Orange Peel

The orange peel is just one of the many symbols Macintyre uses to represent the secrecy of espionage. Macintyre explains that spies use a variety of different objects such as orange peels, bottle caps and chalk marks to indicate different messages that would go unnoticed by the regular passerby. Gordievsky learned all these signals and more when he attended the KGB training called school 101. For example, an orange peel underneath a park bench could mean "I am in danger," whereas an apple core in the same location could mean "I am leaving the country tomorrow" (25).