Part 18 (1/2)

If his words were intended to comfort me, they had the opposite effect. ”Wait a minute. What things are you talking about?”

Henry shook his head. ”I'm sorry, sir, but while I am a.s.signed to you, I also work for Mr. Astor-”

I stood up and crossed the room, my anger growing. ”I don't give a d.a.m.n who you work for, you don't presume to give me advice by dangling vague information in front of me like that and not elaborate.”

I saw Henry stiffen, all of our easy rapport now gone. ”I'm sorry, I should not have said anything. Please use the bell if you require anything else.”

And with that he left me to the rising tide of doubts swirling about in my mind. I debated going after him, but the longer I hesitated, the less likely I'd be able to find him. I had no idea where he slept, and I knew in my heart of hearts he was too loyal to Harlan to betray a confidence. Besides, I was probably making more of it than it was, something I was very adept at doing.

Fatigue overcame me then, and I trudged into the bathroom to complete my evening ablutions. By the time I climbed into bed some twenty minutes later, I was too tired to worry about anything. I fell asleep within five minutes.

The dream came again, the Dantean imagery even more vivid and horrific than before. The essential difference between this one and the last was the roles Julia and Maddy played were reversed. Now, Maddy was the angel trying to lead me back from h.e.l.l, and Julia was Medusa with her writhing serpentine locks.

This time, I woke up screaming, the sweat soaking my bedclothes. I sat up and snapped on the light, my heart hammering against my ribs, and tried to focus my mind on the details of the dream. One thing did emerge from the murk of my subconscious: the watertight door. The whole of my nightmare centered around that one part of the s.h.i.+p off-limits to the pa.s.sengers and guarded by the burly crewman. Whatever lay behind that door was preying on my subconscious, forcing my sleeping mind to confront it. Why it was doing so in such a stylized manner was anyone's guess, and I supposed even Julia would be hard-pressed to interpret the meaning with any certainty.

And yet, I knew one thing absolutely: I had to find out what was behind that door.

I threw aside the blankets and sheets, changed into the clothes I'd worn the day before, and left the suite a few minutes later. It was past three in the morning and the s.h.i.+p now ran on a skeleton crew. As I made my way down the hall toward the Grand Staircase, I suddenly realized the vibration of the s.h.i.+p felt different, somehow. More rapid. And then it hit me....

We were going faster.

Just as in the original voyage, when Captain Smith had ordered the s.h.i.+p's speed increased to twenty-two knots so, it seemed, had we.

The trip to the holds beneath the forecastle took far less time than it had the first day of the voyage when the vastness of the t.i.tanic had so overwhelmed me. When I drew closer to the Number One watertight door, my breathing accelerated and my pulse pounded in my ears. The vibration of the s.h.i.+p's engines were the faintest up here toward the bow but, if one listened carefully, one could hear the sounds of the water rus.h.i.+ng alongside. As it was, it was deathly quiet. Peeking around the corner, I was startled to discover the door unguarded. Perhaps at this late hour Harlan had not felt the need to be so vigilant, or maybe he'd grown less concerned about compromising whatever lay behind it, now trusting that his pa.s.sengers were less likely to venture below, the novelty having worn thin.

Whatever the reason, it appeared Providence had given me the chance to satisfy my curiosity. I moved out from behind my hiding place and over to the watertight door itself. A ma.s.sive thing, the door could be operated remotely from the bridge, or manually from where I stood via a b.u.t.ton set into a panel. One b.u.t.ton was green the other red.

Banis.h.i.+ng the last vestige of my fear, I reached up and punched the green b.u.t.ton, startled at the sound of a motor whining and the loud metallic clanking of attendant gears. The fear came rus.h.i.+ng back. Intent as I was on getting the door open, I had not checked out the immediate surroundings to make sure no one lurked about. I had a.s.sumed I was safe, a potentially fatal error in judgment. And though it appeared I was safe, for the moment, the fear remained, for I realized with a rush of dread these sounds had also haunted my dreams.

The door cranked upward at a snail's pace, at least it seemed that way to me. Finally, when the opening was wide enough to admit a man, I stooped and crawled through, barking my s.h.i.+ns on the bulkhead.

I stood just inside the door, waiting while my eyes adjusted to the gloom. The entire hold was perhaps a thousand square feet, the whitepainted steel walls narrowing steeply toward the bow, which lay hidden behind more of Harlan's bogus cargo. Crates upon crates lay stacked to the ceiling, battened down with coa.r.s.e hemp netting. The air inside was hot and smelled musty. There was no light switch I could find, nor was there a way to close the door from the inside, leaving me vulnerable should anyone return.

A sweat broke out on my skin and I felt it trickling down my spine. It was time to move, yet something prevented my legs from obeying my brain. Fear seemed an inadequate word to describe the feeling that enveloped me. I staggered forward, first one step, then another. I kept expecting flames to sprout from the walls and the Medusa to appear, cackling with s.a.d.i.s.tic glee. My rational mind knew it was silly, yet the remnant of the ancestral reptilian brain all of us share kept warning me.

Something is wrong, it said.

My anxiety rising, I forced myself onward into the room, squeezing by the crates. I had no idea what I was looking for. It might have been anything. And if it resided inside one of the sealed crates I was already defeated, for I had no way of breaking into them, no crowbar. Nor did I have the time. There had to be over fifty crates in all.

In spite of this, I took the time to examine as many as I could see without undoing the hemp netting holding them in place. As far as I could tell, there was nothing at all sinister about them. It was now approaching four in the morning, and I was tired, frustrated, and angry.

Why would Harlan have someone guard the hold, if there was nothing worth guarding? Logic dictated, therefore, that there must be something there. I was about to leave, when something caught my eye, something red and luminous. It took me a moment to focus. It was against the far wall, nestled against the hull plating where it met the bulkhead.

My anger forgotten for the moment, I crossed the room, bending down for a closer look. It appeared to be a plain black box made from steel or aluminum and painted with a black wrinkle finish, and was attached to the plating by some kind of super-hard aircraft epoxy.

Springing from it were dozens of micro-fine insulated wires, so skillfully placed along the seams of the hull plating that I would never have noticed them, except that each one terminated into the head of a rivet.

What had initially attracted my eye, however, was a red LED readout, divided into hours, minutes, and seconds. The seconds were even now flas.h.i.+ng by in rapid descending order: 41:39:45...41:39:44...41:39:43....

Math never being my strong suit in school, it took me several moments of mental fumbling before I determined that the timer would reach zero at approximately 11:40 p.m. on April 14th, two days hence.

A cold s.h.i.+ver swept through me when I realized the significance of that date and time: the moment the original t.i.tanic struck the iceberg.

”My G.o.d, Harlan, what are you doing?” I said, breaking the silence.

”Hey, what the h.e.l.l are you doing down here?”

I swung around as the burly crewman's shadow fell upon me. The man's face was flushed with blood, angry.

Reacting without thought, I threw myself at him, knocking him back against a heavy crate. He made an ”Oooof” sound and bent over double.

I ran.

Diving through the open watertight door, I rolled to my feet and slammed my fist down on the red ”down” b.u.t.ton, now relieved beyond measure to hear that metallic clanking.

”YOU!”

I whirled and spotted another crewman with sandy hair and a snarl on his lips, barreling toward me. Panicking, I took off, heading for the safety of one of the other holds. A part of me, the mindless primitive, knew if I could get back to my suite, I would be safe. The rational part knew otherwise: that all roads led back to Harlan, and there was no safe place-except off the s.h.i.+p.

My pace slowed when I reached the next hold. Like the last one, it was filled with more ersatz cargo, as well as Harlan's painstaking recreation of William Carter's 1912 maroon Renault. I stared at it, no longer seeing it as a nostalgic reminder of a tender, romantic moment from Cameron's film. Now, it became a symbol of all the waste, of all the money he'd spent on the greatest of living monuments, and now made ready to destroy. The question was: why?

The two crewman caught up with me at that moment, each of them taking one arm. The big one shook me angrily. ”You've got a lot of explainin' to do, mate,” he said, in a thick c.o.c.kney dialect.

The other one, shorter and far slighter than his muscular companion stared at me with wild eyes. ”What'll we do with him, Charley?”

”We'll take him to the Squire, we will.” He turned to me, gripping my arm harder. It felt as if it was caught in a vise. ”And no funny business, or we'll b.l.o.o.d.y well toss you over the bleedin' side.”

I shook my arms free, and stared him down. ”Yes, you do that. And see what Mr. Astor has to say about it.”

Charley's eyes narrowed in anger, but I saw the wheels turning laboriously in his brain. It didn't take him long to realize his threat was an empty one. He grabbed me again and the blonde one followed suit.

”Come on, you,” Charley said, pulling me toward the door. My last glimpse of the Renault and the hull plating beyond it revealed more of the micro-fine wiring, more explosive rivets.

Ten minutes later, after climbing interminable stairs-the lifts were shut down for the night-we stood in front of Harlan's suite, the steward guarding it giving us the once over. Charley nodded. ”There's a good lad. Open up.”

The steward looked nervous. ”He said he didn't want to be disturbed.”

”We found this bloke in the Number One hold. I think he'll want to know. Now open the b.l.o.o.d.y door!”

The door swung open behind the steward and Harlan stood there, glaring, wrapped in his silk dressing gown. I tried to hide my shock at his appearance. The skin on his face had taken on a crepey appearance, the color a sickening jaundiced hue. The eyes, surrounded by deep circles the color of putty, burned in their sockets with righteous anger.

”What the h.e.l.l is going on out here?” he shouted, spittle flying from his cracked, dry lips.

Charley's bravado dimmed somewhat, but he thrust me forward with little effort. I felt like a rag doll in his hands. ”We found this bloke in Number One.”

Harlan turned and fixed his gaze upon me, his expression softening. ”I guess I should have expected this from you, kiddo,” he said, sadly.

I didn't answer him, my anger and confusion overwhelming me at that moment.

He nodded to the two crewmen. ”Bring him in, Charley. And you,” he said to the blonde crewman, ”go back to your post. And don't leave it again.”