Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

Ransom smiled at this, wondering how many men around the table at the Red Lion were on the constable’s payroll, and how many men in Belfast Reahall had his hooks into. When Walter McComas had volunteered so readily to join them in going to the mine was he, too, on the take—a Reahall snitch? Belfast politics and graft seemed a long way from Chicago’s ills, and yet not so far after all, not now, not as Ransom and his two young clients were forced into Reahall’s paddy wagon.

The ride in the back of the smelly wagon that bumped its way over cobblestone streets gave Alastair pause. Belfast remained behind the times, and his situation now recalled a time when he’d ridden in such a wagon down Chicago streets in 1893, the year of the great fair, the fair that ended with the assassination of Chicago’s most beloved mayor. But why dwell on the unchangeable past, he silently counseled himself, and instead he stared across at the two boys arrested with him. He asked himself the question Reahall had put to him: Why didn’t I disappear when I had the chance? At the same time, the lads kept up a constant chatter about what fools and idiots they had to put up with, and how disappointed they were in their Dr. Bellingham. They outright cursed Dean Goodfriar as a hopeless cause.

The sputtering mechanical wagon, powered by an easily choked off engine, jerked, their bodies reacting, as it pulled for the waiting Belfast jail. When the wagon smoothed out a bit, rattling over the cobblestones, Ransom recalled the evening before when Reahall and Bellingham had come on scene where the ancient creature lay alongside McAffey’s body. He recalled the familiarity between Bellingham and Reahall, and he felt rather lonely in being the only one in the rear of the wagon who knew that Professor Bellingham and quite possibly Dean Goodfriar were as surely in bed with the local constable as any of the toughs at the Red Lion Inn.

It was determined that while they searched for the missing crewman, Houston Ford, that Scorpio would continue toward Titanic without further delay; already a half day had been lost. A search party made up of crewmen who knew Houston Ford had been organized, and every inch of Scorpio was being searched, but so far, nothing had come of their scouring the ship—although the searchers had even gone so far as to open the ovens in the galley to be sure, much to Cookie’s seething anger.

More and more rumors began circulating aboard, and to add injury to insult, a lone albatross had begun to follow Scorpio , occasionally perching atop the crow’s nest. Word was Ford had taken a small collapsible to escape what he’d done to Alandale, because he and Alandale had had an ongoing homosexual relationship, which had ended with Alandale’s death after a big fight.

Some reports had circulated that Alandale’s angry voice could be heard coming from his cabin. Additional hearsay—and that it appeared the two men had a terrible fight and breakup; the rumor continued with Houston Ford’d having panicked and in a rage, he’d stolen some chemicals, most likely from Dr. Entebbe’s stores, and that he’d created a deadly concoction of acids. This he allegedly threw into Alandale’s face—which might explain the discoloring and condition of the disfigured body, but the deceased’s arms, torso, feet were also uniformly discolored. Did that make sense?

Regardless how it happened or what sort of chemicals might be involved, all the crewmen had visited and gazed upon Dr. Alandale’s remains. Meanwhile, the stories grew larger and more fantastic by the hour.

Dr. Entebbe, the Nigerian medical man aboard wanted nothing more to do with the body anymore than the most superstitious crewman might. The members of the crew seemed more concerned with what had killed Alandale, leaving him a mummified body than did the chief medical man on board. But David wasn’t foolish enough to believe the interest of the members of the crew were simply prurient—they wanted to see for themselves just how bad it was. They wished to decipher just how bad it could get for themselves. They were tough, callous seamen, and they’d at first laughed at those who described the condition of the body, ridiculing the frightened among the crew. That is until they saw Alandale first hand, ending such remarks as: “It’s a dead guy for the love’a God; ain’t’cha never seen a dead guy?” and “How bad can it be?” and “What’s a little death aboard a ship?”

All such talk had ceased now that they’d all seen the actual results of Dimitri Alandale’s demise. No one was cracking wise or finding even dark humor worthy of a laugh. Instead fear was fast taking hold—fear of disease, fear of a wasting away, a cancer like nothing that Entebbe had ever seen—worse than AIDS. Like nothing David had ever seen in his thirty six years on the planet outside of a museum of petrified mummies. An end described to a T in Declan Irvin’s journal, which David sat reading now. In fact, the journal had captured his imagination entirely and he was enraptured with one question that kept him turning pages—what happened next?

The ship came to a halt, the horns blasted, and everyone on the bridge was wildly cheering. The sounds filtered down to belowdecks, where the divers took up the cheer, knowing immediately what had happened. Their combined raised voices reached David’s ears where he sat mesmerized, reading Declan Irvin’s journal.

The continued cheers nagged at him, however, and finally pulled him from the journal. Then it dawned on David—they had arrived! Scorpio , cursed or not, now hovered two and a half miles above the most famous wreck of all the wrecks the world over—and a salvage diver’s wet dream to be sure.

David hid away the journal that he’d now gotten well over two-thirds of the way through. He needed a better hiding place for it; he mustn’t let it fall into the wrong hands. Recalling how Alandale’s body was recovered from behind that panel in his compartment, he spied an identical one here. He quickly pulled the panel away far enough to insert the precious journal. He’d come to believe entirely in its authenticity and in fact that Kelly had not lied to him regarding the origin of the narrative.

Once topside, David saw that some of the crew were still boisterous about their arrival while others only half-heartedly so. No doubt the death of Dimitri Alandale still weighed heavily; it certainly did for David. Many aboard, including some of the divers, had gone to the rails to look over the side and down at the surface of the water as if looking at the very spot where Titanic sank, they might feel a true connection, one that touched both imagination and the heartstrings.

With all movement at a standstill, all engines silent, he heard the sea anchor away, splashing and disappearing. Over the PA, the captain informed everyone, “Ladies, Gentlemen, we are perfectly situated halfway between the two halves of Titanic below, positioned to explore each section simultaneously.”

The official news gave even the most grizzled old sailor aboard goose bumps. They were, after all, here to seek contact with what awaited below Scorpio at this moment— Titanic . Forbes and his monitors and men behind the monitors up at the bridge, no doubt, already had Titanic on radar, and David imagined them all standing about the three-dimensional image of Titanic ’s hologram as she now looked, detail for detail of massive destruction.

David leaned over the rail and watched now as the tethered Cryo-cable snaked down on its two and a half mile journey to the bottom, sending down a high-tech and highly sensitive camera eye alongside ambient light components that had already been lowered over the side. All this in an effort to ‘put eyes’ on Titanic —the living looking at the long dead—ship to ship.