Blockhead
As the shadowboxing over the Ukrainian border continues, in the deep recesses of our minds there is the possibility that things could get out of control and the world faces a nuclear confrontation.
Two books I have read recently deal with this theme.
Ken Follett’s Never is a fictional look at the idea that a bunch of seemingly disconnected events could coalesce into a nuclear conflict. Follet notes that when researching for his Century trilogy (based around three generations during the 20th century), he was struck by a group of seemingly unrelated events that lead to an unplanned and unwanted war – the Great War. Could it ever happen again?
In his latest tome Follett weaves together three main threads based around a female CIA agent in North Africa, a female US president and a Chinese intelligence officer. Slowly the threads start to relate until the climax, when unrelated events, some trivial in the grand scheme of things, are woven into a Gordian knot for the US president.
Owen Matthews’ Red Traitor is a fictional account of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. As an author, Owen Matthews has a lower profile than Follett, but he is a good writer. In part this is because he has spent much of his career as a journalist in Eastern Europe and Moscow: the areas and society he writes about.
Red Traitor tells the story of Alexander Vasin (also the main character in Matthews’ first novel, Black Sun), who is trying to find an American spy rumoured to be embedded in the highest echelon of Soviet power. The second thread involves a senior Soviet submarine officer, Captain Vasily Arkhipov, who is chief of staff of a flotilla of four diesel-electric submarines sent to Cuba. Each submarine is armed with 21 conventional torpedoes, as well as one “special weapon” – a torpedo armed with a nuclear warhead. The orders were essentially that “for the first time in history, a commander had a nuclear weapon and the power to use it”.
Red Traitor is based on two true stories. Although a work of fiction, it is based closely on eyewitness accounts and real characters. I found this actually gave a greater sense of realism to Red Traitor than Never. Although we know the outcome of the Cuban crisis, this novel expertly captures the tension and intrigue of the time and reveals why war was averted.
Arkhipov survived a nuclear reactor meltdown in a submarine that took the lives of 19 of his colleagues. This experience plays a pivotal role in his decisions and actions during the crisis. The Americans did not know the Russian submarines were armed with nuclear missiles. Robert McNamara, defence secretary at the time, later noted that the world had “come very close” to nuclear war, “closer than we knew at the time”.
While many sources record the life and deeds of Arkhipov, the author seems alone in noting, “A room in the CIA’s headquarters at Langley, Virginia, is named for Arkhipov. It seems scant memorial to the man whose level-headedness saved the world from nuclear war”. That level-headedness, in my view, is absent from the characters in Follett’s work.
Of the second major character, the author notes, “Finally a bow to the real Alexander Vasin, my late uncle, who as a young Soviet tank commander lost a leg outside Smolensk in 1944 but despite his disability rose to be the USSR’s deputy minister of justice and a wise and loving husband to my aunt Lenina”.
I found both of these books engaging reads and recommend them.