Library of the Dead by Glenn Cooper Read Free Book Online Page A

nodding his head. "Smart. Very smart. Probably your idea. I would have done the same. Listen, friend, can you give me assurances that this won't be used against me in the future? I plan on thumping you at the next general election, and it would be bad form to torpedo me beneath the waterline."
    "You have my assurances," Bevin replied. "The matter transcends politics."
    Churchill got up and clapped his hands together once. "Then I'll do it. I'll call Harry in the morning if you can arrange it. Then I'll deal with the Atwood conundrum."
    Bevin cleared his throat, which had become dry. "I'd rather hoped you could deal with Professor Atwood speedily. He's down the corridor."
    "He's here! You want me to deal with him now?" Churchill asked incredulously.
    Bevin nodded and rose a little too quickly, as if he were escaping. "I'm going to leave you to it and personally report back to the P.M." He stopped for emphasis. "Major General Stuart will be your logistical aide. He'll attend to you until the matter is resolved and all materials have been removed from British soil. Is that acceptable to you?"
    "Yes, of course. I'll take care of everything."
    "Thank you. The government is grateful."
    "Yes, yes, everyone will be grateful except my wife, who's going to murder me for missing dinner," Churchill mused. "Have Atwood brought in."
    "You want to see him? I hadn't thought that was entirely necessary."
    "It is not a matter of wanting to see him. I feel I have no choice."

    Geoffrey Atwood sat before the most famous man in the world with a look of utter bewilderment. He was fit and sinewy from years of fieldwork but his complexion was sallow and he looked ill. Although fifty-two, present circumstances made him appear a decade older. Churchill noted a fine tremor in his arm when the man lifted a mug of milky tea to his lips.
    "I have been held against my will for almost a fortnight," Atwood vented. "My wife knows nothing of this. Five of my colleagues have likewise been detained, one of them a woman. With all due respect, Prime Minister, this is quite outrageous. A member of my group, Reginald Saunders, has died. We have been traumatized by these events."
    "Yes," Churchill agreed, "it is quite outrageous. And traumatic. I have been briefed on Mr. Saunders. However, I'm sure you would agree, Professor, that the entire affair is most extraordinary."
    "Well, yes, but..."
    "What were your duties during the war?"
    "My expertise was put to good use, Prime Minister. I was with a regiment assigned to the preservation and cataloguing of recovered antiquities and objets d'art looted by the Nazis from museums on the Continent."
    "Ah," Churchill replied. "Good, good. And upon discharge you resumed your academic duties."
    "Yes. I am the Butterworth Professor of Archaeology and Antiquities at Cambridge."
    "And this excavation on the Isle of Wight was your first field project since the war?"
    "Yes, I had been at this site before the war but the current excavation was in a new sector."
    "I see." Churchill reached for his cigar case. "Do you want one?" he asked. "No? Hope you don't mind." He struck a match and puffed vigorously until the room hazed up. "You know where we are seated, do you not, Professor?"
    Atwood nodded blankly.
    "Few people outside the inner sanctum have visited this room. I myself had not thought I would ever see it again, but I have been called in, out of semiretirement, as it were, to deal with your little crisis."
    Atwood protested. "I understand the implications of my discovery, Prime Minister, but I hardly think that the liberty of myself and my team should be at issue here. If it is a crisis, it is a manufactured one."
    "Yes, I take your point, but others might differ," Churchill said with a coldness that disquieted the professor. "There are larger matters at stake here. There are consequences to be reckoned with. We can't have you going off and publishing your findings in some damned journal, you know!"
    The smoke made Atwood wheeze