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 know if I hear anything.”
She thanked him and gave him the information, grateful that he seemed to think Andrew was simply a crackpot. It was only after they hung up that she began to wonder about that phrase “if I hear anything.”
Andrew came in in the early afternoon, and she served him an apple and a liverwurst sandwich. He seemed a little abashed. Margaret knew she had to think carefully and move slowly in order not to waste her opportunity. She felt a wisp of that old temptation—curtain rising, play commencing—but she put it away and said, “I read the papers, Andrew, and put them back on your desk. Why did you show them to me?”
“Well, of course, I wondered what you think.”
“What I think?”
“If you agree with me.”
“About whether I am the unwitting center of a nest of spies who are using me to get to you?”
“Why, yes. I wanted to get your opinion.”
“You say you’ve already sent everything in.”
“I have.”
“So what does my opinion matter?”
“Well, my dear, who else have I got to ask?”
She couldn’t help acknowledging that, in other circumstances, this remark might strike her as poignant, or even funny, but now she said, soberly, “I do not think that I am