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