Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom) Page 34

  At the moment, little to nothing save the hull of the ship could be seen in the distance outside the bubble and on the periphery of their lights. For an odd, strange moment, the wall looked like a blue-black iceberg lurking here to destroy them. Commenting on how like an iceberg in the night it looked, David muttered “Irony of ironies, eh?”

  “No doubt about it, kiddies,” Swigart said now. “I’m going in with you three, and Forbes’ fears be damned.”

  “But who’s going to be in contact with the surface?” asked Kelly.

  “You can stay back, Dr. Irvin; in fact, let’s make it an order if you like. As for the surface, they can see what’s going on, and they can monitor us from there—all of us. Mendenhall, let’s have at it, shall we?”

  Mendenhall who had not smiled for the photo and had maintained an eerily stoic demeanor throughout replied, “Ready… I’ve been ready all my life for this.”

  “Good… good! What about you Ingles?”

  David was busy contemplating the full meaning of what Mendenhall had said. “Ready sir; following your lead.”

  “Irvin? Make up your mind.”

  Kelly hesitated a moment before saying into her com-link, “I’m with you, sir. Just worried if a rogue current were to come along… what with no one at the controls…”

  “It’s not that strong; monitors say normal. Listen, all of you,” began Swigart, “we all know the score here. We are two and a half freakin’ miles below the surface. At these depths, no matter our grand technology, a slip up means death. We also know that despite all our training that in the end during such operations it can come down to every man for himself. So take all due precautions, people, but let’s have at Titanic’s insides, shall we?”

  This didn’t sound like the Lou Swigart of the boardroom, the Lou who had meticulously trained them on the interior lanes and passageways within the monster ship now before them. David guessed the murders of Alandale and Ford had affected Lou more than he had dared let on.

  Each of them—armed with the Titanic’s manifest—knew what was in Titanic’s holds and stores. Each had also committed architectural diagrams of the ship’s interiors to memory. In point of fact, every diver knew his section of the wreck as well as anyone might. Now each diver must deal with the weight of this moment, the historic significance of it all. No one had ‘walked’ here before—not a living soul—not since Titanic went down a hundred years before.

  “Look there, Kelly,” Mendenhall said, pointing out the large cross portal at the nose of the sub.

  David swiveled to put up a hand to silently warn her to keep her distance from Mendenhall, but she got in close enough to see what he was pointing at. A sturgeon fish at these depths was a surprise. Max’s camera caught it as it swam past Titanic’s still-in-place anchor.

  “Good Ol’ Bob Ballard was right about one thing,” said Lou, distracting David.

  “What’s that?”

  “Titanic’s way too far slammed into the ooze to ever ‘raise’ her.”

  David stared out at the knife’s edge of the bow that’d plowed into the mud and silt. “Looks to be about sixty feet under.”

  Swigart expertly brought the submersible up and around the nose. “Port and starboard anchors on either side of the bow in place.”

  “Will ya look at that?” asked David, “A single link in the anchor chain’s gotta be the size of a cathedral door.”

  Kelly could see the second anchor out her own portal now. “That port anchor is maybe six feet above the seabed, while starboard anchor’s level with the sea floor.”

  “It means we’ll be working at a helluva an angle,” added Lou, “but we knew that.”

  “One thing on paper… another to see it,” said David, unable to take his eyes off what their running lights were picking up. David and the others watched a pair of mating crabs making their way along what was once the brass placard over top of the Officer’s quarters. He imagined Lightoller, Murdoch, and others off duty inside teasing a younger officer, or speaking of the latest news of the day, possibly writing a letter home, or preparing a wireless message to go out to a loved one.

  David studied the sad remains of a boat davit, the mighty little warrior of a winch still on duty, still in place, looking for all the world like R2-D2 of Star Wars film fame. Then a shining, bronze-topped capstan used to tie off the enormous ropes when docked; the glowing capstan was enormous in its size and shape, the manufacturer’s marks covered by one of two plaques placed on Titanic by Ballard so many years before declaring the ship a cemetery, hallowed ground, a place not to be disturbed. The other one was at the base of the stern section where Bowman and the other aquanauts now roamed.

  Again rivers of rust covered the railings and trailed along her sides… more rust-red pools of it moving out on the seabed, looking like blood. David tried to ignore these sights and Bob Ballard’s now eerie warnings—prophetic in a sense given their circumstances. Huge rusticles hanging everywhere made A Deck look even more ghostly than the other areas of the ship. The rusticles partially obscured intact windows and copper edgings, which Max’s lights reflected off of to send back what felt like so many spirits.

  David had seen a photograph tucked into Declan Irvin’s journal, no doubt by Thomas Coogan who’d held on to it for a time—a photo of a gathering of 1500 men in London, an overhead shot for the Times to illustrate the enormity of the loss of life that Titanic represented. This place was teeming with 1500 plus souls lost to a sudden traumatic death. He imagined it the ultimate ‘Ghost Hunters’ wet dream—literally so.

  Through the sub’s front portal, David could imagine people walking the promenade deck, peering out the windows where the deck was covered, windows he now realized either shattered or cranked down so people might watch the life boats being lowered. He could see through the open windows frozen in time like props from a Twilight Zone set. He stared hard at this section of the promenade; he imagined lovers on honeymoon or holiday, married couples, strollers, children playing with hoops and tops, imagined that long-ago dog named Varmint, Inspector Ransom—another scoundrel—and Dr. Declan Irvin among those spirits at rest here.

  David chose to ignore the ghosts, the rust, and the plaque to remain focused when the wheel housing came into view—empty of its wheel, yet otherwise intact.

  “There, just beyond,” Lou said, breaking David’s reverie. “Precisely where Ballard landed Alvin; we set down there, and we can enter through the Grand Staircase; we know from film taken by Alvin’s robotic camera called Jason that the stairwell is in surprisingly good shape.”

  “What? You don’t want to take the elevator?” asked Mendenhall in a rare bit of humor.

  “They called it a lift,” Kelly replied, now leaning in over David’s shoulder to get a better view. Due to conditions within the submersible, and their being suited up, he could not smell her, but his memory of how she smelled seemed heightened all the same, and he was excited by her still—hoping against hope that no matter what happened down here that they might have a future together.

  David said, “But Jason only penetrated as far as B-Deck; we don’t know anything beyond that.”

  “So we go where no man has gone before, David,” replied Kelly. “After all, it’s why we’re here.”

  “One step beyond,” added Lou, his voice teeming with an excitement none of them had seen or heard before—at least not on the surface.

  In passing, David saw a large opening which appeared safe enough for a diver to enter and exit in a gangway below a set of stairs at a bulwark railing—the door completely torn away. He made no noise about it, knowing that Lou knew every inch of the ship from his years of study; still, he wondered if Lou or the other two inside Max with him had taken note of this spot. However, as Lou was both in charge and the expert on Titanic’s remains, he let it go by without calling attention to it.

  Lou had made Titanic a decades-upon-decades study much as had Juris Forbes. And while it was a common fascination, few had turned their li
ves entirely over to her. All the same, given the excitement of actually being here, neither Lou nor Mendenhall had actually seen the opening, so far as David could tell. Just the same, David reserved the information in the event he and Kelly might require it as a quick exit if needed. They had passed by the area far too quickly. They should have slowed to take more photos, but Lou seemed hell-bent as he headed Max straight for a position over top of the officers’ saloon—their mess hall—to hover right beside the collapsed officers’ cabins. This was on the port side Boat Deck, and along the way, they’d gaped to look into the windows of the Grand Staircase until the sub was beside the huge center expansion joint just aft of the number one funnel opening and the officers’ quarters.

  Here they could see that the superstructure of the ship had actually cracked wide open all along the expansion joint like a quake fault line, and David could see all the way through and out the starboard side! There was an array of tantalizing glimpses of various interiors as Max’s lights played over the huge rent. Inside one cabin, David and the others made out a broken sink, scattered brushes, a torn away space heater, and a broken apart but trapped bed.

  “Quite the accommodations,” muttered Lou, staring at it all. But they must push on. They moved slowly, carefully forward as to not allow the sub to catch on any overhanging davits or other obstructions when out of the darkness came a familiar sight. They passed the davit for lifeboat number two, where Lou intended to land, right beside 1st Officer William Murdoch’s cabin. It was the only davit still standing on the port side. David could see the davit now and the horrible wreckage just to the right, where the wall of the officers’ quarters had collapsed outward.

  “Check out that sign over the one door—you can still read it,” said Kelly.

  “What’s it say?”

  “For use of crew only.”

  Another brass sign but completely askew reflected the light; once perched over the top of an entryway, it read: 1st Class Entrance. “It’s an entryway to the Grand Staircase.”

  “Landing anywhere here’s gonna be tricky, Lou,” cautioned David. “Perhaps you ought to remain here, keep her hovering above all this.”

  “Just aft of the davit… other side of those metal stanchions, and we’re home free,” replied Lou, a smile creasing his ruddy features. Lou brought the sub in perfectly for a smooth touchdown—so smooth in fact, it was eerie in itself as David felt an odd pang in his gut—a feeling as if Titanic was luring them to their deaths.

  Swigart and Mendenhall exited the sub, David knew that Kelly was not about to linger behind inside the sub. He held out a hand to her. “I’ve got your back.”

  She didn’t hesitate entering the airlock chamber with David, but just before doing so, David noticed that she had clicked something on the dashboard. “I hit the camera on, which for some reason Lou switched off,” she said once inside the privacy of the airlock. She added, “Keep your eye on Swigart and Mendenhall. I have no idea who among us is here for those eggs, David, but I fear it is one of them.”

  “And the freezer compartment, the one where those things were locked away is below us somewhere here, according to the journal.”

  “And suddenly Lou is interested in diving with our team?”

  “And he changed the teams’ arrangements last minute as well.”

  “Totally out of character,” she agreed.

  David agreed but added. “Money changes everything. It could just be he has dollar signs in his head.”

  They rushed to catch up to the other two divers, and soon they were watching Swigart split them into two pairs—Kelly with Swigart which left David with Mendenhall. Lou had discovered one possible way to get to the interior depths, Mendenhall another. David felt trumped as if a chess move two steps ahead of him had been made. A move he had not contemplated, yet one he should have foreseen.

  Swigart is it, he thought now. It absolutely felt that way on the one hand, but Jacob Mendenhall remained suspect as well.

  TWENTY SIX

  Well into the harbor at Queenstown now, while Constable Ransom and his companions remained locked away, above decks on Titanic, Captain Edward Smith was, he felt, being besieged—first by these imposters posing as medical and civil authorities out of Belfast of all places, and now comes the tirade, tantrums, and rantings of one old battleaxe, a tough German named Mrs. Catarina Krizefieldt who insisted on a refund and that she be put off at Queenstown immediately.

  An elderly, sometimes wheelchair-bound woman with bushy eyebrows, a noticeable snout, and the angry eyes of a vulture, Mrs. Krizefieldt had obviously boarded under false pretenses merely to gain some brief newsprint notoriety as she had raised holy hell among passengers and crew, claiming herself a psychic on the order of Nostradamus, and that she had foreseen the sinking of Titanic in a matter of days if not hours.

  Spreading such a rumor to the captain’s ear was one thing, but when he ignored her repeated notes passed to him, first at dinner the night before, and next through his officers this morning, Smith wanted nothing more than to honor her request that she be put off at Queenstown—their last port-of-call before leaving Europe for America. Smith meant to appease the woman not so much as to honor the mad request but to be rid of her—as he had rid himself for the time being of this man Ransom and his stooges.

  Indeed, Captain Smith most certainly wanted this publicity-seeking so-called psychic off his ship. And while at it, he ordered Murdoch and Lightoller to “escort those Belfast idiots from the brig to that lifeboat as well. Kill all the Albatrosses aboard with one drop of a boat.” Even so, it meant time wasted and effort wasted, things Smith detested.

  To this end, he had his navigator plot a course for the most convenient departure point in the bay at Queenstown, where they were scheduled to take on not just additional passengers and supplies for their Atlantic crossing, but trade goods as well. He understood crates of hand-made, German grandfather clocks were among the goods going to America from here.

  To complete Mrs. Krizefieldt’s request, a lifeboat had to be packed with the woman’s trunk, bags, wheelchair, despondent caged parakeet, her equally despondent-looking husband, and finally herself.

  Second Officer Lightoller had been slated to take two junior officers with him to go ashore to oversee the boarding of additional passengers and cargo, and so he was selected to see to the de-boarding of Mrs. Krizefieldt, and her belongings in addition to escorting at gunpoint the other three unwanted characters aboard.

  At the time of packing the now wildly rocking lifeboat with the family Krizefieldt and their possessions, the prisoners were being escorted up from the brig—so far as Captain Smith knew. Using a single lifeboat made sense as the most expedient way to get them all out of the captain’s hair in one fell swoop. At the same time, Titanic must come to a complete halt, her anchors lowered to steady her, followed by the lowering of the lifeboat as Queenstown had no dock large enough to accommodate Titanic. This all in addition to his men having to bring on new passengers, properly de-board others via the boat train, and load on new provisions, stores, medical supplies, and trade goods.

  Smith’s orders to Lightoller had been simple and direct: “See that all aboard your lifeboat, sir, are safely put ashore. We’ll place all these malcontents into one boat, and let the Queenstown authorities deal with them, while Wilde sees to boarding passengers coming on here along with any additional goods and supplies.”

  The baby-faced Lightoller meant to carry out his orders to the letter, thinking the malcontents the captain spoke of had succeeded in upsetting his captain and his ship. He knew that it would be some time before things got back on course and on schedule; for himself, personally, it’d be some time before he could get back to the ship due to his having to unload the gnarly old German couple, Ransom, and his young accomplices. Still things were gong smoothly enough what with Lifeboat #5 safely lifted and waiting for the prisoners, held steady by the powerful davit engine. The young officer once again marveled at the amazing technological adv
ances that had made Titanic possible. He knew the ship might be delayed, but Titanic was made for speed as well as elegance; she could make up the time once they were moving forward again.

  “Another ruse to slow us down,” Smith told his officers on the bridge from where he stood watching Lightoller organizing Lifeboat #5. Officer Wilde nodded, appreciating his captain’s wisdom.

  “How low will Cunard stoop, sir?” Wilde put in.

  “As low as their knees will allow.”

  Rather than seeing to the job of escorting the prisoners up from the bowels of the ship to be taken off, Will Murdoch had sent word via a crewman that this be done. Not long following this, Murdoch was sent word that the three prisoners had escaped and were at large. This on a boat some nine New York City blocks long and three wide. A more precise measurement placed the ship at 28 meters or 92 feet wide, and 882 feet or 269 meters long. A ship with a thousand hiding places.

  At the same time that Charles Lightoller was organizing the packing off of Mrs. Catarina Krizefieldt, word reached the captain that Ransom and his two young cohorts had attacked their guards halfway up to the boat deck, and the trio had disappeared after the melee belowdecks. It was believed they were now in hiding among the second class citizens of steerage grade tickets.

  “What shall we do sir?” asked Murdoch after reporting the unhappy news to Smith.

  “Shall we hold the lifeboat up, sir?” asked Lightoller, who’d joined them at the bridge on learning the news. “I mean until we can apprehend the prisoners?”

  “More time wasted,” Smith muttered, disgusted, his features and white beard at odds with his angry blue eyes. At this moment, he more resembled depictions of Zeus than Santa. “Damn you, Murdoch, why didn’t you see to the escort of prisoners personally, man?”