Welcome back to Dead Drops and Dial Tones, I am Lukas Brandt. In October 1962 the world came closer to nuclear war than at any time before or since, and most of the people who tell that story were in Washington or Moscow. This episode is told from a radio hut west of Havana. Orlando was nineteen, a conscript operator, and for thirteen days he sat with headphones on listening to traffic he only partly understood, watching Soviet convoys pass on the road, and being told at least twice that the Americans would land by morning. He is eighty-two now. I spent two afternoons with him in Havana, and we talk about the sounds, the rumours, the rum traded with the Soviet soldiers at the next post, and the night of October 27 when he was sure it was over. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.