[Verginius Rufus]

Maybe he got the idea from Our Man in Havana, by Graham Greene. The main character photographs parts of a vacuum cleaner and passes them off as top secret information (it's been a long time since I read the book so I don't recall the exact details).

[lee martell]

I’m going to have to look that book up. I don’t know much about Graham Greene.
I did hear that he had an unusual type of marriage. His daughter wrote a book about it.