“So the ‘bomb’ is a nuclear bomb?”
Liesl was looking through the pages of the report. There were charts and graphs and lists of numbers she didn’t know the significance of.
“It roughly doubled the radiocarbon concentration in the atmosphere.” Rhonda reached over and closed the report. “It allows physicists to tell with a great deal of accuracy when something was created in the second half of the twentieth century or later.”
“It’s been in the university’s collection for over a hundred years,” Liesl said.
“No.”
“No?”
“Not the manuscript we sampled.”
Liesl covered her mouth with her hands.
“So you’re not saying we acquired a forgery a hundred years ago,” Liesl said.
“Liesl. You know I can’t speculate.”
“Right. But you can confirm that even if we acquired a forgery a hundred years ago, this isn’t it?”
“Yes. I suppose I can confirm that.”
Liesl stood up and then Rhonda did.
“How long?” Liesl said. “How long do I have until the lab submits the results for publication and this goes public?”
Rhonda picked up the loose pages of the report. She knew exactly what Liesl was asking of her. Her answer confirmed that yes, she knew.
“They’ll wait,” Rhonda said. “No one at the lab will report anything until you have told us we can do so.”
Liesl led Rhonda back to the elevator. They said a quiet goodbye. Liesl walked back through to the larger reading room. It had been cleaned from the night before; there was no trace of the drinking or the mourning that had taken place under the eyes of the books. Liesl stretched out, resting her feet on a table and looking up to the shining books and the one burned-out light bulb, hoping the answer of what to do would suddenly come to her.
Nine Years Earlier
The sixty-one-year-old chief librarian of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections was forty-five minutes late for his meeting with the brand-new university president, Lawrence Garber. By the time the librarian arrived, the university’s youngest-ever president was scheduled to leave for his next meeting with the dean of the medical school. Garber wanted to leave on general principle, but as an economist, he subscribed to the idea of sunk cost and knew that the time already spent waiting could not be recovered. The board of regents at the university had advised of the importance of the rare books library as a major source of donors, and Garber knew that leaving now would only mean another wasted forty-five minutes as a result of another power play by a man who didn’t like answering to someone ten years his junior.
“Mr. Garber,” Christopher said with a warm handshake when he finally appeared. He made no apologies for his tardiness.
“You have a beautiful library here,” Garber said, not too proud to flatter. “Opened in ’69, I understand?”
“We got our own building then, yes.”
“And you’ve been the chief since then? Since 1969?”
“Why?”
Garber took a seat without being asked. The room had swung back in his favor. “Thirty-one years is an awfully long time. I’m interested in planning for the future.”
Christopher paused before answering. And then, slowly, his weathered face spread into a smile. Here was a worthy adversary. “Not even niceties to ease me into it, eh?”
“No. I had reserved the first forty-five minutes for niceties.”
Christopher knew he had to say something else to rebalance the room. “So, who’d you have in mind to take my job?”
“Your job?” Garber said. “Well, for a future chief librarian, I’ve heard Max Hubbard has impressive credentials.”
“Pity he’s a queer, though,” Christopher said. “And that nasty business about how he left the church. I agree he would be ideal, but if the donors ever learned about it, it would be a scandal.”
This time it was Garber who took a long pause. He considered telling Christopher that he himself was gay, considered admonishing him for his dated language. But showing offense was showing weakness, and there was no room for that in this first meeting. “What’s this about the church?”
“You don’t know?”
“Pretend I don’t.”
“He had a parish here in town. As well as being a well-known scholar, he led a congregation. He was popular. Busy church. Brought in a lot of donations. And he was caught stealing fifty thousand dollars.”
“Fifty thousand dollars?” Garber said. “What the hell is he doing working for us?”
“Well, he’s a talented books man, Mr. Garber. That can’t be understated. And as it turned out, the fifty thousand dollars was to pay off a parishioner who had learned that the beloved father was a flamer and was blackmailing him. Ugly business.”
“And the church learned of this?” Garber shook his head. “Of the blackmail, I mean?”
Christopher interrupted to answer the incomplete question. “They didn’t press charges. Against either party. Max was asked to quietly give up the collar. In the end, they cared more about the queer thing than the money thing.”
“And you gave him a position?”
“Yes! A great books man was available.”
“Is it common knowledge that…”
“That a thief was invited to work with our precious collections? He’s a great books man, but some things, to some people, would be unforgivable. The only way to keep Max’s secret safe is to keep his name out of the press, and the only way to do that is to keep Max exactly where he is. Wouldn’t you agree?”
17
Liesl stood at one of the tall, dusty windows that lined the south side of Christopher’s office and watched the two old men in charcoal suits on the stairs outside exhibit the copulatory behavior of the educated upper classes vis-à-vis compliments on each other’s wristwatches and marathon times. Their pointless patter snuck in through the slightly open window, and she braced herself for a tiresome meeting.
Liesl gave up a morning of solitary anxiety about the loss of one precious text via theft and the capture of another via auction when an early-morning email from President Garber summoned her to her office at exactly nine without further explanation. She had taken this to mean it would be a morning of public anxiety.
At nine exactly, having exhausted all their compliments and other formalities while still outdoors, the suits had made their way to her office door. Punctual.
“I’d like you to meet Professor Langdon Sibley,” Garber said.
“Call me Sib,” the man said. “I hear ‘Langdon,’ and I start looking for my father.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you, Sib,” Liesl said. “Welcome to our library.”
Garber was grinning from ear to ear.
“Heard of each other?” he said. “Brilliant. Shared friends?”
“Not that I know of,” Liesl said. “Mr. Sibley’s reputation precedes him.”
“A famous librarian?” Garber said. “Brilliant.”
“Not at all,” Sibley said. “I’ve sat on some committees, authored some papers. Nothing more.”
“Of course,” Garber said. “You’ll have heard then, Liesl, that Sib was planning on moving on from his role in Boston.”
“I hadn’t,” Liesl said. “I’m sure they’ll be sorry to lose you.”
“They’ll never replace him,” Garber said. “Sib’s is the name I hear most when I ask about great libraries. He was considering the private sector for his next stage.” The dollar-bill sound of private sector hung in the air.
“Nothing’s decided,” Sibley said. “And President Garber was kind enough to invite me for a tour of your beautiful campus.”
“That was kind of him,” Liesl said. “Did you know Christopher?”
“Socially, of course. He once sent me a John Grisham paperback for my birthday. As a kind of joke.”
Garber’s smile was so wide. He didn’t get the joke at all.
“You have plans to write, Liesl? About gardens?”
“About gardening books,” Liesl said. “A study of knowledge sharing about plant cultivation.”
“Very interesting,” Sibley said. “My wife is a great horticulturalist; she’d find that fascinating.”