Wise Gals by Nathalia Holt

Author:Nathalia Holt [Holt, Nathalia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

MUSKETEER

1956

“Subject’s sex and family circumstances make her a difficult rotation assignment in the communications field.”

These fifteen words, typed into Addy Hawkins’s personnel report, were an anchor. They tied the divorced mother of three to the shores of the United States. Yet in the wake of the Petticoat Panel, Addy was no longer content to wait. Her experience with the panel had made it clear that CIA administrators could not be counted on to do what was fair and just.

Whereas at twenty-seven she had humbly submitted to her supervisor’s orders, at forty-two she was willing to push the boundaries. She communicated her arguments with a clarity that suited her years at the CIA. She had the expertise and the seniority, and now her children were grown.

Technically, Don, age eighteen, was still living at home with her, but even he, the baby of the family, was on the precipice of adulthood. Her elder son, Eddie, was in college; her daughter, Sylvia, had recently married.

“It’s finally happened,” Addy told a colleague in 1955 when she got the news. She was leaving Washington for a European assignment. Even better, she would be able to bring her younger son with her. Addy loved having Don with her. Parents are not supposed to have a favorite, but children often have an inkling which sibling is loved most of all, and “baby” Don had been doted on by Addy and his siblings all his life. Don was interested in attending architecture school in London, and Addy knew this would be the perfect opportunity for him to live overseas.

“This is going to be the best thing for you,” she told him. She could have easily said the same words to herself.

It would have surprised Don to learn that Addy was already a world traveler. Her trips to New York “for work” had in fact taken her on flights across the globe—from Germany to England to France. Yet this rotation assignment was different. She would not be spending a rushed week at the CIA station in Frankfurt, instructing men with far less experience than herself on how to communicate securely. Instead, she would be a security and communications officer integral to the mission.

In London, Addy received a file that included a cryptonym she did not recognize. “Musketeer” was printed in bold letters. It was sandwiched in between code she was desperate to unravel. Yet the enemy communications she was trying to pry open were surprisingly not Soviet in nature. Instead, they were from their allies.

Addy was tiptoeing into a prickly and possibly explosive situation. Earlier that year, Addy’s communications started keeping a close watch on Egypt, particularly after the country’s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, assumed control in 1954 and subsequently nationalized the Suez Canal. The canal, the strategically important connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, created a bridge between Africa and Asia. By 1955, more than half of the world’s oil supply, including two-thirds of European oil, passed through the canal.

“We shall defend with our

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