Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom)

by Robert W. Walker

  “You naval chaps may be interested in her scars, what precisely brought Titanic to her knees, Mr. Ingles, what the death blow was; not me. My only concern is the operation dealing with her interior and the recovery of priceless treasures we can only imagine.”

  Ingles nodded and smiled. “Treasures just waiting for us, and since we’re uniquely equipped to convey them to the surface without the slightest damage… treasures the size of statues and ‘motor cars’ of the day, who better to relieve that sad old ship of her burdens?”

  “Indeed. She’s just waited so patiently and for so long for you aquanauts—the new spacemen of the deep, David.”

  “I’m just proud to be one of the team, sir.”

  “Good, then you don’t hold with Dr. Robert Ballard’s sentimental ahh… diarrhea about the site being a fitting memorial to those who died aboard the ship the night of April 12th 1912?”

  “Ballard’s sat idly by while foreign expeditions have gone to Titanic to prove one pet theory or another; suppose they’d had our technology and a war chest like Lucifer’s or Kane’s? Americans must do this first, not just to be the first-for-first sake, but to ensure the treasures we do find will end up in the hands of the American people.”

  “There’s far more inside Titanic than Ballard had the vision to realize, but again he didn’t have liquid air technology, now did he? Curious what he might’ve done had he the wherewithal we have today at his disposal in September 1985?”

  “Would he have gone inside Titanic’s corridors and holds?” David shook his head and snorted at the thought. “I’m no expert on human nature, sir, but I trust you are. I know there’s good reason to salvage Titanic as you would any shipwreck before another country gets its hands on our technology and goes for it.”

  “Even as we rape and pillage her, as the press says, we’ll do it with a great deal more reverence and respect than say the French?” He laughed and stormed off, saying he was needed on the bridge—his destination, leaving Ingles to study their course via the hologram that Forbes had returned to three dimensions and present headings.

  Captain Juris Forbes had been careful to time his reentry into his state-of-the-art control room aboard Scorpio so as to not run into any cameras or Craig Powers. A green hue coming off the electronic screens colored the command room and bridge. Every gauge on every panel, every gadget and gizmo must be checked and rechecked, which is what the bridge crew had been doing while he had been before the television cameras back at Woods Hole, three and a half hours ago now. Each officer in turn was asked to report, and one by one a positive ‘all systems go’ response came rolling off their tongues. “Music to my ears, gentlemen.”

  “Any problems near shore, will be tenfold out on the high seas,” he felt compelled to caution his men, although he respected them and knew if the slightest blip showed up anywhere on their screens, they’d notify him at once. They’d wake him if necessary as Captain Edward Smith’s men had done the night Titanic struck that infamous iceberg, a thing impossible to do nowadays thanks to the Air National Coast Guard up to the minute reports on ice in the region even now as late as April—the same month as saw the Titanic go down due to a mountain of ice.

  Everyone aboard knew that it had been mechanical failures, human error, and weather that had turned back Forbes’ last expedition in the Grand Caymans in search of a priceless shipwreck stuffed with gold and silver. That had been four years ago; it had taken that many years to regain his reputation and gain his command aboard the Woods Hole owned Scorpio IV—a ship built on donations, largely from silent partners.

  He needn’t literally take the helm, but Forbes liked the feel of her under his guiding hand, and so he would on occasion, like now, replace the man at the wheel—in this case Walker who’d stood in for him to fend off Powers. He thanked his officer and took the wheel. It relaxed him to hold the powerful wheel in hand. The ship’s gleaming, brass wheel may look like something out of the past, but it acted as an electronic sensor; the least touch or lack of touch and Scorpio could go off course and time would be lost. Juris imagined himself the sort of captain that Bly was in terms of his navigational abilities, that if necessary he could sail a lifeboat back to safe harbor from anywhere on the ocean’s surface. But he was hardly the whip-cracking, bullying sort. Still, he demanded discipline, for without strict discipline and protocols at sea, an entire crew could pay such a debt in blood.

  “Mr. Walker!” he called out.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “It appears one of Captain Swigart’s divers is in the map room; would you please be so kind as to escort him off the bridge,” Forbes calmly said, staring out at the sea, the power of Scorpio beneath his fingertips.

  SEVEN

  After having been escorted from the map room and off the bridge by Second Officer Walker, David Ingles kicked about the deck for awhile before he returned to his room, chatted with Bowman about the upcoming dive, napped restlessly, read portions of an intriguing international thriller entitled Silver by the author who’d replaced Dan Brown, returned to the galley for what passed as meatloaf with potatoes and greens, and finally found himself standing under the star-filled sky. He studied Orion and other configurations in the firmament until bored with the exercise. He then leaned on the railing to stare down at the churning wake of Scorpio going at top speed toward her destination when a sudden light hit him, and he realized he could see his shadow bobbing and weaving in the whipping seawater down there. The moon had come from behind high stratus clouds, shedding its pale light over him. “Blue moon,” he said, quoting an old song, “you saw me standin’ all alone… without a dream in my heart… without a love of my own…”

  “Don’t let the moon see you crying!” came a feminine voice from behind him.

  It seemed the training of the divers—to remain unattached to one another and objective, had kept them all at the polite stage. Even with Bowman, there remained a distance, and it appeared Kelly had gone off to hide from David as well, until now. At least, he was thinking so, until she startled him here and now.

  “Oh, sorry!” she was saying, leaning now on the railing beside him. “Didn’t mean to frighten you, Dave.”

  “You snuck up on me!” David didn’t care to look the least fragile. “Where’d you come from?”

  “Been exploring the ship; came out of that hatch right there.” She indicated a hatchway a mere five feet away. “Getting to know the ship as well’s I can.”

  “You need to get Forbes or someone with pull to show you the map room; should see the set up—amazing technology, just eye-popping.”

  “I’ll have to do that, yes.”

  “I think Forbes is a bit touchy about who’s on his bridge though.”

  “You boys with your toys…” she shook her head, smiling. “So what’re you doing out here? Contemplating the stars?”

  “Sure, the stars, why not? Look at ’em!” he thrust his eyes skyward. “They’re dancing with the April moon.” As he said this, David was thinking how his shadow had danced with the churning wake—looking like a drowning victim.

  “So you’re a romantic, eh?” She followed his eyes and stared up at the firmament. “A bit brisk but a beautiful night.”

  “That it is on both accounts. Need my jacket?”

  “No, but thanks. A night like this… not unlike—”

  “It’s April 13th soon, a night before she sank; do you feel how that tugs at the heart?”

  “Yes, in fact, I do. A night like this, the sea calm as glass,” she replied and their eyes met.

  Neither had to speak it aloud: the thought of its being a night in the North Atlantic exactly like the one that silently watched the demise of thousands aboard Titanic.

  “Yeah—but only if you believe the accounts.” Her remark must be designed to break the spell, he decided, staring at her still.

  “Survivors… witnesses to the disaster said the ocean was like glass that night, and yeah—stars looking on like a million eyes.”

 
“Moon bright, too. Funny they couldn’t’ve seen a freaking mountain of ice ahead. Least that’s what I’ve read.” She wrapped her arms about her to stave off the chill air.

  David wanted to wrap an arm about her but thought better of it. Instead he remained still, listening to her sparkling voice.

  “The lookout—Frederick Fleet, right? Said it dawned on him last minute that a portion of the sky ahead was—how’d he put it—‘strangely empty of stars’ on account of he was staring at an iceberg straight ahead.”

  “Yeah,” replied David, “like a black screen against the sky.”

  “Funny,” she muttered, eyes now on the ship’s wake and the deep.

  “What’s funny?”

  “I mean if it was a night like this when Titanic struck the berg, why? Why couldn’t Murdoch or Lightoller, or any other officer or crewman aboard, see the damn ice before she ran over that spur?”

  “No binoculars, remember? Facts bear it out—at the trials… well inquiries.” “I know all that! Lightoller said they’d left Southampton in a rush, and they simply left a box of freshly manufactured binoculars on the wharf. Said he’d go to his grave wondering if it weren’t all his and the Quartermaster’s fault—Hitchens.”

  “Oversights happen. It’s popularly called—”

  “Human error, so I’ve heard.” She dropped her gaze and shook out her hair in the ocean spray. Then she began to laugh a lilting, pleasant laugh.

  He took this as an invitation to lighten the mood, so he laughed; she then echoed his laughter, and a crewman stared at the couple before going on by without a word as if wishing to respect their privacy. It looked to be the man named Ford from the galley.

  “No such thing as privacy on board a ship,” David muttered on watching the crewman disappear into sharp shadows on his way toward the other side of the ship.

  “Dave… there were a lot of inconsistencies at both the American inquest and the British inquest, and you know everybody fabricates and fills in or outright lies at such gatherings for any number of reasons.”

  “You think Lightoller lied about the binoculars along with Fleet?”

  “I suspect the veracity of all the remarks by the crew, especially the officers who survived.”

  “Why in the world?”

  “Would they lie?—those who manned the lifeboats, and not one of them could easily answer what was in Captain Edward Smith’s mind that night he went 21knots into an ice field he knew to be miles long and wide straight ahead?”

  “I know the sixty-year-old Captain Smith had wireless warnings all evening, but still—”

  “And-And some of the survivors who encountered Smith thought him in a daze… in a panic, some said… unable to make a move or give an order—completely out of character.”

  “Come on—the man did the-the manly thing! What-what and all that!”

  “Of course—he was British after all, through and through. The captain must go down with his ship. It’s the comforting facts we cling to. ‘Facts as it were, allow us all to sleep at night… to feel a bit better about the disaster.”

  “Wow… whew… you’ve given this some serious thought, but Kelly, he was last seen on the bridge, firmly standing there and overseeing the—his men… and the launching of the lifeboats.”

  “The whole of it was botched—the lifeboats! Perhaps intentionally so, and Smith was nowhere to be seen; he was shot by Murdoch just before Murdoch shot himself.”

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “Witnesses said Murdoch fired and killed one other man before taking his own life when things became too desperate; why not his beloved Captain?”

  David mulled this thought over. He’d never considered Smith had done anything other than what the last photograph of the man depicted—leaning over the bridge from the height of a god and sending a salute down to everyone aboard. “Then it’s pure conjecture on your part?”

  “Conjecture based on a healthy sense of men; look, David, I have reasons for my beliefs about that night. I have it on good authority.”

  “You mean, what if Von Daniken or Stephen King had written a book about that night, right? You been reading some hair-brained conspiracy theory? A special military attaché and envoy carrying a world-changing message between the Pope and President Taft aboard, gun-smuggling, sabotage? Aliens from outer space?”

  She gritted her teeth and glared at him; she tried to speak but only an angry ‘ugh’ erupted from her gut.

  “Come on, Kelly. They made some stupid but all too human mistakes like sailing off with too few lifeboats, no binoculars aboard for the lookouts—pure arrogance, I know.”

  “And no binoculars—not a single pair, not even for the lookout,” she sarcastically added.

  “Thinking… thinking Titanic could not be brought down—hubris of the age; the Unsinkable Titanic. The most marvelous man-made object on the planet. There was bound to be confusion and fear and desperation when it became obvious—all their human errors cascading back at them—biting them in the ass.”

  She remained silent, allowing him sway.

  “No one can imagine the circumstances Smith and his men found themselves in; it’s a wonder so many got off alive—707.”

  “Agreed there. How many lifeboats did they carry? Sixteen, for God’s sake, along with a couple of flimsy collapsibles?” she said, shaking her head. “And even then the fools in charge, they only managed to fill the boats they had to a mere third of capacity.”

  “Another sad fact, but hardly—”

  “They could have saved hundreds more but instead, these highly trained, cool-headed professionals failed miserably in filling those boats, and in fact, took it upon themselves to order the boats lowered and moorings released too soon. Lost one entirely—sent it over the side! Maybe right along with the binoculars.”

  David only now realized what she was saying—that it was all intentional. “Whatever are you getting at, Kelly?”

  “Yeah, whatever… and who cares about truth anyway?”

  “What truth?”

  “How and why Titanic went down; you’re right—it’s no longer relevant. Only the legend is relevant. Hell, whole industries have survive on it.”

  “You mean like books, films?”

  “That and more, yes. There’re whole cults devoted to this shipwreck, David.”

  “Be that as it may, Kelly, there’re plenty enough wild-hair theories on what eventually sent that ship to the deep—from a bomb on board to a mummy’s curse!” David shook his head in disgust. “So why don’t you subscribe to one crackpot theory or the other, and leave it at that? Ballard’s theory, the French expedition’s theory, the rivet theory, sabotage theory… . I mean how is any of it relevant to our mission today?”

  “History is always relevant, David. I was being facetious. Like death, when is history not with us?” She gazed into his eyes, and for a moment, he wondered what she might be thinking, while hoping she was thinking some romantic thoughts about him, and all this talk was maybe just nerves. But why all the dancing around?

  David wanted to kiss her but wondered if he should get involved with her now—after the crazy talk she was spouting. She had to simply be tossing these wild notions out there just as an intellectual exercise, to impress him with all she knew of Titanic’s history, perhaps. But there was another concern that should keep David on a hands-off approach with her. Suppose someone saw them in an embrace?

  “Swigart sees us together like this out here under the stars, he could get the wrong idea,” he said. “Best we both turn in; big day tomorrow.”

  “Say you don’t think me mad, David—my ideas about Titanic’s demise?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say, Kelly. That people lie under oath all the time? That maybe it wasn’t a clear night? That the binoculars were stolen?”

  “I’m asking you to keep an open mind.”

  “Sometimes all we have is eyewitnesses and that’s what makes it history.”

  “Even t
hough science has proven again and again that we can’t trust the human eye? Police lineups prove it wrong every day.”

  “It’s all we have to go by from that night in 1912?” he shrugged. “What ya gonna do?” He again focused on her beautiful features.

  “We also know that history changes depending on whoever’s writing it.”

  “But there’s truth in there somewhere, and like I said, it’s all we have to go by.”

  “And sometimes we live or die based on how little we know! Or how much rewritten history we’re fed!”

  “Ahhh… yeah, I get it: ‘Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it’, right?”

  “That’s right. Think about it. People have faith in religion, that Mark and Matthew and Luke and Peter got it right, word for word, but then theology, the study of religion replete with scholars, comes along and the true scholars of the Bible see the same set of facts from another perspective; they see facts that don’t bear out the Gospels.”

  “Kelly, you’re bringing down the stars and my mood,” he said with a laugh.

  She persisted in the same somber tones. “Dave, think about it, please—if we take everything in history—like how Titanic went down—as gospel, then we may be ignoring the facts, the real truth rather than the legend, and that makes us all hypocrites.”

  “When the legend overtakes the truth, print the legend?”

  “Precisely—not unlike our PR campaign back at Woods Hole for our mission.”

  “Hmmmpf! Precisely what I mean by our being hypocrites! We buy into the same legends we create—fairytales, like the one about that night. We don’t dare even contemplate the real story as it might ruin our dream image of brave Captain Edward J. Smith and the brave crew and passengers of the Titanic Legend.”

  “Ahhh… I get it now. You’re an agnostic wishing to prove God was not there that night because he’s not at home. Kelly, I’m going to end this conversation now.”