barges motionless in the Pool of London. As
they rounded the Isle of Dogs, the hill of Greenwich came into view, the complex, eye-baffling beauty of the Royal Naval College, the distant outline of the Observatory perched on the hilltop,
dividing East from West along an utterly arbitrary line. What better symbol could there be for this entire visit?
Khrushchev preached the new gospel of peaceful coexistence to the Senior Service, spoke of the speed of the arms race, described the Ordzhonikidze, the ship that had brought him to
Britain, as state of the art technology that would be out of date within a matter of months. It seemed to Troy to be a sound argument. Depending on how you read it, it was a warning to us all or a
threat to the West. Khrushchev tipped the scales, and added that the Russians had no wish to ‘push you off the planet’. But then that in turn implied that they had the power to do
so.
Within minutes of him resuming his seat Troy heard Khrushchev offering to sell the Ordzhonikidze to the First Sea Lord.
‘Buy two, and I’ll throw in a submarine for free,’ he said in best adman parlance.
The Englishman looked utterly baffled by this. He had no idea whether to take it as a joke or to name a price. Troy had no sympathy with such men, and on any other occasion it might have been a
good wheeze, a good ruffling of the feathers of these imperial peacocks; but Troy found the menace that lurked just beneath the surface of this unruly schoolboy behaviour too hard to stomach. Three
days of jokes and he was beginning to think there was no such thing as a joke that didn’t have hidden depths just like an iceberg. Perhaps the joke was the defence of the underdog? Coming
from the topdog it seemed brutal, bullying and boorish.
Only minutes later Khrushchev turned his sights on the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. ‘One day,’ he said, ‘one day soon we will be able to put nuclear warheads onto
guided missiles. Believe me, it will change the face of warfare.’
Troy knew from the look on the man’s face, as the interpreter put it into English, what was coming. His expression was the blinking, startled blankness of shock.
‘I find that,’ the interpreter reported back to Khrushchev, ‘a shocking suggestion.’
Khrushchev shrugged a little. ‘It may well be,’ he said. ‘It is nonetheless the future.’
The baldness of truth or the nakedness of threat? And once more Troy’s sympathies swung. Khrushchev’s party was over forty strong. They had required an entire floor of
Claridge’s, they were trucked out for all the interminable public functions in varying combinations in a logistic nightmare requiring a convoy of limousines, and enough coppers to mount an
invasion of Latvia or Lithuania. Khrushchev meant to show off Russia with an eighty-legged advertisement. Prominent in that advert were Messrs Tupelov and Kurchatov, known respectively for their
work on supersonic flight and atomic physics. If not to rub home the possibilities in the conjunction of the two, why else had Khrushchev brought them? To be shocked was the utmost naiveté.
The man was CIGS. To be shocked was crass stupidity. If we too were not going to put our nuclear weapons onto rockets and aim them at the cities of our enemies, why else had we gone to the trouble
of hijacking the German rocket scientists? Why, even now, was Werner von Braun, inventor of the V2, holed up in some American laboratory if not to invent a rocket capable of carrying a nuclear
warhead? Or did this man really think that we could fight another war as we had fought most of the others, by sending a gunboat out to one mutinous colony or another, or an expeditionary force to a
troubled ally—was the word ‘Imperial’ in his title so brain-befuddling that he could not see the world as it had been reborn in fire at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Both sides bored him rigid. He got into the habit of never being without a book or newspaper. Prompted by
they rounded the Isle of Dogs, the hill of Greenwich came into view, the complex, eye-baffling beauty of the Royal Naval College, the distant outline of the Observatory perched on the hilltop,
dividing East from West along an utterly arbitrary line. What better symbol could there be for this entire visit?
Khrushchev preached the new gospel of peaceful coexistence to the Senior Service, spoke of the speed of the arms race, described the Ordzhonikidze, the ship that had brought him to
Britain, as state of the art technology that would be out of date within a matter of months. It seemed to Troy to be a sound argument. Depending on how you read it, it was a warning to us all or a
threat to the West. Khrushchev tipped the scales, and added that the Russians had no wish to ‘push you off the planet’. But then that in turn implied that they had the power to do
so.
Within minutes of him resuming his seat Troy heard Khrushchev offering to sell the Ordzhonikidze to the First Sea Lord.
‘Buy two, and I’ll throw in a submarine for free,’ he said in best adman parlance.
The Englishman looked utterly baffled by this. He had no idea whether to take it as a joke or to name a price. Troy had no sympathy with such men, and on any other occasion it might have been a
good wheeze, a good ruffling of the feathers of these imperial peacocks; but Troy found the menace that lurked just beneath the surface of this unruly schoolboy behaviour too hard to stomach. Three
days of jokes and he was beginning to think there was no such thing as a joke that didn’t have hidden depths just like an iceberg. Perhaps the joke was the defence of the underdog? Coming
from the topdog it seemed brutal, bullying and boorish.
Only minutes later Khrushchev turned his sights on the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. ‘One day,’ he said, ‘one day soon we will be able to put nuclear warheads onto
guided missiles. Believe me, it will change the face of warfare.’
Troy knew from the look on the man’s face, as the interpreter put it into English, what was coming. His expression was the blinking, startled blankness of shock.
‘I find that,’ the interpreter reported back to Khrushchev, ‘a shocking suggestion.’
Khrushchev shrugged a little. ‘It may well be,’ he said. ‘It is nonetheless the future.’
The baldness of truth or the nakedness of threat? And once more Troy’s sympathies swung. Khrushchev’s party was over forty strong. They had required an entire floor of
Claridge’s, they were trucked out for all the interminable public functions in varying combinations in a logistic nightmare requiring a convoy of limousines, and enough coppers to mount an
invasion of Latvia or Lithuania. Khrushchev meant to show off Russia with an eighty-legged advertisement. Prominent in that advert were Messrs Tupelov and Kurchatov, known respectively for their
work on supersonic flight and atomic physics. If not to rub home the possibilities in the conjunction of the two, why else had Khrushchev brought them? To be shocked was the utmost naiveté.
The man was CIGS. To be shocked was crass stupidity. If we too were not going to put our nuclear weapons onto rockets and aim them at the cities of our enemies, why else had we gone to the trouble
of hijacking the German rocket scientists? Why, even now, was Werner von Braun, inventor of the V2, holed up in some American laboratory if not to invent a rocket capable of carrying a nuclear
warhead? Or did this man really think that we could fight another war as we had fought most of the others, by sending a gunboat out to one mutinous colony or another, or an expeditionary force to a
troubled ally—was the word ‘Imperial’ in his title so brain-befuddling that he could not see the world as it had been reborn in fire at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Both sides bored him rigid. He got into the habit of never being without a book or newspaper. Prompted by
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