Let us pretend, then, that we are a secret agent being interrogated by the enemy. Let us pretend that we must live on our wits, for these next few minutes, as if we were deep, deep under cover. We are Bacall—or better: we are Hedy Lamarr, who as well as being the most beautiful woman in Europe also developed a frequency-hopping guidance system for torpedoes . She sighs, and lets the thought go out of her on the exhale, like a prayer: