Bombshell

Chapter Two Welcome To L.A

In a remote corner of Los Angeles International Airport, from the yawning mouth of a North American Aviation hangar, Jack Harrigan — his mental and emotional state a mix of detachment, concern, and fatigue — watched as an Air Force 707 landed in the heat-shimmering distance. The forty-two-year-old agent, assigned these days to the State Department Security Division, had flown ahead the day before from Washington to finalize preparations for the visiting Russian delegation, arriving at this moment on that jet.

At six foot two, Harrigan had a shaggy, rugged handsomeness — there were those who said he resembled a leaner Robert Mitchum, the movie actor — that made him almost too distinctive for the security division, which favored banality in its agents’ appearance, the better to blend in with crowds. Among Harrigan’s distinguishing characteristics were hazel eyes, singed eyebrows (age nine; fire-cracker), and a re-set nose (age twelve; fist-fight), false front tooth (age sixteen; hockey puck); one other deformity, only his ex-wife and a few other females knew about: a fistful-sized chunk of his left buttock was missing (age twenty-five; German mortar).

A sorry excuse for a welcoming committee had gathered at the hangar to wait quietly for the premier of Russia — and the sixty-some entourage accompanying him. This small assemblage was a pale shadow of the festivities that had been arranged for Khrushchev back east, when he flew in to Idlewild a week ago. Mayor Wagner of New York rolled out a literal red carpet, complete with waving banners, effusive speeches, a huge cheering crowd, and three blaring brass bands.

Mayor Poulson of Los Angeles — that pain-in-the-ass prick — felt differently about having a communist dictator delivered to his bailiwick, viewing Khrushchev with the warmth reserved for a bastard child found in a basket on a doorstep.

As the plane began to taxi toward him, Harrigan stood motionless in the noonday sun’s withering heat; but behind the black sunglasses his trained eyes were darting from the handful of put-upon perspiring dignitaries lined up across from him, to the press corps held back behind a cop-guarded barricade, to the small crowd of citizens who’d been aware of Khrushchev’s coming, and cared enough — for whatever reason — to witness the historic moment.

Harrigan was cataloguing every movement, scrutinizing every face, looking for any hand-held objects that weren’t fountain pens, cameras, or little American flags… and looking for certain kinds of faces, hot with rage or, even more dangerous, cold with rage…

Just because the crowd was paltry didn’t mean the agent could let his guard down, not for a heartbeat; it only took one person — in one heartbeat’s time — to pull out a gun and assassinate Khrushchev, and send the United States to the edge of a precipice beyond which was an all-too-real nuclear abyss.

Yup — just another day in the life of Jack Harrigan.

And had Harrigan deemed to remove his sunglasses, to take a better look at the meager mob, something else would have been revealed about the agent: dark circles under his eyes, indicating the lack of sleep and abundance of stress he’d endured this past week, which had begun dubiously — a bad omen, for those who believed in that kind of thing (and he did) — with the initial arrival of the Russians on American soil.

The Soviets had put down at Andrews Air Force Base, fifteen miles southwest of Washington D.C., in a huge Russian Tupolev jetliner. The use of that airplane — considerably longer and taller than its American counterpart — was a disaster in and of itself: when the metal debarkation staircase was wheeled up to its door, the ramp was too short. It was a scene out of a slapstick comedy: chaos broke out on the ground, while Khrushchev and company were left cooling their heels, until some poor bastard finally found a common household ladder.

When the Russians finally climbed ignobly out, and down, like sweethearts eloping in the middle of the night, Nikita Khrushchev was not in the mood for love; the dictator was red with rage. The press had a field — day snapping him and the portly missus, her dress wrapped tightly around her legs for modesty’s sake, coming down the ladder. Harrigan, working closely with the Secret Service boys (until recently he’d been Secret Service himself), saw to it that any film — whether news organization or civilian — was confiscated.

When a reporter pal of his had bitched, Harrigan said, “No way I’m gonna let World War III start up over some fat Russian broad gettin’ embarrassed… but don’t quote me.”

Various pomp and circumstance had awaited the Russian premier and his people at Andrews — the usual twenty-one-gun salute, President Eisenhower on hand, honor guards, ten bands massed to play both the Soviet national anthem, “Soyuz Nerushimy Respublik Svobodnykh,” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A motorcade through the Maryland suburbs into Washington had been followed by a full-dress parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.

But none of it took the bite out of the ramp-and-ladder incident: strike one for the Americans — not at all an auspicious beginning to a last-ditch peace mission between two nations on a nuclear collision course.

At one point early on, when the Russians had still been aboard the Tupolev jet, Harrigan — watching from the sidelines as the catastrophe unfolded — thought he detected a small, smug smile briefly purse Khrushchev’s thick lips, as the dictator peered from the plane’s window at the Americans below, running around like ants that had their colony disturbed.

Surely the Russians knew the specifications of U.S. commercial jets. Had they built their plane bigger on purpose? Was this a cunning chess move, designed to make the Americans start off the trip with a blunder?

Later, when an obviously embarrassed President Eisenhower asked Khrushchev to leave the huge Tupolev behind at the base, and offered one of the Air Force’s new 707s for the rest of the premier’s cross-country trip, Harrigan again could only wonder: Had that been Khrushchev’s plan all along? Just how much national security would be compromised in the name of hospitality?

Harrigan of course had been briefed extensively on Khrushchev at the State Department. There was no denying that this man — however much the roly-poly despot might seem a thug or peasant-risen-to-power — was a smart and formidable adversary. He’d have to be, to have survived the bloody purges of Stalin.

Now Harrigan had had a week to form his own opinion of the Russian ruler, and found him to be a complicated man, whose disposition could turn on a dime, like a big precocious child. Amusing and warm at one moment, Khrushchev was an erupting human earthquake the next: shrewd and ruthless, and about as subtle about his wants and needs as a sailor on a three-hour pass.

At the moment, however, Harrigan was not the least bit interested in the inner workings of Nikita Khrushchev’s mind and what made this bomb of a man tick; he was concerned — make that panic-stricken — over the perils of making it through the last leg of what he considered to have been an ill-advised trip in the first place… a trip that had only deteriorated further with each stop along the way.

While in New York, the premier infuriated the United Nations delegation — Chiang Kai-shek’s democratic Nationalist China had refused to attend — who had generously allowed him to give a speech before the General Assembly. The Russian guest had repaid this gracious gesture by delivering a tirade punctuated with bellicose blustering and outright threats.

Still, Harrigan had noted, there had been a suggestion that what Khrushchev wanted most was peace…

Khrushchev — surprisingly dapper in a blue serge suit with gray tie and gold stickpin, two medals on his lapel — had taken the U.N. podium with his personal interpreter at his side, a handsome if vaguely sinister-looking young man named Oleg Troyanovsky. As Khrushchev spoke in his native tongue, his voice grew sharper and louder. The interpreter was able to soften the premier’s inflection, but not his words, which warned of world destruction unless the cold war came to an end, and disarmament began.

“Over a period of four years,” Khrushchev suggested, “all states should effect complete disarmament and should no longer have any means of waging war. Military bases on foreign territories shall be abolished, all atomic and hydrogen bombs destroyed…”

The delegates had no argument with that. But how? Khrushchev never said.

Twice before — in 1927 and 1932 — the Soviet Union had proposed total world disarmament of this kind, but on both occasions the rest of the world had recognized the proposal for what it was — a one-sided attempt to get every other nation to cast its armaments aside… while Russia refused adequate supervision to demonstrate that they were doing the same.

Khrushchev concluded his seventy-two minute speech by condemning the assembly for not allowing Mao Tse-tung’s Red China to join the United Nations. Nationalist China on Formosa, he told them, was all but dead, “a rotting corpse that should be carried out.” Delegates shifted uncomfortably in their seats, disgruntled murmurs rising among them.

After the media reported the speech, the mood of the general public — who previously had been guardedly polite toward the Russian leader in Washington and New York — began to shift ominously; and by Chicago, crowds had become downright hostile, as Khrushchev continued his lecturing on the evils of capitalism and of eminent Soviet domination.

There had been an electrified charge in the air as the motorcade whisked the premier along Chicago’s Michigan Avenue amid signs that read: FISH AND GUESTS SMELL IN 3 DAYS! GO TO THE MOON, LEAVE US ALONE! and RUSSIAN ATROCITIES IN HUNGARY MUST BE ANSWERED! The lynch mob mood concerned Harrigan enough that he’d flown back to Washington that night to meet with his State Department boss, on whose shoulders rested the enormous responsibility of safeguarding Khrushchev.

For decades, the Secret Service had protected not only the president of the United States but any visiting dignitaries. Recently, however, a new security division had been formed in the State Department to handle the ever-increasing number of foreign guests; the world was growing smaller, it seemed, even as living on it grew more dangerous.

Many of these agents, Harrigan included, had been culled from the ranks of the Secret Service. Protecting Khrushchev was their first assignment. Harrigan wished they could have gotten their feet wet with a much smaller fish; but they were stuck instead with this big barracuda.

“I think we should cut the trip short,” Harrigan told Bill Larsen, his chief.

He and Larsen had known each other for over ten years, working the White House Detail together. They had both gone after the coveted top spot in the new division, but Bill — Harrigan’s senior officer by a few years — had landed the position, putting a strain on their friendship.

Seated behind the massive, cluttered mahogany desk in his executive office, Larsen — middle-aged, brown-haired, average, even undistinguished looking (always a plus in this work), wearing a rumpled Brooks Brothers suit and a twelve-hour stubble — gave Harrigan a hard stare.

A portrait of Eisenhower peered over the shoulder of Harrigan’s former colleague/new boss, as if Ike were curious to hear Harrigan’s thoughts, while an American flag stood at attention in the corner. A wall clock with the division seal read just after midnight.

“I say we go straight from Chicago,” Harrigan said, “to that photo-op farm in Iowa. Get our boy grinning with his fellow pigs and then put his big ass on his big-ass airplane and ship him back to Siberia or wherever-the-hell.”

Larsen thought about that for a moment. “Skip L.A. altogether, you mean.”

“Skip it. Why borrow trouble?”

Larsen thought some more; then he slowly shook his head. “Ike won’t like it.”

Harrigan sat forward, put a hand on the desk. “Fuck Ike,” he said, with a sneering nod at the portrait. “Would Ike like some more ugly incidents? Maybe he’d like a dead premier for supper, and atomic war for dessert?”

“Are you on amphetamines again, Jack?”

Harrigan sighed. “Bill — it’s getting hot out there… and I’m not talking about the goddamn weather.”

“I know… I know.” Larsen sat and brooded; then he pounded his desk with a fist. “Goddamn that fat little bastard! Why can’t he just keep his big mouth shut? Doesn’t he know anything about diplomacy? Can’t he just sit back and look at the scenery and shut the hell up?”

Harrigan sighed, shrugged, nodded. “Even his own people can’t control him. He’s like Al Capone or something.”

“Al Capone we could put in jail — this jerk we have to wine and dine.” Larsen let out a weary blast of air. “Maybe the president could broadcast an appeal…”

“For what?”

“Patience on the public’s part. To cut the guy some slack, the way you do some hick from the country who shows up at the family reunion with the manners of a billy goat.”

Harrigan smirked. “And how does that work, exactly? You think Nikita’s people won’t tell him what the prez is saying about him in the press?”

“Ike could simply imply that—”

“That the public should just ignore the commie dung being flung their way?”

A small shrug. “It could work.”

“Yeah, and if we all believe, really really believe, maybe Tinker Bell won’t fucking die.” Harrigan shifted in the chair. “Anyway, that’s not the real issue here, Bill. We have the most volatile man in the world heading into the most volatile city in the world… And I’m not getting the support I need from the mayor.”

Larsen’s eyes tightened as he sat forward. “What do you mean?”

“You know how many men Poulson’s giving me? How about a hundred?”

Larsen’s eyes ping-pong-balled. “Jesus Christ! We had three thousand agents in Washington — two thousand in New York!” The division chief leaned back in his chair, looking like he’d been poleaxed. “Why do I think that prick Poulson would just love to have Khrushchev take a bullet on his turf?”

“I don’t know. Because he would?”

Larsen stood, leaning forward, hands touching the desktop. “Jack, I’ll call Mayor Poulson personally — I’ll remind the S.O.B. which side of the bread the politics is buttered on.”

“Good. Thank you.” For that much, at least.

Larsen was saying, “You’ll have more men than a damn hundred, or I’ll have his honor’s head on a stick.”

“Either way that goes,” Harrigan said with a smile, and shook hands with his old friend, “sounds good to me.”

With the meeting over, Harrigan stopped at a water fountain to take a pill; then he spoke to another burning-the-midnight-oil agent in the hallway for a moment, just small talk between co-workers, and was heading down the shining tile corridor of the State Department building, when Larsen suddenly called him back to his office.

“Hey!”

Harrigan walked back and stood before Larsen, who was poised at the doorway.

“I just got word from Central Intelligence,” the chief said. He looked shaken, standing there rigidly. “One of their agents in Formosa is warning of an assassination attempt.”

Harrigan’s eyes narrowed. “Target K?”

“Target K,” Larsen said.

Well, it looked like Khrushchev’s speech to the United Nations had reached the ears of Nationalist China.

“That’s just great,” Harrigan said tersely, “that’s just swell — well, hell, why don’t I round up every Oriental in the greater Los Angeles area, and call it even!”

Larsen shook his head, ashen. “I’ll see that you get that manpower.”

“You’d better,” Harrigan said. “Or there could be a new man in your chair.”

“Maybe, Jack,” Larsen said, kidding on the square. “But it sure as hell won’t be you… Anything else I can do for you?”

“Sure, Bill.”

“Name it.”

“Pray.”

The Air Force 707, bearing Khrushchev and his entourage, rolled to a smooth stop in front of the hangar, and polished metal glistened in the California sunlight. Immediately, the ground crew pushed the heavy aluminum staircase-on-wheels to its door, which after another few minutes opened slowly, with theatrical melodrama.

First down the steps were three of Harrigan’s men from the State Department Security Division; on their heels were four of Khrushchev’s personal Okhrana guards, elite uniformed members of the KGB, the Russian spy agency. Then came the premier himself, wearing a lightweight tan suit; he was smiling, waving his homburg hat, apparently in a good mood. Thank God for small favors, Harrigan thought.

Close behind him was plump, pleasant Mrs. Nina Khrushchev, attired in a simple navy dress, being helped down the steps by her twenty-four-year-old blond, blue-eyed son, Sergei. An older son might have been on Nina’s other arm, if his plane hadn’t been shot down in flames back in World War II by the Germans.

Next were Khrushchev’s two daughters, Rada and Julia, both in their early thirties, one blonde, the other brunette, fetchingly framed in the jetliner’s exit doorway, debunking any notion that Russian women were strictly shotputting babushkaed beasts at the Olympics. The two sisters were downright pretty, Harrigan thought.

Finally, bringing up the rear, were the bureaucrats and intellectuals, the entourage Khrushchev insisted he have with him: Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Ambassador Mikhail Menshikov, Atomic Energy executive Vasily Emelyanov, Minister of Education Vyacheslav Elyutin, and, among others, the editor of Pravda, Pavel Satyukov.

The mayor of Los Angeles, Norris Poulson — a beefy bucket-headed character with dark hair and dark-rimmed glasses, his black suit a perfect choice, if he’d been attending a funeral — stepped forward to greet Khrushchev.

“We welcome you to Los Angeles, the City of Angels,” Poulson said, with all the enthusiasm of a white Southern sheriff meeting his daughter’s colored boyfriend, “where our city motto is that the impossible always happens.”

Well, Harrigan thought, that was easily the dumbest goddamn city motto he’d ever heard.

Everyone waited for the mayor to continue — some minor speech seemed appropriate, some small recognition of this important personage in their presence. But only an embarrassing silence followed.

Khrushchev’s smile dropped, his eyes narrowed. Holding a four-page speech in his hands, the premier — who obviously knew damned well he’d been insulted — growled only one line from it, before stuffing it angrily back in his pocket. Oleg Troyanovsky didn’t bother to translate.

Harrigan clenched his teeth and cursed the mayor under his breath; it was clear Poulson had intentionally snubbed Khrushchev, who was now moving briskly, angrily, past the small crowd of stunned well-wishers.

One of the crowd — a dark young man in a short-sleeved white shirt and denim tie — called out in Russian to Khrushchev, stopping the premier in his tracks. The young man appeared to be of European stock, with just a tinge of Asian in the eyes — or was that Harrigan’s imagination running wild, in light of the Formosa threat?

The agent tensed as he moved quickly between the two, prepared for anything, his coat unbuttoned to give easy access to his shoulder-holstered.38. But Khrushchev only smiled back at the young man, providing a wordless non-response to whatever it was the youth had said.

Harrigan would have to ask the translator later. Right now, however, the urgency of the moment was to get the premier and his entourage safely into those waiting, bulletproof limousines.

As the caravan of cars slowly drew away, Harrigan — in the limo directly behind Khrushchev — looked back at the hangar, where the press and the small crowd were drifting in this direction or that one, dispersing…

…except for the young man in the white shirt, who intently watched them go, eyes unblinking, smile frozen.

Harrigan filed the face in his mental cabinet and settled back in the seat, hoping to Christ that Mayor Norris Poulson was wrong about Los Angeles.

That it wasn’t the city where the impossible happened.

The goddamn possible was bad enough.