Private Life (50 page)

like "Oriental-looking fishermen disembarking in a secluded spot, then huddling together

and talking eagerly among themselves," or "the ripple on the surface of the water that

could be evidence of a submarine beneath." He had observed a great deal of fishing

activity around the shipbuilding yards on five occasions, and had observed that the

fishermen in the boats "looked Oriental." He had seen others looking at the ships in the

yard "too minutely and longer than tourists would do" on six occasions. He had seen a

man writing things on a pad. When he approached the man, the man "hastily" put away

his pad and "hurried off." On several occasions, when he was walking down the beach,

cars above him on the side of the road "hurriedly drove away" as he scrutinized them.

Everything was scrupulously dated, including time of day and weather conditions. Given

his vindication about the
Panay
incident, she couldn't help feeling unsettled by his

observations.

She turned the page. She read, "Other Matters." The first page of this section

read:In addition, I have come to believe that my wife, Margaret Mayfield Early, has

become the center, certainly unwitting, of a nest of spies that are cultivating her

acquaintance (and have been for some time), as part of an effort to get access to me and

to my papers. Primary among these foreign agents is a Russian man who goes by an Irish

name, Peter Moran, and purports to be an investor. I believe that he was hired by the

Japanese government when he was working and living at Tanforan Race Course. He

speaks fluent Japanese and Russian, and semi-fluent Chinese. According to his own

report, he also speaks fluent French and some German (not to mention his original

language, which, I believe, is a Ukrainian dialect). Sometime about 1900, as a young

man, Peter Krizenko (for that is his previous name, though whether that is the name he

was born with, I don't know) lived for a period in Japan. I have been unable to ascertain

what sort of connections he made at the time. He may also be working for the Russians,

but I doubt it, as I do not believe he is or ever has been a Bolshevist.I believe that Mr.

Krizenko's most important contact is a member of a family living in Vallejo who own a

shop. Their name is "Kimura." Father--Sei, mother--Kiku, daughter--Naoko, son--Joseph,

son--Lester. I have not made up my mind which of these is the agent. Mr. Kimura is very

old. (Note--has now died.) Joseph moved to Japan in 1936 (not a time when any realistic

young man would have chosen to seek his fortune there). Joseph is in constant

communication with the boy Lester, who works on the wharf, but from what I have seen

of Lester, Lester is not gathering the information--too busy and a bit dull. Both the

daughter and the mother work as midwives, and therefore travel a great deal about the

countryside. My guess is that one or the other or both of these women are gathering

information about food, other crops, harvests, workers' movements, trucking, and other

essentials of day-to-day American life on the West Coast. I have seen no evidence that

they are observing the shipyard or have been seen on the island.

Margaret laughed out loud in disbelief, but could not have said whether the laugh

was at the absurdity of Andrew's speculations or their cruelty.

On the second page of this section was a list of dates and times when Andrew

knew she was meeting either Pete or one of the Kimuras, a list of dates and times when

he knew that she had received or placed telephone calls to any of them, and a separate list

of dates when he knew she had gone to Japantown "to eat in restaurants and look at

galleries." He went on:I believe that my wife's interest in Japantown is solely motivated

by her love of Japanese art and artifacts, but it may be that she is serving as an unwitting

courier for messages from these gallery owners to the Kimuras, as she usually shares her

finds with them. Old Mr. Kimura is an artist. I have not been able to ascertain his

reputation--whether these artistic efforts are part of a cover-up, or undertaken in a sincere

pursuit of his craft.

After this, there was another section entitled "The Underlying Scheme." This was

a relatively short section, because he had addressed the topic in some previous

communication to the President, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Commandant of the

Base. It went:You will note that I have sent two previous reports to you. One of these

concerned my investigations into the
Panay
incident and the contemporaneous slaughter

of Chinese civilians in Nanking by the Japanese military, in December, 1937 and

January, 1938. The second of these, which I believe is more germane to this nest of spies

that I have discovered, concerns the activities of Dr. Albert Einstein in and around the

naval base and in Vallejo. I have seen Dr. Einstein in Vallejo eight times. On four of

these occasions, I had the opportunity to follow him about the town. It is my belief that

he recognized me on three of these occasions, and so my investigation of his activities

was aborted. Persons reading my previous report may know that Dr. Einstein is well

aware of me, since I have been a persistent critic of his patently ridiculous theories about

the nature of the universe for some twenty-five years or more. At any rate, on one

occasion, owing to a very thick fog, I was able to follow Dr. Einstein for sixty-six

minutes. My detailed report on that investigation is to be found in my earlier

communication, dated February 5, 1940. The gist of what I had to say is this. I believe

that Dr. Einstein is also serving as an agent for a foreign power (no doubt Germany) and

that he is haunting the island in order to find out something. Given Dr. Einstein's interest

in physical phenomena, my guess is that weapons systems are his goal--perhaps those

carried on submarines. He may, indeed, be connecting with Pete Moran (Krizenko) and

passing information to him.

Margaret threw down the papers with such vehemence that Stella jumped off her

lap. Here he had evaded her attempts to control him, and very cleverly, too, by boning up

on all those movies and manufacturing himself as a movie fan, while all the time doing

surveillance of the city and the bay. She was angrily impressed by his enterprise in

getting around--a man who could not drive! He must have used trains and streetcars, and

of course walked considerable distances. She called Stella back to her and patted her.

Through her coat she could feel that the dog was muscular and physically fit. And he had

conjured the Kimuras and Pete into a "nest of spies." Poor Mr. Kimura, to have his

artistic aspirations so cavalierly dismissed as a cover-up for espionage! And poor Mrs.

Kimura, a woman who had witnessed as much daily horror as anyone! Andrew imagined

that she was noting down harvest dates, and estimating crop sizes (peaches? cherries?

roses?) as she was driving from delivery to delivery. Naoko had visited their house on the

island, and come to several knitting circles. Did Andrew think that when the ladies

weren't looking the girl was going into his office and rifling through papers for

information on the Aether? Or, alternatively, sneaking about the ship factories, writing

things down? Evidently, he did.

Yes, Pete was a shady character. All of Pete's attractions grew out of the fact that

he was a shady character whose credentials were not in order, and whose stories could

never be proved or disproved. The only things she knew about Pete were that he had in

his possession some Japanese works of art, that he had shown her some horses at the

racetrack that he said were his, and that, for now, she liked him. Very much. He was

kind, observant, and enjoyable to talk to. Aah, Pete, she thought. Andrew was right to be

suspicious of Pete, because Pete made a career of acting suspiciously, but the thought of

his suspicions made her tingle with rage.

She got up from the chair, turned out the light, and went into Andrew's office. She

laid the papers in the center of the desk, where he would be sure to see them, then she put

a shawl over her shoulders and took Stella out into the yard. The dog did some

investigating, and then they went back into the house. She left Stella in the kitchen, where

he would find her, and went upstairs to her room, where she closed the door, changed

into her nightgown, and got into bed. Sometime later, she heard Andrew come in, then

come up the stairs. He did not knock on her door. He went into his room, then the

bathroom, then his room again. After that, there was silence. She fell asleep.

In her dream, she didn't know whether she was frightened for Andrew or of him.

Sometimes he was a figure stumbling through the sand, and sometimes he was a figure

coming toward her, large and threatening, but overall what frightened her was the space

around him, a vastness that seemed to indicate that anything could happen. She woke up

from this dream and fell asleep again, into a different dream, in which the word "spy"

itself was what frightened her. At first Andrew was the spy (as indeed he was), seeming

to look at one thing but really looking at another. Then he was supplanted by other

figures, none of whom she could recognize, who were also spying, though not, in

particular, on her. Though they seemed innocent enough--rather like the figures of

children running about--her dream self was filled with waves of horror that she could not

escape or reduce, waves that might be tossing her about in the surf, just below the Golden

Gate Bridge. At the end of this dream, just before she woke up, she thought the words

"Agent Keene," and those words stayed with her and repeated themselves over and over

through the next uneasy dream, which was about men coming to the house. In this dream,

she kept going to the door and opening it, and seeing a figure on the doorstep. The roses

like those she had cut and carried to Mr. Kimura also figured into this dream--she was

afraid that the person on the doorstep would see her cut the roses and know whom they

were for, and take them away from her. But she didn't actually dream about the Kimuras

or Pete.

Toward morning, she woke thoroughly. The room was dark, the sky was

lightening, so she lay there for a few minutes, breathless and with her pulse sounding in

her ears. Her whole life seemed just then to be so unfamiliar as to induce a sense of

vertigo. It was as if she were a child again, and had dreamed about everything that was to

come, as if she knew to her very bones that she could not manage or handle what was to

come. She had to remind herself several times that what seemed as though it was going to

happen had in fact already happened, and she had managed it, or, at least, she had

survived it. But she continued to tremble. And this feeling evolved into a more

frightening one--she was herself, old, sixty-two, and her mind was so full of everything

that she had seen and done and imagined that she didn't know what to make of any of it,

how to think, what to do, how to live.

She heard Andrew stirring in his room and, after that, in the hallway, and she was

seized with such fear and revulsion that she put her head under the covers and waited and

waited for him first to go downstairs, and then to leave the house. She knew now that

there was no telling what he was doing or where he was going, and that the least of her

worries was that he would annoy someone and be brought home by the local police. She

also realized that he wanted to talk to her about what he had written.

She did not want to talk to him about anything. She was a coward, and avoided

him.

When the house was quiet, she got dressed and went to the police. She told the

sergeant on duty that she had once been visited by an Agent Keene, from the FBI, and

that she wanted to talk to him again. They gave her a telephone number in San Francisco.

There had been a drunken brawl in downtown Vallejo the night before, and the police

were too busy to ask her any questions, for which she was grateful.

But there was no Agent Keene. Agent Keene had been transferred to parts

unknown (or, at least, parts not to be known by her), and she was eventually connected

with Agent Greengrass, who was not familiar with Andrew and had never seen his

"reports," although, he said, they sounded "interesting."

She said, "Well, Agent Greengrass, I don't think they are interesting. That's why

I'm calling you. Captain Early's reports are a mishmash of crazy ideas, and I wanted to

make sure that the people in your office understood that."

"Why did you want to make sure of that?"

"Because

it's

true."

Agent Greengrass was silent, then said, "Tell me your name again."

"Margaret

Mayfield

Early."

"And to whom did your husband send these reports?"

She thought of saying that she didn't know, but she couldn't bring herself to lie.

She said, "Roosevelt, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Commandant of the Naval

Base."

"Ma'am," said Agent Greengrass, "you wouldn't believe the pile of stuff that goes

to the White House, for the eyes of the President only, that reports secret air attacks and

webs of underground tunnels. But I will take down your name and address and let you