Barbara and Max Allan Collins
Bombshell
Dedicated to
Stephen Borer…
…that most dedicated of fans
“I could tell Khrushchev liked me.
He squeezed my hand so long and so hard that I thought he would break it.”
“It is a question of war or peace between our countries, a question of life or death...”
“I have little respect for money...
Ideas excite me.”
Authors’ Note
The events described in this book occurred on the weekend of September 19, 1959. Some of what you are about to read is in the public record; some of it derives from recently declassified material — from both Russian and American sources — made available to the authors from various quarters, in part due to the Freedom of Information Act. Other information was culled from unpublished memoirs of various participants, including a State Department official, herein called “Jack Harrigan.” Dialogue, whenever possible, is from these sources; other times the authors have taken the liberty of exercising their imaginations in what we are presenting as a novel.
Prologue
A Blinding Flash
The strobe of light — brighter than the simultaneous popping of one hundred million flash-camera bulbs — preceded the thunderous roar by seconds.
A young boy — clad in a plaid short-sleeved shirt and dark blue jeans with rolled-up cuffs, his blond hair sheared in a near-bald butch, his freckled face flushed from riding his bicycle in the hot sun — dove off the bike onto the green lake of a nearby lawn, where he belly-flopped, and frantically buried his face in the grass, covering the back of his head with his interlaced hands, protecting himself as best he could.
At the same time, across the street, a mother in a blue cotton housedress — she had been pushing a brown baby-buggy down the sidewalk past a row of neatly-kept clapboard houses with lawns cut as short as the bike-rider’s butch — threw herself across the front of the open buggy, making a human shield for her baby, wailing within.
The deafening roar turned down its own volume, becoming a low growling rumble…
…and a mushroom cloud rose in grotesque grandeur, blooming beneath an awaiting heaven, life-choking smoke and debris shooting outward with insidious speed in every direction, a storm of rubble and rubbish, a manmade tornado fragmenting other harmless manmade objects into deadly projectiles, a rain of death that filled the little movie screen.
“Remember,” a helpful if ominous male voice intoned, managing to be heard above the conflagration, as well as the rattle and hum of the movie projector, “in the event of atomic attack… duck and cover!”
Tiny eyes narrowed in young faces in the darkened classroom, heads nodding, filing away this priceless information.
“This action,” the stern yet friendly voice informed them, “can save your life.”
Light, ebullient music bounced along as if this were the end of the latest episode of “Ozzie and Harriet,” and then swelled absurdly to greet the letters spelling out THE END, which forebodingly filled the screen, only to fade. The monster movie many of these children had seen at a recent Saturday matinee had ended similarly… only with a question mark tagged onto those final chilling two words.
Now the end-of-the-world cacophony was over, the only sound in the classroom the whipcrack of the celluloid film — snap, snap, snap — whirling around as the reel ran out. There was something scolding about the sound…
Mrs. Violet Hahn — seventh-grade social studies teacher at Emerson Junior High in West Los Angeles — shut off the machine with a sharp click, making a few children jump, and the rotating film slowed, its snapping turning to soft, rather pathetic slaps, like a winded old man running out of energy. The teacher, looking matronly beyond her years in a drab tan cotton dress and brown oxford shoes, took a few steps over to a wall switch and turned on the lights with another spine-stiffening click.
Mrs. Hahn couldn’t remember a single time during her twelve years at Emerson when her pupils had been so pin-drop quiet after the showing of an educational film, the usual likes of which admittedly included risible do’s-and-don’ts — such classics as "Friendship Begins at Home," "Are Manners Important?" and "Alcohol is Dynamite."
Even so, she demanded complete silence during all the showings (anyone who broke this rule got sent to the principal’s office), and so — afterwards — the youngsters usually unleashed their pent-up energy by poking fun at the “stupid” movie, or hitting each other, or throwing spitballs.
And this film — with its helmet-wearing cartoon turtle and Disney-like song — had been designed for decidedly younger audiences than junior high age…
Even so, the response to today’s film had been different. After all, it hadn’t just been Bert the Turtle; it had also featured that sonorous, portentous narrator warning students to: “Always remember — the flash from an atomic bomb can come at any time!”
Mrs. Hahn crossed the polished wooden floor, its boards creaking with her every step, to the front of the classroom, where she turned to face her students.
Four dozen wide eyes stared back at her.
Perhaps the movie had been a little intense, she thought. It had certainly unsettled her. This wasn’t a normal film day, with students instructed on good hygiene, or healthy eating habits, or acceptable lunchroom behavior. Or even one of the more disturbing documentaries, such as those about the animals that lived in the wilds of Africa, or the many fish that swam in the sea, or the tiny turtles making their way across an endless D-Day-esque beach, very few surviving the predators along the way… Life and death was the underlying theme of many such educational films.
However, watching a panther track a gazelle, or a shark swallow a blowfish, was much more removed — and, from an adolescent standpoint, far more entertaining — than seeing a boy dive for his life and a mother sacrifice hers.
“Are there any questions?” Mrs. Hahn asked the class, making her voice sound matter-of-fact, hoping to take the onus out of the moment.
When no one responded, she added, “Or comments?” For if any student was truly disturbed, better to deal with it now, rather than receive an angry phone call in the middle of the night from some parent whose child couldn’t sleep — or whose Johnny or Jane had awoken from a dream of a blinding atomic-bomb flash.
“Yeah,” came a sullen voice from the back of the classroom. Harold Johnson, a dark-haired boy with piercing brown eyes in an acned pie-plate face, sat slouched at his wooden desk. He was bigger than the others — only because he’d been held back twice. “That ‘duck and cover’ is a bunch of junk,” he said.
Mrs. Hahn raised her chin and looked down her nose at him. “What our film today tells us happens to be very good advice, Harold — lifesaving advice. So you’d be wise to remember it.”