"No," Hank said. "I thought that term was passé. Look, aren't we even going to my hotel for my things?"
The second C.I.A. man, the older one, said, "All your gear will be waiting for you in London. They'll be sure there's nothing in it to tip off the KGB if they go through your bags."
The younger one said, "We're not sure, things are moving fast, but we suspect that that term, Iron Curtain, applies again."
"Then how am I going to get in?" Hank said irritably. "I've had no background for this cloak and dagger stuff."
The older C.I.A. man said, "We understand the KGB has increased security measures but they haven't cut out all travel on the part of non-Communists."
The other one said, "Probably because the Russkies don't want to tip off the spacemen that they're being isolated from the western countries. It would be too conspicuous if suddenly all western travelers disappeared."
They were passing over the Potomac, to the right and below them Hank Kuran could make out the twin Pentagons, symbols of a military that had at long last by its very efficiency eliminated itself. War had finally progressed to the point where even a minor nation, such as Cuba or Portugal, could completely destroy the whole planet. Eliminated wasn't quite the word. In spite of their sterility, the military machines still claimed their million masses of men, still drained a third of the products of the world's industry.
One of the C.I.A. men was saying urgently, "So we're going to send you in as a tourist. As inconspicuous a tourist as we can make you. For fifteen years the Russkies have boomed their tourist trade—all for propaganda, of course. Now they're in no position to turn this tourist flood off. If the aliens got wind of it, they'd smell a rat."
Hank Kuran brought his attention back to them. "All right. So you get me to Moscow as a tourist. What do I do then? I keep telling you jokers that I don't know a thing about espionage. I don't know a secret code from judo."
"That's one reason the chief picked you. Not only do the Russkies have nothing on you in their files—neither do our own people. You're safe from betrayal. There are exactly six people who know your mission and only one of them is in Moscow."