Captain McEachern wasn’t lashing himself to anything, however; standing on firm sea legs, he was shaking a fist at the behemoth ship and cursing a blue streak at their utter disregard of his Trinity. Soon Titanic was well past them but the swells remained, shaking and turning the small sailing ship like a cork in a water spout.
When finally, the swells calmed enough that Ransom and the others believed Trinity would survive, Alastair went up to the captain’s deck where McEachern had taken over the wheel, righting his ship. Ransom knew it would take some convincing to get the captain to chase Titanic to Cherbourg, France, and he wasn’t wrong.
McEachern was already waving him off and shaking his head, knowing what Ransom wanted. “I’ll not ‘’ave anymore dealin’s with Titanic, Mr. Ransom.”
“But Captain!”
“I’ve me own crew and tender to look after, sir, as well as cargo needs loadin’ here!”
“After you unload then! It’s imperative.”
“No law can compel me to it, sir—not after the greeting we’ve received by those bastards piloting that monster.”
Ransom knew it would take money—likely every cent that Declan and Thomas had laid in his hands along with promises of more from the coffers of Belfast and perhaps the White Star Line itself.
Ransom calmly, quietly began putting ideas of great wealth into McEachern’s now twitching ear.
TWENTY
“Get the hell outta there, Ingles! Now!” Swigart shouted at David when he had reopened the main entry hatch to the submersible where David had spent now the longest five minutes of his life. The friendly confines of the sub’s blue-lit interior had become a wretched coffin with the awful corpse of Houston Ford in here with him.
Swigart had again worked out some sort of deal with the TV people so that they might hold off sending any images back to the mainland in his effort to keep a cap on the mayhem as everyone had a cell phone. Despite their remote location, David believed it only a matter of time before Luther Warren Kane’s spies aboard Scorpio would be informing the financier. Given the circumstance of double-murder aboard, the possibility of Kane showing up with a couple of federal agents was not remote.
Swigart had become convinced of a night dive now for certain; he must know he was racing against the time that Kane would show up and take over by force if necessary. Kane might stand with Swigart and Forbes, encouraging them to go ahead as planned, but given the game changes, no one could be sure. That scenario did not even take into consideration other crewmen who may have taken shots of the goings on here and sent them home to loved ones if not to the Star and Enquirer or CNN for that matter.
Feeling the sense of urgency, Swigart had become absolute in his belief that if they did not dive now, they would never get a dive to Titanic at all. Stubborn once he made a decision, the Commander of Divers for this expedition repeatedly shouted for his divers to get Ford’s body out of the way and to climb aboard Max for the dive. But no one wanted to be the ones to transport the body, knowing it would be difficult in the confined space and small hatchway.
Finally, Lena came up with more surgical gloves and Swigart grabbed hold of one end of Ford and ordered David to the lower extremities. Having had experience with transporting Alandale’s body to the specimen freezer, the two of them took extreme care with Ford’s body, which felt a tenth of the weight it appeared. Photos of it most likely would only raise skepticism in anyone back home who might see them.
“God, it’s the same damn thing as happened to Alandale,” muttered Swigart.
“David, be careful,” said Kelly from outside of the submersible.
“It’s a little late for that.”
“You think it’s contagious?” asked Swigart of David.
“Who knows; we don’t know enough, Lou. We’re working in the dark here. The cautious route would have us racing for home. Getting away from whatever is aboard Scorpio that’s killing healthy men.”
“I know… I know but one dive… one chance to get inside Titanic. Dave, you can’t say it’s not pulling on you, too. If we don’t do it now, we may never get another chance. Others will take over for us… for our failure here.”
But not all the divers felt the pull so strongly as Swigart or even David. Even before they could get Ford’s still intact body into the biological specimen alongside Alandale’s remains. Some of the divers were muttering among themselves; some looked to be wearing ‘second thoughts’ on their brows. Gambio muttered something about the curse of Titanic. Jens more than anyone seemed about to bolt, having second thoughts about climbing into the submersible where Ford’s body had possibly contaminated the air. At the same time, none of them wanted to be left out; they were all thinking of the riches waiting for them. Both greed and fear ran high, each in a tug of war inside every diver now. No one wanted to die but everyone wanted to complete the mission. Everyone wanted to be able to say, ‘I was among the first to walk the corridors of Titanic in 2012’.
David followed Kelly into the sub as she took the lead, saying, “If the bodies are contagious, we’re already infected, but I haven’t felt anything, no symptoms of illness.”
Bowman, a bit tentative, finally joined them inside, suited up like the others, his liquid air pack on his back. Kelly had just whispered in David’s ear, “Whoever the carrier is… he may well be going down with us.”
Mendenhall climbed aboard, saying nothing to anyone, maintaining his calm and quiet demeanor. Lena came in next saying, “What the hell. You only die once, right?”
“Got that right,” replied Bowman.
Steve Jens held back, hesitating at the hatchway. Fiske, directly behind him, bellowed, “In or out, Jens! Either way, outta my way.” He’d been given the green light to join them in the sub.
Jens shouted to back. “All right, all right” before disappearing into the sub ahead of Fiske.’
Lou saw Kane waving some paper over his head, and Lou merely waved him off and slammed the hatch closed from inside. Finally, they were now all in; all in the pressure cooker, about to be lowered over the side when Captain Forbes banged hard on the glass and slapped a message in bold magic marker that read: Abort Now!
Every officer, every diver, and every crewman who could be spared was ordered to the conference room aboard Scorpio, which was standing room only, spilling out into the corridor. TV cameras that had stood idle before now came in from two directions. A deal had been cut—no live feed at this time for total access to the ship and crew—and every item brought up from the deep—later. There was hardly room for these technicians and cameramen in the room; it was, after all, a research and salvage vessel and so the space had been built for small groups of seamen at a time.
Forbes and Swigart ran the meeting personally, and David was interested to hear what they had to say now that not one but two bodies lay in state in the freezer. Before the meeting began, even as they filed into the room, the tasteless black humor laced jokes ran their course: “A couple of stiff ones would go well right about now” followed by “One vodka neat—no ice, please” on the heels of “Dry martini for me”.
David managed to get a seat where he could watch Kelly’s every expression from across the room; for now, she looked despondent, a kind of sad hopelessness playing tiddlywinks about her eyes. She continued to be a fascination for him and his fantasies, but his logical side kept lecturing and returning to one question: How do you know it’s not her behind all of it? Behind two killings as well as the sabotage. But it didn’t add up; if she were this maniacal killing machine—had it taken her over, why would she have tried to sabotage the mission? Yet it was the perfect cover for the beast to pretend being a descendent of this young intern Declan Irvin. It seemed now a factual account—Irvin’s journal. Of course, it could just as well be a fictitious account, a fake, the book totally inauthentic. Yet the thing certainly felt authentic down to its odor of a hundred years, down to its feel and crumbling, discolored with age pages.