The Titanic Enigma (3 page)

They already knew most of the basics from Lesson 101 of their training as marine archaeologists. The
Titanic
had set sail for New York from Southampton on its maiden voyage on 10 April
1912. Four days into its journey, she struck an iceberg and sank. This resulted in the deaths of 1,517 of the 2,223 passengers and crew. It was the greatest peacetime disaster in maritime
history.

The report contained a map of the ocean floor and described the current state of the wreck scattered over two square miles. The vessel had broken into two sections as it sank. The larger, bow
section, was located at precisely 41°43' 57" N, 49°
56'
49" W; about seven hundred yards away lay the stern, which was now in far worse condition than the bow section. According to
the report, no trace of any soft furnishings, carpets, wooden objects or indeed human bones remained, as these were long ago consumed by marine life. What remained was frail. Parts of the deck of
the stern section had collapsed and many of its metal structures were heavily corroded. The final page of the document covered what little was known about the radiation leak itself, reiterating the
phenomenal radiation levels measured by the probe that had filmed the footage of the wreck.

*

An hour later, the US Navy aircraft touched down on a pad a hundred yards from the nearest buildings. Derham led them from the aircraft. A grey Pontiac was waiting for them, a
guard at each of the rear doors. The servicemen saluted briskly and snapped to attention as the captain approached. Kate and Lou were shown into the back seats of the vehicle and Derham sat in the
front. A silent driver in naval uniform drove the car across the tarmac to a squat building at the edge of a cluster of ugly concrete and steel hangars. A fighter jet screamed low overhead as they
stepped out.

The car park beside the squat building had been built on high ground a quarter of a mile from the Atlantic Ocean. From here, Kate and Lou could see part of the military base spread out before
them – the dry docks and the harbour, and a long line of piers. Lou counted sixteen massive warships, great grey lumps of jagged metal, stark against the blue. The naval base was one of the
largest in the world. At any one time, seventy-five ships and over one hundred and thirty aircraft were stationed here.

The two scientists followed Jerry Derham towards the squat building. He flashed his ID at a guard close to the main door. Inside, they crossed a wide reception and entered a lift. It dropped
quickly. Lou and Kate noticed a digital display counting off the floors in rapid succession. It slowed and stopped at B17.

‘It’s a bit of an iceberg – if you’ll pardon the terrible pun,’ Derham said, turning first to Kate then to Lou. ‘There are nineteen levels below ground. This
building is the main research hub for the station – and indeed for the entire United States Navy.’

The lift opened onto an administration area. They could see uniformed staff busy at computer terminals and consoles. In one corner, a small group of officers sat in comfy chairs going over some
notes, iPads and clipboards in hand. There were at least a dozen naval personnel in the room; all of them seemed oblivious to the new arrivals.

Derham led the way to a large steel door on the far side of the room. He placed his palm on a pad to the left of the door. A light strip over the pad turned green and a computer voice said,
‘ID confirmed.’ The door slid sideways into a recess and opened onto a long, brightly lit, white-walled corridor that curved to the right. Ahead was another door and a second sensor pad
at head height. Derham stood in front of it. A narrow horizontal light beam moved slowly from the top of the rectangle to the bottom like a flat bed scanner. ‘A retinal reader,’ he said
without moving his head as the light followed its course. ‘ID confirmed,’ the computer voice said.

They were in a room the size of an aircraft hangar. In the centre stood two metal cylinders the colour of aged pewter. At the rear of each cylinder was a large jet nozzle. Two fins, one each
side of the tubes about a third of the way from the front, made the machines look like very strange aircraft, but it only took a few seconds for Kate and Lou to realize they were looking at some
form of submarine.

They could see a small maintenance crew working on the sub furthest away. One of the men was wearing a protective mask and held a welding tool blazing in his gloved right hand.

‘Jules Verne 1
and
Jules Verne 2
,’ Derham said. ‘These subs each carry four people and a half-ton payload at speeds up to thirty knots. They can comfortably
go to 15,000 feet beneath the surface, and if the crew are really great friends,
JV1
and
JV2
can stay submerged for up to a year. They’re completely pressurized, so the crew
don’t need to decompress. The guys are attaching additional anti-radiation shielding to the hulls.’

Neither scientist knew quite what to say. Lou took a couple of steps towards the nearest sub and ran a hand along the smooth hull. It felt like silk. ‘How?’ he said, shaking his head
slightly.

‘How what?’

‘How did you build this? I’ve never seen anything like it.’

Kate walked over to the end of the jet nozzle and peered inside. A pair of technicians approached and she stepped back, rejoining Lou and Derham.

‘These vessels, along with everything else you see in this construction hub today, are top secret. These are the only two such vessels in the world. They cost over a hundred million
dollars each to build and they employ technology that will not be released into the civilian world for at least twenty-five years. They come from the drawing boards of the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency.’

‘DARPA,’ Kate said, ‘of course.’

Derham nodded. ‘We have DARPA to thank for the cell phone, pilotless aircraft, the Internet, digital technology and microelectronics, to name just a few things we now take for granted. But
thirty or forty years ago all those things would have been as far-fetched as these babies seem now.’ He waved a hand towards the subs. ‘DARPA had the technology to design these back in
the 1980s – primitive versions, for sure, but they worked.’

‘Necessity being the mother of invention,’ Lou remarked.

‘Exactly. The military need to be not just one step ahead, but half a dozen steps. When something is improved or replaced by even better technologies, the older ones are released to the
public.’

‘And these have been tested?’ Kate asked. ‘They can definitely reach the depth of the
Titanic?’

‘Yes,’ Derham replied. ‘But there’s more. Come this way.’

He took them through a door. A small group of overalled technicians were coming towards them along a corridor and the three newcomers stepped aside to let them pass into the construction hub.
Derham then headed off towards a door at the end of the corridor. It led into another large room, alive with activity. Desks and computer terminals lined the walls to left and right. Lab-coated
figures and more technicians in differently coloured overalls worked at stations or stood in groups deep in discussion. A glass cube dominated the room. They could see two or three figures moving
around inside. They were wearing white hats, latex gloves and shoe covers, and masks over their mouths and noses.

Lou and Kate followed Derham to a secured door that opened with a card from the captain’s pocket, and he led them into a small antechamber. Here they found a collection of plastic parcels.
Derham plucked one up, ripped open the packaging and pulled out a gown, a hat and the other paraphernalia needed to go into the sterile room. A few moments later, the three of them were suited up
and inside the glass cube.

A circular metal rail had been suspended in the middle of the ceiling of the cube. Dangling from it by wires were a dozen or more metallic-coloured suits. At first glance, they looked like the
sort of spacesuits worn by NASA astronauts on the first orbital flights of the early 1960s. But a closer examination showed they were made from a strange silk-like fabric similar to the outer shell
of the
JVs
in the construction hub.

‘These,’ Derham said, ‘are the LMC suits.’

‘LMC?’ Kate asked, eyeing the suits.

‘Liquid metal carbon. It’s a revolutionary new material the eggheads tell me is somewhere between a solid and a liquid. I think the nearest analogy is the element mercury; at least
that’s how they describe it.’ He walked over to one of the technicians standing close by, said something and nodded towards the rack of suits. The technician took one down and clambered
into it. Pulling on a helmet, he ran his fingers over a panel on his left sleeve, the suit emitted a single low note and expanded. He looked like a Michelin Man.

‘Whoa!’ Lou exclaimed and stepped back. The suit shimmered like a mirage. It had the appearance of moving water, held together in a human shape by some miraculous power.

The technician took a few steps towards Derham and stomped back the other way. Breaking into a brisk walk, he turned just before the far wall and paced back again. They could see the man
grinning through the visor of the helmet.

‘It’s not possible to swim in them – they’re too bulky – but these suits,’ Derham explained, ‘allow the wearer to leave the
JVs
and walk on the
ocean floor under pressures in excess of 480 atmospheres – the sort of pressure experienced at the depth of the
Titanic
wreck. They double up as extremely effective radiation
suits.’

‘No way!’ Kate declared. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘No, it’s not,’ Derham replied, a faint smile flickering around his lips. It was clear he was enjoying showing off this stuff. ‘The LMC gives under pressure. Think of it
as a blob of mercury with a human inside it. In theory, the LMC can take almost unlimited external pressure – it simply moulds itself to the form inside.’

‘My God!’ Lou exclaimed and walked over to the technician in the suit. ‘May I?’ he asked, turning to Derham.

‘Sure.’

Lou touched the shimmering material and Kate came over to try it too. ‘It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before,’ she said. ‘It’s like . . . like . .
.’

‘Like it’s not actually there?’ Derham said.

‘Yes,’ Kate replied. ‘Yes, that’s it, exactly.’

‘So,’ Lou said, turning away from the technician. ‘This means you really can get down to the
Titanic
and inside it. I still can’t wrap my head around that idea.
I envy you, man.’

‘Why?’ Derham said, turning first to Kate and then back to Lou. ‘Aren’t you coming with me?’

Five miles outside Lyon, France. Present day.

Smoking a fat Bolivar, one of her favourite cigars, Glena Buckingham, the CEO of Eurenergy, sat up from her chair as her Polish executive assistant, Hans Secker, came into
the drawing room at her European home, the magnificent Louis XIV country estate of Château Chambourg.

Secker was a small man dressed immaculately in a blue suit and a lightly patterned purple tie. He had worked closely with Buckingham for almost four years and was her most trusted
lieutenant.

Buckingham drew on her cigar. ‘I hope this is as urgent as you made it out to be on the phone, Hans. I have to be in Strasbourg in forty-five minutes.’ Her voice was cut-glass Home
Counties.

‘I think it is, Glena,’ he replied and leaned down to open his briefcase. He was one of only a handful of people in the world who called her by her Christian name. When he
straightened, he had a small folder of papers in his hand. He passed it to her.

The top page was a photograph showing segments of a shipwreck. Buckingham recognized it immediately.
‘Titanic,’
she said. ‘It’s been all over the
news.’

‘Officially, Marine Phenomenon REZ375 has been caused by some natural radiation leak.’

She shuffled through the papers and stopped, read a paragraph, lifted another photograph and studied it as she walked towards a massive window trailing cigar smoke behind her. Sunlight splashed
onto the marble floor.

‘The source is in the ship itself?’ she exclaimed. ‘And the radiation levels are rising.’

Secker was at her elbow, nodding slowly, a brief cynical smile playing across his lips. Buckingham turned and stared down at him.

‘How can that be?’

‘I don’t know . . . yet. But I intend to find out.’

Glena Buckingham studied him without expression as she worked through the possibilities in her mind. ‘It could still be a natural source.’

‘It could; but, if you look here.’ He gently turned a page and tapped the bottom paragraph. ‘A precise sensor sweep from one of our satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the
site has established that the source is not from the ocean floor or beneath it, but close to twenty-five yards above it, which puts it within the bowels of the wreck.’

Buckingham stared again at the papers. ‘I can see why NATO have set up an exclusion zone . . . and why you have brought it to my attention, Hans. It could be a natural radiation source,
but if it’s not then it has to be an alternative energy source, which definitely presents us with an unacceptable threat. You’ve done well.’

Secker merely nodded.

‘And NATO is basing the operation in Norfolk, Virginia? Do we have anyone there?’

‘We do.’

‘Good. Contact him right away.’

‘No need. He has already called us. The navy has enlisted specialists. He’s not sure what they are planning, but they are very keen to get to the root of what this is all
about.’

‘Of course they are. Give your contact free rein. I want updates as they come in, Hans. Got that? Also, get Sterling Van Lee onto it. He’s our best . . .’

‘I took the liberty . . .’

Buckingham nodded. ‘Good.’ She looked back down to the photograph of the
Titanic
lying broken in two on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean and drew on the fat cigar. ‘Who
could have imagined such a thing?’ She handed the papers to Secker then strode across the room, through the hall and out onto the gravel driveway towards the waiting chopper.