The Company of the Dead

by David Kowalski

  “Meaning, you’re the natural heir to the Astors and the Guggenheims, the Wideners and the Thayers, Joseph. I don’t see you climbing into any lifeboat, empty or otherwise.”

  XIII

  “You came here by misadventure. We came through fire, only to find ourselves facing a fool rather than an enemy. You should have sat quietly somewhere and stuck to your investments. Left the big decisions to the guys who can handle them. Get back in your room, the sight of you sickens me,” Gershon hissed.

  “I’m here because you asked for my help.” Wells’ voice was a croaky rasp. “You called me down to the Waste Land.”

  “That wasn’t me, Wells.” Gershon’s snarl was unfocused. It took in everything. It was aimed at the world.

  “Why did Kennedy pick you, of all people?”

  Gershon’s smile was appalling. “I think I was supposed to elicit some spark of humanity in your soul. I think I was supposed to dissuade you from your path of destruction. I think,” he let out a terrible laugh, “I was supposed to become your friend.”

  “Looks like he read you wrong.”

  “Nobody’s perfect.” Gershon stepped towards the porthole. Dawn’s wound opened along the horizon. The ocean was flat and calm. “Get back in your room.”

  Wells retreated to his bedroom and closed the door. Gershon’s disdain was a chisel, chipping away at his resolve. He could accept that the ship had sunk in their world. Could imagine how it might have played out. He considered Morgan’s sketch of a hundred years gone wrong. The ship might have been lost, but the antiquated ideas of the late 1800s had somehow persevered. Kennedy’s world had missed the glancing iceberg of Hitler’s Germany and the Holocaust that had ensued. It had missed seven years of the worst bloodshed the world had known; its own conflicts spread thin across the years in disturbing parallels on the fields of Europe, in the jungles of Vietnam and on the bloodied streets of Dallas. Missing the horrors, it had missed the messages. Monarchs ruled vast kingdoms and colonies. No one yearned for the stars that lay beyond the smelter-borne smoke of sprawling cities. No one sought for rights among the disenfranchised. Instead of taking one great leap forwards, Kennedy’s world had huddled in the footprints of the previous century. Technology, cowed by the loss of man’s grandest venture, had been vaster than the empires, but much too slow.

  Stultified, they had stumbled, unready, upon armaments that could shatter worlds, and then proceeded to use them. Kennedy and his men weren’t soldiers or agents or missionaries; they were refugees from a dying world.

  The only thing you can accuse me of is failing at my task.

  He could see how they might have misread his attempt. He could even empathise with their desire to let matters follow their own murky course. He just couldn’t accept standing by and letting the disease that was the Titanic’s destruction follow its own natural history. Not when he could still intervene.

  He glanced out the porthole, plotting escape. It opened onto the hull, offering no practical pathway. There was no chance he could work his way aft to the second-class promenade, and the forwards shelter deck was well beyond reach. Dropping into the ocean, in the hope of being spotted by a lookout, was a less appetising prospect. He looked down at the water. Daybreak’s golden gleam made it no more inviting.

  He had to get away from Gershon or the early hours of the fifteenth would find him out there, regardless.

  The thought of trying to overpower the doppelganger made him sneer. He pictured the two of them squabbling over the pistol. Neither was a man of action. It would end in blood, stupidity and tears.

  He stripped the sheets from his bed, knotting the ends. He could leave the fashioned rope dangling out of the window and conceal himself in the wardrobe or under the bed. Gershon’s confusion might buy him precious moments. He tested the sheets for strength and the knot unravelled. He tied it with a double hitch. There was barely enough bedding to make it out the window. He needed to rip the curtains from the four-poster bed. He needed to do it quietly.

  There was a muted sound from without. He bunched the sheets in a disarray on the bed as Gershon entered the bedroom.

  Behind him there was a gentle knock on the cabin door. Gershon cocked an ear and motioned Wells to silence. His face betrayed his anxiety.

  The knock was repeated with some insistence. Kennedy wouldn’t have bothered with the nicety, it had to be Crawford with his breakfast.

  Gershon edged back towards the cabin’s entrance. He had his pistol up and close to his chest. There was the rattle of a set of keys being retrieved, the creak of a body leaning up against the door.

  “Get rid of him,” Gershon mouthed.

  Wells remained silent.

  Gershon returned his attention to the latch. Wells lunged forwards instinctively.

  Gershon turned towards him, pistol raised. He staggered, struck from behind by the cabin door.

  Wells caught a glimpse of Crawford, framed in the entrance. He crashed into Gershon’s legs, sending him sprawling to the floor. The steward, his tray’s contents smeared over his uniform, tottered into the room. Gershon’s roar was an incoherent howl of pain and fury over the sound of shattering plates.

  Wells gained his feet and burst past Crawford into the passageway.

  Cabin doors began opening up and down the corridor. He pushed past an elderly man in a dressing gown and sprinted into the second-class promenade. He raced past startled onlookers, down the aft stairway and through the second-class accommodation, panting along the corridor. The second-class dining saloon was being prepared for breakfast. He tore past bustling stewards to gain the next stairwell, took the stairs in twos and threes, and stumbled onto E deck.

  There was no sound of pursuit.

  Leaning up against the warm bulkhead of the engine casing, he caught his breath. The walls emitted a steady throb that massaged the knotted muscles of his back.

  He couldn’t stay here and he couldn’t return to his cabin. His options were dwindling rapidly.

  There was no approaching Andrews or any other members of the senior crew. Only God knew what explanation Gershon was concocting for Crawford’s benefit.

  The binoculars were in the baggage compartment on the orlop deck below G. He had thirty hours to get them to one of the lookouts. After that, after they’d negotiated the ice field, he’d return to the society of the ship and see what cards were dealt to him.

  He made his way down to Scotland Road.

  XIV

  Kennedy settled Chief Steward Latimer’s concerns by presenting false identification and a contribution to the stewards club. He explained that Mr Wells had swindled a certain American building magnate out of a good deal of money. He and his companions were charged with securing the criminal and bringing him to justice. He apologised for the untowards commotion that had taken place earlier on C deck.

  Latimer accepted the details with a show of understanding. It appeared that Wells wasn’t the only gambler who’d signed on under another name. Latimer assured Kennedy that while more than one card shark had secured passage on the Titanic, hoping to ply his grift, the staff of the White Star Line had everything in good order.

  They both agreed that the maiden voyage was hardly the setting for an all-out manhunt. Kennedy and his men would be permitted the run of the ship, but discretion would be greatly appreciated.

  Only Crawford—the steward who’d been attending to Wells—seemed unconvinced by the tale. Notwithstanding his subtle display of misgivings, he acquiesced to Latimer’s order. Wells’ cabin would be sealed off after a thorough search.

  They found nothing of interest. A careful examination of the two journals revealed no other difference besides the smudged line drawing of the iceberg. Wells hadn’t bothered to make any further entries in Doc’s presence, despite having been left with the manuscript.

  It was late afternoon. Splitting up again, they scoured the ship. Doc, infuriated and miserable, was assigned the upper decks and first-class accommodations. Morgan took second-class
and the crews’ quarters along Scotland Road. Kennedy searched the lower decks. It was one thing seeking a stranger on a ship of this size, quite another looking for someone who didn’t want to be found.

  Warnings were posted at all the dining rooms—after all, Wells had to eat sometime. These warnings, like every other aspect of this interference, had to be discreet. No record could be left of their activities. Tomorrow night, the White Star Line’s staff would have other problems to concern themselves with.

  They had decided to reunite on the boat deck. Kennedy arrived first, and stood outside the gymnasium, leaning on the railings between the lifeboat davits. More than once he reached out to touch the brightly painted wood of lifeboat seven. It felt sturdy enough.

  A cool breeze had shifted most of the other passengers indoors. A few remained, reading or writing letters while wrapped in the blanketed cocoons of their deckchairs. He spied Morgan and Doc as they emerged through the first-class entrance. Their disappointed faces relayed the news.

  They exchanged the results of their vain expeditions.

  “You’re sure he didn’t give you any hint? Any idea what he had in mind?” Kennedy probed.

  Doc shook his head. “He was more interested in why you’d recruited me.”

  “I’m wishing now that I’d let you shoot him. I’ve got a strange feeling that’s how this is usually resolved.”

  That morning, Kennedy had shared the same appalling revelation with Doc that he’d related earlier to Morgan. Doc had nodded glumly, as if his worse fears had been substantiated. He’d seemed almost relieved. His recent close proximity to the carapace had provided sinister visions that he’d chosen to disclose only in the aftermath of Kennedy’s account. Murky dreams of cold black water.

  He said, “I couldn’t even look him in the eye, Major, much less shoot him.”

  Kennedy made himself nod understandingly. He wondered what difference Hardas or Lightholler might have made. He couldn’t picture it. The alternatives were sealing themselves off.

  He thought about the watertight doors he’d seen below deck.

  “We have to stop him,” Morgan said. It was muttered quietly, the conclusion to some internal monologue.

  “You’ve been up all night, Doc,” Kennedy said. “You need to get some rest. Darren and I will continue searching. I’ve managed to enlist some of the stokers and firemen. They’re watching the engine rooms. He won’t get past them. Whatever he’s going to try has to involve the bridge or the wheelhouse. He doesn’t dare approach Andrews, Ismay or the captain.”

  “If his cabin’s clean, we need to go through any items he may have stored with the purser or down in baggage,” Morgan suggested.

  “Ship’s staff have already gone through his belongings,” Doc replied.

  “They wouldn’t know what to look for.”

  Kennedy agreed. “I’ve been down there before. I’ll take baggage, you brace the purser.”

  He rode the elevator down to E deck, then took Scotland Road past the boiler casings, working his way forwards. Baggage was stored on G and the orlop deck. He found another set of stairs and negotiated the labyrinthine passages towards the squash court. No one was playing. He entered the first-class baggage compartment, pistol drawn, and began to search.

  XV

  Wells tore a bite from the roll he’d pilfered outside the third-class dining saloon. He had an apple someone had discarded and another roll in his pocket. He had the binoculars safely strapped under his shirt. Their metal casing nudged painfully against his ribs as he shifted to find a position of comfort. The mailroom, dimly lit, was heaped with the shadows of mail sacks. They passed easily for body bags in the gloom.

  This was one of the first places that had flooded—would flood. One of the officers, perhaps Boxhall, would come down here after the collision to find the room awash. The mailmen would spend a short time trying to shift the sacks out of the water before realising the futility of their task. None of them would survive the sinking.

  He checked his watch: 6 p.m. He wound the mechanism. The last thing he needed was to lose track of the time. It would be thirty hours, give or take, till they struck.

  He stared through the darkness at the curving wall of the starboard bulkhead; daring it to buckle, open a seam, finger-wide, and admit the icy waters of the Atlantic. He heard some movement from the opposite wall. Someone was trying to gain entry through the baggage hold. He inched his way back along the floor and worked his way towards the bulkhead. He burrowed deeper under the piled bags of mail.

  A crack of light widened into brightness. He heard breathing, ragged, coming from the doorway, and then a voice—Kennedy’s—calling out to him.

  “Mr Wells, I have the master-at-arms with me and I fear his patience is drawing to a close. I’ve assured him that you would come peacefully, but I can’t vouch for his frame of mind. He makes our mutual friend seem perfectly charming by comparison.”

  Kennedy, trying to match the patois of the era, was laying it on thick. He’d plainly spent too little time among the people of this world. Our mutual friend. Wells pictured the master-at-arms as some Dickensian throwback, with mutton-chop sideburns and red, spider-veined cheeks. He had to suppress a hysterical urge to laugh, and tried to slow down his breathing.

  “Come, come, Mr Wells. You’ll miss your supper.”

  There was a desperate edge to Kennedy’s invitation. They were moving through the room. It was hard to gauge the number of footsteps. Then came the sound of more men tramping down the stairs from the post office above.

  It was over.

  Voices issued from the stairs, one saying, “This should be the last of it for today.”

  Another replied, “With all the Marconigrams going out to Cape Race, you’d think no one had the time for writing letters.”

  “You would at that.”

  With the approach of the newcomers, the footsteps on the mailroom floor scuttled away into silence. He heard the door to the baggage hold close.

  “Did you hear something, Smithee?”

  “Might have been the door to the outer office. I’ve been meaning to pass a message on to Mr Andrews about that.”

  The postal clerks gained the mailroom floor. He felt the sacks shift above him as more were added to the hoard. They continued their work in silence, the only sound the labour of their task, as bag was piled upon bag.

  Finally they departed. He waited for ten minutes before stealing up the metal stairs to the post office. It was deserted. He waited a little longer before exiting the room and climbing the stairs to the third-class cabins on E deck. He found a lavatory and stood relieving himself, wanting to cry, wanting to vomit, but only producing a dry, retching gag in his throat. His clothes, damp through with perspiration, clung to him with a heady stench of fear.

  Someone was taking a shower. They’d left a pile of fresh clothes by one of the water closets. He grabbed a shirt and trousers and escaped back down to G deck. He removed his shoes and traversed the narrow corridors with an ear out for any sound of movement. A cabin door was open.

  He peered in to see a young man lying on one of the bunks. He had a thick comb of blond hair and tawny skin but his background was unplaceable. The man took in his appearance and ogled him curiously.

  “Do you speak English?” Wells asked hesitantly, turning an eye back to the corridor.

  There were three other bunks in the bare room. Two of them showed signs of occupancy but one remained untouched. The man narrowed his eyes, saying nothing.

  Wells reached for his wallet and emptied its contents onto the bed.

  The man examined the pound notes and returned to Wells with a newly appreciative gaze. “Been a bad boy, have we?” His accent hinted at the lilting tones of England’s north.

  “I’ve had my moments,” Wells replied with a measure of relief. “Can I stay here a while?”

  “This lot would buy you a berth above with change. I like your watch, though. Did you pilfer that too?”

  Wel
ls had his shoes tucked under his arm. He glanced down at his watch, thankful that the binoculars remained well concealed behind the bundle of stolen clothing. “The watch is mine. Yours tomorrow night if you let me stay. But no one must know.” He felt a twist in his abdomen and added, “I’ll need food too.”

  “Mum’s the word then.” The man swept up Wells’ money with all the deftness of a croupier. He drew a small trunk from below his bed and shovelled the booty inside. He glanced back up at Wells with a leer and said, “Welcome to steerage, mate.”

  XVI

  It’s out there, Morgan thought.

  The evening was cool. He stood by the ship’s stern on the poop deck. The last of the sun was a pink sheen at the ocean’s edge. They were sailing into darkness.

  He peered at his watch. Doc was due on deck any time now.

  Out there and waiting for us.

  You’re just an echo. The major told me so.

  I’m barely that.

  Morgan closed his eyes, banishing his dead companion. He reviewed the afternoon’s events.

  The purser’s office held no items belonging to either Wells or his alias. Kennedy had found Wells’ trunk in the first-class baggage compartment. It showed signs of being ransacked, and recently. None of the adjacent bags had been touched. Whatever he intended on using was small enough, light enough, to be transferred in a small carry-all.

  A gun would serve little purpose. If he planned on using explosive charges, in order to disable the propellers, he’d have to get past Kennedy’s guards outside the engine rooms. He might try to drop anchor. He might even try to warn Captain Smith directly, or first officer Murdoch.

  He would have felt safe with me, bud.

  Morgan started a thin-lipped smile. “He would have at that, Commander.”

  Doc’s figure emerged from the shadows ahead. They acknowledged each other wearily.

  Morgan said, “Good, you brought a coat. Joseph will be up to relieve you at midnight.”