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Uptown Hug. Predictably, Nikita Khrushchev, for whose protection so many labored, found plenty of opportunity to accuse the U.S. of keeping him in "custody." Nevertheless, he managed to get around. Without forewarning his own security people, he pushed out of the Soviet headquarters on his first morning in town, stepped into his Cadillac and roared off. The consternated cops shoved off with him, and as they rode north, finally discovered that Khrushchev was headed for Harlem and a visit with Fidel Castro (see following story). They hugged each other, shouted incomprehensible greetings, while all the time the police scuffled with the crawling squad of newsmen, photographers and hangers-on. "The visit," said a grinning Khrushchev later, "is deemed respect to a heroic man."
The Red boss got another chance that afternoon as the General Assembly gathered. Waddling across the hall to the Cuban delegation, Khrushchev again embraced the happy Castro, who embraced him right back—creating for a moment a comical tableau in which Khrushchev suddenly seemed to be sporting Castro's flowing beard as a headpiece. Squatting in his seat for the long session of speeches, he donned his earpiece to get the Russian translation of the goings on, mumbled occasionally to his Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko, applauded politely at the right time, now and then got up to shake a hand. But his chief aim was to recruit Africans. Ambling through the Delegates' Lounge, he searched out hands to shake in an effort at rebuilding the Communist prestige that had been so roundly shattered in the days before; observers gave him a low score.
Onstage. While his satellite cohorts enclosed themselves in discreet and safe privacy (exception: Bulgaria's Zhivkov went sightseeing), Khrushchev determinedly worked at his best talent: gathering headlines. On the iron-railed little balcony of the Soviet U.N. mission headquarters, 20 ft. above the street, Khrushchev appeared twice on Wednesday to jabber with the swarm of TV men and reporters below. In the "balcony scene," the beefy Russian, dressed in shirtsleeves (with gold cuff links), batted out a torrent of comment that alternated from the breezy to the belligerent.
"This," he complained, with a sardonic reference to the State Department's Manhattan-only travel restriction, "is the only place I can stroll. I am under house arrest, so my desires are restrained. I am not seeing America." The case of the RB-47 pilots,* he said, is being "investigated." Yes, he did plan to visit Cuba and, later, North Korea, where he has a date with Red China's Mao Tse-tung; no, there are no basic ideological differences with China; yes, he supported the Lumumba government. And what about the U.S.'s open-skies proposal? "Fly in your own skies, not in ours."
Tooth for a Tooth. As Khrushchev traded words with the clamoring newsmen, a steady stream of cars passed the headquarters, and drivers filled the air with imprecations. From down the street came the sound of demonstrators as they sang God Bless America. "Let them sing," cried K. "We, also, sing the Internationale, and we sing it well," and with that, he launched into a line or two from the Communist anthem.