stuck in Burma.”
“Why do you say Burma?”
“I don’t know. Naoko said her greatest fear was that he would be impressed into the army and find himself in the tropics.”
“To my knowledge, China is far from tropical.”
“Well, that’s what she said. The geography is hazy to me.”
He gave Stella another bit of bread. “You know, there are Japanese spies everywhere.”
“We aren’t at war with them, though.”
“What they do is find these boys who are on the outs with the navy, or down and out, and they give them money, and these kids get them what they want.”
“What do they want?”
“Codebooks. Operational manuals. Descriptions of ships. Almost anything, really.”
“But we’re neutral. They don’t want to be at war with us.”
“Do they not? They’ve signed the Tripartite Pact with the Germans and the Italians.”
This had happened about four days before, and had been much talked about in the papers. Margaret thought, So this is what he’s getting at. She said, “Even so, being at war with us would make no sense.”
“Perhaps they think we will soon be at war with Germany, and then they can enter through the back door.”
“Roosevelt knows—”
“We are the back door,” interrupted Andrew.
She stared at him.
“My dear,” he said, “I have something I would like you to read. It is of my own composition, a rough draft. I improved this version a bit before I sent it off, but the gist is the same. I’ll get it.” He stood up and went into his office. He came back with a sheaf of papers of the sort she recognized only too well—small handwriting (though readable), written from edge to edge and top to bottom, numbered in big slashing numbers in the top left corner, one to twenty-four. He handed them to her and turned on his heel, went to the coat rack, took his coat, and went out, leaving Stella with her. The papers were addressed to President Roosevelt, the Commandant of the Base, and the Secretary of the Navy.
In her hands was a diary of Andrew’s activities for about two years—from the late winter of 1938, just after the Panay incident, through that year, and into January of 1940. What he had recorded were his observations from all sorts of vantage points around the bay and on the other side of San Francisco, as far west as Ocean Beach, along the shore of Golden Gate Park, and Lincoln Park, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and up into Marin County. He had been all around the bay: Oakland, Emeryville, San Pablo, Pinole, San Rafael, Corte Madera, Tiburon, Sausalito, San Mateo. In all of these places, he had stared out at the water with his binoculars. He had seen a number of suspicious things, 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