“Professor Hutch’s birthday, so we thought we’d surprise her,” Lewis said.
“Surprised?” Nigel asked her.
“Quite.”
“Cheers, and happy birthday,” Nigel said to Amanda as he led his date back out on the dance floor.
“Cheers,” Amanda said, wiggling her fingers at them. The three watched as the pair boogied to the far side of the dance floor.
“Well, fancy that,” Lewis said. “Think she’s on to us?”
Paul shrugged. “This is the hep spot, if they’re going out they’d probably come here.”
“I don’t know,” Lewis said, drumming his fingers on the table along with the Stones. “It’s strange. I’m convinced she’s probably Agency.”
“How do you become convinced that something is probably the case?” Amanda asked mischievously.
“Well, she’s Russian. She lands in our department just when we start up on this for real. But on the other hand she does live in some hellish part of Dorchester.” Lewis kept his eyes on the pair as they began dancing on the floor.
“Dorchester?” Paul asked.
“Would the Agency ever put anyone there?” Amanda asked. “Especially a number like that. Plus, her educational background’s legit.”
Lewis stared momentarily at Amanda and appeared about to speak when Paul interrupted him.
“Anyway.” Paul held up his glass to his lips as he told them that the day before he’d sent the chronometer back to 1923, kept it there until 1933, and brought it back. “It worked perfectly.”
“Hot diggety dog,” Lewis said. “This calls for a drink.” He hoisted his whiskey and took a long hit. When he was done he exhaled approvingly, momentarily studied his raised glass, and then put it down. He turned to Amanda.
“Paul tells me you have something for us.”
Amanda nodded. “It’s the Cuban Missile Crisis,” she said. “That is the pressure point. That changed everything.”
Paul finished his drink. “The event we need to undo?”
“If you’re looking for a one-shot strike, something that can be accomplished by two or three people, I can’t think of a better place to intervene,” Amanda said.
“Why?” Paul asked.
Amanda sighed. “In 1962 the United States had, hands down, the best military in the world. The Soviets didn’t even have a navy. Not one to speak of anyway. They had a Communist government in Cuba that Eisenhower approved being overthrown in early 1961 with an invasion by a ragtag group of Cuban expatriates trained by the CIA. But Kennedy got elected and wouldn’t commit American air power to support the invasion. Without air support the whole campaign fell apart at the invasion point known as the Bay of Pigs.”
It was Lewis’ turn to nod. “One of history’s blunders. We studied that operation, the CIA recruitment of the Cubans, the training process, the battle…” he grimaced. “Studied it all in school.”
Paul discerned Lewis’ pause before saying “in school.” It was often Lewis’ euphemism for military training.
“Kennedy’s decision had a number of long term effects,” Lewis finished.
“It had three big ones,” Amanda continued. “First, right wingers in the U.S. believed that Kennedy was soft. Second, Khrushchev realized that he needed to do something to strengthen Cuba’s hand if Castro were to stay in power. And third, Castro himself realized that he needed to expand Communism to South and Central America if he was ever going to challenge the U.S.”
“That was 1961, though,” Paul protested.
Amanda nodded. “In response to all this Khrushchev sent missiles to Cuba which could be loaded with nuclear warheads. In October of ’62 Kennedy found out about them and a debate erupted in the administration as to what to do.”
Amanda leaned across the bar room table toward Paul. “I’ve listened to the tapes of the meeting. Every one of his advisors recommended invasion to remove Castro and Cuban Communism. Senator Russell, Senator Fulbright, General Curtis LeMay, everyone. The risk, of course, was that Kennedy feared a nuclear war.”
“Was he right?” Paul asked.
“No, absolutely not,” Amanda answered. “Khrushchev never would have done it. If Kennedy had invaded Cuba the U.S. would have won and there never would have been any Ché Guevara to foment a Central and South American revolution. As it was Ché was almost stopped in Bolivia except he was saved by General Lee.”
“General Li? Chinese?” deVere asked
Lewis rolled his eyes. “No, an American traitor who had defected to Cuba and joined the Cuban guerillas. Named Lee. He later became a general and won a crucial battle at Acapulco. We studied his campaigns in training school. They became the blueprint for Communist guerrilla activities everywhere.”
“Oh yeah.” Paul remembered the picture of the thin-faced man on the wall at the Kennedy Library Exhibit. He had forgotten his name. “Any relation to Robert E. Lee?”
Amanda snickered. “No, no relation to Robert E. He was O.H. Lee. Anyway, Ché lucked out. A successful invasion in ’62 would have made Kennedy wildly popular and may have given the U.S. the courage to stay and fight in Indo-China. As it was, the American military advisors were pulled out in early ’64.”
“So, what do we do?” Paul asked. “How do we convince Kennedy to invade Cuba in ’62?”
Amanda sipped her beer. As a waitress drifted close she held up three fingers. She waited until the waitress had moved away before answering.
“We don’t,” she answered. “The press does. We use an indirect approach. First, we get cash. As a history professor I can get access to the old American money plates at the museum and can print up a bunch of old United States money. Real paper and everything. Every so often someone will do it for a party or Halloween or something. It’s not a big deal. Obviously, the currency is no good today but valid in ’62.” She smiled. “At least we’ll be rich.
“Second, Lewis gets us all communicators with extended energy packs. No satellite communications back then but strong scrambled radio transmitters with coast-to-coast range.
“Third, three laptops filled with scanned newspaper articles from the New York Times and Washington Post. And of course, three printers since they’ll be none there.”
Paul nodded. “Anything else?”
“Firearms,” Lewis answered. “Just in case.”
Amanda shrugged. “That’s up to you. I don’t need any. But anyway, gun laws were more relaxed back then before the Soviets took over.”
It was Paul’s turn to shake his head. “It was that damn NRA and their idiot president. First thing the Soviets did was go to the NRA building in D.C. and grab the member list. They didn’t need gun registration. Once they had that, they were able to eliminate 85% of the private gun ownership in the country.”
“But not their bumper stickers.” Amanda smiled.
“Then what?” Paul asked. “How do we use the newspapers?”
“The two most important newspapers were the New York Times and the Washington Post,” Amanda continued. “We approach Ben Bradlee at the Washington Post and Harrison Salisbury at the Times, prove who we are by showing them copies of the newspaper articles from the next day’s papers which we’ll bring with us, horse racing results, etc., and convince them of the need to go to war. William Randolph Hearst was once able to convince the United States to go to war against Spain—we can do it again.”
“And?”
Amanda raised her eyebrows.
“What happens if Kennedy changes his mind and invades?” Paul asked.
“He also might not pull out of Vietnam. Pulling out was a mistake.”
“He should’ve stayed in?”
“They called it the Domino Theory,” Amanda said. “There’s a guy nobody remembers today named John Foster Dulles, but he was brilliant. If anybody knew what they were talking about back then, he did. His theory was that if Vietnam goes, next goes Laos, next goes Cambodia, one after the other, next thing you know all Indochina’s Communist. Which is exactly what happened.”