Our Man in Manhattan

Recently, I came across a passage in Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana that reminded me of – something. The book deals with an English vacuum-cleaner salesman in Havana who is contracted by a British spy network to be their contact in Cuba in the turbulent late 1950s there. Strapped for cash, the salesman invents and gets salaries and expenses for non-existent agents he is supposed to have hired (such as the imaginary Engineer Cirfuentes in the passage below). The novel’s most beloved hoax has the salesman/secret agent passing off sketches he has made of vacuum-cleaner parts as clandestine renderings of a new weapons system being built in the jungle of Cuba’s Oriente province.

Back in London, the drawings cause considerable excitement. We pick up the action as the head of intelligence, the Chief, examines the drawings with Hawthorne, the agent who hired the vacuum-cleaner salesman in the first place:

Hawthorne stared at the drawings. They reminded him of – something. He was touched, he didn’t know why, by an odd uneasiness.

‘You remember the reports that came with them,’ the Chief said. ‘The source was stroke three. Who is he?’

‘I think that would be Engineer Cirfuentes, sir.’

‘Well, even he was mystified. With all his technical knowledge. These machines were being transported by lorry from the army-headquarters at Bayamo to the edge of the forest. Then mules took over. General direction those unexplained concrete platforms.’

‘What does Air Ministry say, sir?’

‘They are worried, very worried. Interested too, of course.’

‘What about the atomic research people?’

‘We haven’t shown them the drawings yet. You know what those fellows are like. They’ll criticize points of detail, say the whole thing is unreliable, that the tube is out of proportion or points the wrong way. You can’t expect an agent working from memory to get every detail right. I want photographs, Hawthorne.’

‘That’s asking a lot, sir.’

‘We have got to have them. At any risk. Do you know what Savage said to me? I can tell you, it gave me a very nasty nightmare. He said that one of the drawings reminded him of a giant vacuum cleaner.’

‘A vacuum cleaner!’ Hawthorne bent down and examined the drawings again, and the cold struck him once more.

‘Makes you shiver, doesn’t it?’

‘But that’s impossible, sir.’ He felt as though he were pleading for his own career. ‘It couldn’t be a vacuum cleaner, sir. Not a vacuum cleaner.’

‘Fiendish, isn’t it?’ the Chief said. ‘The ingenuity, the simplicity, the devilish imagination of the thing.’ He removed his black monocle and his baby-blue eye caught the light and made it jig on the wall over the radiator. ‘See this one here six times the height of a man. Like a gigantic spray. And this – what does this remind you of?’

Hawthorne said unhappily. “A two-way nozzle.’

‘What’s a two-way nozzle?’

‘You sometimes find them with a vacuum cleaner.’

‘Vacuum cleaner again. Hawthorne, I believe we may be on to something so big that the H-bomb will become a conventional weapon.’

‘Is that desirable, sir?’

‘Of course it’s desirable. Nobody worries about conventional weapons.’

‘What have you in mind, sir?’

‘I’m no scientist,’ the Chief said, ‘but look at this great tank. It must stand nearly as high as the forest trees. A huge gaping mouth at the top, and this pipe-line – the man’s only indicated it. For all we know, it may extend for mile – from the mountain to the sea perhaps. You know the Russians are said to be working on some idea – something to do with the power of the sun, sea-evaporation. I don’t know what it’s all about, but I do know this thing is Big…’

Funny, no? My goodness, the things those novelists dream up….

But it reminded me of – something.

Then I remembered. So I looked it up.

From a speech given on February 6, 2003 by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations Security Council:

We know, we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was disbursing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq. Most of the launchers and warheads have been hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to four weeks to escape detection…

Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb.

He is so determined that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries, even after inspections resumed.

These tubes are controlled by the Nuclear Suppliers Group precisely because they can be used as centrifuges for enriching uranium. By now, just about everyone has heard of these tubes, and we all know that there are differences of opinion. There is controversy about what these tubes are for.

Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium...

Let me tell you what is not controversial about these tubes.

First, all the experts who have analyzed the tubes in our possession agree that they can be adapted for centrifuge use. Second, Iraq had no business buying them for any purpose. They are banned for Iraq.

I am no expert on centrifuge tubes, but just as an old Army trooper, I can tell you a couple of things: First, it strikes me as quite odd that these tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets.

Maybe Iraqis just manufacture their conventional weapons to a higher standard than we do, but I don't think so.

Second, we actually have examined tubes from several different batches that were seized clandestinely before they reached Baghdad. What we notice in these different batches is a progression to higher and higher levels of specification, including, in the latest batch, an anodized coating on extremely smooth inner and outer surfaces. Why would they continue refining the specifications, go to all that trouble for something that, if it was a rocket, would soon be blown into shrapnel when it went off?

The high tolerance aluminum tubes are only part of the story. We also have intelligence from multiple sources that Iraq is attempting to acquire magnets and high-speed balancing machines; both items can be used in a gas centrifuge program to enrich uranium…

The Chief says, “I’m no scientist.”

Powell says, “I am no expert… just… an old Army trooper.”

At least the Chief was fictional.