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knew it the sun was heading toward the horizon and it was time to knock off. He thought no more about the field of rubble and the sheriff. Maybe it was some kind of test glider. That would explain the seeming lack of victims. After he finished work he sat at the table drinking coffee and smoking.
    In the back of his mind he'd been thinking that the Army Air Force might show up on its own, but as evening fell he had to conclude that they were not coming today.
    Late that night he was awakened by light outside brighter than the moon. He pulled on his boots and went out. A blue searchlight was darting down from a huge, dark object that hung soundlessly in the sky, blackening out the stars.
    The searchlight went on and off in the dark, darting down now and again. It moved toward the pasture where the wreckage lay.
    Perhaps the fourth being was rescued on that night. I think not, though, because it was heard again. Bob expected the Air Force to show up the next morning, but they didn't. He waited a few days. Still nothing.
    Finally, on July 7, he got in his Jeep and went rattling off toward Maricopa. He told the sheriff's deputy to tell the Air Force to get out to his place and claim its own.
    When the sheriff called the Army Air Field in Roswell, they had no idea what he was talking about, but they went out anyway, to see what had so upset one of the region's stolid ranching men.

Chapter Three
    The Chronicle of Wilfred Stone
    It would soon be the responsibility of my friend Joe Rose to get Ungar under control. He would do it with the same ferocious subtlety that appeared when we were fishing for trout, and that he had used on former Gestapo agents when he interrogated them.
    Now I dislike fishing, but in those days I was young and full of murder, and loved the game of it and the kill. I inherited the sport of fly-fishing from my father, and many of the other gentlemen in CIG had done the same.
    Back in July of 1947 I was - God, let me see - I was thirty-four years old. I'd just had my birthday. I was born on Friday, June 13, 1913. I walk under ladders and seek out black cats.
    Thirty-four. I was healthy from my years in the Office of Special Services. Now I am bent and flabby and cancerous from my years in MAJIC. The wages of sin.
    But what delicious secrets I know. I am so terribly afraid . . . and that, too, is delicious.
    Don't let me pretend to be a hero. I am no hero. Spies are not glamorous. We gather and protect secrets, which are power. We control your lives and you don't know it.
    When the history of this era is written, it must certainly be called the Age of Secrets. I will state the matter simply: Everything important is classified.
    Everything.
    Public knowledge has degenerated to a form of entertainment. I should know. The control of the public mind has been my lifelong profession and horrible fascination.
    Official secrets are the snare of modern life. If you don't know them, you're helpless. If you do, you're trapped.
    July 6, 1947: The previous week I had been roped into a peculiar sort of a project. The Board of National Estimates had asked the Central Intelligence Group what it would mean if the rash of "flying disks" being reported nationwide resulted in contact with spacemen. We did not yet know of what had happened in Roswell, but there had been so many other sightings reported in the last few months that our interest was piqued - at least officially.
    Because I'd made no secret of the fact that I was unhappy on the French desk, I was given this bit of silliness to amuse myself.
    I was in the process of completing the intelligence summary that would answer the BNE request. What, if anything, did we know about these spacemen, if they even existed? Why were they here? Were they hostile?
    Communistic? I worked diligently away in my dingy office at 2430 E Street, the headquarters of the CIG.
    My official employer was still the OSS. The military was battling the President over the establishment of the CIA, and the