Blackbone by George Simpson, Neal Burger Read Free Book Online Page B

Kirst could get into the crate and save his ass. So make a report to the museum director and call it quits. You can’t change what’s happened, and you’re certainly not the first person in this war to lose some shipping.”
    Loring jumped up. “I’ve got to know what happened!”
    “Loring, for God’s sake, the museum is wall-to-wall artifacts! What’s another more or less?”
    “It’s not enough for somebody to tell me it went to the bottom of the sea. I have to know for sure!”
    “You’re obsessed with this.”
    Her eyes blazed. “Yes!”
    Warren sat back grimly. “Oh, Christ, I’m a fool. I am just a goddamned pipeline for you. And I’ve been clinging to hope for months. Hope when there is none. I realized it today, when I was on the line to Washington trying to squeeze information out of some chicken general.... You don’t trust me—not with your life, your love, or your body. You don’t even trust me with those goddamned errands you send me on. I’m pulling strings for you, but you keep me in the dark over why!”
    He spread both hands on the sofa and heaved himself to his feet. “What’s so goddamned important about the Delaware Trader and that shipment and you getting to that German officer? Why do you have to know?”
    “Warren, I can’t discuss it. Thanks for what you’ve—”
    “Don’t patronize me!”
    “I can’t tell you.”
    “Why not?”
    “You wouldn’t believe it.”
    “No?” He was shouting now. “Well, if I wouldn’t, then what about the people in Montana?”
    His face twisted with emotion, then all at once he was falling backward. He landed on the sofa and slid from there to the floor. He sat looking at her stupidly, then broke into a satisfied smirk. She knelt beside him.
    “What people in Montana?”
    Warren gingerly placed his coffee cup a few feet away on the floor. It was empty. He reached into his coat pocket and produced some papers, which he waved enticingly at Loring.
    “Kirst,” he said. “Herr Leutnant Kirst has been shipped to a POW camp at Blackbone Mountain, Montana.”
    Relief flooded through Loring, along with the unpleasant certainty that if she took those papers from Warren, she would never see him again. She suddenly felt very guilty.
    “These are for you.” He placed the papers in her hand as if he were entrusting her with the Japanese invasion plans. “Travel instructions and a letter of introduction from the State Department. I’ve already wired the commandant. He’s expecting you.”
    She kept the papers. “Look, Warren—”
    “Don’t make a speech.”
    “I wish you’d understand. I have to follow through on this....” He was already dragging himself to his feet. She stayed on the floor. “I promise—when I get back, we’ll straighten out our lives, and it won’t be the way it’s been—”
    “It sure won’t, lady.” He was moving toward the door.
    Loring rose and made a move to follow, but something held her back. Warren reached the door and opened it. He turned and gave her a bitter smile. “I’ve turned away some interesting possibilities since I’ve known you. I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m going to find somebody who wants me.”
    He straightened his coat and tie and walked out. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said as he shut the door.
    Loring stared after him, feeling nothing but the touch of the papers in her hand.
    She turned away and looked for somewhere to sit, and at last the tears started to come. Determined not to give in to this, she swore at herself, but the tears still came, because deep inside she knew that despite never having given Warren Clark any real encouragement, she hadn’t been completely honest with him either. She should have told him way back at the beginning, when she suspected that his ultimate purpose was to win himself a wife who would cook for him, poop out his babies, and rise up the Washington social ladder on his arm. An ornament, not a woman. His very presence had always