You got it, son. People forget—the old Model-T Ford may be old, but it worked. It got you there. It carried you from A to B. And it hardly ever broke… - Frederick Forsyth

They also drew their £1000 in five gold sovereigns and the "goolie chit." This remarkable document was first introduced to the Americans in the Gulf War, but the ritish, who have been flying combat in those parts since the 1920s, understood them well. A goolie chit is a letter in Arabic and six kinds of Bedouin dialect. It says in effect, "Dear Mr. Bedou, the presenter of this letter is a British officer. If you return him to the nearest British patrol, complete with his testicles and preferably where they ought to be and not in his mouth, you will be rewarded with £5000 in gold." Sometimes it works.

In Moscow, the warrant officer radio operator removed his headphones and nodded toward the teleprinter. "Faint but clear," he said.
The printer began to chatter, sending out a screed of paper covered with a jumble of meaningless letters. When it fell silent, the officer beside the radio tore off the sheet and fed it through the decoder, already set to the formula of the agreed one-time pad. The decoder absorbed the sheet, its computer ran through the permutations, and it delivered the message in clear. The officer read the text and smiled. He telephoned a number, identified himself, checked the identity of the man he was addressing, and said: "Aurora is 'go.'"

Not really. There's a quantum leap in moral philosophy when you cross the Jordan.