Henry Rowe of Boothbay got a surprise in the mail a few days before his 83rd birthday. On July 6, he received a letter from his son who lives in the Washington, D.C. area.

The letter contained a Washington Post article about the book “The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Cold War Story of Espionage and Betrayal.”

In Christopher Rowe's letter he asks: “Dad, does this look familiar?”

The novel is a story about how a Soviet spy saved the United States $2 billion in engineering costs. The novel also mentions how a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent avoided KGB surveillance using an inflated doll.

The device is called a “Jack-in-the-Box.” The device has a special meaning to the Rowes. They both worked for “The Agency.” And it was Henry, a 20-year CIA veteran, who created it.

“My task was to enable someone to be in two places at the same time,” Henry Rowe said.

The device is stored in the agent's brief case. Once inflated, “The Jack” would spring from the case and appear as if the agent was in the car.

“The book doesn't mention my name, but there was only one in the world like it. And that's mine,” he said.

According to Rowe, the device fooled the KGB for seven years.  On this particular night, the doll developed a slow leak and remained inflated for about 30 minutes. The KGB agent reported seeing the American’s head on the car dashboard.

Hoffman used details from a circa 1981 KGB report that an American agent apparently vomited in his car.

“It stated the agent's head was on the dashboard. Now move ahead 25 years,” Henry Rowe said. “The Kremlin (Soviet Union) has crumbled and we (U.S.) got into the KGB files. Somebody decided to check on a certain diplomat and on a certain date which showed he got sick in the car. He wasn’t sick. It was the dummy, of course,” he said.

Henry Rowe began his CIA career in 1963. He worked as an electronics engineer, diplomat and a site manager. His work took him to 43 countries. And he either lived, visited or worked in nearly every European country, including ones behind The Iron Curtain.

His first foreign assignment was as a diplomat in 1967 for the American Embassy in London. During his two-year stint, he signed official correspondence using his alias, “Bernard O. Mattlig,” a German national.

Rowe was tasked with visiting “screening rooms” in American embassies in Europe. These copper-clad chambers were filled with agents monitoring radio broadcast. Agents, like Rowe, used special equipment to decipher coded messages.

Later, his work as an electronics engineer took him to Sofia, Bulgaria, where he installed antennas on the American embassy's roof. In 1971, Rowe spent two months in the Bulgarian capital.

He remembers installing antennas to monitor the Eastern Bloc country’s transmissions. And across the street, on another roof top, a female Bulgarian technician erected antennas monitoring his work.

“It was all counter-espionage,” he said.

Rowe stayed in a Bulgarian hotel reserved for American diplomats. He remembers taking apart the telephone and photographing the listening devices inside.

During his stay in Sofia, KGB agents followed him on regular basis. One day, Rowe became fed up with his unwelcome shadow, and confronted the agent.

“I knew he'd be photographed talking to an American agent, which would cause his superiors to question why this happened. After that, I never saw him again,” said Rowe.

Rowe’s CIA work mostly specialized in electronic engineering projects, either creating projects like the Jack-in-the-Box or managing a major Japanese radio antenna installation. Despite his work overseas, he never considered himself at risk.

“I never felt in danger. I had diplomatic immunity. And nobody touches a diplomat,” he said.

His fondest memory of his CIA days happened in 1976. He managed a Japanese radio antenna facility that monitored Asian countries’ communications. One antenna was a mile in length, according to Rowe.

One day, a transmission was intercepted in Cyrillic characters: The Russian alphabet. The message reported that there was going to be a Chinese potato famine. But Rowe believed the message had a greater meaning than just a bad harvest.

Rowe concluded that Mao Tse-tung, the chairman of the China's Communist Party, had died.

But how does one go from reading about a potato famine to pronouncing a prominent world leader's death. Rowe knew Chairman Mao's health was poor, and that the only reason for Chinese peasants to stop harvesting was to attend his funeral.

“I put all pieces of the puzzle together,” he said. “I admit it's a leap, but that's my job.”

Rowe reported to the White House that Chairman Mao, the leader of the People's Republic of China, was dead.

Later, White House officials contacted Associated Press, United Press International and Reuters news services to either confirm or deny the report. None of the international press agencies could do either.

Days later, President Gerald Ford announced to the world that Mao Tse-tung, the chairman of the Republic of China's Communist Party and the man who led the country's revolution in 1949, had died.

Following the president's announcement, Chinese officials confirmed Mao died on Sept. 9, 1976.

Rowe remembers sending the memo without any hesitancy.

“That was a good feeling for something like that to happen,” he said.

Working for the world's preeminent intelligence organization was something the boy who once worked in Boothbay's mud flats digging worms never envisioned.

“Life has a lot of twists and turns. I didn't plan any of this, not even working for the federal government,” Rowe said.

His journey into in the CIA began during his final college semester at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was interviewing on campus for various engineering positions. In spring 1963, corporations like IBM, AT&T and General Electric were prospecting for future employees. Rowe also interviewed with several smaller companies.

“The reason for that is I didn't really know what an electronic engineer did, even though I was about to graduate,” Rowe said.

He was early for his last interview, so he popped his head into a room and asked:  “What are you selling?”

What ensued was a conversation between Rowe and a man he described as a “Sam Spade looking character” dressed in a sharp suit and a felt hat sitting with his feet on the desk, and a dimly lit light bulb over his head.

The Spade-like character piqued Rowe's interest by asking him a question no one else had: What do you want from a career?

“I want to retire at age 50, and I want your job,” Rowe said.

The man was a recruiter for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Early retirement was important to Rowe. He had several uncles who died in their 40s. So Rowe wanted to retire young enough to enjoy his later years. So he joined “The Agency” in 1963.

In 1983, he retired at age 50, and by the time he finished his CIA career, Rowe became the Sam Spade character's superior.

For years, Rowe was prohibited from talking about his work. But after three decades, the information has become declassified and now obsolete.

“It's been 32 years; that's a half a lifetime ago. Looking back, it was good to see I did some good even though I didn't know it at the time,” he said.

Rowe and his wife, Grace, returned to Boothbay in 1984, and moved into the home he grew up in. Since returning, Rowe became the first the president of the Boothbay Civic Association, served three terms as selectman, serves as the local American Legion’s chaplain, and is the founder of The Woodchucks, a volunteer group providing free fire wood to needy families.

This is the first of a two part profile on Boothbay resident Henry Rowe. Next week, part two tells about his return to his hometown, his community service, and daily interests.