John Davies, a retired British software developer, has been studying the Soviet maps for a decade. Even today, the US State Department uses them (among other sources) to place international boundary lines on official government maps. Given the technology of the time, the Soviet maps are incredibly accurate. Things that would be virtually impossible to find out without eyes on the ground. They’re the kinds of things that would come in handy if you’re planning a tank invasion. The Soviet maps of US and European cities have details that aren’t on domestic maps made around the same time, things like the precise width of roads, the load-bearing capacity of bridges, and the types of factories. During the Cold War, the Soviet military mapped the entire world, parts of it down to the level of individual buildings. The maps were part of one of the most ambitious cartographic enterprises ever undertaken. In the top right corner of each one, printed in red, was the Russian word секрет. Inside the crates were maps, thousands of them. The Soviet Military secretly mapped the entire world, but few outsiders have seen the maps-until now. Guy figured the guys who packed it were used to handling cargo that had to get past drug-sniffing dogs, but it wasn’t drugs he was there for. It was a box inside a box, and the space in between was packed with juniper needles. As he pried the lid off one to inspect the goods, he got a powerful whiff of pine. The crates he’d come for were all that was left. By the time Guy arrived at the helipad, most of the goods had already been off-loaded from the chopper and spirited away.
The Soviet Union was falling apart, and some of its military officers were busy selling off the pieces. It didn’t look like a military base, not exactly, but there were men who looked like soldiers standing around. A military helicopter was on the ground when Russell Guy arrived at the helipad near Tallinn, Estonia, with a briefcase filled with $250,000 in cash.
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