Illustration by John Leavitt
Welcome, new members of the Cold War Reenactment Society (henceforth known as the ‘Tradesmen Benevolence Society’ or simply ‘The Society’). As Director, it warms my heart to know that so many are dedicated to upholding the tradition of honest analog espionage. No computer program or data breach could possibly compete with the authentic satisfaction that accompanies a lovingly planted bug or the elegant jab of an umbrella-tip full of ricin. It feels so good to know there is a real person opening, reading, and then resealing your mail — that there’s a real pair of eyes behind those binoculars and dark, drawn curtains. Expect no drones here, only flesh-and-blood, morally compromised people devoted to doing whatever it takes to do whatever it is we do here.
First let us deal with the practicalities. Your tweed jackets, tortoiseshell glasses, and tan trench coats are provided, but Society members are expected to provide their own heavy glass ashtrays and drinking problems. First assignments will be given after a short evaluation and bowler hat-fitting period. Secret families across town may be established upon request.
Please indicate if you are being blackmailed into spying for The Other Side via the enclosed necktie color chart. Double agents are encouraged to become triple agents. Quadruple agents will be mocked.
The Society includes three ranks of specialization. THIEF kit members will receive a crowbar, wire cutters, a black turtleneck, a ball-peen hammer, sanitary gloves, and a cassette tape cued up to to “The Girl From Ipanema.” FIGHTER kit members will receive duct tape, torn bedsheets, a lighter, five gallons of gasoline, one canvas sack, one dozen oranges, and a Walkman containing “The Other Side” by The Doors. WIZARD kit members will receive a graphing calculator, a transistor radio, a terminal connected to ARPANET, a short-sleeved dress shirt, and The Best of YES on vinyl.
Members wishing to specialize in asset acquisition and running will be given makeovers, a free fashion consultation, a weeklong improv workshop that includes a lecture from a “How to Win Friends and Influence People” guru, and a copy of “Kinsey Ain’t Nothing But a Number.” Members wishing to specialize in Administration have already been contacted at their respective Yale clubs.
For general advice on assignments, please consult the following supplementary materials: ‘So Your Gay Lover is Defecting,’ ‘Recruiting at Oxbridge: Wingtip Tips,’ ‘Advanced Redacting,’ and ‘101 Uses for a Windowless Room.’ These can all be found inside hollowed-out books titled NORWEGIAN MARITIME TAX LAW 1880-1887 located in friendly used bookstores.
In addition to our annual ‘We’re Not So Different, You And I’ meet-up with The Other Side, The Society hosts many recreational activities, including Wig Making Classes, Accent Acquisition, Honeypot Potluck, and Group Contemplation of the Grim Mathematics of Mutually Assured Destruction (21+).
Society members with small children are encouraged to get them involved by introducing the Shredded Document Jigsaw Puzzle game and re-casting ‘Hide and go Seek’ as ‘Front and Follow.’ Junior Society Members can practice their skills by observing and reporting on their friend’s parents. Remember: It’s never too early to get them used to using dead drops.
Society meetings will take place in movie theater balconies, alleyways near embassies, empty VFW halls, and when you’re least expecting it. Transcripts of previous meetings may be requested via cryptic messages in the classified section of your major daily newspaper. Please have a P.O. box under an assumed name for deliveries, or just have your oblivious spouse pick them up unknowingly.
If you need to contact the Society directly, merely flick the light in your upper-story bathroom twice or begin speaking into any public pay phone; an unmarked black van will be with you shortly. Members are advised not to use actual radio stations for communication. No one wants a repeat of the Mykonos incident.
Members are also encouraged to peruse alternate funding streams for the Society, such as goods transporting, people moving, and community narcotics outreach.
A request for a full copy of the Society Rule Book may be requested and then denied. Remember, whether you’re playing for your Crown, your Country, or your Party, it’s not about winning. It’s about making sure our off-the-books budget never decreases.
Good luck. We’re all rooting for you and/or plotting against you,
-D.
P.S.: Congratulations on successfully decoding this letter. It has been treated with a contact poison already working its way into your bloodstream. The antidote will be given at the next Society meeting.
This is what it is. When I was a small child hearing these announcements this was scary as hell. I fear that the MSM are frightening the children of today. The cold war was terrifing.
Yes I have indulged drawing myself cause this is my final peice for the toast also cause I owned literally the same outfit as Robert Redford playing a CIA agent https://twitter.com/leavittalone/status/733858575…
I realized it was you before I read the byline, based on the similarity of this drawing to your Will Graham piece.
Thanks!
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH.
also so impressed with this illustration, holy crap the watercolor/sketching skills? swoon.
Now I’ll be off sorting myself into which Spy House I’d fall into. I think THIEF, for the bossa nova.
I snorted at “Girl from Ipanema” but then realized I, too, am probably a THIEF.
I unironically love that song, and I would totally be a THIEF, hands down, no questions asked (or else i’d be shot)
‘Recruiting at Oxbridge: Wingtip Tips’
I went to the careers fair in my last term at Oxford and got approached by a person from the MI5 stall asking if I wanted to take a leaflet. It lacked the mystery of a tap on the shoulder. (I do not work for MI5.)
They had a stall? Supremely disappointing. I wouldn’t work for them either after that.
I know; it was not easy to take them seriously as shadowy and mysterious when they were surrounded by stalls for tech companies and Teach First. Hugely disappointing.
Their plan is succeeding, then.
I was recruiting at a careers fair for my own (non-secret) department a few years ago and was also disappointed to see a stall for the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.
To be fair, I had a chat with the girl manning the stall and she did say that this was pretty much the only time she was ever allowed to say who she worked for so…
They ran fairly subtle newpaper ads a while ago. I remember they said “We understand you may want to talk to your family about it before applying, but that means you’re already disqualified.”
“The Best of YES on vinyl”
Therefore my Marxist TA boyfriend in college was a spy.
This explains a lot
It’d make my middle-aged high school Advanced Placement US History And Government teacher a cold-war spy as well, which totally does not surprise me. He even wore tweeds, short-sleeved dress shirts, and tortoiseshell glasses.
Not surprised.
Also I wouldn’t be surprised if the Russian teacher (as in, he taught the Russian language) at my high school was also a spy (for The Other side; the job so obvious no one would think of it, hiding in plain sight, etc), who, instead of actually teaching anything, literally apparently only showed spy movies in Russian, with subtitles. I learned this from a friend of a friend, who was actually born in the USSR mere months before it fell, and whose first language was Russian. He took the class cuz he liked watching the movies. That kid was an inspiration to us all.
I have never not regretted taking Japanese. Huge mistake (YUGE, even).
I took German because the teacher brought chocolates and cake to class sometimes. Also sometimes fancy pickles. (She is also a wonderful woman and I love her, but I’m not going to pretend the chocolate didn’t figure in to things.)
Right okay- book recommendations please? I love the classics- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; the entire Harry Palmer series, I’m less into the Game, Set, Match series also by Deighton, I remember loving Gorky Park but I’m not even sure if that was technically Cold War Spy or just Set In The Soviet Union.
And obviously my love for Ben Macintyre’s entire field of non-fiction work is well-documented.
I loved “A Spy Among Friends” so. freakin’. much.
The Mrs. Pollifax books are a lot of fun – bored widow volunteers for the CIA and surprises everyone by being a really good spy. Kind of a subversive combination of Cold War spy novel and cozy mystery.
And the first one is out in ebook.
ETA – I’ve been amusing myself coming up with names for this sub-genre. Cozy suspense? Cozy spy story? Cozy spies?
Cold cozies.
Why does nobody talk about how excellent Graham Greene is? I love his spy books and they are better than le Carré #unpopularopinions
That’s a great point!
Alan Furst is fun. I also just read the first 2 books in Robert Goddard’s trilogy Ways of the World.
I have never heard of these people! Thank you!
It is completely random, I’m sure, but at full screen resolution the acrostic of the last letters of each line of this helpful pamphlet reads: “The skewered whelk absconds with lemon basil flair. Send a cask of gin for reinforcement.”
*leaves room while “Le Mere” comes on the radio*
I propose a fourth rank for records and research (Owl? Swot?)
You would be issued a warm cardigan, a sturdy tea mug, a magnifying glass, an encyclopaedic memory and an LP of The John Dankworth Orchestra.
I would very much like to join that group.
Yes, yes here. I love rifling through cabinets of carbon copies.
(upon returning from youtube to find out who The John Dankworth Orchestra was)
This is a little bit scary, yes, because I would absolutely have ben nutty about this if had been an adult in the ’60s.
This is where we shove everyone working on Case Nightmare Green
I love the Laundry Files more than is probably healthy (I can’t tell you how relieved I am that they aren’t permanently broken up, they just can’t live together).
And yes, that was the visual I was thinking of too.
ARPANET. And I’m assuming that a plug for The Assets on Netflix would be redundant in this post, since we’ve all obviously seen it.
I’ve been seriously considering adding short-sleeve button-downs to my wardrobe options; it’s good to know there’ll still be some exciting job opportunities afterwards.
I prefer Swinging on a Star as my heist soundtrack, personally.
How does Mailbot fit into all of this?
Whoa. I came to the comments to ask this same question.
Wizards aren’t restricted to codes that were actually used during the Cold War, right? Because I’d like to give a thief a very carefully arranged deck of playing cards and instructions to pay attention to the typos in The Guardian’s obituary section.
I think relying on fake typos in the Guardian might be undone by the real ones.
I would 100% watch this John LeCarre movie (because I’ve already read all the books.)
Ok this will be the one time when my partner will “get” The Toast humor, he just has to love this!
As he is both a “war gamer” and a Le Carre enthusiast…
Well, that’s sorted out the intro to the Cold War LARP I’ve been threatening to run for years… Love it! *tips*
I would join such a group in a fucking heartbeat. omg so much want
You know what? Even a story game would work! Esp a long-distance story game.
DOWNSIDES, POSSIBLE: actually be flagged on the terror watchlist
UPSIDES, POSSIBLE: brag to friends that you’re actually on the terror watchlist
May I play? Please???
Ooh, yes, this is so good. As someone born riiiight after the Berlin Wall fell, I enjoyed this so much.
Listen, I need this to be a real Society more than I need air rn
Somebody make it happen
Even a LARP idgaf
brb buying tweed, a record player, batters for my tape player, a ham radio, and a Russian-to-English/English-to-Russian dictionary (also good middle-shelf whiskey)
Also, who else unironically loves The Girl From Ipanema??
I still say those boys should be allowed to come back. Maybe not given security clearances, but let back.