Shift: A Novel

than a century and you Americans, with your penchant for brute force, have never managed to understand. There will be a confrontation. Your president will threaten war. The Russians will back down, and nothing will change. Or they won’t back down, and still nothing will change, because neither side is willing to fire first.”

“So what’s Khrushchev’s real plan?”

“You misunderstand. At this point, Khrushchev is only nominally in charge of the Politburo, and the Politburo is only nominally in charge of the country. But I have reason to believe that certain officers of the KGB—men whose power predates the premier’s and will continue long after he has been replaced—have come up with a less visible strategy. The missiles will hold everyone’s attention, but they are just empty shells, both figuratively and literally. Their payloads are the real threat. While everyone’s attention is focused on the shells, these men plan to move several ‘unmated’ nuclear devices into Cuba under cover of conventional trade shipments—oil, wheat, and the like. The payload of an SS-3 weighs nearly three thousand pounds, so they can’t exactly be carried in a suitcase. Nevertheless, they are relatively small and portable compared to a rocket-powered MRBM and, should the necessitating situation arise, could be delivered to locations in the United States by boat or airplane and thence by small truck to any target desired. No doubt some of them would be intercepted along the way, but if even one got through, it could wreak tremendous damage.”

Melchior’s head was spinning, and it wasn’t just the fact that he’d been on an eight-hundred-calorie-a-day diet for the past three months.

“That doesn’t make sense. The conventional wisdom says that nuclear weapons are only useful if the other side knows you have them. If anything, you want to exaggerate the size of your arsenal, not play it down. ‘Mutually assured destruction,’ as the policy has it. What would be the benefit of having a hidden nuclear arsenal on Cuban soil?”

“Your analysis presupposes the idea that the men who are bringing this arsenal to Cuba are interested in maintaining detente or some other version of the balance of power. But what if they actually want to win the war, or shift its terms?”

“You think they actually plan to use these weapons? But that would lead to nothing but their own annihilation.”

“Would it? If millions of lives were lost in an anonymous nuclear attack on the United States, what purpose would it serve to wipe out Russia and perhaps China? The damage would have been done. A counterattack would be nothing more than punitive, and would lead only to reprisals. Destruction on an unimaginable scale. No, the Soviet Union would be an unattractive target. Cuba, though. An insignificant little country. A thorn that had somehow managed to pierce the aorta of the United States. That would be a target to appease an enraged citizenry’s demand for blood, without risking any kind of serious reprisal.”

Melchior looked for a flaw in Raul’s reasoning. He didn’t see one. So here it was, he thought. The next level of proliferation. Not nuclear-armed states but nuclear-armed organizations, nuclear-armed individuals, with their own, unparsable agendas. He supposed it was an inevitable development, but God, it had come fast.

“Then my question is the same,” he said. “Are you telling me about the bombs so I can pass the information along to the U.S. government?”

“Pass along what? A rumor? Your James Jesus Angleton”—Raul gave the middle name its proper Spanish pronunciation—“will spend weeks analyzing every possible motive we might have for telling you such a story and ultimately dismiss it as misinformation, a strategy to focus CIA attention on Cuba while the Soviet Union hatches its real plan elsewhere. You need proof in order to make your story compelling. Of the bombs’ existence, and of their location.”

At last Melchior understood.

“You don’t know where the bombs are.”

“Because they are being moved here clandestinely—that is to say, without Politburo approval—it is very difficult for even my government to keep track of them.”

“So you want me to track them down and tell you where they are. Why would I do that?”

“If all I wanted was to track them down, I would put my own men on the task. I want you to remove them.”

“You want to give nuclear weapons to your worst enemy?”

“I am giving you nothing that you don’t already have. I merely want them off my soil. Cuba has no desire to join the nuclear club, and it is tired of being the pawn in other countries’ wars. I can easier stomach a small-scale CIA operation that my brother can denounce as capitalist intervention than a full invasion in search of something that might not even exist—or, worse, a couple of ‘pre-emptive’ nuclear strikes.”

“Let me see if I got this straight. You’re going to set an American agent free”—Melchior figured the time for subterfuge was long past—“on Cuban soil, to track down possible nuclear bombs being moved here by rogue officers in the KGB, and, if I find them, to bring a full CIA team into the country to remove them?”

Segundo smiled.

“Who said anything about setting you free? Just as your country has denied your existence for the past three months, so shall I announce your escape a half hour after you walk out of this office, and call for a national manhunt. Of course, as the man in charge of that hunt, I can do as much to hinder as help its efforts. But if my men were to catch you, well …” Raul shrugged. “I would probably shoot you myself, just for making me look the fool.”

Melchior sat silently for a long time.

Then: “What makes you think I won’t just shoot Fidel the minute you let me go?”

Raul laughed so hard that Melchior thought he was going to fall out of his chair. When he’d finally regained composure, he reached into a drawer, pulled out something small and shiny, and tossed it across the desk’s broad surface. Melchior recognized it immediately.

Donny’s crucifix.

“Shoot him?” Segundo said. “Wouldn’t you rather offer him a cigar?”