* * * * *
From Istanbul, in Turkish Thrace, to Moscow, U.S.S.R., is only a couple of
hours outing for a round trip in a fast jet plane--a shade less than
eleven hundred miles in a beeline.
Unfortunately, Mr. Raphael Poe had no way of chartering a bee.
The United States Navy cruiser _Woonsocket_, having made its placid way
across the Mediterranean, up the Aegean Sea, and through the Dardanelles
to the Bosporous, stopped overnight at Istanbul and then turned around and
went back. On the way in, it had stopped at Gibraltar, Barcelona,
Marseilles, Genoa, Naples, and Athens--the main friendly ports on the
northern side of the Mediterranean. On the way back, it performed the same
ritual on the African side of the sea. Its most famous passengers were the
American Secretary of State, two senators, and three representatives.
Its most important passenger was Mr. Raphael Poe.
During the voyage in, Mr. Raphael Poe remained locked in a stateroom, all
by himself, twiddling his thumbs restlessly and playing endless games of
solitaire, making bets with himself on how long it would be before the
ship hit the next big wave and wondering how long it would take a man to
go nuts in isolation. On the voyage back, he was not aboard the
_Woonsocket_ at all, and no one missed him because only the captain and
two other Navy men had known he was aboard, and they knew that he had been
dropped overboard at Istanbul.
The sleek, tapered cylindroid might easily have been mistaken for a Naval
torpedo, since it was roughly the same size and shape. Actually, it was a
sort of hybrid, combining the torpedo and the two-man submarine that the
Japanese had used in World War II, plus refinements contributed by such
apparently diverse arts as skin-diving, cybernetics, and nucleonics.
Inside this one-man underwater vessel, Raphael Poe lay prone, guiding the
little atomic-powered submarine across the Black Sea, past Odessa, and up
the Dnieper. The first leg, the four hundred miles from the Bosporous to
the mouth of the river, was relatively easy. The two hundred and sixty
miles from there to the Dnepropetrovsk was a little more difficult, but
not terribly so. It became increasingly more difficult as the Dnieper
narrowed and became more shallow.
On to Kiev. His course changed at Dnepropetrovsk, from northeast to
northwest, for the next two hundred fifty miles. At Kiev, the river
changed course again, heading north. Three hundred and fifty miles farther
on, at Smolensk, he was heading almost due east.
It had not been an easy trip. At night, he had surfaced to get his
bearings and to recharge the air tanks. Several times, he had had to take
to the land, using the caterpillar treads on the little machine, because
of obstacles in the river.
At the end of the ninth day, he was still one hundred eighty miles from
Moscow, but, at that point, he got out of the submarine and prepared
himself for the trip overland. When he was ready, he pressed a special
button on the control panel of the expensive little craft. Immediately,
the special robot brain took over. It had recorded the trip upstream; by
applying that information in reverse--a "mirror image," so to speak--it
began guiding itself back toward Istanbul, applying the necessary
corrective factors that made the difference between an upstream and a
downstream trip. If it had made a mistake or had been discovered, it would
have blown itself to bits. As a tribute to modern robotics and
ultra-microminiaturization, it is a fact that the little craft was picked
up five days later a few miles from Istanbul by the U.S.S. _Paducah_.
By that time, a certain Vladimir Turenski, a shambling not-too-bright deaf
mute, had made his fully documented appearance in Moscow.
* * * * *
Spies, like fairies and other such elusive sprites, traditionally come in
rings. The reason for this circumstructural metaphor is obscure, but it
remains a fact that a single spy, all by himself, is usually of very
little use to anybody. Espionage, on any useful scale, requires
organization.
There is, as there should be, a reason for this. The purpose of espionage
is to gather information--preferably, _useful_ information--against the
wishes of, and in spite of the efforts of, a group--usually referred to
as "the enemy"--which is endeavoring to prevent that information from
getting into other hands than their own. Such activities obviously imply
communication. An espioneur, working for Side A, who finds a bit of
important information about Side B must obviously communicate that bit of
information to Side A or it is of no use whatsoever.
All of these factors pose complex problems.
To begin with, the espioneur must get himself into a position in which he
can get hold of the information he wants. Usually, that means that he must
pass himself off as something he is not, a process which requires time.
Then, when he gets the information he is after, he must get it to his
employers quickly. Information, like fish, becomes useless after a certain
amount of time, and, unlike fish, there is no known way of refrigerating
it to retard spoilage.
It is difficult to transmit information these days. It is actually easier
for the espioneur to transmit it than to get it, generally speaking, but
it is difficult for him to do both jobs at once, so the spy ring's two
major parts consist of the ones who get the information from the enemy and
the ones who transmit it back to their employers.
Without magic, it is difficult for a single spy to be of any benefit. And
"magic," in this case, can be defined as some method by which information
can be either obtained or transmitted without fear of discovery by the
enemy. During World War I, a competent spy equipped with a compact
transistorized short-wave communications system could have had himself a
ball. If the system had included a miniature full-color television camera,
he could have gone hog wild. In those days, such equipment would have been
magic.
All this is not _à propos_ of nothing. Mr. Raphael Poe was, in his own
way, a magician.
It is not to be supposed that the United States of America had no spy
rings in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at that time. There were
plenty of them. Raphael Poe could have, if it were so ordained, availed
himself of the services of any one or all of them. He did not do so for
two reasons. In the first place, the more people who are in on a secret,
the more who can give it away. In other words, a ring, like a chain, is
only as strong as its weakest section. In the second place, Raphael Poe
didn't need any assistance in the first place.
That is, he needed no more assistance that most magicians do--a shill in
the audience. In this particular case, the shill was his brother, Leonard
Poe.
* * * * *
Operation Mapcase was as ultra-secret as it could possibly be. Although
there were perhaps two dozen men who knew of the existence of the
operation by its code name, such as the Naval officers who had helped get
Raphael Poe to his destination, there were only five men who really knew
what Operation Mapcase was all about.
Two of these were, of course, Raphael and Leonard Poe. Two others were the
President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense. The fifth was
Colonel Julius T. Spaulding, of United States Army Intelligence.
On the seventh day after Raphael Poe's arrival in Moscow, the other four
men met in Blair House, across the street from the White House, in a room
especially prepared for the purpose. No one but the President knew the
exact purpose of the meeting, although they had an idea that he wanted
more information of some kind.
The President himself was the last to arrive. Leaving two Secret Service
men standing outside the room, he carefully closed the door and turned to
face the Secretary of Defense, Colonel Spaulding, and Leonard Poe. "Sit
down, gentlemen," he said, seating himself as he spoke.
"Gentlemen, before we go any further, I must conduct one final experiment
in order to justify Operation Mapcase. I will not explain it just yet." He
looked at Lenny Poe, a small, dark-haired man with a largish nose. "Mr.
Poe, can you contact your brother at this moment?"
Lenny Poe was a man who was not overawed by anyone, and had no inclination
to be formal, not even toward the President. "Yeah, sure," he said
matter-of-factly.
[Illustration]
The President glanced at his watch. "It is now five minutes of ten. That
makes it five minutes of six in the evening in Moscow. Is your brother
free to move around? That is, can he go to a certain place in the city?"
Lenny closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. "Rafe says he can go
any place that the average citizen would be allowed to go."
"Excellent," said the President. He gave Lenny an address--an intersection
of two streets not far from Red Square. "Can he get there within fifteen
minutes?"
"Make it twenty," said Lenny.
"Very well. Twenty minutes. When he gets there, I'll ask you to relay
further instructions."
Lenny Poe closed his eyes, folded his arms, and relaxed in his chair. The
other three men waited silently.
Nineteen minutes later, Lenny opened his eyes and said: "O.K. He's there.
Now what?"
"There is a lamppost on that corner, I believe," said the President. "Can
your brother see it?"