The Company of the Dead (18 page)

“There’s more you have to hear, much more. This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Why the hell am I here?” Lightholler asked, his voice almost cracking. “What the hell does this have to do with me?”

“We’re at an impasse,” Kennedy said. “The japs have us, and we have them. They let Houston know what’s going on and we hang. We contact Tokyo and Hideyoshi is commanded to commit suicide on the steps of the Summer Palace. But while we’re at this standoff, we buy the time to finish what we started.”

“And what’s that?” Lightholler said bitterly. “The Mexicans still control the Canal. They’ll be no friendlier to the japs than they’ve been to the Confederates, especially with you as president. Not to mention the fact that Ryuichi would never allow a Shogun to wield that much power, particularly his own brother.”

“Absolutely,” Kennedy replied. “Both empires think they have everything to gain by a reunited America. Both are probably wrong.”

“So who wins?” Lightholler asked. “Conspiracies have a habit of being brought to light. There’s no way this is going to work.”

A melancholy smile flickered across Morgan’s face.

“No one wins,” Kennedy said. “Not in the long run.”

Lightholler shivered. Someone walking over his grave. He craved another of Hardas’s sour cigarettes.

Kennedy continued. “A large portion of the Bureau has been operating independently from the Confederate states for the last three years in pursuit of Camelot. My team has been operating independently from the CBI for the last two. We’ve met with surprising success in negotiating a reconciliation considering it was the last thing on our minds. Financial backing from the Germans
and
the Japanese didn’t hurt either.”

Lightholler surveyed the men sitting around the small table. This changed everything. Rendered the letter useless. Unless, of course, the Palace supported Kennedy. That might explain Admiral Lloyd’s ignorance. It would explain a number of things.

He said, “Back in my hotel room, you only checked for surveillance devices after you introduced yourself. And
well
after you had told me that you were from the South.”

“We checked your room the night before you arrived,” Kennedy said. “We knew where the bugs were.”

“Aside from that, you didn’t mind if someone knew you’d been there. You weren’t checking for surveillance devices, you were neutralising them. And whoever was observing your progress now believes that I’m involved.”

“They were watching you, not me,” Kennedy said. “You’re implicated in far more than Camelot now.”

“What you’ve done is commit treason and draw me into the process. Thanks to you, they were ready to imprison me.”

“Your abduction would have ended in your death. The men who took you were assassins.”

“They only took me because they thought I was part of your crew, damn it.”

“They would have taken you anyway,” Kennedy said.

“When did you discover that I was under surveillance by the CBI?”

“Yesterday.”

“So now your boss knows you’ve been double-dealing.”

“He knows, but for all of the wrong reasons,” Kennedy said.

Lightholler sighed. There was more to this. Layers of deception and confusion. And still,
Why neutralise the bugs at all?

“Ultimately, we don’t care about the Confederacy—or the Union,” Kennedy said. “Not in their present form. We don’t care about the Germans or the Japanese. The concept of treason here is irrelevant. We’re looking at a bigger picture—much bigger.”

“The big picture,” Lightholler said deliberately. “Something bigger than you becoming president of the USA? Something bigger than rearranging the borders of the two empires?”

The Palace had offered his assistance to the CBI under the assumption that they were doing work that would benefit England. Whatever the “big picture” was, it went far beyond anything the Foreign Office had imagined. And it was only after Hardas had neutralised the bugs in his hotel suite, that Kennedy had mentioned the ship.

“And still you claim all this has something to do with the
Titanic
?”

“That’s where it all starts,” said Morgan. “That’s where it ends.”

Kennedy reached for the satchel and withdrew a number of photographs. He handed them to Lightholler.

“What do you make of these?” he asked.

Lightholler placed them before him carefully. After a moment, he asked, “Where did you get them?”

“They’re from a recent expedition,” Hardas answered.

“I didn’t know they’d scheduled any dives recently,” Lightholler said, his eyes fixed upon the images spread out on the table.

Three of the photographs showed the wreck of the
Titanic
seen from various angles. Its massive hull stretched out, intact and rising from the floors of the Grand Banks as though cresting one last muddy wave. Two of the great funnels were visible. She seemed remarkably well preserved. The images were the clearest Lightholler had ever seen.

He’d participated in one of the later dives, following the failure to raise the wreck in 2007. It had been part of the media lead-up to the centennial cruise. The trip had been made in an over-crowded bathyscaphe, brimming with journalists and retired naval officers. They’d hovered for half an hour, approximately fifty feet above the wreck. Despite the powerful beams of light that bathed the ship, all detail had been lost within those seemingly impenetrable depths. He thought he’d seen all of the available footage, but the details of these photos astounded him.

“You must have gotten pretty close. What kind of submersible did you use?”

“A special one,” Hardas said, smiling for the first time.

“What about these?” The last two photographs were the only ones he couldn’t make out distinctly.

“Sorry about those two,” Hardas said. “I took them myself.”

Lightholler stared at him.

“By remote camera, of course. They’re from inside the ship.”

Lightholler observed the faces around him. There was no hint of amusement among them. As far as they were concerned, this was no joke.

“These photos are from the purser’s office on C deck.” Hardas leaned forwards, pointing with a stubby finger. “And this here’s the purser’s safe.”

Lightholler peered at the grainy images. The flash from the camera was reflected a hundred times in a cloud of floating debris. He could make out a wall only with difficulty. It was lined with shelving, streamered by seaweed. A barnacle-crusted shape squatted beneath it.

“Now you see it,” Hardas indicated one of the images, “and now you don’t.” He pointed at the last photograph.

Lightholler leaned back in his chair. “Why the secrecy about the dive?”

“Dives,” Hardas corrected, smiling again.

Kennedy turned his attention back to Lightholler. “The dives weren’t supposed to be a secret. At least not initially,” he said. “Hardas is ex-navy. He was part of a team appointed to put a new series of German submarines through their paces.”

“In Japanese waters?” Lightholler asked.

“Part of the tests were to see if we would be detected by any of the new Japanese destroyers,” Hardas said, warming to the subject. “If we were detected, we could always say we were mounting an independent dive to the
Titanic
.”

“Without a surface vessel to support you, that would be a pretty weak excuse,” Lightholler replied.

“With the current fervor for the
Titanic
sweeping the world, and considering the recent Japanese infringements of German territorial waters, it was hoped that such an expedition would be ... overlooked,” Kennedy said.

“Besides,” Hardas added, “we weren’t detected.”

“So why were you testing submersibles for the Germans?” Lightholler asked.

“It was a fringe benefit of the Camelot project,” Hardas replied. “We give them some of our submersible technology, they let us in on stratolite construction.”

“I always wondered how you guys got strat technology before we did,” Lightholler said. He’d never seen a stratolite. Not outside of newsreel footage, anyway. The first one, the
Kaiser Wilhelm I
, had been launched back in ’99, amid much fanfare. The first permanent high-atmosphere dwelling. It was still up there. Somewhere over the South Pole as he recalled. The cynics had said that if the Germans couldn’t make it to the Moon, they would settle on building one for themselves. With a radius of just under a mile, it was, at the time, the largest vessel ever built. The Germans conceded to having seven in operation, the Japanese, five, but back in the navy he’d been told to double those figures. And three years ago the Confederacy had commissioned its first one, the CSS
Patton
. The
Times
had done a write-up on it, reporting that its construction had sent their national budget skyrocketing.

Lightholler lit another cigarette, his eyes again falling to the last two photographs. “So what was in the safe?”

Kennedy pressed forwards in his chair, waiting for Lightholler to meet his eyes. “Some gold, some jewellery, stocks, bonds, and this.” He reached into the satchel and withdrew a book.

Morgan pulled his chair closer, staring at the object as though it were some holy relic. Kennedy slid it across the table to Lightholler. Its front cover was thick cardboard, water damaged and stamped with a splash of rust-coloured material. He could make nothing of the smudged writing that appeared there. There seemed to be someone’s name, handwritten, on the top right corner. Its binding and the roughly cut edges of its pages were encrusted with a thin layer of green mould. The pages themselves were curled back, coated with a slender sheet of plastic. Probably some form of preservative.

Lightholler studied the book, but didn’t touch it. What could it possibly contain that would be of any significance now?

“Are these Archibald Butt’s private papers?” he asked. He recalled that Butt, adviser to President Taft, had been aboard the
Titanic
. It had been speculated that he’d carried some important documents meant for the president, yet lost at sea.

“Morgan?” Kennedy cued, settling back into his chair.

“What shapes history, Captain?” The historian leaned forwards. “Events or personalities?”

Lightholler, struck by the non sequitur, made no reply.

“Are you familiar with your great-grandfather’s memoirs?”

Lightholler tendered a tight-lipped smile. “It was required reading in my home. Yes, I know them. A long list of rantings and justifications by an inept fool.” It felt good to say it aloud.

“A list, you say.” Morgan’s expression turned contemplative. “How much do you recall from his chapter on the sinking of the ship?”

“Just scraps. I always thought his view of the event was somewhat jaundiced. Where are you going with this?” Lightholler glanced again at the book. “Are those Astor’s papers?”

“No,” Kennedy replied. “But he does rate a mention,” he added darkly.

Morgan pressed on. “Astor only devotes a small portion of his memoirs to his actual rescue. He dwells quite a bit on Charles Lightholler, of course.”

“Of course.” Lightholler suppressed a frown. Through that one pivotal event, an unholy dynasty had been born.

“In his writings, Astor’s distraught, bereaved,” Morgan continued. “Taken aboard the
Carpathia
, still damp from the Atlantic, he’s told that his wife and their unborn child were lost at sea. So of course he fails to make mention of any list.”

“List?”

“According to the
Carpathia’
s log, Astor was somewhat preoccupied with a list when he was first brought aboard. The captain also noted that Astor mentioned a strange encounter in the cargo hold, just before the
Titanic
foundered. He’d been told by someone that he was on some list. Told that he wouldn’t see New York.”

“I’ve never heard this,” Lightholler said. “But what of it? The man was clearly raving, and with damn good reason.”

“That’s what it was put down to, and Astor never mentioned it again. It was left as a minor footnote to a terrible catastrophe.” With that, Morgan reached for the journal. He handled it gingerly, opening it to a pre-selected page. “Until now.”

He slid it over to Lightholler.

The names were handwritten. It appeared to be a register of some kind. He scanned down the page.
Smith, John: Captain. Murdoch, William: first officer. Andrews, Thomas: Ship’s builder. Astor, Colonel J.J. Butt, Major
Archibald. Guggenheim, Benjamin. Rothschild, M. Stead, William T. Thayer, J.B. Widener, Harry.

“What is this?”

“A who’s who of some very powerful, very wealthy, very influential people,” Morgan said. “All of them sailed on the
Titanic
, and all—with a singular exception—were lost at sea.”

“This could be about anything. A lot of people died that night.”

“True enough,” Kennedy said. “But that’s not the only list in the book.”

Lightholler leafed through a few pages. The next sheet that caught his attention had been divided into two columns. The left bore another series of names. He recognised most of them.
Picasso, Kandinsky, Duchamp, Chagall
; artists who’d left their mark on the twentieth century. The names on the right were a different breed.
Stalin, Sorel, Mussolini
—tyrants and murderers all. There were more names he didn’t recognise.

“Who are Mengele and Eichmann?” he asked.

Morgan shrugged.

“And you’ve got Hitler on the wrong side of the ledger. Why isn’t he with the artists?”

Morgan shrugged again.

He turned over and read on.
American Telephone and Telegraph. General Motors. Krupp. Lockheed Aircraft. October 1929. Wall Street.

“A projected investment portfolio, we believe,” Morgan said. “As for the date and location, I’m thinking it’s close enough to the Great Depression.”

A fragment at the bottom of the page caught his eye.
Sarajevo: Princip. Archduke Franz Ferdinand and wife. June 28, 1914.

“And you found this intact, in the purser’s safe.”

Morgan nodded.