Silence, the swallowing kind. A black hole of it, its stillness more startling than the sound that will soon puncture it, a mechanical bashing of metal into skin. Not a bullet, but a type slug hitting paper and exacting a "J" that initiates a date now friendly to the eye and familiar to microfiche, security ledgers, and school workbooks: June 17, 1972, the Watergate break-in. But silence first, and silence necessarily.