Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom)

by Robert W. Walker

  More and more rumors began circulating aboard, and to add injury to insult, a lone albatross had begun to follow Scorpio, occasionally perching atop the crow’s nest. Word was Ford had taken a small collapsible to escape what he’d done to Alandale, because he and Alandale had had an ongoing homosexual relationship, which had ended with Alandale’s death after a big fight.

  Some reports had circulated that Alandale’s angry voice could be heard coming from his cabin. Additional hearsay—and that it appeared the two men had a terrible fight and breakup; the rumor continued with Houston Ford’d having panicked and in a rage, he’d stolen some chemicals, most likely from Dr. Entebbe’s stores, and that he’d created a deadly concoction of acids. This he allegedly threw into Alandale’s face—which might explain the discoloring and condition of the disfigured body, but the deceased’s arms, torso, feet were also uniformly discolored. Did that make sense?

  Regardless how it happened or what sort of chemicals might be involved, all the crewmen had visited and gazed upon Dr. Alandale’s remains. Meanwhile, the stories grew larger and more fantastic by the hour.

  Dr. Entebbe, the Nigerian medical man aboard wanted nothing more to do with the body anymore than the most superstitious crewman might. The members of the crew seemed more concerned with what had killed Alandale, leaving him a mummified body than did the chief medical man on board. But David wasn’t foolish enough to believe the interest of the members of the crew were simply prurient—they wanted to see for themselves just how bad it was. They wished to decipher just how bad it could get for themselves. They were tough, callous seamen, and they’d at first laughed at those who described the condition of the body, ridiculing the frightened among the crew. That is until they saw Alandale first hand, ending such remarks as: “It’s a dead guy for the love’a God; ain’t’cha never seen a dead guy?” and “How bad can it be?” and “What’s a little death aboard a ship?”

  All such talk had ceased now that they’d all seen the actual results of Dimitri Alandale’s demise. No one was cracking wise or finding even dark humor worthy of a laugh. Instead fear was fast taking hold—fear of disease, fear of a wasting away, a cancer like nothing that Entebbe had ever seen—worse than AIDS. Like nothing David had ever seen in his thirty six years on the planet outside of a museum of petrified mummies. An end described to a T in Declan Irvin’s journal, which David sat reading now. In fact, the journal had captured his imagination entirely and he was enraptured with one question that kept him turning pages—what happened next?

  The ship came to a halt, the horns blasted, and everyone on the bridge was wildly cheering. The sounds filtered down to belowdecks, where the divers took up the cheer, knowing immediately what had happened. Their combined raised voices reached David’s ears where he sat mesmerized, reading Declan Irvin’s journal.

  The continued cheers nagged at him, however, and finally pulled him from the journal. Then it dawned on David—they had arrived! Scorpio, cursed or not, now hovered two and a half miles above the most famous wreck of all the wrecks the world over—and a salvage diver’s wet dream to be sure.

  David hid away the journal that he’d now gotten well over two-thirds of the way through. He needed a better hiding place for it; he mustn’t let it fall into the wrong hands. Recalling how Alandale’s body was recovered from behind that panel in his compartment, he spied an identical one here. He quickly pulled the panel away far enough to insert the precious journal. He’d come to believe entirely in its authenticity and in fact that Kelly had not lied to him regarding the origin of the narrative.

  Once topside, David saw that some of the crew were still boisterous about their arrival while others only half-heartedly so. No doubt the death of Dimitri Alandale still weighed heavily; it certainly did for David. Many aboard, including some of the divers, had gone to the rails to look over the side and down at the surface of the water as if looking at the very spot where Titanic sank, they might feel a true connection, one that touched both imagination and the heartstrings.

  With all movement at a standstill, all engines silent, he heard the sea anchor away, splashing and disappearing. Over the PA, the captain informed everyone, “Ladies, Gentlemen, we are perfectly situated halfway between the two halves of Titanic below, positioned to explore each section simultaneously.”

  The official news gave even the most grizzled old sailor aboard goose bumps. They were, after all, here to seek contact with what awaited below Scorpio at this moment—Titanic. Forbes and his monitors and men behind the monitors up at the bridge, no doubt, already had Titanic on radar, and David imagined them all standing about the three-dimensional image of Titanic’s hologram as she now looked, detail for detail of massive destruction.

  David leaned over the rail and watched now as the tethered Cryo-cable snaked down on its two and a half mile journey to the bottom, sending down a high-tech and highly sensitive camera eye alongside ambient light components that had already been lowered over the side. All this in an effort to ‘put eyes’ on Titanic—the living looking at the long dead—ship to ship.

  Alongside everyone else, David had claimed a section of railing to watch the cable as it continued to disappear into the white caps. He now searched the enormous Atlantic for the ghosts of those who’d died here, imagining the horror of that night… imagining the cries rising up from those freezing to death in the shadow of the giant ship.

  With dusk trailed by a blood orange sun dying on the horizon, and the mild whitecaps looking like debris in the water, a shape like a torn white shirt here, a napkin there, a table cloth in the distance, and the shadows beside each whitecap appeared as so many top hats, deck chairs, evening jackets, skirts, children’s dolls, door fixtures. None of which existed here except in David’s mind.

  They had arrived and the divers were anxious to get below the surface, but it was rather late for a dive of such significance. Lou Swigart was saying so to anyone within the sound of his voice. Still, as any diver knew, neither surface weather nor time meant a thing two miles down.

  David assumed Swigart and Forbes would be chomping at the bit to make initial contact with Titanic. Weather reports called for choppy seas only getting more so in the hours and days ahead. While topside conditions didn’t bother divers, it most certainly affected the ship and crew. It must be figured into the decision as to when to dive and when not to.

  If tonight was to be it, they’d soon be preparing Mad Max—their state-of-the-art submersible—which meant the first dive team would be away within the hour. But no, given all that had happened on board it appeared the Commander of Divers wanted a halt to the excitement.

  No doubt, Lou didn’t want his divers any more emotional than necessary once they were inside Titanic’s corridors, ballrooms, Turkish bathhouse, gymnasium, pilot house, her compartments, cargo holds, and staterooms.

  On hearing Jacob Mendenhall, Will Bowman, Lena Gambio and others going toward the MHD submersible, David turned from his reverie at the rail. It would be up to Swigart to determine which of the two dive teams would be making first contact with Titanic—who among them, like astronauts stepping on the moon, would be standing on the foredeck, searching her interiors and compartments, snatching open closed hatches that had remained closed for a hundred years.

  Steve Jens, too, was soon sliding down ladders to get to Max, calling out that they had Titanic on sonar and adding, “Forbes’ team has dropped a camera that’s traveling to Titanic as we speak, so we’ll have eyes on Titanic from inside Max here.” He slapped the submersible as if it were his favorite backyard grill, and thanks to Jens' rings, this sent up a resounding metal chorus.

  “I want first dibs,” said Mendenhall in a voice louder than anyone had heard come out of him to date.

  Bowman shouted, “Our team deserves first dive, Commander, sir!” Will pulled David into him. Kelly stood off to one side.

  “Lou there’s room enough in Max for all eight of us,” Kelly suddenly shouted over them. “And given the time, and none of
us have had any sleep since… since Alandale was found—well, why not one dive tonight with all parties, Commander Swigart, sir?”

  “Nooooo way!” said Bowman. “Bad idea, Irvin.”

  “Hold on,” said Swigart. “She’s got a point. One dive, one team; we get over who’s going to be first, people. Make for a helluva photograph to send back to shore, make Kane and CNN and all the rest happy—get ’em off our backs, give ’em a headline. We can set the sub on hover and automatic for the photo. Whataya say?” Suddenly Swigart seemed like a kid opening presents at Christmas.

  Meanwhile the eyes on Titanic worked their way to the deep on the Cryo-cable snake-line, so that Forbes and those both on the surface and those inside Max, might see their way two miles below. All this as Scorpio would be hovering above given her steerable station-keeping thrusters—similar to the steerable thrusters of a tugboat. Meanwhile or soon rather, the MHD sub would be scouring the bottom like a UFO as it, like Scorpio, was tied to a computer and GPS for automatic station-keeping. MAX as the divers had come to call it, in fact operated, oddly enough, like a Chinook helicopter—hovering at times as well as this was possible without anchoring. It would be a piece of cake to have it hover over the coordinates of Titanic and monitored from the control room aboard Scorpio. The coordinates which Robert Ballard, decades before, had designated as the final home of the unsinkable ship were in use. Soon now the divers inside the MHD sub would be hovering over hallowed ground, a cemetery with not one but two giant mausoleums—the stern section and the bow section, separated by a good mile.

  All this while Alandale’s body silently awaited autopsy, and crewman Houston Ford remained missing, and then there was that missing collapsible, which while equipped with an integrated EPIRB beacon, and a tough one at that, had surely been disabled. Why else could they not locate a signal? Had Alandale’s killer disabled the beacon?

  Mysteries within mysteries, David thought now, awaiting Swigart’s final determination of who among them would be first to step foot on Titanic’s crushed decks—as so far no one was taking seriously the idea the entire dive team should go down to Titanic tonight, together.

  Kelly had inched alongside David and whispered in his ear. “Look up just slightly.”

  He did so to see Dr. Entebbe, the ship’s medical man, staring down over the noise of the divers and Swigart. Dr. Entebbe called down to them. “We think it a bad idea to risk everyone at once.”

  “And besides!” added Captain Forbes who nervously paced alongside the ship’s doctor, “Lou, it’s rather late in the day; why not take down one of the teams at first light?”

  Swigart looked a bit deflated at this, but he called up to Forbes and the doctor, saying, “The dive team’s my full responsibility, Captain.”

  “Aye, I leave it in your hands, then Commander Swigart.”

  Dr. Entebbe shouted down at Swigart, “Captain Forbes is thinking of the safety of your men, Mr. Swigart—that’s all.”

  At the doctor’s side Forbes now seemed intent on examining the sky and clouds that warned of an impending storm in tandem with the growing whitecaps at sea, the clouds moving in like ships adrift. Darkness was coming on fast. Without looking back at Swigart, Captain Forbes announced, “Looks like rain overnight… maybe tomorrow.” Then he abruptly said, “Lou, you’re perfectly within your rights to do as you please with your team. I stand by you… I trust your judgment.”

  “Good… good thing, sir,” replied Swigart. “’Preciate your confidence.”

  “Well then… ready your divers, Captain Swigart, for whatever you decide is best. What will you do?” he asked in the end.

  Swigart looked his divers up and down, feigning a grimace that turned to a smirk, and then he loudly announced, “I think Dr. Irvin has an excellent idea, and like I said, it’ll make a fine PR moment; it’d please William Kane to no end seeing the live feed we have in mind.” He gave a nod to the cameraman and news guy, Craig Powers, who waved back. David could see they certainly thought they had negotiated a sweet deal and the best lay ahead of them.

  “Sooooo,” began Bowman, “does that mean what I think it means?”

  “Sooooo,” mimicked Swigart, “everyone gear up for the dive of your life, and be seated in Max in ten minutes or you forfeit the moment!”

  A cheer went up among the two dive teams, during which Kelly said to David, “Not like Swigart to change plans on the spur. Watch him down there.” They both knew that Swigart would be piloting the submersible and calling the plays below.

  David still had his doubts about everyone aboard, including Kelly, but he kept silent council for now as all the divers rushed for their waiting gear hanging in the central equipment lockers below deck.

  Ten minutes wasn’t time really to fully gear up and be seated inside the magnetically propelled Max. It was every diver for himself as they all rushed to get back into their gear. Every diver knew that he and she had some time to finish gearing up inside the submersible on the way down—but not more than minutes.

  Mad Max ran through water on a system that ushered in ocean water before her, swallowing it whole and blasting it out her stern from either side, creating a propulsion effect like that of a squid, gliding through the depths at enormous speeds. Once lifted off Scorpio via hydraulic arms and winches and fully submersed, this little sub could outdistance many a man-made object in the sea, including older US nuclear powered subs.

  Behind him, David noticed that Swigart was throwing open the top hatch to the MHD sub, spinning its handle like a top. For the first time since learning of the horrors in the pages of Declan Irvin’s damnable journal, David felt a wonderful wave of excitement wash over him again. This was why he was here; this was something he had always been willing to die for; this he understood. Going to ‘war’ with the sea felt so much better than being at war with some unseen enemy. Indeed true, but even more so, this feeling of anticipation and knowing he could beat the ocean, this faith and fight he loved. He so anticipated the dive going into full swing, and was about to disappear for the central storage area to grab his gear when all of them were stopped by a scream coming from all places Lou Swigart’s throat.

  The scream sent the Albatross diving from the crow’s nest as it pierced the silent world they found themselves in, while the same scream sent Kelly, David, and the others racing back to where Swigart pointed at the interior reaches of Max.

  David assumed some additional sabotage had been discovered, but on following Swigart’s finger, he saw the mummified body of Houston Ford inside the small sub. In fact, Houston’s body had been encased in the submersible the entire time. The TV cameraman had somehow gotten atop Max to shoot down through the open hatch to get a live feed of the body just as Swigart moved to block him. In the same instant, Bowman tripped, sending David headlong into the sub a second before Swigart slammed the hatch closed against the news men.

  From inside the sub, David found himself shut off from the others, inside with Houston Ford’s mummified body. He hardly knew how he had wound up inside here, but he cursed Bowman for his bumbling awkwardness.

  He rushed to the forward glass portal—a huge wide crisscross of what they termed Gorilla Glass—the wide viewing window consisting of an aluminosilicate glass—clear aluminum—which was held together with carbon nanotube fiber that permeated and reinforced the whole of it against the external pressures of the deepest depths of the ocean floor.

  And from behind the Gorilla Glass cross, David raised his arms, looking like a martyr. He banged for help but the only noise created bounced around the interior, the only one to hear it him and the dead man on the floor of the sub.

  Still he gesticulated for attention back of the aluminum glass, looking out on Kelly, the others, and Swigart, who was shouting orders that David could not hear, while Bowman and Kelly pointed him out to Swigart, whose back was to him. While he could not hear any of them, he could read their body language which in a word said chaos. Swigart’s body language was screaming for the cameraman
to back off.

  “Damn fool,” David told himself, turned and stared at the desiccated corpse.

  David felt as if all the air had been let out of him. Just when the dive was about to go into full swing—now this. “Damn… damn… damn,” he muttered to himself while staring at Ford’s body and then admonishing himself mentally for thinking Alandale’s death and Ford’s death were such an inconvenience to him even as the heightened emotions he’d felt over the impending dive evaporated.

  NINETEEN

  On being arrested and placed in chains by Sergeant Quinlan, Declan Irvin had grabbed his leather carry bag typically slung across his chest from the left shoulder and after the sergeant searched the bag, had been allowed to keep it with him in his cell. Now from his bag, he’d dug out a journal that he’d been keeping and began writing. In fact, he’d been writing for hours.

  Alastair Ransom, who’d been placed in a separate but adjacent cell than that of the two interns, watched Declan now as he jotted notes into the book that appeared like a ledger. When Alastair finally asked Declan about the journal, the young man explained that he kept detailed notes on all that’d happened, and that he’d begun the diary when he’d first become fascinated with the huge ship Olympic, Titanic’s sister ship which had already been launched the year before.

  “Fascinated?” Thomas snickered, where he sat on his bunk, twiddling his thumbs. “Obsessed is what I call it.”

  Ignoring this, Ransom asked Declan to read an entry. “I need some distraction; going crazy here.”

  Declan flipped back to an earlier section of the journal. He read aloud notes that spoke of a Captain Edward Smith who had taken Olympic out for her initial sea trials—and he laughed aloud, adding, “Smith rammed the newly built Olympic into a naval vessel called the Hawke. Of course, some say the Hawke’s captain was at fault, but most go with Smith being in the wrong. What’s significant is that Captain Smith is to be made captain over the Titanic for her maiden voyage to America. The incident with the Hawke is the only error in judgment ever attributed to Smith, who after Titanic’s maiden voyage to New York and back plans on a long retirement.”