The Wrecker

One moment Nikita Khrushchev was in a rage, with cords standing out in his neck, his face reddened, veins throbbing in his temple, and words rasping out to the accompaniment of table-pounding thumps of his fist. The next, he was all nuzzling friendliness, apple-cheeked and soft-eyed, speaking of eternal peace with a gap-toothed smile and roguish gestures.

Empty Chair. On the summit's first day, he had broken up the meeting before it could even begin, with his demands that President Eisenhower punish the guilty U.S. "aggressors." But he did not turn around and go home. Did he really expect a contrite confession from Eisenhower after insulting him up and down?

Next morning, while Eisenhower, De Gaulle and Macmillan met in the Elysee Palace to make a last attempt to save the summit, Khrushchev climbed into a big, black Zil convertible with Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky and went bowling off into the country. Spotting a wood chopper beside the road, Nikita had the car stopped, leaped out and seized the ax from the startled peasant. After lopping off a few branches from a fallen tree, Nikita popped back into the car, perspiring. At the tiny village of Pleurs, he lifted a glass of champagne and shouted, "Vive la paix!"

The other three adopted De Gaulle's suggestion to hold a now-or-never 3 o'clock summit meeting, and had to send a motorcycle cop out the Pleurs road to hand the invitation to the wandering Khrushchev. At 3 the others gathered somberly in the conference room at the Elysee Palace, which 200 years ago had been the dining salon of Madame de Pompadour. By then Khrushchev was back in Paris, but instead of sitting in the empty red plush armchair that was awaiting him, he was relaxing in a bathtub at the Soviet embassy.

Messages shot back and forth between the bathtub and the Elysee. A Soviet aide phoned to ask if the meeting was a preliminary one or a summit meeting. If preliminary, Nikita would come; if a summit, he would not--unless, of course, President Eisenhower was prepared to apologize publicly and abjectly for the U-2 spy plane and to agree to punish the guilty. After an hour of fruitless telephoning, a tight-lipped Charles de Gaulle decided to end the farce. He wrote out the Western reply: "Mr. Khrushchev's absence was registered, and General de Gaulle took note of it. In these conditions, the discussions that had been foreseen could not take place." The summit was dead.

Next morning Nikita made a 40-minute call on President de Gaulle and was roundly booed in the Paris streets. When he finally arrived at the Palais de Chaillot for his long-awaited, twice-postponed press conference, the hall was jammed with 3,500 newsmen who overflowed seats and aisles, were perched on phone booths and window sills.

Bias Against Cats. For 2 1/2 hours, the dictator of all the Russias alternately ranted and wheedled, sought to persuade and intimidate, told rambling anecdotes. As for American "aggressors," he said, they should be treated the way Russian peasants treat cats that steal cream or break into pigeon lofts. When he was young, cried Nikita, "we would catch such a cat by the tail and bang its head against the wall, and that was the only way it could be taught some sense."

He huffed and puffed about the intrusion of the U2. If the flights had gone on for four years and he had known about them, why had he not protested on his visit to the U.S.? His answer was insulting but not compelling. He had been on the point of doing so at Camp David because the atmosphere was "so convivial, with President Eisenhower telling me to call him 'my friend' in English and using the same words with regard to myself in Russian. But then I became apprehensive, and I thought there was something fishy about this friend of mine, and I didn't broach the subject. It turned out that I was right because when we caught them redhanded they say they are not thieves, it's just their thieflike policy, that's all."

Mustard Lips. What about Ike's statement that the U.S. had suspended the U-2 flights and would not resume them? Khrushchev was scornful. "Such a statement may have satisfied the servitors of imperialism. The imperialists have grown accustomed to behaving like Russian merchants did of old: they painted their lackeys' lips with mustard, and the lackeys said, 'Thank you,' and bowed low." Then he flew into a rage. "To hear President Eisenhower, it would seem that the question of whether American military planes will or will not overfly the U.S.S.R. depends on him and him alone. Just think --what presumption! He now says they will not overfly. What magnanimity! This is to be decided by us and very definitely. We shall shoot those planes down; we shall deal shattering blows at the bases whence they come and at those who set up those bases."

Jabbing a finger at the audience, swinging uppercuts in air, Nikita promised to sign a peace treaty with Communist East Germany: "We will write finis to the second World War and thereby deprive the West of the right to maintain occupation forces in West Berlin." But for all his fury, his threats had qualifications--the kind of man who gets carried away, Khrushchev also is capable of the controlled tantrum. "When we do this is our business. When we deem it necessary, we won't hesitate. We'll pull the pen from our pock et, for the drafts are all ready, and sit down and sign and then announce it."

No Squeals. As he went on, some of the throng of newsmen booed him. Khrushchev shouted: "I have already been informed that Chancellor Adenauer sent here some of those bastards we didn't finish off at Stalingrad ! We hit them so hard we put them ten feet underground, right off! If you boo us and attack us again, look out! We will hit you so hard there won't be a squeal out of you." Someone cried: "Is this a press conference or a propaganda meeting?" With a triumphant wave of his fist, Khrushchev shouted back: "Propaganda!" Then he toasted the crowd with a glass of mineral water and, winking jovially, called out his favorite French catch phrase: "Vive la paix!"

The next morning Nikita was at Orly Airport, on the same red carpet from which Eisenhower had departed three hours before. Khrushchev convulsed a covey of Soviet aides as he warned Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, about to take off for Manhattan to bring the U-2 spy charges before the United Nations. "Be careful of those imperialists," chortled Nikita. "Be careful to cover your back. Don't expose your back to them.''

Change of Mood. But when his white Ilyushin 18 turboprop set down in East Berlin, Khrushchev emerged in a new character--sober, sedate, mantled in almost Roman dignity. East Germany's Red Boss Walter Ulbricht greeted him nervously; he had first learned Nikita was coming only when Khrushchev casually remarked to newsmen in Paris that he "might" stop off on his way home. Khrushchev gave one glowering glance at a stiffly goose-stepping German Communist honor guard, then stepped to the microphones, fished in his pockets for a prepared statement, and read it in a flat monotone voice. He reiterated his Paris line that the summit failure was the fault of the U.S., and sneered at nameless U.S. statesmen who "are pulled on the strings of the militarists." But that was the last glimmer of fire. For a man who had just stormed out of Paris spewing a blizzard of invective and cracking jokes right and left, his performance was odd, unexpected, and curiously neutral.

For his big set speech at East Berlin's Seelenbinder Hall, Nikita Khrushchev had a handpicked, wildly cheering audience of 8,000 Communists. Standing beneath a banner reading END THE PROVOCATIONS OF EISENHOWER AND ADENAUER, Nikita cried, "There was perfidy on the part of the American President. I repeat the word perfidy--there is no other word for it." Then he stood by, frowning, while an interpreter read the remainder in German. A strange note of resignation ran through it. His new theme: wait, and take it easy. He complained darkly about U.S. militarists, but added, "We will wait for negotiations. If the next President will not negotiate, then we will wait for the one after that." His audience--the bigwigs of East German Communism--had come ready to cheer the announcement of his long-threatened, long-promised treaty with East Germany. Khrushchev told them: wait six or eight months. When this was greeted by grim silence, Khrushchev hastily interposed: "We do not let this subject out of our sight, but let's wait a bit. It will ripen better."

Throughout the applause, Nikita Khrushchev and Defense Minister Rodion Malinovsky were unsmiling and wooden-faced. The next day they climbed again into the white Ilyushin 18 and flew back to Moscow.

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