Wormold, a vacuum-cleaner salesman, was short of money. His daughter had reached an expensive age—so he accepted Hawthorne's offer of $300-plus a month and became agent 59200/5, M16's man in Havana.

To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. Then his stories start coming disturbingly true...