Library of the Dead

FEBRUARY 12, 1947

E rnest Bevin was the link, the go-between. The only cabinet member to serve in both governments. To Clement Atlee, the Labor prime minister, Bevin was the logical choice. "Ernest," Atlee had told his Foreign Secretary, the two of them seated before a hot coal fire at Downing Street, "speak to Churchill. Tell him I'm personally asking for his help." Sweat beaded on Atlee's bald head, and Bevin watched with discomfort as a rivulet ran down his high forehead onto his hawklike nose.

Assignment accepted. No questions asked, no reservations tendered. Bevin was a soldier, an old-line labor leader, one of the founders of Britain's largest trade union, the TGWU. Always the pragmatist, prewar, he was one of the few Labor politicians to cooperate with the Conservative government of Winston Churchill and align himself against the pacifist wing in the Labor Party.

In 1940, when Churchill readied the nation for war and formed an all-party coalition government, he made Bevin Minister for Labor and National Service, giving him a broad portfolio involving the domestic wartime economy. Shrewdly, Bevin struck a balance between military and domestic needs and created his own army of fifty thousand men diverted from the armed forces to work the coal mines: Bevin Boys. Churchill thought the world of him.

Then the shocker. Just weeks after VE day, basking in triumphant victory, the man the Russians called the British Bulldog lost the 1945 general election in a landslide drubbing by Clement Atlee's Labor Party, tossed aside by an electorate that did not trust him to rebuild the nation. The man who had said, "We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall never surrender," limped from the grand stage in surrender, depressed and dispirited. Churchill moodily led the opposition after his defeat, but took most of his pleasure from his beloved Chartwell House, where he wrote poetry, painted watercolors, and tossed bread to the black swans.

Now, a year and a half later, Bevin, Prime Minster Atlee's Foreign Secretary, sat deep underground awaiting his former boss. It was cold, and Bevin kept his overcoat buttoned over his winter-weight vested suit. He was a solid man, thinning gray hair swept back and pomaded, fleshy faced with incipient jowls. He had chosen this clandestine meeting spot purposely, to send a psychological message. The subject matter would be important. Secret. Come now, without delay.

The message was not lost on Churchill, who barged in, glanced about unsentimentally and declared, "Why would you ask me to come back to this godforsaken place?"

Bevin rose and with a wave of his hand dismissed the high-ranking military man who had accompanied Churchill. "Were you in Kent?"

"Yes, I was in Kent!" Churchill paused. "I never thought I'd set foot in here again."

"I won't ask for your coat. It's chilly."

"It always was so," Churchill replied.

The two men shook hands dispassionately then sat down, Bevin steering Churchill to a spot where a red portfolio with the P.M.'s seal lay before him.

They were in the George Street bunker where Churchill and his War Cabinet holed up for much of the conflict. The rooms were constructed in the basement chamber of the Office of Works Building, smack between Parliament and Downing Street. Sandbagged, concrete-reinforced, and well belowground, George Street would probably have survived the direct hit that never materialized.

They faced each other across the large square table in the Cabinet Room, where night or day, Churchill would summon his closest advisors. It was a drab, utilitarian chamber with stale air. Nearby was the Map Room, still papered with the charts of the theaters of war, and Churchill's private bedroom, which still reeked of cigars long after the last one had been extinguished. Farther down the hall in an old converted broom closet was the Transatlantic Telephone Room, where the scrambler, code-named "Sigsaly," encrypted the conversations between Churchill and Roosevelt. For all Bevin knew, the gear still functioned. Nothing had changed since the day the War Rooms had been quietly closed down: VJ Day.

"Do you want to have a poke around?" Bevin asked. "I believe Major General Stuart has a set of keys."

"I do not." Churchill was impatient now. The bunker made him uneasy. Curtly, he said, "Look, why don't you get to the point? What do you want?"

Bevin spoke his rehearsed introduction. "An issue has arisen, quite unexpected, quite remarkable and quite sensitive. The government must deal with it carefully and delicately. As it involves the Americans, the Prime Minister wondered whether you might be unusually well-positioned to assist him personally in the matter."

"I'm in the opposition," Churchill said icily. "Why should I wish to assist him in any activity other than vacating Downing Street and returning me to my office?"

"Because, you are the greatest patriot the nation has ever possessed. And because the man I see sitting before me cares more for the welfare of the British populace than he does for political expediency. That is why I believe you may wish to help the government."

Churchill looked bemused, aware he was being played. "What the devil have you got yourself into? Appealing to my patriotic side? Go on, tell me about your mess."

"That folder summarizes our situation," Bevin said, nodding at the red portfolio. "I wonder if you might read through it. Have you brought your reading glasses?"

Churchill fumbled through his breast pocket. "I have." He wrapped the spindly wire rims around his enormous head. "And you'll just sit there and twiddle your thumbs?"

Bevin nodded and leaned back in the simple wooden chair. He watched Churchill snort and open the portfolio. He watched him read the first paragraph. He watched him remove his glasses and ask, "Is this some kind of a joke? Do you honestly expect me to believe this?"

"It's no joke. Incredible, yes. Fictitious, no. As you read you'll see the preliminary work military intelligence has done to authenticate the findings."

"This is not the sort of thing I was expecting."

Bevin nodded.

Before Churchill resumed reading, he lit a cigar. His old ashtray was still at hand.

From time to time he muttered something unintelligible under his breath. Once he exclaimed, "Isle of Wight of all places!" At one point he rose to uncramp his legs and re-light his cigar. Every so often he furrowed his brow and hit Bevin with a quick quizzical stare until, after ten minutes, he had completed the file. He removed his glasses, tucked them away, then took a deep drag on his Havana. "Am I in there?"

"Undoubtedly yes, but I would not know the details," Bevin said solemnly.

"And you?" Churchill asked.

"I haven't inquired."

Suddenly, Churchill became animated, as he had been so many times in this room, his blood boiling with conviction. "This must be suppressed from the public! We are only just awakening from our great nightmare. This will only plunge us into darkness and chaos."

"That is precisely our opinion."

"Who knows about this? How tightly can it be controlled?"

"The circle is small. Besides the P.M., I am the only minister. Fewer than a half-dozen military officers know enough to connect the dots. Then, of course, there's Professor Atwood and his team."

Churchill grunted. "That is a particular problem. You were right to isolate them."

"And finally," Bevin continued, "the Americans. Given our special relationship, we felt we had to inform President Truman, but we've been given assurances that only a very small number of their people have been briefed."

"Is that the reason you've come to me? Because of the Yanks?"

Bevin finally felt warm enough to remove his coat. "I will be completely truthful with you. The Prime Minister wants you to deal with Truman. Their relationship is frosty. The government wants to delegate this matter to you. We don't want to be involved beyond today. The Americans have offered to take full possession of the materials, and after considerable internal debate our inclination is to let them have them. We don't want it. They have all sorts of ideas apparently, but frankly we don't wish to know. There's serious work to be done to reconstruct the country, and we can't take on the distraction, the accountability, should there be a leak-or the expense. Further, decisions must be made regarding Atwood and the others. We are asking you to assume control of this matter, not as the leader of the opposition, not as a political figure, but in a personal capacity as a moral leader."

Churchill had been 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 and he coughed a few times to clear the phlegm. "I've thought about this night and day since we were taken into custody. Please bear in mind that I was the one who contacted the authorities. I didn't go off and ring Fleet Street, you know. I'm prepared to enter into a secrecy agreement and I'm certain I can persuade my colleagues to do the same. That should put any concerns to rest."

"That, sir, is a very helpful suggestion which I shall consider. You know, in the course of the war, I made many difficult decisions in this room. Life and death decisions…" He drifted off, remembering one in particular, the horrific choice to allow the Luftwaffe to firebomb Coventry without ordering an evacuation. Doing so would have tipped off the Nazis to the knowledge that the British had broken their codes. Hundreds of civilians died. "You have children, Professor?"

"Two girls and a boy. The eldest is fifteen."

"Well, no doubt they will want to see their father back at the earliest possible moment."

Atwood teared up and became emotional. "You were an inspiration to all of us, Prime Minister, a hero to all of us, and today a personal hero to me. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your intervention." The man was sobbing. Churchill gritted his teeth at the spectacle of a man letting loose like this.

"Think nothing of it. All's well that ends well."

Afterward, Churchill sat alone, his cigar half done. He could almost hear the echoes of war, the urgent voices, the static of wireless transmissions, the distant crunch of buzz bombs. The plumes and swirls of blue cigar smoke were like ghostly apparitions floating in the underground miasma. Major General Stuart, a man Churchill had casually known during the war, came in and stood erect, parade ready. "At ease, Major General. You've been told this mess is in my lap now?"

"I have been so instructed, Prime Minister."

Churchill put the cigar out in his old ashtray. "You're holding Atwood and his party down in Aldershot, correct?"

"That is correct. The professor believes he is being released."

"Released? No. Take him back to his people. I'll be in touch. This is a delicate matter. One can't be hasty."

The general peered at the portly man, clicked his heels together and saluted smartly.

Churchill gathered his coat and hat and without looking back slowly walked out of the War Rooms for the last time.