The Secrets We Kept(39)
“Then I ran a wire from the screen to the radio, dialed back to twenty megahertz, positioned the microphone just right, and that was it.” She lowered her voice. “Contact.”
“With what?”
“Sputnik.”
We all looked at one another.
“You may want to keep this conversation for after hours,” Linda said, looking around.
Gail snorted. “It’s practically child’s play.”
“What does it mean?” Judy whispered.
Gail shook her head. “Don’t know.” She motioned to the row of offices behind her. “That’s for them to find out.”
“Maybe a code?” Norma said.
“A countdown?”
“What happens when the beeping stops?” Judy asked.
Gail shrugged.
“It means you have to get back to work,” Anderson said from behind. We scattered, except for Gail, who remained standing. “And, Gail,” we heard Anderson say, “I’ll see you in my office.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
We watched her trail Anderson into his office; then we watched as she left it twenty minutes later, holding her white hankie to her nose. Norma stood up, but Gail waved her away.
* * *
—
October passed. The leaves turned orange, then red, then brown, then fell. We hauled out our heavier coats from the backs of our closets. The mosquitoes died off, bars began advertising hot toddies, and everywhere, even downtown, the city smelled of burning leaves. Someone brought in a jack-o’-lantern with a hammer and sickle carved into it to display at reception, and the men had their annual trick-or-treat around SR, going desk to desk taking shots of vodka.
November came in with a bang—or rather, a blast. The Soviets shot Sputnik II into space—this time carrying a dog named Laika. Kathy hung a Lost Dog poster in the break room with a picture captioned MUTTNIK: LAST SEEN ORBITING THE EARTH, but it was promptly removed.
Tension at the Agency increased, and we were asked to stay late for the men’s after-hours meetings. Sometimes they’d pick up a pizza or sandwiches if we had to stay past nine. But often there were no breaks and no food, and we made sure to pack extra lunches, just in case.
The Gaither Report soon followed, informing Eisenhower of what he already knew: that in the space race, nuclear race, and almost every other race we were further behind the Soviets than we had thought.
But as it turned out, the Agency already had another weapon in its pipeline.
* * *
—
They had their satellites, but we had their books. Back then, we believed books could be weapons—that literature could change the course of history. The Agency knew it would take time to change the hearts and minds of men, but they were in it for the long game. Since its OSS roots, the Agency had doubled down on soft-propaganda warfare—using art, music, and literature to advance its objectives. The goal: to emphasize how the Soviet system did not allow free thought—how the Red State hindered, censored, and persecuted even its finest artists. The tactic: to get cultural materials into the hands of Soviet citizens by any means.
We started out stuffing pamphlets into weather balloons and sent them over borders to burst, their contents raining down behind the Iron Curtain. Then we mailed Soviet-banned books back behind enemy lines. At first, the men had the bright idea to just mail the books in nondescript envelopes, cross their fingers, and hope at least a few would make it across undetected. But during one of their book meetings, Linda piped up, suggesting the idea of affixing false covers to the books for better protection. A few of us gathered every copy we could find of less controversial titles like Charlotte’s Web and Pride and Prejudice, removed their dust jackets, and glued them to the contraband before dropping them into the mail. Naturally, the men took the credit.
And it was around that time that the Agency decided we ought to dive even deeper into the war of the words, graduating several men within the ranks to create their own publishing companies and found literary magazines to front our efforts. The Agency became a bit of a book club with a black budget. It was more appealing to poets and writers than book readings with free wine. We had our hands so deep in publishing you’d have thought we got a cut of the royalties.
We’d sit in on the men’s meetings and take notes while they talked about the novels they wanted to exploit next. They’d debate the merits of making Orwell’s Animal Farm the subject of their next mission versus Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. They’d talk books as if their critiques would be printed in the Times. So serious, and yet we’d joke that their conversations felt like ones we’d had back in our undergrad lit classes. Someone would make a point, then someone else would disagree, then they’d go off on some tangent. These discussions went on for hours, and we’d be lying if we said we hadn’t caught ourselves nodding off once or twice. Once, Norma interrupted the men by saying she firmly believed the themes Bellows explores far outweigh the sheer beauty of Nabokov’s sentences, and that was the last book meeting she ever took notes at.
So there were the balloons, the false covers, the publishing companies, the lit mags, all the other books we’d smuggled into the USSR.
Then there was Zhivago.
Classified under code name AEDINOSAUR, it was the mission that would change everything.