Tom West
The Titanic Enigma
PROLOGUE
When the call came to get him to the bridge to begin his shift, Captain John Curtis was enjoying a very pleasant dream. As he opened his eyes and stared at the metal bulkhead above his bunk, he felt about ninety-five years old and told himself, for perhaps the fiftieth time, he would definitely take early retirement… just as soon as he got back home.
He pulled on his fleece and hat, yanked open the door to the cabin and hauled himself onto the deck of the Ottawa Dawn. It was a stunning morning — a clear, cloudless sky, a pinch of cold in the air, the ocean as still as a cup of coffee. They were steaming towards Newfoundland at their top speed of twenty-seven knots, anxious to get to shore with their catch of North Atlantic cod. Curtis ascended the metal ladder to the bridge, leaned on the handle and stepped inside. His first mate, Tony Saunders, was alone at the helm. Curtis said ‘Hi’ and then started rummaging around in a cupboard, removing charts and instruments.
This was when Saunders noticed something through the front window. Without a word, he lifted up his binoculars and surveyed the horizon. Curtis was still half in and half out of the cupboard sorting through things in preparation for the long day ahead. He had to steady himself occasionally as the ship swayed gently. It was quiet, the only sound the almost subliminal rumble of the trawler’s engines and the rhythmic splash as the vessel sliced through the water.
Saunders mumbled something and bent forward, trying to make sense of what he was seeing through his binoculars. His face contorted in disbelief.
‘Holy Mother of God!’ he exclaimed suddenly.
Startled, Captain Curtis lifted his head and banged it on a low shelf inside the cupboard. ‘Crap!’ he yelled and then emerged, rubbing a spot just above his forehead. ‘What’s up, Tony?’
Saunders ignored him, transfixed by what he was seeing. Curtis came up to his right. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Look!’ The first mate pointed through the glass.
Curtis screwed up his eyes then reached for another pair of binoculars resting on the radio console. He brought them up and let out a whistle.
To the naked eye, it looked like a single silver mass, but through the binoculars the view was very different. ‘Take us down to five knots,’ Curtis snapped. The boat began to slow, but it was carried by inertia straight into the leading edge of the thing they had seen. Saunders kept the helm while Curtis sounded the alarm and dashed through the door on to the steps and down to the boat deck, just as the crew emerged into the bright light of morning.
All about the boat, as far as the eye could see, lay dead fish bobbing gently on the surface of the water.
The five crewmen leaned over the rails and Curtis shouted to Saunders to kill the engines. They all heard their throb descending down the scale, leaving the trawler to drift with the current. The air stank, the ammonia of decaying fish cutting through the tang of brine.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’ one of the crewmen managed to say, turning to his boss.
Curtis was about to reply when they all heard a low rumble. For a fraction of a second, the captain thought Saunders had kicked in the engines again, but this was a different sound, deeper, fuller. The sound grew in volume but kept the same note, a low sub-woofer throb.
The surface of the ocean began to tremble and churn. The fish started to vibrate. Giant bubbles broke the surface as though the Atlantic was boiling. And all the time, the sound was growing louder and louder. A couple of the seamen turned to the captain, the fear clear in their faces. Curtis felt himself break into a cold sweat.
One of the crew rushed through a door leading below deck. A few moments later, he emerged clutching his iPhone. Bracing himself with one hand gripping the rail, the other working the controls of the screen, he began to pan round.
And when it broke the surface, its giant slimy grey head first, the seamen could hardly believe what they were seeing. The sperm whale was a big one, at least fifty feet long. It roared through the surface of the water, half its body shooting above the fish-smothered sea before crashing belly-first onto the shuddering mess of silver. As it smacked down onto the surface, great plumes of water shot thirty feet into the air. The giant, stone-dead whale trembled as the energy of its ascent through the ocean was counteracted by buoyancy and gravity. Then it rolled onto its back, revealing great red furrows along its underside contrasting starkly with the bleached white of the guts and blubber spilling from it.
1
Everything was going pretty well, he thought. They’d checked the diving gear. All fine. The remote cameras had come up with some very cool pictures of the four-hundred-year-old wreck of the pilgrim ship, the Lavender.
He and Kate slipped off the side of the boat and began their descent. The Lavender was in only two hundred feet of water but there were hidden dangers. The ship was fragile, there were sharks aplenty, not to mention stingrays and freak currents.
He saw Kate just a few feet below him. ‘Everything cool, babe?’ he asked through the comms.
She gave him the thumbs up.
A few minutes later they had reached the ocean floor. The wreck was directly ahead. It really did look like something from Pirates of the Caribbean.
‘Take it slow here, Lou,’ Kate’s voice resounded in his headset. ‘I’ll lead the way in through the port side. Everything OK with you?’
‘A 1.’
He saw Kate glide through the water. Then he felt something thump his back. A surge of irrational anger swept through him. He twisted and saw two black circles through the whipped-up water, an opened mouth, rows of triangular teeth.
A great white shot past. Lou swung round, swept his arm up through the water, and as the shark went to snap he slammed his fist into its skull, right between the eyes. It slipped down through the water, stunned for a moment.
He screamed into his comms, but Kate seemed totally unaware of what was happening, as though their radio link had severed. He waved frantically. She turned, raised a hand, nodded… totally oblivious. He looked down and saw the shark rocketing up through the water. It twisted and headed straight for Kate. She had her back to it.
From ten yards away, Lou could see the huge fish open its mouth and slither to one side, grip Kate about the middle, close its mouth and start to shake its prey.
Blood plumed outward like a mushroom cloud rising from a nuclear explosion, Kate’s body a rag doll mauled by a rabid dog. Then, as he watched, the water becoming opaque with blood, he saw Kate’s body snap in two, her legs slipping downward slowly to the ocean floor.
Lou Bates woke screaming, covered with sweat. He sat bolt upright gazing around, elemental dawn seeping its way between the blinds and into the darkened room. The sheets were soaked. He took a deep breath, forcing his heart to slow, then looked at his shaking hands, just visible in the gloom. He couldn’t still them, couldn’t escape how real his dream had seemed.
But it was a dream.
2
Lou Bates pulled onto the North Shore Road in his rented US Army jeep. The sun’s iridescent orange rays sparkled on the ocean — real holiday brochure stuff. His long mousy-blond hair was swept across his face by the warm breeze. He glanced at his watch. It was coming up to 9 a.m. Leaning forward, he flicked on the ancient radio.
‘On this morning’s programme,’ the presenter said, ‘as civil unrest grows, what next for Thailand? And the election in Croatia… no clear result expected. But first… At an emergency meeting in New York this morning, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 44 allowing a NATO force to police a five-mile exclusion zone around what the military are calling “Marine Phenomenon REZ375”, otherwise known as the Titanic site. In the three days since the odd phenomenon was first brought to public attention by the crew of Canadian trawler Ottawa Dawn, conspiracy theorists have had a field day — not least, of course, because the location of the peculiar incident is directly above the site of the final resting place of the Titanic, which sank on 15 April 1912. Now, though, cranks aside, many respected organizations and individuals are asking some pretty uncomfortable questions about the cause of the incident. Late last night, a few hours before the Security Council meeting, Greenpeace issued a statement claiming they had proof the phenomenon has been caused by an unknown source of radiation. Although they have offered no evidence, they are already pointing a finger at the US military.