Kennedy kept the rocker in motion. He nodded to himself. He looked down at Bobby, who raised his eyebrows. "Too noisy," the President-elect finally said.

Dulles leaned forward. "How's that, Jack?"

"I am fully aware that the smaller the political risk, the greater the military risk," Kennedy said. "The trick is to find the prudent balance between the two. Trinidad is too spectacular, too loud. The whole thing sounds too much like a full-fledged World War II invasion. I want you to reduce the noise level. I would feel more comfortable signing off on this if it were a quiet landing on a remote beach, and preferably at night. By dawn I'd want the ships that brought them there to be out of sight over the horizon. That way we can plausibly deny any American involvement-a group of Cuban exiles landed on a beach, some war surplus B-26s flown by pilots who defected from Castro's air force are providing them with air cover, that sort of thing."

Joe Kennedy shook his head. "What are you people doing about Castro? He ought to be a.s.sa.s.sinated before the invasion or it will fail."

There was an embarra.s.sed silence. Torriti opened his mouth to say something but Bissell touched his arm and he shut it. Jack Kennedy told his father, very gently, "Dad, that is just not the kind of thing we want to get into."

Joe Kennedy got the message. "Of course, of course. I withdraw the question."

The President-elect asked about the nuts and bolts of JMARC. Bissell provided answers. The few details he couldn't come up with, Leo Kritzky had at his fingertips. Yes, Castro had a small air force, he said: a few dozen planes that could get off the ground, old Sea Furies and a few T-33 jet trainers, possibly jury-rigged with cannon, that the United States had given to Batista. Absolutely, the brigade's B-26s could be expected to control the skies over the invasion beaches without a.s.sistance from American jets flying from aircraft carriers. No question about it, brigade morale was high and the exiles' combat proficiency excellent; each recruit had fired off more rounds than the average GI in an American army boot camp. Yes, it was true that there had been a minor uprising in Oriente province but it had been crushed by the Cuban army. Yes, the CIA did have raw reports from Camagu Province that the Castro regime was on the ropes, that civil strife and even anarchy were a real possibility, which is why they believed that the brigade's landing in concert with the establishment of a provisional government would lead to a ma.s.sive uprising.

As the briefing dragged on, Bobby looked at his watch and reminded his brother that, in ten minutes, he would be talking on the telephone with Charles de Gaulle. Kennedy thanked the CIA men for coming down and asked Allen Dulles to accompany him back to the main house. "Eisenhower urged me to go ahead with this," he told Dulles, who limped along beside him. "But I want you to remember two things, Allen. Under no circ.u.mstance will I authorize American military intervention. Everything we're trying to do in Latin America, my entire Alliance for Progress initiative, will go down the drain if we're seen beating a tiny country over the head. The brigade has to sink or swim on its own. Also, I reserve the right to cancel the landings right up to the last moment if I judge the risks unacceptable."

"When the time comes to decide, Jack, bear in mind that we'll have a disposal problem if we stand down."

"What do you mean, a disposal problem?"

"What do we do with the brigade if we cancel? If we demobilize them in Guatemala, it could turn into a nightmare. They might resist being disarmed, they might invade on their own. We can't have them wandering around Latin America telling everyone what they've been doing. If word got around that we'd backed down it could trigger a domino effect- Communist uprisings elsewhere."

Kennedy stopped in his tracks and touched Dulles's shirtfront with a fingertip. "You're not going to back me into a corner on this. Allen."

"That wasn't my intention, Jack. I'm only alerting you to problems that we'll have to deal with if you decide to cancel."

Across the garden, Bobby led Bissell, Leo and the Sorcerer through his father's house to the bar and offered them one for the road. He knew that Bissell was being groomed to step into Dulles's shoes as DCI when the veteran spy master retired, which made Bissell a mover and shaker in Washington. Bobby didn't want to get off on the wrong foot with him. At the same time he wanted to make sure that Bissell, like the Washington pundits, understood that he was the second most important man in the capitol. I think your briefing was effective," he told Bissell now. "My brother likes the CIA-he always says, if you need something fast the Pickle Factory is the place to go. The pencil pushers over at the State Department take four or five days to answer a question with a simple yes or no."

Through a partly open door. Jack Kennedy could be seen talking animatedly on the telephone while his father stood by, his arms folded across his chest, listening to the conversation. "Let's be clear about one thing," Bobby went on. "Cuba is my brother's top priority. Everything else plays second fiddle. No time, no money, no effort, no manpower is to be spared. We want you to get rid of Castro one way or another." Bobby's eyes suddenly turned to ice; his voice became soft and precise. "We're in a hurry, too. We want to start the Kennedy administration off with a grand slam." He looked hard at Bissell. "Frankly, we're concerned that the CIA will lose its nerve."

The Sorcerer, feeling better with alcohol in his veins, let a satanic smile work its way onto his lips. Bobby's arrogance had rubbed him the wrong way. "We won't lose our nerve," he muttered, crunching ice between his teeth. "But we're worried you might."

Bobby's eyes narrowed. "Iron the wrinkles out of your plan, my brother will sign off on it. Like my father suggested, it'd certainly make the decision easier if Castro were out of the picture."

In a Company limousine on the way to the airport, where a private plane was waiting to fly them back to Washington, the four CIA men were lost in contemplation. Leo finally broke the silence. "Bobby sure is a sinister little b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Trouble is," Dulles remarked, "every time he uses the imperial we, you don't know if he's speaking for Jack or just trying to sound important."

"I thought I was brought along so I could brief Jack on Executive Action," the Sorcerer said.

"Jack obviously doesn't want to talk about Executive Action in front of witnesses," Bissell said. "In any case, your presence on the team was more eloquent than a briefing."

"Bobby didn't mince words," Dulles noted. "Get rid of Castro one way or another. It's evident the Kennedys won't shed any tears if we can manage to neutralize Fidel."

"I hope to h.e.l.l that that's not a condition for giving the green light to JMARC," Bissell said.

"Jack's n.o.body's fool," Dulles told him. "Getting rid of Castro would certainly be the icing on the cake. But I can't believe he's counting on it."

Bissell, worried sick about his project, gazed out the window of the speeding car. After a while Dulles said, "I remember dining with Jack in his home on N Street right after he was elected to the Senate. After dinner the men went off to smoke cigars. The conversation turned to American presidents-it turned out that Jack was especially fascinated with Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. My brother, Foster, asked him, why those two. Jack replied that they were the two greatest presidents. Then he said"- Dulles shut his eyes in an effort to recapture the scene-"he said, 'In order to be a great president you have to be a wartime president."' He opened his eyes and punched Bissell playfully in the elbow. "He'll go ahead with JMARC, d.i.c.k. Mark my words."

The Technical Service elves, as they were known in-house, lived in a world of their own: a sealed-off warren of top-floor rooms in one of the Company's "temporary" World War II buildings on the Reflecting Pool. The single entrance off the stairwell to their shop, protected by a hermetically sealed door with a skull and crossbones stenciled on it, was manned day and night by armed security guards. The elves themselves, stooped men with a tendency toward thick eyegla.s.ses and thinning hair, favored white lab coats, the pockets of which were usually filled with disposable syringes. Some of the rooms were climate-controlled, with the temperatures hovering in the greenhouse range because of the spoors germinating on moist cotton in petri dishes. Cardboard labels were propped up everywhere: bacteria, fungi, algae, neurotoxins were growing like weeds. The man who directed the division, Dr. Aaron Sydney, a cantankerous five foot two biochemist with tufts of wiry hair on his cheekbones, had worked for a giant pharmaceutical firm before joining the Company. His most recent triumph had been the development of the infected handkerchief that the CIA mailed to General Abdul Karim al-Ka.s.sem, the Iraq military strongman who had fallen afoul of the wonks who masterminded American foreign policy. "Oh, my, no, we certainly don't expect it to kill the poor man," Dr. Sydney was supposed to have told Dulles when he brought him the finished product. "With any luck, it will only make him ill for the rest of his life."

"I didn't catch your name when Mr. Bissell called to arrange the appointment," Dr. Sydney told the Sorcerer when he turned up in his office.

"Torriti, Harvey."

"What can we do for you, Mr. Harvey?"

The Sorcerer looked around the room with a certain amount of discomfort. The walls were lined with shelves filled with sealed jars containing white mice and the occasional small monkey preserved in formaldehyde. each jar was carefully labeled in red ink: clostridium botulinum, toxoplasma gundii, typhus, small pox, bubonic plague, Lupus. Torriti repeated the question to jump-start the answer. "What can you do for me? You can give me Alka-Seltzer."

"Oh, dear, do you have an upset stomach?"

"I want to arrange for someone else to have an upset stomach."

"Ahhhhh. I see. Male or female?"

"Does it make a difference?"

"Indeed it does. Matter of dosage."

"Male, then."

Dr. Sydney uncapped a fountain pen and jotted something on a yellow legal pad. "Would it be asking too much to give me an idea of his age height, weight and the general state of his health?"

"He's in his early thirties, tall, on the solid side, and in excellent health as far as I know."

"Excellent... health," Dr. Sydney repeated as he wrote. He ogled the Sorcerer through his reading gla.s.ses. "Just how upset do you want his stomach to become?"

Torriti was beginning to get a kick out of the conversation. "I want his stomach to stop functioning."

Dr. Sydney didn't miss a beat. "Suddenly or slowly?"

"The suddener, the better."

Dr. Sydney's brows knitted up. "Is that a word, suddener?"

"It is now."

"Suddener. Hmmmm. Which would suggest that you don't want to give anyone time to pump his stomach."

"Something along those lines, yeah."

"Will the product need to be disguised in order to get past an inspection at a border?"

"That'd be a smart idea. Yes. The answer is yes."

"Obviously, you won't want a powder-police at borders of certain countries tend to get all hot under the collar when they see powders. A pill, perhaps?"

"An Alka-Seltzer would be about right."

"Oh, dear, Mr. Harvey, I can see you are a novice at this. Alka-Seltzer is far too big. I'm afraid you'll want something smaller. The smaller it is, the easier it will be for the perpetrator to slip it into a liquid without anyone noticing. You do want the perpetrator to get away with the crime, I take it."

"I suppose so."

"You only suppose?"

"To tell the truth, I haven't given it much thought." The Sorcerer scratched at his nose. "Okay. I've thought about it. I want the perpetrator to get away with the crime."

"How many specimens will you require, Mr. Harvey?"

Torriti considered this. "One."

Dr. Sydney seemed surprised. "One?"

"Is something not right with one?"

"We generally supply more than one in case something goes wrong during the delivery process, Mr. Harvey. To give you a for-instance, the product might be dropped into the wrong gla.s.s. Or it might be delivered to the right gla.s.s which, for one reason or another, is not consumed. If the perpetrator possessed a backup supply, he-or, why not? she-could get a second shot." Dr. Sydney aimed a very nasty smile in the Sorcerer's general direction. "If at first you don't succeed-"

"Skydiving is not for you."

"I beg your pardon?"

"That was a joke. Listen, right, I hadn't thought about a backup supply. As long as you're going to all this trouble you might as well give me a bunch of pills."

"How does three sound to you?"

"Three sounds fine to me."

Dr. Sydney scratched the number three on the pad. "May I ask if you are working on a tight schedule, Mr. Harvey."

"Let's say I'm hurrying without rushing."

"Dear me, that's nicely put; oh, nicely put, indeed. The hustle without the bustle. The haste without the waste." Dr. Sydney rose to his feet and looked up at the Sorcerer. "Would that everyone in the Pickle Factory functioned the way you do, Mr. Harvey. Mr. Bissell generally wants things done by yesterday. If you could manage to drop by again in, say, four days, chances are I will have what you need."

Leo Kritzky was in the process of tacking the photographs to the wall when d.i.c.k Bissell and his Cuba task force people trooped into the war room on the ground floor of Quarters Eye. "How does it shape up?" Bissell demanded. He hooked a pair of dark-rimmed spectacles over his ears and, leaning forward on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, examined the black-and-white blow-ups. Taken from a height of 70,000 feet during the previous day's U-2 mission over the southon coast of Cuba, they showed what appeared to be a long stretch of beach, part of which was filled with tiny one-room bungalows set in neat rows.

"If anything," Leo said, "it looks even better than Trinidad."

Waving everyone to wooden seats pulled up in a semicircle facing the wall, Bissell nodded. "Walk us through this, will you, Leo?"

"d.i.c.k, gentlemen, what you're looking at is the Bahia de Cochinos-in English, the Bay of Pigs. It's a stretch of beach roughly thirteen miles long and averaging four miles in depth. On one side is the bay and, beyond that the Caribbean. On the other are the Zapata swamps, which for all practical purposes are impa.s.sable-they're crawling with marabu bushes with lone thorns that'll flay the skin off you, poisonous guao plants, the occasional deadly snake, not to mention the cochinos cimarrones, the wild pigs that have been known to attack humans and give their name to the bay."

"Sounds like a description of Capitol Hill," someone quipped.

"There are three ways across the Zapata, three causeways"-Leo traced them with a pointer-"built up from land fill and rising above the swamp."

"Do we have an idea what Castro has down there in the way of troops?" Bissell asked.

Leo pointed out what looked like four long low structures next to an unpaved road behind the town of Giron, which consisted of a few dozen wooden buildings set back from a wide main street. "There are roughly a hundred militiamen from the 338th Militia Battalion stationed in these barracks. Notice the antennas on the third building-it must be the radio shack. Here is a blow-up of their motor pool-we can read the license plates so we know these are militia trucks. Seven, all told. No armor, no artillery in sight."

E. Winstrom Ebbitt, who recently had been brought in as Bissell's deputy chief of planning in charge of logistics, leaned forward. People who knew Ebby well understood that he had grave doubts about JMARC but tended, like everyone else, to nibble around the edges of the operation to avoid a head-on confrontation with Bissell and his gung-ho top-floor planning staff. "That looks like more barracks-down there, Leo, more to the left, north of the road that runs parallel to the beach."

"No, that's civilian housing, according to our photo interpreters," Leo said. "The construction workers who are building the Playa Giron bungalow resort down at the beach"-Leo pointed out the neat rows of one-room structures-"live up there. Again, you can read the license plates on the Jeeps and trucks and the two earth movers parked in the field behind the housing-it's all civilian. Judging from the sign on the roof of the shack near the pier-it says 'Blanco's'-this must be the local watering hole. The two piers here appear to be in good condition-one is made of concrete, the other of wood pilings and planks. Between them there is what amounts to a small harbor, which appears to be deep enough to accommodate landing craft. There is some evidence of seaweed but no serious obstacles. I'm getting our people to work up tide charts-"

Bissell interrupted. "It's the airport that attracts me."

"The strip, it goes without saying, is a G.o.dsend," Leo said. His pointer traced the runway angling off to the left beyond Giron. "That's a Piper parked next to the control tower. Working from that we were able to calculate the length of the runway. Its long enough to handle B-26s, which means that the air strikes could plausibly look Cuban from D-day onward. Once we secure the beachhead and get fuel ash.o.r.e, planes could actually fly from the runway."

"Have we had a reaction from the Joint Chiefs?" someone asked.

"We ran it by them late yesterday," Leo reported. "They said it looked okay to them."

"They weren't bursting with enthusiasm," Ebby remarked.

"This isn't a Joint Chiefs operation," Bissell said, "so they're keeping their distance-they're not going to come straight out for or against anything. That way, if JMARC falls on its face they can say, 'we told you so."'

"I like the causeways," one of Bissell's military planners, a marine colonel sheepdipped to the Company for the Cuban project, commented. "If the brigade can seize and hold the points where they reach the beach area, Castro's columns will be trapped on the causeways and sitting ducks for the B-26s."

Ebby shook his head. "There's a downside to your Bay of Pigs," he told Leo. "We'll be losing the guerrilla option if things turn sour."

"How's that?" someone asked.

Ebby walked over to the giant map of Cuba on the next wall. "Trinidad is at the foot of the Escambray Mountains. From your Bay of Pigs, the mountains are"-he stepped off the distance with his fingers and measured it against the scale-"roughly eighty miles away across impa.s.sable swamps. If the B-26s can't break Castro's grip on the causeways, the brigade won't have the guerrilla option available. They'll be trapped on the beaches."

"There's an upside to your downside," Bissell said. "Havana will be nearer when the brigade breaks out of the beachhead."

"There's no fallback if the brigade air strikes don't destroy Castro's armor," Ebby insisted.

Bissell bridled. "The brigade won't need a fallback."

"Things can go wrong..."

"Look," Bissell said, "we'll have a carrier off the coast. If the B-26s can't hack it, we'll fly strikes from the carrier. One way or another Castro's forces will be cut to ribbons."

"Kennedy specifically told Director Dulles he'd never authorize overt American intervention," Leo noted in a flat voice.

"If push comes to shove," said Bissell, "he'll have to, won't he?" He stood up. "I like it, Leo. Except for a handful of militiamen and some construction workers, it's uninhabited, which will make it less noisy than Trinidad, which is what Kennedy wants. Let's ail head back to the drawing boards and work up an operation order predicated on early April landings at the Bay of Pigs. As for the business about going guerrilla, I see no reason to raise the matter again when we brief the President, one way or the other."