This week in the saga

The volume ends on the day the silence does. Two things happen in the same week and only one of them is noticed. On the tenth, the office puts out a calm procedural note: boxes have been arranged for transport back to the National Archives, following discussions it describes as collaborative and respectful. Nobody marks the date. On the thirteenth a court filing gives him the words he has waited five years for, and the letterhead comes back in capital letters — they spied on the President of the United States — followed by the claim that it is a bigger crime than Watergate and that no newspaper will print it. His last statement of the exile, on the fourteenth of February, is two clauses long: he was proven right about the spying, and he will be proven right about 2020. Late that same night, on a network that belongs to him, an account posts for the first time. Get ready, it says. Thirteen months after the account went dark, the voice comes back on — and the first thing it does is tell everyone to wait for it.