Martin shook his head. "If it's rubbish, how come the prof's birth date was in one of the books?"
"Yeah, how come?" Timothy chimed in.
"There has to be a scientific explanation," Beatrice said.
"Does there?" Atwood asked. "Why does everything have to fit into a neat scientific package?"
"Geoffrey!" she exclaimed. "Coming from you? Dr. Empiricism? When was the last time you went to church?"
"Can't remember. Excavated quite a few old ones." He had the dazed look of a newly minted drunk. "Where's my beer gone?" He looked up and saw Reggie at the bar. "Oh, there he is. Good man. Survived Rommel. Hope he survives Vectis."
Ernest was thoughtful. He wasn't as tipsy as the rest. "We need to do some tests," he said. "We need to look up more people we know or perhaps historical figures to verify their dates."
"Just the approach," Atwood said, hammering a beer mat with his hand. "Using the scientific method to prove that science is rubbish."
"And if all the dates are right?" Dennis asked. "Then what?"
"Then we turn this over to scary little blokes who do scary little things in scary little offices in Whitehall," Atwood replied.
"Ministry of Defense," Ernest said quietly.
"Why them?" Beatrice asked.
"Who else?" Atwood asked. "The press? The Pope?" Reggie was waiting for the publican to pull the last of the pints. "We're dying of thirst here!" Atwood called to him.
"Just coming, boss," Reggie said.
Julian Barnes came through the door, his great coat open and flapping. No one was more surprised than the local men, who knew who he was but had never seen him in a pub, let alone this one. He had an unpleasant kind of bearing, a snotty blend of entitlement and pomposity. His hair was slicked back, his moustache perfectly carved. He was small and ferretlike.
One of the locals, a union man who despised his lot, said sarcastically, "The wing commander's got us confused with the Conservative party offices. Down the road on the left, Squire!"
Barnes ignored him. "Tell me where I can find Reginald Saunders!" he boomed out in a round oratorical tone.
The archaeologists snapped their heads in attention.
Reggie was still at the bar, about to deliver the poured pints. He was a dart's toss from the pompous little man. "Who wants to know?" he asked, straightening himself to his full, intimidating height.
"Are you Reginald Saunders?" Barnes demanded officiously.
"Who the hell are you, mate?"
"I repeat my question, are you Saunders?"
"Yeah, I'm Saunders. Have you got business with me?"
The small man swallowed hard. "I believe you know my wife."
"I also know your motor, guv. Toss-up which I prefer."
With that, the wing commander pulled a silver pistol from his pocket and shot Reggie through his forehead before anyone could say or do anything.
Following his audience with Winston Churchill, Geoffrey Atwood was driven back to Hampshire in a covered army transit lorry. Beside him on the wooden bench was an impassive young captain, who only spoke when spoken to. The destination was a wartime base where the army still maintained a large barracks and training ground, and where Atwood and his group had been detained.
At the onset of the journey Atwood had asked him, "Why can't I be released here in London?"
"My instructions are to return you to Aldershot."
"Why is that, if I may ask?"
"Those are my instructions."
Atwood had been in the army long enough to know an immovable object when he saw one, so he saved his breath. He supposed solicitors were drawing up secrecy agreements and that all would be well.
As the van squeaked and bucked on its worn suspension, he tried to think pleasant thoughts about his wife and his children, who would be overjoyed at his return. He thought about a good meal, a hot bath, and resuming his reassuringly pedestrian academic duties. Vectis would by necessity disappear down a deep well, his notes and photographs confiscated, his memories expunged, practically speaking. He imagined he might have furtive chats with Beatrice over a glass of sherry in his rooms at the museum, but their heavy-handed confinement had achieved its desired effect: he was scared. Far more scared than ever during the war.
When he returned to the locked barracks, it was nighttime and his comrades surrounded him like photographers swarming a film star. A pale, dispirited lot, they had lost weight and were irritable, fed up, and ill with worry. Beatrice was housed separately from the men but was allowed to stay with them during the day in a common room where their minders brought them colorless army grub. Martin, Timothy, and Dennis played hand after dreary hand of gin rummy, Beatrice fumed and swore at the guards, and Ernest sat in the corner stroking his hands in an agitated, depressive state.
They had all pinned their hopes on Atwood's foray to London, and now that he was back, demanded to know every detail. They listened, rapt, as he recounted his conversation with Major General Stuart and applauded and wept when he told them their release was imminent. It was only a matter of working through government secrecy agreements for signature. Even Ernest perked up and pulled his chair closer, the tension in his jaw slackening.
"You know what I'm going to do when I get back to Cambridge?" Dennis asked.
"We're not interested, Dennis," Martin said, shutting him up.
"I'm going to take a bath, put on clean clothes, go to the jazz club and introduce myself to loose women."
"He said we're not interested," Timothy said.
They spent the next morning waiting impatiently for news of their release. At lunchtime an army private entered with a tray and laid it on a communal table. He was a dull humorless lad whom Beatrice loved to torture. "Here, you dimwitted wanker," she said. "Get us a couple of bottles of wine. We're going home today."
"I'll have to check, miss."
"You do that, sonny. And check to see if your brains have spilled out your ears."
Major General Stuart picked up his ringing phone at his office in Aldershot. It was a call from London. The muscles of his hard face, fixed with disdain, didn't move. The exchange was short, to the point. There was no need for exposition or clarification. He signed off with a "Yes, sir," and pushed his chair away from his desk to carry out his orders.
The lunch was unappetizing but they were hungry and eager. Over stale rolls and glutinous spaghetti, Atwood, a man of great descriptive powers, told them everything he could recall about Churchill's famed underground bunker. Midway through their meal the private returned with two uncorked bottles of wine.
"As I live and breathe!" Beatrice exclaimed. "Private Wanker came through for us!" The lad put the bottles down and left without a word.
Atwood did the honors, pouring the wine into tumblers. "I would like to propose a toast," he said, turning serious. "Alas, we will never be able to speak again of what we found at Vectis, but our experience has forged among us an eternal bond that cannot be torn asunder. To our dear friend, Reggie Saunders, and to our bloody freedom!"
They clinked glasses and gulped the wine.
Beatrice made a face. "Not from the officers' mess, I shouldn't think."
Dennis started seizing first, perhaps because he was the smallest and lightest. Then Beatrice and Atwood. In seconds all of them had slumped off their chairs and were convulsing and gurgling on the floor, bloody tongues clamped between teeth, eyes rolling, fists clenched.
Major General Stuart came in when it was over and wearily surveyed the sorry landscape. He was bone-tired of death but there was no more obedient soldier in His Majesty's Army.
He sighed. There was heavy lifting to do and it would be a long day.
The general led a small contingent of trusted men back to the Isle of Wight. Atwood's excavation site had been cordoned off and the cutting covered by a large field headquarters tent, shielding it from view.