Over the course of two October days in 1986, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet
General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev held a low-profile summit in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Surrounded by a small cadre of advisers, the leaders were attempting to negotiate a
reduction in the number of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert around the world.
More than two decades later, noted historian and author Richard Rhodes has dramatized the
summit in Reykjavik, a two-act play that was recently read in Chicago
and that will receive a staged reading at the City University of New York's
Graduate Center on September 9. In this semi-fictional work, Reagan and Gorbachev
encounter J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project's dynamic, erudite
scientific front man, who teaches them more than they ever expected to know about
“nuclear power.” Rhodes included Oppenheimer, he says,
“because the play needed a perspective outside those of the principal
characters, and who better than the first director of Los Alamos?”
Among the other characters in the play: Secretary of State George Shultz, Undersecretary
of Defense Richard Perle, Air Force Colonel Robert Linhard, Soviet Foreign Minister
Eduard Shevardnadze, Soviet First Lady Raisa Gorbachev, and Marshal Sergei Fyodorovich
Akhromeyev, each of whom played an important role in the summit.
The play, which is excerpted below, takes place in Hofdi House, the former French
ambassador's residence on Reykjavik Harbor. The stage is a construction of
levels and spaces including a small conference area with a harbor view, an upstairs work
area, and a stage-level dining room outfitted with a large conference table.
Act One, Scenes One and Two
A noise of grinding, screeching, and hissing starts under the stage
floor. In the conference room, a cloud of steam blows up. Oppenheimer
emerges out of it, dusting off his famous porkpie hat, and calls to the two
leaders.
OPPENHEIMER: Mr. President? Mr. General Secretary? It's J.
Robert Oppenheimer. I wonder if I might speak with you?
Reagan and Gorbachev react with curiosity to Oppenheimer's
invitation. The lights go out in the conference space as they join
Oppenheimer mid-stage, the two attachés following at a respectful
distance with black bags that contain each nation's missile
launch codes.
REAGAN:
[Shaking Oppenheimer's hand] Dr. Oppenheimer.
Aren't you the fella who gave us these awful bombs? I thought you were
dead.
OPPENHEIMER: Yes. I am.
REAGAN: Then what are you doing here?
Oppenheimer shakes hands with Gorbachev.
OPPENHEIMER: Mr. Gorbachev. [To Reagan] I have blood on
my hands. Anyway, there isn't a physicist among you. No one who
understands anything fundamental about these so-called weapons you're
dealing with.
GORBACHEV: I disagree. Chernobyl was fundamental.
REAGAN:
[To Oppenheimer] I remember your picture on the cover of
Time magazine right after the war. Then you had some security
troubles.
OPPENHEIMER: My train wreck. [To Gorbachev]
It's true. You had to deal with the Chernobyl mess.
REAGAN: When did you pass over?
OPPENHEIMER: When did I die? I died of throat cancer in 1967.
Chain-smoker. Nature's way of telling me to quit.
GORBACHEV: One nuclear reactor.
OPPENHEIMER:
[To Reagan] One badly designed nuclear reactor. They lost control
during an idiotic experiment. It ran away to 100-times maximum power and blew up.
Blew off the concrete lid. Blew out the hall. Tons of radioactive debris flying half
a mile up into the air. He's still dealing with it.
GORBACHEV: We've had to mobilize half a million people to
clean up the reactor site. Twenty minutes' shoveling is a lifetime dose.
OPPENHEIMER:
[To Reagan] Last month in Kiev, that ancient city downriver from
Chernobyl set above the Dnieper on a high bluff, glorious with chestnut
trees–last month along the boulevards of Kiev they raked up the fallen
chestnut leaves, all 300,000 tons of them, and buried them as low-level nuclear
waste.
GORBACHEV: If one reactor can cause that much destruction, what in
God's name would be left after a nuclear war?
REAGAN: A nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought.
GORBACHEV:
[To Reagan] You keep saying that, Ron, but then you exempt the
Strategic Defense Initiative [SDI].
REAGAN:
[Impatiently] We're not planning a first strike.
We're proposing to give up ICBMs. The agreement
I'm talking about would prohibit us from developing SDI until we
reduce our offensive weapons. SDI would be our protection from
surprise attack. Yours too. A sort of gas mask.
Back in 1925–you're too young to remember, Mikhail, but
I'm not–all of the countries that fought in World War I met
and agreed not to use poison gas again. But they didn't renounce gas
masks. Gas masks guaranteed they had a defense in case someone decided to cheat.
They kept their gas masks just to be sure.
What I'm saying is that we should go forward to rid the world of the
threat of nuclear weapons, but at the same time keep our gas masks–keep a
shield to protect our countries if someone decides to bring back nuclear missiles.
We need a gas mask here.
As Reagan is finishing his explanation, a nuclear bomb rolls on-stage on
a low dolly. The bomb is 12 feet long, 18 inches in diameter, tapered at the
nose, with two tail fins, all its surfaces white-enameled and shining.
Reagan and Gorbachev both react with some fear.
REAGAN: What the hell is that?
GORBACHEV: Is it an American bomb? What's it doing in
Reykjavik? [He signals his attaché.] Leitenánt!
Syudá! Boot' nastorzhé! [Lieutenant!
Over here! Be alert!]
Both attachés move closer, watching each other warily and
clutching their black bags. As the following dialogue proceeds, they slowly
relax, checking each other at each step of the way, and finally returning
their black bags to the floor–a nuclear alert and stand-down in
miniature.
OPPENHEIMER: Gentlemen! Gentlemen! No reason for alarm. You have bombs
like these positioned all over the world.
Oppenheimer proceeds to “show” the bomb. Someone
tosses him a barker's cane from offstage to point with, and he
does the demonstration sideshow style.
OPPENHEIMER: This sinister beauty is the American B-83 gravity bomb.
Twelve feet long. Eighteen inches in diameter. Weight, 2,400 pounds. A two-stage
thermonuclear–so-called “hydrogen”–bomb
with dial-a-yield, meaning it can be set to yield anything from a few thousand tons
up to 1.2 million tons of TNT equivalent. One point two megatons is about 80 times
more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb my colleagues and I built at Los Alamos
during World War II. The fireball alone is a mile and a half in diameter and hotter
than the sun.
Much hotter.
This most modern of U.S. gravity bombs is carried externally on one of our bombers at
up to twice the speed of sound. A major design feature of the B-83 is its capability
for accurate, low-level supersonic delivery against hard targets such as missile
silos. The weapon is thus designed for relatively hard impacts on irregular
reinforced concrete surfaces. The heavy steel weapon body is equipped with a hollow
shock-absorbing steel nose with concentric frangible rings to prevent ricochets or
sliding. The warhead is mounted forward in the bomb body in the first
compartment–the “forward case”–to make
the bomb nose heavy. The mid-case contains the firing set and fuzing controls,
surrounded by phenolic resin honeycomb for protection. These are the only
compartments that need to survive impact. The aft case contains the arming system,
and behind this is the afterbody with the parachute system.
To give the bomber crew time to get away, the B-83 is equipped with a 46-foot
Kevlar-nylon-ribbon parachute held by 60 Kevlar suspension lines and deployed by
three 4-foot diameter pilot chutes. The parachute system can reduce bomb velocity
within seconds from 700 miles per hour to merely 44 miles per hour. In short, this
is our best bomb. Gives new meaning to the phrase “whited
sepulcher,” doesn't it? We have hundreds of them.
AKHROMEYEV:
[Calling from the dining room] We have such bombs too! Many such
bombs!
OPPENHEIMER:
[Calling back] Of course you do, Marshal Akhromeyev, of course you
do!
REAGAN: What's your point, Dr. Oppenheimer? Why drag this
thing in?
GORBACHEV: He wants to rub our noses in it. [To
Oppenheimer] Isn't that right?
OPPENHEIMER: These things exist as a physical reality, yes.
They're not merely poker chips.
GORBACHEV:
Vot gde sobaka zaryta.
OPPENHEIMER: Exactly.
REAGAN: What did he say?
OPPENHEIMER: It's a proverb: “That's
where the dog is buried.”
During the following dialogue, Oppenheimer turns to the bomb, opens a
hatch into its forward case and fiddles around inside.
REAGAN: Humph. [To Gorbachev, as one leader to another]
When did you have “The Briefing”?
GORBACHEV: Within a month of taking office.
REAGAN: I put it off for as long as I could. Didn't want to
hear it.
GORBACHEV: No? Neither did I, but once I became general
secretary–
REAGAN: It's obscene. I've never been so depressed
as I was after that briefing. You know what President [Dwight D.] Eisenhower said
about nuclear war? [Gorbachev shakes his head.] He said there
wouldn't be enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.
GORBACHEV: If it came to that, could you push the button?
REAGAN: Confidentially?
GORBACHEV: I'll never tell.
OPPENHEIMER:
[Over his shoulder] Your secret is safe with me. I'm
dead.
REAGAN:
[To Gorbachev] No. I don't think I could. What about
you?
GORBACHEV: Never. Not even in our war games. [Beat] But
what are we going to do about it?
Interrupting, Oppenheimer extracts from the bomb's innards a
gold-plated sphere about 4 inches in diameter, turns around cupping it in
his hands–it's unusually heavy for such a small object
(plutonium and uranium are more than twice as heavy as lead)–and
presents it to the two leaders for viewing.
OPPENHEIMER: Voila!
Startled, Reagan and Gorbachev step back. In their shock, they speak over
each other.
REAGAN: What the hell?
GORBACHEV:
Kakova chorta? [What the hell?]
REAGAN: Isn't that thing dangerous?
OPPENHEIMER: Only if you squeeze it.
He squeezes it.
REAGAN: My God, man, don't squeeze it!
OPPENHEIMER: I mean squeeze it with high explosives. It's
subcritical. Warm as a rabbit, though.
The two leaders approach the core as if it were a snake and hesitantly
inspect it.
REAGAN: Warm? What's it–
OppENHEIMER: Plutonium.
Reagan starts, startling Gorbachev, who half-steps back but then bravely
stays put.
REAGAN: Isn't plutonium supposed to be the most toxic
substance on Earth?
OPPENHEIMER: Urban myth. Botulism toxin is.
REAGAN: Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle.
OPPENHEIMER: You can handle “ploot.” As you see.
Gorbachev inspects the core closely, tapping it with a pencil.
GORBACHEV: And this is the core of your bomb?
OPPENHEIMER: Of the primary. The B-83 is a thermonuclear. It has a
hydrogen secondary that the primary sets off. Like a match head lighting a match.
This bit only destroyed Nagasaki. Add in the hydrogen secondary and it would take
out New York, all five boroughs, plus Long Island and up the East Coast all the way
to Boston. [Beat] Or all of Moscow.
Gorbachev takes the core–he's surprised by its
weight–and weighs it up in his hand as if he's
weighing up the future of the world.
REAGAN:
[To Oppenheimer] Well, why do you think we want to be rid of them?
GORBACHEV:
[To himself, freighted with feeling] So here is Chernobyl. This
roundness, this little earth, this crystal ball, this horse turd. Five or six
Chernobyls. [To Oppenheimer] Ni be, ni me, ni kukareku.
REAGAN: What are you fellas talking about?
GORBACHEV: It's a proverb.
REAGAN: Well certainly it's a proverb. Just like the last
one. What's it mean?
OPPENHEIMER: “Neither ‘baaa,’ nor
‘maaa,’ nor even
‘cock-a-doodle-do.’” “Whereof we cannot
speak, thereof we must be silent.”
Act Two, Scene Two
Halfway through day two, Reagan and Gorbachev continue to disagree on
SDI, or the earliest incantation of missile defense. As Gorbachev abruptly
leaves the conference area, the lights go down on the negotiating room.
Reagan leaves the conference area and enters stage space. Oppenheimer joins
him.
REAGAN: Well, Dr. Oppenheimer, you've been around since the
beginning of all this. What do you think? Is Gorbachev right or am I?
OPPENHEIMER: You're proposing a technological solution to a
political problem. It's ironic. That's what nuclear weapons
were supposed to be.
REAGAN: Nuclear weapons? Is that why you fellas invented the damned
things?
OPPENHEIMER: We believed the Germans were ahead of us.
REAGAN: But you kept going after the Germans were defeated. So we could
drop them on the Japanese.
OPPENHEIMER: That wasn't my decision to make.
REAGAN: You supported it.
OPPENHEIMER: I couldn't see any alternative.
REAGAN: Explode one over Tokyo Harbor for a demonstration? Warn the
Japanese first?
OPPENHEIMER: We didn't have any bombs to spare. And what good
would a demonstration have done? An enormous nuclear fire-cracker, that's
all. We firebombed every major city in Japan in that final year of the war. In
Tokyo, we killed 140,000 people in one night–more than either Hiroshima
or Nagasaki–and it didn't slow them down one iota.
[Beat, with passion] We thought atomic bombs would put an end
to war by making it suicidal. A technical fix, like SDI. But they're both
full of holes. You can't force peace with weapons, Mr. President,
whatever you call them. Why not go with common security? Nuclear weapons are a
danger to everyone on Earth.
In the following dialogue Reagan speaks not conspiratorially but with
confidence and enthusiasm, as if he's discussing real policy
issues–which, from his point of view, he is.
REAGAN: You're Jewish, aren't you, doctor?
OPPENHEIMER: Nominally.
REAGAN: But you support Israel?
OPPENHEIMER: Certainly.
REAGAN: Well, the 38th chapter of Ezekiel says, “God will
take the children of Israel from among the heathen where they'd been
scattered and gather them again in the promised land.” After 2,000 years,
that's finally happened.
OPPENHEIMER: And?
REAGAN: It's one of the signs foretelling the battle of
Armageddon.
Libya going Communist is another.
OPPENHEIMER: You mean [Muammar] Qaddafi?
REAGAN: Sure. Ethiopia going Communist is another. Whoever thought that
would happen? The day of Armageddon isn't far off. Everything is falling
into place. Do you know when the End Times begin?
OPPENHEIMER: I don't.
REAGAN: I do. Jesus put it one generation after the rebirth of Israel. A
generation in the Bible is about 40 years.
OPPENHEIMER: 1988.
REAGAN:
[Nodding vigorously] 1988. Two years from now.
OPPENHEIMER: That's when the big battle–?
REAGAN: Not the battle. First the Antichrist emerges, pretending to be
the Great Peacemaker, and trumps up seven years of phony peace.
Then the battle of Armageddon. Ezekiel says fire and brimstone will
be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean nuclear
weapons. They exist now, and they never did in the past.
OPPENHEIMER: Then why are you trying to eliminate them?
Aren't you disarming the righteous?
REAGAN: Disarming both sides. The forces of the Antichrist as well. No
nukes, no Armageddon. [Beat] After Armageddon, Jesus returns. The
Second Coming of Christ, the Resurrection of the Dead, the Last Judgment.
[Beat] The end of the world.
OPPENHEIMER:
[Catching on] You want to prevent all of that. You
want to confound the prophecies and … save America.
REAGAN:
[Modestly, but overjoyed to be understood] Not prevent, Dr.
Oppenheimer. Just postpone. Give America time to fulfill its destiny.
OPPENHEIMER: Which is?
REAGAN: You don't know? Why, to spread democracy across the
world. To Russia. China. The Middle East.
OPPENHEIMER: I see. And if someone cheats. … Ah. Qaddafi.
REAGAN:
[Nodding] Qaddafi. Don't you know he'd like
to drop one right on the White House.
OPPENHEIMER: And that's where SDI comes in.
REAGAN:
[Smiling] I love America. It's the shining city on a
hill.
With the deep sense of satisfaction that comes from believing yourself
understood, Reagan strolls confidently offstage. The attaché
follows, imitating Reagan's confident stride, swinging the black
bag, but stops and turns partway back to listen to Oppenheimer.
OPPENHEIMER:
[To audience] I wonder if he knows he's marked with the
Sign of the Beast. R-O-N-A-L-D, six letters, W-I-L-S-O-N, six letters, R-E-A-G-A-N,
six letters: 666. Could the president be the Antichrist? [Beat] But
then the numerical equivalents of “Mikhail S. Gorbachev” in
Russian add up to 1,332–which is 666 times two. [Beat]
On the other hand, the Antichrist is supposed to be a Jew. Ah. Henry Kissinger. His
name in–let's see–in Hebrew adds
up to 111, which … times 6 … is 666!–and
wasn't he ever the peacemaker.
Oppenheimer returns to the conference room as the lights go
down.
Act Two, Scene Six
Nearing the end of day two, Reagan and Gorbachev have just finished
consulting with their respective advisers on how to accomplish their summit
goals. Reagan, Shultz, Gorbachev, and Shevardnadze come together and walk
toward the conference area, as do the two attachés. Perle,
Linhard, and Akhromeyev separate and reoccupy the dining room. Oppenheimer
emerges from the conference area and picks off Reagan and
Gorbachev.
OPPENHEIMER:
[To Reagan and Gorbachev] May I detain you gentlemen once more?
GORBACHEV:
[Cordially but impatiently] Well? [In Russian] Nu,
shto? [Get on with it.]
OPPENHEIMER:
[In Russian] Ya ponimáyu [I understand]:
There's not much time. But we still don't really know what
motivates you to abandon nuclear weapons. [To Reagan] Mr.
President? Armageddon is certainly grand enough, yet it seems a little …
remote?
REAGAN: Well, I've heard more than one psychiatrist say that
we imbibe our ideals from our mother's milk. Maybe so. My mother, Nelle,
was a peacekeeper and a pacifist; maybe I get the drive from her. Still, what comes
to mind first of all is the seven summers I spent lifeguarding at Lowell Park in
Dixon, Illinois, at one of the recreation areas that fronted on the Rock
River–the same river I skated on in the winter when it froze. I got
$15 a week, seven days a week from dawn to dark to save all and sundry.
Lifeguarding is a great way to learn about people. I saved a grand total of 77.
GORBACHEV: You rescued 77 people from drowning?
REAGAN: Yes sir, I did. I guarantee you they needed saving–no
lifeguard gets wet without a good reason. In my case it really took an emergency.
Since I was on duty full-time, a wet suit was a real hardship, and I was too
money-conscious to buy a spare.
I didn't get much in the way of thanks, much less a
reward–which I did a little fantasizing about and which would have come
in handy for college. The only money I ever got was 10 bucks from an old man
who'd lost his upper plate going down the slide. I retrieved it for him.
I got to recognize that people hate to be saved: Almost everyone I dragged to shore
sought me out later and denounced me. Their theme was, “I would have been
fine if you'd let me alone. You made a fool out of me trying to be a
hero.”
OPPENHEIMER: Interesting ambivalence.
REAGAN: Yes? Well, there you are.
OPPENHEIMER: Mr. Gorbachev?
GORBACHEV: Is it a game?
OPPENHEIMER: No more than theoretical physics is a game.
GORBACHEV: I wanted to study physics when I went up to Moscow
University.
OPPENHEIMER: Yes? Why didn't you?
GORBACHEV: To study physics one had to qualify for a security clearance.
OPPENHEIMER: Ah. For weapons research. And you didn't?
GORBACHEV: No. My grandfather was an “enemy of the
people.”
OPPENHEIMER: And now you're general secretary.
GORBACHEV: Yes. Life isn't bounded by security clearances.
[Beat] Of course, I think first of the war. And whenever the
subject comes up, I see one horrible image. In the spring of 1943, when the snow had
melted–I would have been just 12–we children roamed through
the countryside searching for trophies. The Germans had advanced through Privolnoye
and retreated back through Privolnoye by then. We came to a remote stretch of forest
between Privolnoye and the next village, Byelaya Glina. There we stumbled upon the
remains of Red Army soldiers who had fought their last battle in that place in the
summer of 1942. It was horror, unspeakable horror. I still have nightmares about it:
decaying corpses that animals had scavenged, skulls in rusted helmets, bleached
bones, rifles protruding from the sleeves of rotting jackets. There was a light
machine gun red with rust, some hand grenades, heaps of empty cartridges. There the
men lay in the thick mud of the trenches and craters, unburied, staring at us out of
black, gaping eye sockets.
My generation is the generation of wartime children. It burned us. It left its mark
on our character and on our view of the world.
REAGAN: That's strange.
OPPENHEIMER: What's strange?
REAGAN: Mikhail's story reminds me of Jack–my
father. Finding him flat on his back on the front porch in the middle of the winter
when I was 11 years old, and no one there to lend a hand but me. He was drunk, dead
to the world. I stood over him for a minute or two. I wanted to let myself into the
house and go to bed and pretend he wasn't there. Oh, I wasn't
ignorant of his weakness. I don't know at what age I knew what the
absences meant or the loud voices in the night. But up until then, Nelle or my
brother had handled the situation, and I was a child in bed with the privilege of
pretending to be asleep.
Someplace along the line, I suppose, each of us has to accept responsibility. If we
don't, we just grow older without growing up.
I felt myself fill with grief for my father at the same time I was feeling sorry for
myself. Seeing his arms spread out as if he were crucified, his hair soaked with
melting snow, snoring as he breathed. … I bent over him, smelling the
speakeasy whiskey. I got a fistful of his overcoat. I managed to open the door and
drag him inside and get him to bed. Nelle said it was a sickness, something beyond
his control. With all the tragedy that was hers because of it.
[Beat] Nothing we could do about it except try not to let it catch
us by surprise. [To Gorbachev] We'd better get back to
work.
GORBACHEV:
Da.
Reagan and Gorbachev start for the conference area.
OPPENHEIMER: Thank you, gentlemen.
The two leaders gesture as they go. Oppenheimer turns to speak to the
audience.
OPPENHEIMER: My work's done here. I'm going
forward to 2040 to see what the future looks like. See if we're still
around.
The spot on Oppenheimer begins to dim.
OPPENHEIMER: Oh. One more thing. Something I said in a commencement
address back in 1946. Something to leave you with. Nothing's really
changed since then except the size of the stockpiles.
What I said was: “It did not take atomic weapons to make war terrible. It
did not take atomic weapons to make man want peace, a peace that would last. But the
atomic bomb was the turn of the screw. It has made the prospect of future war
unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond
there is a different country.”
