The Titanic Secret

by Clive Cussler

  The driver reacted fast, swerving the big lorry in an attempt to make Bell fall from the truck. Bell clung tightly to the truck as his legs swayed out into space for a moment. As soon as they came back and he could plant his boots on the running board, he pulled the Colt and shot the driver in the left shoulder. A bloody mist filled the cab for an instant. Bell lunged at the driver, punching him twice where the bullet had impacted and reaching across to the low, windowless door beyond. He levered it open and shoved the injured driver to the road. The lorry kept right on going as Bell seamlessly took control. He eased off on the speed and took the next corner.

  The village didn’t have Manhattan’s easily negotiated north-south grid, but it didn’t take him long to make his way back to the inn. The second truck was in the courtyard outside the barn, three surviving Coloradans sitting grimly in its bed, and the fourth, Vernon Hall, still unconscious, under a blanket. Bell jockeyed his truck around in the tight space until the nose was pointed back out to the street beyond their Tudor-style accommodations.

  “The thieves?” Bell asked.

  “There were four of them. Frenchies. Two are dead in the barn. Innkeeper’s wife is taking the others to the hospital,” Warry O’Deming replied, his normal lilt muted to a throaty growl. “One of the bastards might live. Other’s a goner for sure. Walt here took a knife to the belly.”

  “It’s nothing,” the German émigré said. “I’ve cut myself worse shaving.”

  “Charlie?”

  Brewster answered, “We laid him out on the sofa in the front room.”

  Bell nodded. “Get the motorbike out of the truck and leave it here. I’ll be right back.”

  He entered the inn. It had been an inviting space just hours earlier. Now it was shadowed with the gloom of a funeral parlor. The innkeeper was tied to a chair next to Charlie Widney’s body. Brewster must have figured the proprietor had ratted them out, even if he didn’t know how, but he wasn’t taking any chances. The man had been gagged. The man’s wife would have been too concerned with saving the Frenchmen to involve the police until after she’d reached the hospital. By then, Bell and the others would be miles away.

  Bell took two twenty-pound notes from his wallet and tossed them into the terrified man’s lap.

  “His name was Charles Widney.” He spoke deliberately, ensuring the innkeeper understood every word. “He was a good man who deserves a Christian burial. The men who killed him are French mercenaries who we’d escaped from. Your call put them back on our trail and cost Charlie his life. I will be back someday to make sure he’s been buried properly. If he hasn’t been, I will find you and I will beat you to within an inch of your life and then I will beat you two inches more. Are we clear?”

  The man could only sob in fear.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Bell turned and left the building. Moments later, the trucks pulled out and vanished down the road.

  37

  Burdened by even more death, the men continued south, compelled to finish their quest and as unable to deviate from their course as migrating birds from theirs. Bell sold the other two gold coins he kept sewn into his travel bag for contingencies. He used some of the money to buy paint to disguise the trucks. They covered over the red bodywork and smart gold lettering with a shade of dreary green. They also worked out routes that maintained some miles between the two vehicles so that they no longer were traveling as a convoy.

  Bell drove the lead truck, and every fifteen miles he would wait at a discreet spot by the side of the road for Warry O’Deming to appear in the second Leyland. O’Deming would pause, servicing his lorry, while he waited for Bell to pull ahead once again.

  They averaged just twenty miles per hour.

  Walt Schmidt sat in the cab with Bell while Brewster remained in the bed of the second truck with Vern Hall.

  As the day wore on, Walt spoke less and less, and whenever Bell looked over at him, his face was drawn and ashen. He was in pain, and the jostling he was taking along the rutted roads was making it worse. Bell decided that they would stop in Stafford, a large town north of the massive sprawl of Birmingham. They were far enough removed from the train theft that there was no danger of leaving Walt and Vern behind. He would make Brewster see the necessity of it.

  When the sun sank over the distant Irish Sea and darkness filled in the spaces between shadows, the trucks’ headlamps did little to cut the gloom. Still, Bell could see a faint flow in the night sky ahead that foretold their destination.

  “How are you doing over there, Walt? I think tonight we’ll find you and Vernon some warm hospital beds with a couple of rosy-cheeked English nurses to look after you. How does that sound?” Schmidt said nothing. He just looked ahead, his body bouncing and swaying with every movement of the truck.

  Bell knew, but still he called Walt’s name a little louder. “Walter? Are you with me, buddy?”

  He reached over to touch Walt’s shoulder and the slight pressure upset an equilibrium that had been in play for some time. Walter Schmidt’s lifeless body tipped sideways and would have fallen from the truck had Bell not clutched onto him tight and brought the vehicle to a stop. They were in the middle of the road. There was no traffic, and the only sound was of the breeze rattling leafless branches.

  “Typical German,” Bell said with affection. “Stoic ’til the end.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Warry arrived in the second truck. He parked and approached on foot. When he saw something was amiss, he ran the last few steps. There was enough moonlight to see his friend slumped in his seat in an unnatural pose.

  “You damned kraut,” O’Deming cried, letting his grief express itself as anger. “Why wouldn’t you even let us look at the wound? We might ’ave saved ya. Twenty years I knew him, Mr. Bell. Twenty years, and he never complained once. About anything.”

  He stepped back so he could direct his next comment at Brewster, sitting dejected in the rear of the truck with Vern Hall’s head cradled on his lap. “See that, Brewster? Walt’s dead. And Alvin and Johnny. And Jake and Charlie and Tom. And Vern might as well be. And for what? Eh? Why are they all dead?”

  “Easy, Warner,” Brewster said softly. He was affected by this latest death but appeared coherent. “You know why. This is more important than us. Walt could have asked us to stop at any time and we would have. But he knew we needed to keep going. There’s no stopping until we get the byzanium home. This ore represents an opportunity we can’t even comprehend because science hasn’t caught up to its potential. We all agreed to that back in Central City. And it still holds true right now.”

  This seemed to calm O’Deming. “You’re right. It’s just . . .”

  “I know,” Brewster agreed, not needing to articulate anything further.

  They moved Walter’s body to the rear of the truck and drove onto a crossroad that led into utter darkness. It was still close enough to dusk that people might be around, especially as the Leyland drew closer to bigger towns, so they waited in a meadow until midnight. It was cold, and they huddled the best they could around the small fire Bell had built in the lee of his lorry. There was nothing to be done about hunger or thirst.

  At the head of a grassy square in a village a few miles from where they’d stopped sat an old stone church with a bell tower on its side and a heavy slate roof. It was so ancient, it made Bell think it had been sculpted by Nature rather than fashioned by the hands of man. He used his picks on the door’s simple lock, and he and Brewster and Warry O’Deming carried Walt Schmidt’s body inside. The nave was pitch-black, but they made their way down the aisle and laid him carefully on the steps leading up to the altar. As with the others, Bell left a note on the man’s jacket with his name and a request that he be buried with a proper marker, as well as some money to cover the costs.

  Warry crossed himself as he turned away and wiped at an eye when they made for the exit.

  Bell had the morbid t
hought of how someone could mark their progress from Aberdeen southward by following the trail of headstones.

  Believing that Gly’s advertisement had run in Birmingham’s newspapers and that a segment of its population was on the lookout for the convoy, Bell decided it was time to dump the Leylands and find another mode of transport. His first thought was consigning the crates of ore on the railway and shipping them to Southampton.

  On the outskirts of the manufacturing city of seven hundred thousand, Bell hid one of the lorries behind an abandoned cotton mill. The stream that had once provided power to the looms and other machines had become a silted-over quagmire that stank of chemicals and decay. It was a victim of the Industrial Revolution’s second phase, wherein coal and steam and, increasingly, electricity took over from streams and rivers. Beyond the mill were modern factories studded with chimneys that seemed oddly idle even though it was a weekend night.

  They off-loaded Bell’s truck, and he told the two men he was leaving and promised to return sometime after dawn with food, water, and news. Before he left, Bell was encouraged to see Vern Hall tossing and turning a bit in his sleep. It was a sign he was struggling to breach the surface of consciousness again.

  Bell found the New Street Station about two hours before sunup. He parked the truck a good distance away and approached on foot. The building, like all rail terminals in major cities, was huge and never fully quiet even on a Sunday. At the front doors were porters and drivers making arrangements for the day. Vendors were arriving to provide breakfast for early passengers on their way to London or Bristol. The great hall was smartly lit, and already a few ticket booths were open. Beyond, covering over a dozen platforms, was one of the largest arched roof spans on earth. The sound of steam under pressure echoed along it, punctuated by whistles, horns, and the raised shouts of conductors readying the trains.

  Bell used a few coins to purchase a cup of tea—he would have preferred coffee, but this was England after all—and an early-edition newspaper. It headlined news of a coal miners’ strike entering its third week, which was crippling industry and explained the quiet factories he’d noted outside the city. The only other item that caught his eye was continued coverage of the death of polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott some weeks earlier. Everything else was the local stuff found in any hometown paper.

  What he didn’t find was any mention of the Aberdeen railroad heist or any advertisements offering rewards for the apprehension of those responsible.

  He wasn’t sure what this meant or if it was significant at all. Had Gly only targeted Newcastle? Or had he been so certain of it working quickly that he’d only paid for a single day’s advertisement in multiple papers? Given the depth of Gly’s resources, Bell imagined him throwing as wide a net as possible and keeping it out until he’d caught his fish. There was meaning to this, Bell felt certain, but he didn’t know what exactly it was.

  He was certain about something else as well. He wasn’t the only person staking out Birmingham’s principal rail terminal. He spotted four definites and three possibles. Two of the definites were a couple sitting on a distant bench. The man’s head swiveled as he scanned faces and doorways and anything else he could see. The woman’s head was on his shoulder, and Bell knew from experience that she would have told him to hold still if she was really trying to get some rest but that she was just a bit of cover. The other two definites were a couple of men pacing the perimeter of the station like they were soldiers on patrol. Bored walking while waiting for a train wasn’t that unusual. The fact that they studied—as in leered uncomfortably close to—anyone they crossed gave them away. Not bored but on alert. The three possibles were single men, each waiting contentedly, like Bell, with the paper and a cup of tea. Two appeared legit but the third spent an inordinate amount of time looking about.

  There was no way he and the others were going to wheel a thousand pounds of rock through the station without drawing attention. And once aboard the train, they were trapped. Gly’s men could watch them until a moment of his choosing to strike, probably down the line a ways when additional men could be brought in to better the odds.

  Bell found the telephone exchange office as it was just opening. He gave a deposit and had them open a line to London. He hoped to get an update from Joel Wallace, or at least some news from his assistant, Miss Davida Bryer. Bell let the telephone ring a dozen times, hoping it would wake whoever was watching the office. He finally canceled the call on the fifteenth unanswered ring.

  There would be no help from that quarter until they reached Southampton Dock, and only then if Miss Bryer did her job. Bell had his doubts.

  If the rails were out, they would have to switch vehicles, and now that they were down to just four men, Bell had an idea of how they could blend in a little better.

  “Mind if I wait with you, ami?” It was the passenger Bell had singled out earlier as a possible lookout. The Frenchman had approached on Bell’s blind side and had taken him unawares.

  Bell knew the man was putting out feelers about who he was and why he was at the station so early. Rather than get drawn into a conversation, Bell uttered a sting of angry, consonant-heavy syllables that sounded like some Slavic language. He then plastered a scowl to his face.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Bell repeated the performance, pointing to himself and repeating the name Korczynski.

  The Frenchman held up his hands, retreating. “My mistake. Thought you might enjoy some company while you waited.”

  Bell watched him go, glaring like a statue of a Chinese dragon in case he turned back. When the Frenchman went in to use the restroom, Bell dumped the rest of his tea and stuffed the newspaper in a wastebasket. He was out of the station door and gone moments later.

  He drove the city until he found what he needed and bought some food and several thermoses of tea and returned to the abandoned mill. Brewster and Warry appeared especially gray in the early light of day. Both looked like they hadn’t slept in weeks. Warry had developed a muscle tic that made his wrist flinch every few seconds. Both complained of nausea but managed to eat some of the bread and sausage and mashed-up fried potatoes he’d bought on the outskirts of Birmingham. The tea seemed to settle their stomachs.

  “How’s Vernon doing?” Bell asked while they ate. Hall remained in the back of the other lorry under a mound of blankets.

  “Better,” Brewster said. “He’s muttering in his sleep. I take that as a good sign.”

  “I agree.” Bell inspected the crates they’d off-loaded from his truck. The men had knocked them together back in the mine. Much of the wood had been repurposed from larger crates of drilling equipment, blasting caps and fuses, and explosives. Bell saw they could be taken apart and reassembled with relative ease.

  Once they had finished breakfast, he said, “We’ve got three days to make our two o’clock sailing from Berth 26 on Wednesday. That’s plenty of time, as we’re about a hundred and fifty miles north of the port. Our problem comes every time we get near a city. Gly has people out looking for a couple of trucks carrying heavy crates.”

  “Not much we can do about that, is there?” Warry remarked.

  “There is. We’re going to hide the ore in plain sight. We just have to make it through Birmingham and we’ll be okay.” Bell didn’t lay out the rest of his plan just yet. Instead, they unloaded the second truck and mounded dirt around the cache of boxes.

  “Why aren’t we taking them with us?” Brewster asked, sweating heavily even though the morning remained chilly.

  “Gly has the train station staked out, so he has to suspect we’ll come through the city. In case there’s trouble, we can ditch the trucks easily enough and not lose the byzanium ore.”

  “Makes sense.” Warry looked little better than Brewster. His mouth was surrounded by weeping sores, the inside awash with cankers.

  Both men had to stand opposite Bell in order to lift a crate and, ev
en then, they struggled. Five months earlier, even little Warry O’Deming could have manhandled one of the chests on his own.

  38

  Back in the city, Bell drove the lead truck to the garage he’d found earlier and whose owner had agreed to a trade. The building was in a rougher part of town, which was why Bell had chosen it. Around it were row upon row of worker tenements and pubs doing business despite it being the Sabbath. The streets were filthy and teeming with dirty-faced boys, roaming like packs of wild dogs, searching for anything of interest. The men had the dullard look of overworked draft animals, while the women appeared decades older than their years.

  The lookout posted at the larger of the commercial garage’s two entrances had been told to expect the convoy and swung the doors open. Bell drove straight into the cavernous space with Warry right behind. On the concrete floor sat several trucks and motorbuses in various states of repair, in addition to a row of autos fitted out as taxis and a tarp-covered touring car that had likely been boosted from the streets of London. Its front fender was exposed and gleamed like polished silver.

  The garage owner, a thickset man with a few days of stubble on his chin and a gin blossoms nose, had been in a glass-enclosed corner office when Bell rumbled in. He wore loose-fitting khaki pants held up by a dark belt and over-the-shoulder braces that he was just snapping back across his meaty deltoids. His shirt was so oft-laundered, it appeared gray rather than white.

  “What’s this, then?” he asked in a thick Midlands accent. He squinted at Bell through the smoke of a cigar.

  “We talked.”

  Behind the owner was another man, whip-thin and dressed in black. He had hard, unflinching eyes and the look of a killer. He was clearly the garage owner’s enforcer for all the criminal enterprises he dabbled in besides stolen vehicles.