Titanic 2012

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 lives 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 1^st 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: 1^st 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