His smile stretching his brush mustache, his arm half-raised in greeting with fingers waggling briskly, Anastas Mikoyan, the Kremlin's No. 2 man, was busier than a checker in a supermarket on a Saturday afternoon. In the space of a week, he whirled through official and unofficial Washington, raced on to luncheons, dinners and informal question games in Cleveland. Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles. In between appointments, he inspected stores, gave candy to a baby, shook hands along auto assembly lines, peered at new gadgets and chomped on an airline's free Chiclets.
For...