The Titanic Secret
Page 35
“They tried to steal the byzanium, madame,” Gly said.
“And this gives you permission to act like an animal? Mr. Bell phoned me at my friend Hertha Ayrton’s in Portsea yesterday with news of how you’ve comported yourself. Is it true?”
Gly said nothing. Even he was no match for the Polish-born Laureate.
Bell had discovered, from a small article in the Birmingham paper he’d spotted that morning in the train station, that the famous chemist was in England recuperating from kidney surgery. The city council had extended her an invitation to speak at a symposium. He’d deduced early on that she was the logical benefactor of the Société des Mines’s mission to find the ore, so informing her of the lengths taken was the best course to get her to intervene.
Curie’s righteous anger came off her in waves. “I cannot bring myself to fathom that men have been killed on account of the byzanium. What were you thinking?”
“I had my orders,” Gly said, falling back on the excuse used by monsters for their actions since time immemorial. “I was told to get the ore at all cost and that’s what I did.”
“Human life, Mr. Gly?”
He showed a spark of defiance. “What gives you the right to question my tactics? You wanted results and I made it happen.”
“Then where is the byzanium now?” she demanded haughtily and quelled Gly’s moment of bravado.
Bell said, “Ma’am, I oversaw all ten crates being stowed in the hold of the Titanic not two hours ago. The last surviving miner that dug it out of that Russian hellhole, Joshua Hayes Brewster, is sailing back to New York with them. He’ll be met by representatives of the War Department at Pier 59 next Wednesday when they dock.”
“Ten crates you said?”
“Yes, ma’am. Nearly a thousand pounds of rocks. They stripped the mountain clean.”
She was quiet for a moment, then finally said, “I would have loved the opportunity to refine the byzanium like I did when I discovered radium, but I suppose it is not meant to be.”
“I assure you, Madame Curie, my government understands the importance of this find and will treat the samples accordingly.”
She took his arm and led him to the Bohemia’s starboard rail with a view of the shipping channel and the warehouses and piers on the opposite shore. “Perhaps it is for the best, Mr. Bell. I fear war is coming to Europe again. Soon. All these tangled alliances mean one tiny spark will ignite the Continent and all the generals are eager to use their shiny new weapons and prosecute a war on an industrial level.”
Up close, there was a melancholy to her that went beyond her being widowed. She had knowledge—deep knowledge—and it scared her.
She turned back to him and said, “We know from Albert’s work that a distillate of uranium can produce an explosion that could flatten a city.” Bell assumed she meant Albert Einstein, although he’d never heard mention of such a doomsday weapon. She continued. “As terrifying as that is, we have no idea what earth-shattering effects may be derived from this new elemental specimen. If the byzanium remains in Europe, some fool will exploit it in such a way that might destroy us all.”
“We’ll keep it safe,” Bell assured her. “What about Foster Gly?”
“Based on everything you told me yesterday, I arranged for him to be returned to France, where he will stand trial for his crimes.”
Bell looked back across the deck. Gly stood a full head taller than the others. The two men locked eyes, and Bell knew at that moment they were fated to meet again. And next time they met, he promised himself, he would put a bullet in the mercenary’s skull.
42
Four days after seeing Brewster off on the Titanic and the confrontation with Foster Gly, the chill hadn’t yet thawed. Bell rattled the morning paper while closing it properly and peered across the breakfast table at his wife. If there was a look colder than glacial, she was still giving it to him. And it didn’t appear he’d be forgiven anytime soon. Other guests in the Savoy Hotel’s dining room could certainly feel the icy hoarfrost and kept their distance.
“Marion?”
“Don’t you ‘Marion’ me, Isaac Bell.”
“Please, be reasonable.”
“When in the history of couples arguing,” Marion snapped, “has a man saying ‘be reasonable’ ever, ever worked?”
“Well . . .”
“Well, indeed.” Her voice softened, though her posture remained erect and distant. “How could you? We’d planned this for months. I picked out the perfect cabin, rescheduled not one but two movie productions. I bought new dresses for the passage, and some special frilly things for your benefit, and for what? So you can give it to some smelly old miner.”
“Marion, I wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t important.”
“Important?” Her eyebrows arched impossibly. “As in ‘Gosh, I think it’s important to keep promises to my wife so she doesn’t divorce me or maybe just murder me.’ Important like that?”
He changed tack. “The ship will be back in ten days. We have the same cabin reserved. All we’ve lost is a little time.”
“Oh! You are such a man.”
“I should hope so.”
“Don’t you get it? A maiden voyage means beds that have never been slept in, glasses that haven’t been sipped from, plates that have never been used. We had use of a tub big enough for two, and now some sow from Fifth Avenue has already befouled it with her wrinkled carcass.”
Despite himself, he had to chuckle at her phrasing. Even Marion had to give that one a bit of a laugh, and her eyes did finally soften. “It’s the newness of it all that we lost. That’s why I’m mad. And I know you wouldn’t have switched places with him if it weren’t crucial. But sometimes I wish you’d—”
She stopped in midsentence when someone walked into a serving cart and upended the entire thing. It crashed to the floor in a clatter of metal dishes and a splatter of eggs Benedict and coffee. The patron remained on the floor, obviously in terrible distress. Isaac and Marion both got to their feet to see if they could render aid when they heard a disturbance starting out in the lobby. Like a wave, word spread through the hotel. It came in whispers, then sobs, then long moments of utter silence.
Bell grabbed a passing busboy, a lad who looked like he’d just seen a ghost.
“What the devil is happening?” he demanded.
“It’s news just come from America, sir. The Titanic. She struck an iceberg last night.”
“Was anyone hurt?” Bell would forever remember asking such a stupid question on that historic morning.
“She sank, sir. They’re saying half the passengers and crew drowned.” The boy pulled free and vanished into the kitchens.
Bell and Marion exchanged a look, a look that only married couples could understand. In that single glance, they apologized for arguing, reaffirmed their love and commitment, and thanked the Fates that they hadn’t been aboard. Neither would have left the other or taken a seat in a lifeboat that could have gone to a stranger.
Bell sat heavily, his chin sunk to his chest. Marion came to his side and rested a protective hand on his shoulder. He knew Brewster wouldn’t leave the crates. He’d have gone down with the Titanic as surely as her captain must have. The last of the Coloradans was dead.
Bell had spent that previous few days tidying up some details of the case. He’d anonymously paid for the funeral of one of the victims of the Devlin Garage fire. Warry O’Deming now rested in the Catholic section of Birmingham’s Handsworth Cemetery. He’d also reworked Joshua Hayes Brewster’s journal, expunging any mention of Ragnar Fyrie and substituting a piece of fiction about an American gunboat under the command of one Lieutenant Pratt. Bell got that name from a childhood friend back in Boston who’d died of diphtheria. He made sure his own report contained the fictions he’d agreed to with Brewster concerning his closest friend. Vernon Hall might have died as a tra
itor, but history would record him as a hero.
One detail he couldn’t sew up was the derringer pistol he’d taken from the garage. He’d planned on tossing it into the waters off Southampton following his meeting with Marie Curie only to discover he no longer had it. He assumed Brewster had taken it with him on the Titanic and could only hope he hadn’t done anything foolish during the pandemonium of the great liner’s sinking.
Bell never once considered it would all end like this. Thinking about the sacrifice and the hardship, the deprivation and ultimately the madness, he wanted to rage against the injustice of their deaths but knew there was no solace to be had in that. It had gone wrong from the very first, and no matter how hard he tried to make it right, the outcome seemed inevitable. He supposed all that remained was to submit his report to Colonel Patmore at the War Department and hope they did the right thing.
Nine good men went into the Russian wilderness to pull off the impossible and not one survived to tell the tale. It was all a senseless waste, he thought, and said under his breath, “Thank God for Southby.”
EPILOGUE
Dirk Pitt reached the bottom of the staircase and strode down the platform. To his right was an empty set of tracks. At his left sat the gleaming silver body of an Amtrak Acela high-speed train.
He smiled at the porter as he stepped aboard the first-class car and found his seat. He stowed his bags in the overhead but kept the copy of Isaac Bell’s journal. Despite his best efforts the previous night, he’d been unable to finish it before being overtaken by exhaustion.
He accepted a bottled water from the porter and read the last pages of Bell’s saga while there was a delay pulling from the fluorescent-lit tunnels below New York’s Penn Station for the run down to Washington. Ten minutes later, he turned the last page. He rested his head against the railcar’s window.
Pitt was a man of few regrets, but one he was beginning to feel was that he’d never get the opportunity to meet Isaac Bell. What an extraordinary man, he thought.
Straightening the pages of the journal and slipping them back into the envelope, he saw that a piece of paper was stuck to the back of the last page of text, something he hadn’t noticed earlier as he’d perused the journal.
It had been torn from a notebook. Dated October 15, 1953, and signed by Isaac Bell, it read
Writing out this story brought back many memories and one burning question—what did the government do with the information I provided? Following my return to New York with Marion and presenting my notes to Colonel Patmore, I never once followed up on the affair, thinking that it would remain classified. I made some calls this week and learned that Patmore and his immediate superior were killed in a training exercise days after my meeting with them. To the best of my knowledge, the government dropped all interest in byzanium following their deaths. In light of what Madame Curie told me, and what I saw firsthand in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I believe it is for the best.
Pitt knew from speaking firsthand with one of the last Titanic survivors, John L. Bigelow, that Joshua Hayes Brewster had insisted on being led to the vault that ill-fated night. He wanted to be taken to where the crates were stored and then asked to be locked inside. He’d even pulled a pistol, the one Bell had lost track of, on the junior officer to compel his assistance. Brewster’s last words, according to Bigelow, mirrored the final handwritten line of Bell’s tale. At the bottom of the notebook page were scrawled the words Thank God for Southby.
POSTSCRIPT
Under a light mist that fell over the nation’s capital, Pitt walked between the rows of headstones and family mausoleums until he came to a red granite stone with the name Bell across its face that simply said
BELL
ISAAC MARION
1880–1968 1886–1968
Together Forever
Pitt’s fondest wish was to approach this man he admired. To express his admiration for a man lost in the mist of the ages. He stood silently as his mind traveled into the past, recalling their parallel dangers, with death a constant threat. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small stone, one of several he had picked up when he had visited the graveyard in Southby a few years earlier, and laid it at the foot of the granite marker.
The mist was dissipating when Pitt walked away after paying his respects to a man separated by time.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Clive Cussler is the author of more than fifty books in five bestselling series, including Dirk Pitt, NUMA Files, Oregon Files, Isaac Bell, and Fargo. His life nearly parallels that of his hero, Dirk Pitt. Whether searching for lost aircraft or leading expeditions to find famous shipwrecks, he and his NUMA crew of volunteers have discovered more than seventy-five lost ships of historic significance, including the long-lost Confederate submarine, Hunley, which was raised in 2000 with much press publicity. Like Pitt, Cussler collects classic automobiles. His collection features more than eighty examples of custom coachwork. Cussler lives in Arizona and Colorado.
Jack Du Brul is the author of the Philip Mercer series, most recently The Lightning Stones, and is the coauthor with Cussler of the Oregon Files novels Dark Watch, Skeleton Coast, Plague Ship, Corsair, The Silent Sea, and The Jungle. He lives in Vermont.
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