In public the Americans learned to follow the Russian example, and never mentioned the initials GPU or NKVD out loud. Instead they joked about the “Four-Letter Boys” or the “YMCA” or “Phi Beta Kappa” or “the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Bolshevism” or any other whip-smart euphemism that might confuse the listening waiters, secretaries, and assorted informers of every stripe who surrounded them in the Metropol bar.16
