Only a small proportion of the population was receiving training. Most of the people were members of the permanent staff, the housekeeping detail, and instructors. He was certain that many of the men were in the Osoby Otdel, the military security system that was called, or whispered, O.O. Among the special tutors were Czechs, Rumanians, Poles, Letts, and even a few Russians who had lived in America. There were Germans, graduates of the Abwehr and Gestapo, skilled in techniques of espionage. There were women, of course. They were there in the capacity of instructors as well as for morale and convenience. The emotional language of love may be the same the world over, but the colloquialisms and subtleties of the boudoir differ.
He lived in an apartment with men he knew as Gregg Palmer, Ralph Masters, and William Johnson. It was obvious that their backgrounds were much like his own, but they never revealed their Russian names. On orders, when you entered Little Chicago you forgot your past. It was an important psychological factor in the creation of a new personality. These four had stayed together from the moment they entered Little Chicago. They were a team, their mission one.
In their first week of training the four had been supplied with American credentials and were constantly tested in their uses until their new identities were fused in their minds. While Stanley Smith had been born in Iowa, he noted that he was now a resident of Florida. Since he was a man of considerable strategic knowledge and active imagination, this gave him a clue to their mission long before their first official briefing. He wasn’t being sent to Florida because of the climate or because any vital industrial complex existed there. Florida’s military importance lay in the air. Florida was one big landing field, a center of air bases. There was the Navy Station in Jacksonville, with its statellite fields and its companion carrier base at Mayport. But more important were the great bases of the Strategic Air Command. There was Pinecastle in Orlando and Mac Dill in Tampa and Eglin in Pensacola and the gigantic new Hibiscus Field which had recently been described in the news magazines. Why they were located in Florida was understandable. The flying weather was almost always good, and Florida was about as far from Russia as you could get and still stay on the continent of North America. Distance gave the Florida bases an immunity not enjoyed by SAC bases elsewhere. He would bet his bottom dollar (he used the phrase often) that his target would be one of those bases. But he did not mention what he suspected. Silence never sent a man to Siberia.
In his last month of schooling Stanley Smith was examined by a board of three visitors. One of them, Smith was fairly certain, was a native American, although he could not be sure. He was asked some pretty tricky questions, such as who invented the airplane and the electric light. He found that he had almost forgotten they were invented by Mozkaiski and Lodygin, respectively, and promptly gave the answers he knew were wanted: the Wright brothers and Thomas A. Edison. He also received a physical checkup and it was discovered that some dental work was necessary. An incisor was pulled and replaced by a shining stainless steel tooth. The dentist, new to Little Chicago, muttered in Russian. It was the first Russian Smith had heard in two years and he was forced to translate it, in his head, into English. A man’s transformation is complete when he does his thinking in an alien tongue.
Ordinarily, the road out of Little Chicago never doubled back through Russia, a necessary security precaution. In the case of Stanley Smith and his three companions there had been a deviation from normal procedures because of the peculiar nature and importance of their mission. They were flown to Moscow, taken inside the Kremlin walls, and lodged in an office-apartment annex, once barracks. That they were guarded like prisoners, and that security officers slept in their rooms, ate with them, and even eavesdropped in the toilets, did not seem unusual to Smith. All his life he had been watched. Sometimes, as in Budapest, his duty had been to watch others. Only in this way could the state be protected. It was normal, or, as he now said, S.O.P.
In the Kremlin they were introduced to an American—a genuine, Texas-born American—of whom they had been told. They had been warned that this American was erratic, and at times might seem crazy, but that they should be respectful to him, and listen carefully to anything he had to say. He was a great prize. He had been a sergeant in the Strategic Air Command, at a base in England. He had defected to the East while on tourist leave in Vienna. Because of a woman, it was said. His name was Horgan and he was a thin, red-faced, nervous man of about Smith’s age. He wore the uniform of the Red Air Force and the epaulets of a colonel, which was not surprising when one considered that in all Russia he was the only man who knew SAC intimately, as a child knows his father’s house.
In the week that followed, Smith and the others were closeted with Horgan for many hours. Their conferences were held in a comfortable, unmilitary room furnished with leather chairs, with caviar and cheeses always on the table, and liquor, much liquor. Sometimes Horgan grew excitable, and rambled. Sometimes he digressed in tirades at the brass and the officer clique which had refused to recognize his abilities and commission him. Sometimes he cursed, by name, officers who he said had conspired against him. He had even been reduced to KP, when such duty was allowable punishment. Once he quoted from a letter he had written his congressman. Once he broke down and put his head on the table and wept and announced that his wife was no better than an embarcadero whore. She had divorced him while he was in England, and was remarried, now, to a lieutenant. Yet what he had to say about the inner workings of a SAC base, and its security system, was clear enough and had the ring of truth in it. Horgan’s ideas were ingenious, and his advice explicit, but Smith wondered how long he would be allowed to live. Not long, surely, after he had been pumped dry and began to repeat himself and got on the nerves of the O.O. agents who guarded him and the intelligence officers who fawned on him, and dressed him in the trappings of a colonel, while despising him.
The final briefing for Smith, Palmer, Masters, and Johnson was delivered by a general of the Red Air Force, a Hero of the Soviet Union. The general emphasized timing. They must always remember that their mission was only a small part of a larger plan. At the same time their assignment was vital. Unless they succeeded, there might be no larger plan. They were essential as a tiny jewel in the heart of a watch. The general had no doubt that one, at least, would succeed. If only one succeeded, the names of all four would live forever in the history of the world revolution. They would be greater than Stakhanov. They would enjoy privileges and honors, upon their return, such as no young men had ever received before.
They would enter the United States with funds more than sufficient for their mission. They must be careful with their money as with their tongues, for a display of money could attract attention and betray them. If they ran into trouble, they were on no account to contact the Russian embassy or the consulates and thus compromise the diplomatic situation. Nor must they approach any American Communist, for the Party in the United States was riddled with spies and unreliable. In great emergency, there was one man who had been instructed to assist them. The name of this man, his address, and the manner in which he could be approached would be communicated to them before the landing. Also, in case of a shift in timing or change in orders, this man would contact them. He was to be trusted. Whenever they changed address, this man was to be informed. The general had then smiled and said he was now turning them over to the Navy. He had shaken hands with each of them, and wished them good luck.