“I’ll come with you.”

They pulled on their clothes and left the building. The streets were wet but the rain had stopped. More and more people appeared. There was a carnival atmosphere. Everyone was cheering and shouting slogans. Many were singing the national anthem, “La Bayamesa.” There was nothing Latin about the tune—it sounded more like a German drinking song—but the singers meant every word.

To live in chains is to live

In dishonor and ignominy

Hear the call of the bugle:

Hasten, brave ones, to arms!

As Tanya and Paz marched through the alleys of the old city with the crowd, Tanya noticed that many of the men had armed themselves. Lacking guns, they carried garden tools and machetes, and had kitchen knives and meat cleavers in their belts, as if they were going to fight the Americans hand-to-hand on the Malecón.

Tanya recalled that one Boeing B-52 Stratofortress of the United States Air Force carried seventy thousand pounds of bombs.

You poor fools, she thought bitterly; how much use do you think your knives will be against that?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

George had never felt nearer death than he did in the Cabinet Room of the White House on Wednesday, October 24.

The morning meeting began at ten, and George thought war would break out before eleven.

Technically this was the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, called ExComm for short. In practice President Kennedy summoned anyone he felt could help in the crisis. His brother Bobby was always among them.

The advisers sat on leather chairs around the long table. Their aides sat on similar chairs up against the walls. The tension in the room was suffocating.

The alert status of the Strategic Air Command had moved to DEFCON 2, the level just below imminent war. Every bomber of the air force was ready. Many were continuously in the air, loaded with nukes, patrolling over Canada, Greenland, and Turkey, as close as they could get to the borders of the USSR. Every bomber had a preassigned Soviet target.

If war broke out, the Americans would unleash a nuclear firestorm that would flatten every major town in the Soviet Union. Millions would die. Russia would not recover in a hundred years.

And the Soviets had to have something similar planned for the United States.

Ten o’clock was the moment the blockade went into effect. Any Soviet vessel within five hundred miles of Cuba was now fair game. The first interception of a Soviet missile ship, by the USS Essex, was expected between ten thirty and eleven. By eleven they might all be dead.

CIA chief John McCone began by reviewing all Soviet shipping en route to Cuba. He spoke in a drone that heightened the tension by making everyone impatient. Which Soviet ships should the navy intercept first? What would happen then? Would the Soviets allow their ships to be inspected? Would they fire on American ships? What should the navy do then?

While the group tried to second-guess their opposite numbers in Moscow, an aide brought McCone a note. McCone was a dapper white-haired man of sixty. He was a businessman, and George suspected that the CIA career professionals did not tell him everything they were doing.