Bridges Of Spies Quotes

The wrought-iron gate squeaked as Lucas opened it. He lowered the rented bike down the stone steps and onto the sidewalk. To his right was the most famous Globe Hotel in Paris, disguised under another name. In front of the entrance five Curukians sat on mopeds. Lu-cas and his eighteen-month-old friend then shot out across the street and through the invisible beam of an-other security camera. He rode diagonally across the place de la Concorde and headed toward the river. It seemed only natural. The motorcycles trailed him. He pedaled fast across the Alex-andre III bridge and zipped past Les Invalides hospital. He tried to turn left at the Rodin Museum, but Goper rode next to him, blocking his escape.

Christmas 1961 was not a good time to be in jail as a spy in the Eastern Bloc. It was cold outside, miserable inside, and godless everywhere.

A lot of things had changed on that bridge.

Since Madam Conk makes impermissible use of such things as the happenings at Azuma Bridge; since she hires underlings to spy and eavesdrop on us; since she triumphantly retails to all and sundry the products of her espionage; since by the employment of rickshaw-folk, mere grooms, plain rogues, student riff-raff, crone daily-help, midwives, witches, masseurs, and other trouble-makers she seeks to trouble a man of talent; for all these reasons even a cat must do what can be done to prevent her getting away with it.

In the words of Emanuele Tesauro: "We enjoy seeing our own thoughts blossom in someone's mind, while that someone is equally pleased to spy what our own mind furtively conceals." I was a cipher. But, like me, everyone else was a cipher as well. Ultimately, I wanted to peer into books, places, and people because wherever I looked I was always looking for myself, or for traces of myself, or better yet, for a world out there filled with people and characters who could be made to be like me, because being like me and being me and liking the things I liked was nothing more than their roundabout way of being as close to, as open to, and as bound to me as I wished to be to them. The world in my image.All I cared for were streets that bore my name and the trace of my passage there; and all I wanted were novels in which everyone's soul was laid bare and anatomized because nothing interested me more than the nether, undisclosed aspects of people and things that were identical to mine. Exposed, everyone would turn out to be just like me. They understood me, I understood them, we were no longer strangers. I dissembled, they dissembled. The more they were like me, the more I'd learn to accept and perhaps grow to like who I was. My hunches, my insights were nothing more than furtive ways of bridging the insuperable distance between me and the world.

This close, Tal tipped his head back to meet Athlen's unwavering gaze. He spied the light line of freckles that spread over the bridge of Athlen's nose, and the dimple in his cheek, and the slope of his neck as the collar of his shirt slipped sideways. Tal's blood pounded and his head swam, and he didn't know if it was due to illness or something else, something about Athlen's proximity and the strong cage of his arms and the salty smell of his skin.

down near the Brooklyn Bridge and Tweed courthouse. As a kid I’d read something about the courthouse that has stuck with me my entire life: In the nineteenth century, Boss Tweed had used its construction as a pretext to embezzle millions from New York State. When they finally got around to trying him for that crime, they did it in the courthouse named after him. How hilarious an irony—here was a city government building celebrating one of the most corrupt members in its history.

Lucy Gray Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray, And when I cross'd the Wild, I chanc'd to see at break of day The solitary Child. No Mate, no comrade Lucy knew; She dwelt on a wild Moor, The sweetest Thing that ever grew Beside a human door! You yet may spy the Fawn at play, The Hare upon the Green; But the sweet face of Lucy Gray Will never more be seen. "To-night will be a stormy night, You to the Town must go, And take a lantern, Child, to light Your Mother thro' the snow." "That, Father! will I gladly do; 'Tis scarcely afternoon— The Minster-clock has just struck two, And yonder is the Moon." At this the Father rais'd his hook And snapp'd a faggot-band; He plied his work, and Lucy took The lantern in her hand. Not blither is the mountain roe, With many a wanton stroke Her feet disperse, the powd'ry snow That rises up like smoke. The storm came on before its time, She wander'd up and down, And many a hill did Lucy climb But never reach'd the Town. The wretched Parents all that night Went shouting far and wide; But there was neither sound nor sight To serve them for a guide. At day-break on a hill they stood That overlook'd the Moor; And thence they saw the Bridge of Wood A furlong from their door. And now they homeward turn'd, and cry'd "In Heaven we all shall meet!" When in the snow the Mother spied The print of Lucy's feet. Then downward from the steep hill's edge They track'd the footmarks small; And through the broken hawthorn-hedge, And by the long stone-wall; And then an open field they cross'd, The marks were still the same; They track'd them on, nor ever lost, And to the Bridge they came. They follow'd from the snowy bank The footmarks, one by one, Into the middle of the plank, And further there were none. Yet some maintain that to this day She is a living Child, That you may see sweet Lucy Gray Upon the lonesome Wild. O'er rough and smooth she trips along, And never looks behind; And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind.

Oft had I heard of Lucy Gray, And when I crossed the Wild, I chanced to see at break of day The solitary Child. No Mate, no comrade Lucy knew; She dwelt on a wide Moor, The sweetest Thing that ever grew Beside a human door! You yet may spy the Fawn at play, The Hare upon the Green; But the sweet face of Lucy Gray Will never more be seen. 'To-night will be a stormy night, You to the Town must go, And take a lantern, Child, to light Your Mother thro' the snow.' 'That, Father! will I gladly do; 'Tis scarcely afternoon -- The Minster-clock has just struck two, And yonder is the Moon.' At this the Father raised his hook And snapped a faggot-band; He plied his work, and Lucy took The lantern in her hand. Not blither is the mountain roe, With many a wanton stroke Her feet disperse the powd'ry snow That rises up like smoke. The storm came on before its time, She wandered up and down, And many a hill did Lucy climb But never reached the Town. The wretched Parents all that night Went shouting far and wide; But there was neither sound nor sight To serve them for a guide. At day-break on a hill they stood That overlooked the Moor; And thence they saw the Bridge of Wood A furlong from their door. And now they homeward turned, and cried 'In Heaven we all shall meet!' When in the snow the Mother spied The print of Lucy's feet. Then downward from the steep hill's edge They tracked the footmarks small; And through the broken hawthorn-hedge, And by the long stone-wall; And then an open field they crossed, The marks were still the same; They tracked them on, nor ever lost, And to the Bridge they came. They followed from the snowy bank The footmarks, one by one, Into the middle of the plank, And further there were none. Yet some maintain that to this day She is a living Child, That you may see sweet Lucy Gray Upon the lonesome Wild. O'er rough and smooth she trips along, And never looks behind; And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind.

I soon found my feet, and was much less homesick than I was at prep school. Thank God. I learned that with plenty of free time on our hands, and being encouraged to fill the time with “interests,” I could come up with some great adventures. A couple of my best friends and I started climbing the huge old oak trees around the grounds, finding monkey routes through the branches that allowed us to travel between the trees, high up above the ground. It was brilliant. We soon had built a real-life Robin Hood den, with full-on branch swings, pulleys, and balancing bars high up in the treetops. We crossed the Thames on the high girders above a railway bridge, we built rafts out of old Styrofoam and even made a boat out of an old bathtub to go down the river in. (Sadly this sank, as the water came in through the overflow hole, which was a fundamental flaw. Note to self: Test rafts before committing to big rivers in them.) We spied on the beautiful French girls who worked in the kitchens, and even made camps on the rooftops overlooking the walkway they used on their way back from work. We would vainly attempt to try and chat them up as they passed. In between many of these antics we had to work hard academically, as well as dress in ridiculous clothes, consisting of long tailcoats and waistcoats. This developed in me the art of making smart clothes look ragged, and ever since, I have maintained a lifelong love of wearing good-quality clothes in a messy way. It even earned me the nickname of “Scug,” from the deputy-headmaster. In Eton slang this roughly translates as: “A person of no account, and of dirty appearance.

Years ago, when I used to wander of an evening from the fireside to the pleasant land of fairy-tales, I met a doughty knight and true. Many dangers had he overcome, in many lands had been; and all men knew him for a brave and well-tried knight, and one that knew not fear; except, maybe, upon such seasons when even a brave man might feel afraid and yet not be ashamed. Now, as this knight one day was pricking wearily along a toilsome road, his heart misgave him and was sore within him because of the trouble of the way. Rocks, dark and of a monstrous size, hung high above his head, and like enough it seemed unto the knight that they should fall and he lie low beneath them. Chasms there were on either side, and darksome caves wherein fierce robbers lived, and dragons, very terrible, whose jaws dripped blood. And upon the road there hung a darkness as of night. So it came over that good knight that he would no more press forward, but seek another road, less grievously beset with difficulty unto his gentle steed. But when in haste he turned and looked behind, much marveled our brave knight, for lo! of all the way that he had ridden there was naught for eye to see; but at his horse’s heels there yawned a mighty gulf, whereof no man might ever spy the bottom, so deep was that same gulf. Then when Sir Ghelent saw that of going back there was none, he prayed to good Saint Cuthbert, and setting spurs into his steed rode forward bravely and most joyously. And naught harmed him. There is no returning on the road of life. The frail bridge of time on which we tread sinks back into eternity at every step we take. The past is gone from us forever. It is gathered in and garnered.

You can't give me the silent treatment all day, Janel," he said. "I can and will, Jake," she rebutted, not turning to look at him. They sat on the bridge, Janel in the command chair, Jake slightly behind her at the tactical station; he'd spun his around and propped his feet up on the arm of hers. Crossing his hands over his stomach, he smiled at her profile. "Fine, then I'll just sing to pass the time and keep your company." He drew in a deep lungful of air and began an absolutely horrible rendition of 99,000 bottles of beer on the wall...

God redeemed them, and then told them to do something that would lead to blessing, which required obedience, and they refused to do it, an act of rebellion.  They had the audacity to decide that His commandments were optional, and so they did not enter into His promises – even after seeing the plagues of Egypt and the Red Sea part and the mountain covered with fire.  They did it at Sinai with the Golden Calf right after the first Ten Commandments were given,[36] they did it again when ten of the spies brought an evil report and the people refused to go into the Land,[37] and then again when they whored with the pagan women![38]  They did not treat God like He was God.  They violated the very word and spirit of the Covenant.

Shock and awe was not invented for Saddam Hussein. It was invented for Joseph Stalin, and it worked pretty well.

President Truman’s message to Stalin could not have been clearer if written in blood. It was a warning not to contemplate starting a new war in Europe trusting in the Red Army’s old-fashioned strength in numbers. And it signaled more concisely than any speech that Truman had accepted the central argument of George Kennan’s famous “Long Telegram,” sent from the U.S. embassy in Moscow six months before the tests: the Soviet Union had to be contained. As Truman himself put it: “If we could just have Stalin and his boys see one of these things, there wouldn’t be any question about another war.

The template was Richard III’s horseshoe at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485; without a shoe his kingdom was lost. Without a decent pressure suit for the CIA, the cold war was liable to heat up. The stakes were no higher than

Sometimes I thought it was a good thing that he had gone blind, because that way he would never see me, never see my face, never see the look on my face when I was with him, which wasn't the look of a prostitute or a thief or a spy, but an expectant look, the look of someone hoping for anything and everything, from a kind word to a life-changing declaration. There weren't many kind words, because Maciste didn't talk much, but there were kind gestures. And there were no life-changing declarations, or at least none I recognized at the time, though since then I've come to remember each of Maciste's words as a key or a dark bridge that surely could have led me elsewhere, as if he were a fortune-telling machine designed exclusively for me, which I know isn't true, though sometimes I like to think so, not often, because I don't lie to myself the way I used to, but every once in a while.

- Aren't you worried? - Would it help?

Shock and awe was not invented for Saddam Hussein. It was invented for Joseph Stalin, and it worked pretty well. On

If anything ever happens to me, just remember I was doing what I thought was best for the most people.” It

Since the ingrained Soviet approach to the problems of life and politics is conspiratorial, it is no surprise that this approach finds its ultimate fulfillment in intelligence work. When such a man does finally see the light, as has happened, his disillusionment is overwhelming.” Fisher

If he kept his counsel, furthermore, no one need know that he had almost nothing to reveal. And what they didn’t know they could only imagine. After

a time traveler would have been interested to note that in all Fisher’s appeals there was never any doubt that the Constitution’s protections applied to him as an alien. Back

In January 1960 Allen Dulles, who should have known better because he did know better, told Eisenhower that even though the U-2 had shown no evidence of mass missile production, the Russians could still somehow conjure up two hundred of them in eighteen months.

Eisenhower read the Alsop columns and fulminated. He called the missile-gap men “sanctimonious, hypocritical bastards.” But he also bowed to mounting pressure from his own senior staff to beef up the evidence that the missile gap did not exist. This was why he allowed two more U-2 flights before the summit. It was an understandable decision, and a disastrous one. It

On the contrary, privacy was now more central than ever to the Soviet leader’s strategy. His extravagant bluffing about the size of his nuclear arsenal had to work, because without the impression of a meaningful stockpile, there could be no meaningful disarmament.

They asked if I could ride a horse, which I could,” he says. “They asked if I could lasso, which I could. What they didn’t ask me was if I could ride a horse and lasso at the same time, and the answer was I couldn’t.

contained evidence that Stalin may have been a paid informer of the czar’s secret police before 1917.

Yet this was not in fact the strategy that Powers chose. A simpler soul in his position might have seen only a binary decision to make—to talk or not to talk. But the “deluded jerk from Virginia” assumed from the start that if he was to have any chance of saving his life, his honor, and the U-2’s most precious secrets, he would have to use his wits. He

The purpose of his testimony was not to reveal anything the KGB did not already know. It was to provide a prelude to Rudenko’s closing harangue, which was in turn designed to shift the blame for the wrecked summit from Khrushchev back to the Americans.

But there were also some generalities that made it seductive: a spy swap was an admission by everyone involved that they really did spy. It was an admission that spies got caught and that when they did, their spymasters needed them back—to debrief, punish, perhaps reward, and to persuade those still working the dead drops that someone was looking out for them. It was an admission by the spy traders that despite the wall and the codes of silence by which they lived, they could put their shadow war on hold long enough to hammer out a deal. In a way this was reassuring. But a swap was also a fleeting chance for the disclosure people—the best-connected reporters, or the luckiest—to glimpse the secrecy people in action and photograph the hell out of them and study the creases on their foreheads and then hold the evidence up to the light and ask: do these people make us safer, or are they as dangerous as the H-bomb secrets they supposedly try so hard to steal? First,

to live with. Powers did just that. He was a natural

the thoroughbreds whose doctorates would catapult them to capitalism’s commanding heights.

the crumpled air intakes in room 20 are a monument to hubris and luck—great mounds of it, good and bad, accumulated over years of brinkmanship and blundering in the age of Dr. Strangelove. These bits of plane are also a question mark. What if? What if they had stayed in one piece and the aircraft—official manufacturer’s designation “Article 360”—had completed its mission and released its pilot as planned to stretch his cramped legs and sink a long martini in the hut by the concrete outside Adana that served as the American officers’ club? The question hardly bears thinking about, but it can be answered. If Article 360 had stayed aloft, so would hopes of détente at the great power summit scheduled for mid-May that year in Paris. Paris

But there were others with reason to be thankful for the disappearance of that peculiar airplane—intelligence professionals enjoying the unprecedented influence conferred on them by the cold war’s cult of secrecy; military brass sitting atop armed forces that still consumed a tenth of the nation’s gross domestic product seven years after the end of the Korean War; and above all the missile manufacturers—Convair, Douglas, Lockheed, the Martin Company—girding themselves for an open-ended arms race to outproduce the Soviets in the technologies of an exotic new national defense that only Eisenhower seemed ready to resist. It is no surprise that many believed Article 360’s loss was no accident on America’s part; nor that some still do. *

The wizard of Baikonur has done it again. Sergey Korolyov has put into orbit a five-ton space capsule carrying not one but two live dogs and has brought them safely back to Earth.

saw in her old classmate “a certain naïveté . . . a certain lack of caution, a certain trustfulness.” Another college contemporary who remains close to him after many decades describes him as one of those who sensed that a “fundamental purity of heart” will protect them from life’s ambushes.

In 1992 Pryor applied for permission to read his Stasi file. In 1994 it was granted, and he returned to a reunified Berlin. In the reading room established by then for victims of the secret police in the former Stasi headquarters on Magdalenenstrasse, the sheer heft of his ten-thousand-page file gave him what felt momentarily like special status. Then someone appeared with fifteen thousand and he took his place among the mortals. He

It was not hard in 1975 to identify powerful groups with an interest in torpedoing the Paris summit, chief among them the missile builders on both sides.

Twenty-six years later, each superpower had roughly nine thousand warheads. Harold Macmillan called the U-2 affair “a very queer story.” For the defense industry, it was also a very happy one. *

An engineer who has not been educated as a spy or detective is no match for a rascal.

The field office was in the Jacob Javits building, which was located in an especially barren part of lower Manhattan, down near the Brooklyn Bridge and Tweed courthouse.

My name's Donovan. Irish, both sides. Mother and father. I'm Irish and you're German. But what makes us both Americans? Just one thing. One. Only one. The rule book. We call it the Constitution, and we agree to the rules, and that's what makes us Americans. That's all that makes us Americans. So don't tell me there's no rule book, and don't nod at me like that you son of a bitch. James Donovan - Bridge of Spies

Acknowledgements I must acknowledge my debt to so many people and sources. I learnt about the activities of those extraordinarily brave women of the SOE from Marcus Binney’s book: The Women Who Lived for Danger and about what it was like to be a spy from The Spy Wore Red by Aline Countess of Romanones. To find out more about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder I read A War of Nerves by Ben Shephard. Phil Kemp from the Yorkshire Air Museum kindly allowed me to clamber around inside the only reconstructed Halifax Bomber in the World. He told me the lipstick story. An ex-soldier who had served in Bosnia gave me more intimate details about suffering from PTSD.

A few minutes after 8 p.m. on the dark, cold Sunday night of March 4, 2001, Robert Hanssen was apprehended in the otherwise quiet Foxstone Park, in suburban Vienna, Virginia. He had been an FBI Agent for 22 years, looking forward to his retirement, while at the same time spying for the KGB Soviet and Russian intelligence against the United States. FBI Agents had finally caught Hanssen, the mole in their midst, in the act of hiding a plastic bag full of U.S. Government secret documents, under a foot bridge in the park. At the same time other FBI Agents retrieved a package, containing $50,000, thought have been Hanssen’s payment. Although he was caught red-handed the FBI still had to buy additional evidence before he pleaded guilty to 13 counts of espionage. Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole, and confined in a “Supermax” prison, where he still remains locked up in his cell, 23 hours a day. It was determined that Hanssen received over $600,000, plus diamonds and cash, during his career as a spy. It was also discovered that he had links to other FBI investigations including the Aldrich Ames and Felix Bloch cases. To date, his 25 years of subversive activities created the worst intelligence disaster in our countries history.

Paul Dark lit a cigarette and raised it to his mouth. The moment the tip glowed, he inhaled deeply and leaned back on his elbows. He squinted in the afternoon sunshine, taking in the view that stretched out before him. The hillside was dotted with squares of brightly coloured blankets, each of which was home to a Swedish family with young children – like small islands of social democratic prosperity, he thought. A few feet away, Ben was running around pretending to be an aeroplane with another boy, while Claire was seated cross-legged next to him on their blanket, one finger entwined in her hair as she browsed the arts section of Dagens Nyheter , a pair of sunglasses perched on her head. He leaned over and found his own pair, which he pushed tight against the bridge of his nose. So here it is, he thought. Fifty. Half a century.

Because SPYDER wants me dead. They tried to kill me on the Arlington Bridge yesterday.” Erica gave me a look that indicated I was the world’s biggest idiot. “That wasn’t SPYDER. That was me.” “You?” I gasped. “Why would you try to kill me?” Erica’s look hardened, now indicating that I might be the biggest idiot in the entire universe. “I wasn’t trying to kill you. I had to do something to get you free.” “So you opened fire on an entire convoy of Secret Service agents?” “It wasn’t like I had a whole lot of options.” Erica led me through the invertebrate zoo, where display cases were filled with an array of the world’s biggest, slimiest, and most revolting insects. “I had to act fast. If they’d gotten you to the Pentagon and locked you up there, it would have been almost impossible for me to free you.” “Almost impossible?” I echoed. “Nothing’s completely impossible. But some things are awfully close. So I improvised. Lucky for you, I was keeping an eye on you again at the White House yesterday when the bomb went off.” “Really? I didn’t see you.” “Because I didn’t want you to see me.” Erica cut through a demonstration where a museum employee was removing insects from Tupperware containers and showing them to a crowd of riveted children. “After the explosion, I saw the Secret Service drag you out and figured they were taking you to the Pentagon. So I grabbed my motorcycle and raced over to the construction site.” I thought back to the flash of movement I’d seen among the construction workers, moving toward the crane. I now realized it had been Erica. “So, you swung that hook at the car on purpose?” “Yeah. I realize that was a bit dicey, but I’d never operated a crane before. It’s harder than you’d think.” “A bit dicey? You realize if you’d been off by another inch or two, you would have killed me?” Erica considered this, then shrugged. “Well, we all make mistakes. I would have asked you to do the math, but you were tough to reach at the time.

All right, then, thank you.” He shook his head a little. “Fair’s fair. Now we’re even again.” “Spies on a bridge,” murmured Farooq-Lane. “The only adults in the room,” Declan corrected her. He still appeared brisk and professional, but now there was nonetheless something restless about him; he was thinking over what she’d written in the greeting card. This agitation temporarily lifted the illusion of age, and for a fraction of a second, he looked very much like his brother Ronan. Well, like Ronan the last time she’d seen him. Not now. Farooq-Lane freed him from the meeting with a handshake. “Good luck, Mr. Lynch.” “That,” Declan said bitterly, “is the only kind I never have.

There is no farm-state equivalent for intelligence, no geographic center of industry or interests that encourages legislators to focus on intelligence oversight to win voter support. As Michael Hayden told me, “No member ever gets a bridge built or a road paved by serving on the intelligence committee. It’s an act of patriotism.

They’re possibly trying to bridge the gap between digital and kinetic.” The hackers’ goals seemed to extend beyond spying to industrial sabotage.

Fred opened the oven, and I spied a ham inside.

The Arlington Bridge?” the radio dispatcher replied with disbelief. “That thing’s a mess. Why didn’t you take the Roosevelt?” “Because we didn’t!” howled the driver. “We need backup right now!

Ruhn couldn’t fault him for trying. While he couldn’t read thoughts or invade people’s unguarded minds as some of his cousins could, he’d learned that he could talk to people on a sort of psychic bridge, as if his mind had formed it brick by brick between souls. It was perfect for a spy network.

The phrase “conflict of interest” barely begins to describe Tom Lanphier’s rabidly partisan approach to advising one of the most powerful congressional allies of the American military-industrial complex. Yet he was in good company. Air force intelligence was crammed with highly competitive analysts who believed they were in a zero-sum game not only with the Russians but also with the army and the navy. If they could make the missile-gap theory stick, America would have to respond with a crash ICBM program of its own. The dominance of the Strategic Air Command in the U.S. military hierarchy would be complete—and Convair would profit mightily. It is hardly surprising that the information Lanphier fed to Symington and Symington to every politician and columnist who would listen was authoritative, alarming, and completely, disastrously wrong. Symington’s “on the record” projection of Soviet nuclear strength, given to Senate hearings on the missile gap in late 1959, was that by 1962 they would have three thousand ICBMs. The actual number was four. Symington’s was a wild guess, an extrapolation based on extrapolations by air force generals who believed it was only responsible to take Khrushchev at his word when, for example, he told journalists in Moscow that a single Soviet factory was producing 250 rockets a year, complete with warheads. Symington knew what he was doing. He wanted to be president and believed rightly that missile-gap scaremongering had helped the Democrats pick up nearly fifty seats in Congress in the 1958 midterm elections. But everyone was at it. The 1958 National Intelligence Estimate had forecast one hundred Soviet ICBMs by 1960 and five hundred by 1962. In January 1960 Allen Dulles, who should have known better because he did know better, told Eisenhower that even though the U-2 had shown no evidence of mass missile production, the Russians could still somehow conjure up two hundred of them in eighteen months. On the political left a former congressional aide called Frank Gibney wrote a baseless five-thousand-word cover story for Harper’s magazine accusing the administration of giving the Soviets a six-to-one lead in ICBMs. (Gibney also recommended putting “a system of really massive retaliation” on the moon.) On the right, Vice President Nixon quietly let friends and pundits know that he felt his own boss didn’t quite get the threat. And in the middle, Joe Alsop wrote a devastating series of columns syndicated to hundreds of newspapers in which he calculated that the Soviets would have 150 ICBMs in ten months flat and suggested that by not matching them warhead for warhead the president was playing Russian roulette with the national future. Alsop, who lived well but expensively in a substantial house in Georgetown, was the Larry King of his day—dapper, superbly well connected, and indefatigable in the pursuit of a good story. His series ran in the last week of January 1960. Khrushchev read it in translation and resolved to steal the thunder of the missile-gap lobby, which was threatening to land him with an arms race that would bankrupt Communism. Before the four-power summit, which was now scheduled for Paris in mid-May, he would offer to dismantle his entire ICBM stockpile. No one needed to know how big or small it was; they just needed to know that he was serious about disarmament. He revealed his plan to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at a secret meeting in the Kremlin on

had approximately ten operational nuclear warheads. Two months earlier Lanphier had argued before Congress that if Convair had been allowed to start building Atlas missiles in 1957 it would have four hundred of them by now. One month before the shoot-down he made a specific plea for an order for one hundred Atlases and twenty Titans. After May 1, he never had to plead again. A contract with Convair was signed and by 1963 the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command had thirteen Atlas missile squadrons with one hundred thirty-seven ICBMs between them. Twenty-six years later, each superpower had roughly nine thousand warheads. Harold Macmillan called the U-2 affair “a very queer story.” For the defense industry, it was also a very happy one. *

His features were Middle Eastern, his eyes haunted but also defiant. They were all defiant, Gray had found. When he looked at someone like al-Omari, Gray couldn’t help but think of a Dostoyevsky creation, the displaced outsider, brooding, plotting and methodically stroking a weapon of anarchy. It was the face of a fanatic, of one possessed by a deranged evil. It was the same type of person who’d taken away forever the two people Gray had loved most in the world. Though al-Omari was thousands of miles away in a facility only a very few people even knew existed, the picture and sound were crystal clear thanks to the satellite downlink. Through his headset he asked al-Omari a question in English. The man promptly answered in Arabic and then smiled triumphantly. In flawless Arabic Gray said, “Mr. al-Omari, I am fluent in Arabic and can actually speak it better than you. I know that you lived in England for years and that you speak English better than you do Arabic. I strongly suggest that we communicate in that language so there is absolutely no misunderstanding between us.” Al-Omari’s smile faded, and he sat straighter in his chair. Gray explained his proposal. Al-Omari was to become a spy for the United States, infiltrating one of the deadliest terrorist organizations operating in the Middle East. The man promptly refused. Gray persisted and al-Omari refused yet again, adding that “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” “There are currently ninety-three terrorist organizations in the world as recognized by the U.S. State Department, most of them originating in the Middle East,” Gray responded. “You have confirmed membership in at least three of them. In addition, you were found with forged passports, structural plans to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and bomb-making material. Now you’re going to work for us, or it will become distinctly unpleasant.” Al-Omari smiled and leaned toward the camera. “I was interrogated years ago in Jordan by your CIA and your military and your FBI, your so-called Tiger Teams. They sent females in wearing only their underwear. They wiped their menstrual blood on me, or at least what they called their menstrual blood, so I was unclean and could not perform my prayers. They rubbed their bodies against me, offered me sex if I talk. I say no to them and I am beaten afterward.” He sat back. “I have been threatened with rape, and they say I will get AIDS from it and die. I do not care. True followers of Muhammad do not fear death as you Christians do. It is your greatest weakness and will lead to your total destruction. Islam will triumph. It is written in the Qur’an. Islam will rule the world.

Colby was a veteran of the OSS’s legendary Jedburghs, a group of spies recruited to parachute behind enemy lines in the early years of World War II and wreak havoc, organizing resistance and blowing up roads and bridges. The Jedburgh motto was “Surprise, kill, and vanish,” and Colby was perfect in the role.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? Whenever I’m feeling like I need to prioritize what I’m doing or overthinking a particular situation that is making me anxious, I try to remember this great exchange in the film Bridge of Spies. Tom Hanks, who plays a lawyer, asks his client, who is being accused of being a spy, “Aren’t you worried?” His answer: “Would it help?” I always think, “Would it help?” That is the pivotal question that I ask myself every day. If you put everything through that prism, it is a remarkably effective way to cut through the clutter.

Cloak and Dagger was lost in the summertime NBC schedule, lumped into a mystery block with several other shows of far inferior quality. It never attracted a sponsor and got almost no critical attention, but the recent discovery of the entire run reveals a gripping show with every story an unpredictable departure from formula. It was the story of the wartime activities of the OSS—the Office of Strategic Services—“this country’s first all-out effort in black warfare … dropping undercover operators behind enemy lines, organizing local partisans to blow bridges and dynamite tunnels, operating the best spy systems of Europe and Asia.” It was a tense half-hour of patriots and traitors, of love affairs doomed by war, of triumph, tragedy, and failure. The stories did not always end with the lovers embraced and the mad-dog Germans reeling in defeat: the hero-agent, in accomplishing his mission, sometimes gave up his life. It opened with a question by actor Raymond Edward Johnson: Are you willing to undertake a dangerous mission for the United States, knowing in advance you may never return alive? It was transcribed and had a definite “canned” sound, which may also have helped turn listeners away.

No,” Cormac said earnestly. “I only mentioned that I had a contact in Lunathion who might be useful in reestablishing our connection with Daybright, and was sent here.” Ruhn couldn’t fault him for trying. While he couldn’t read thoughts or invade people’s unguarded minds as some of his cousins could, he’d learned that he could talk to people on a sort of psychic bridge, as if his mind had formed it brick by brick between souls. It was perfect for a spy network.