Richard Rhodes' Reykjavik

Abstract

Would the Reykjavik summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev have rid the world of nuclear weapons if only J. Robert Oppenheimer had been present? In this dramatization, Richard Rhodes explores the “what if” of the low-profile but high-level conference.

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.”