‘You’re out of your mind, man!’
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen!’ Asquith interceded. ‘We need only look at a map to see the logic behind the suggestion. Which other country is such a close friend of ours and able to offer wide open spaces far from any habitation, great technical knowledge and the richness of resources we will need from a partner?’
Reid held the prime minister’s gaze, unblinking ‘And you with your vast empire!’ He shook his head.
Asquith gave the ambassador a wan smile, then turned to Rutherford and Fortescue. ‘Gentlemen, what, in your opinion, would be needed in terms of infrastructure and resources?’
Rutherford was taken aback. ‘Well, I can only offer an answer based upon what we were invited here today to discuss,’ he replied pointedly. ‘However, I was working on the assumption of a team of perhaps twenty researchers, a capital investment of around 100,000 pounds, and a five- to ten-year plan to develop a fully functioning industrial energy base that would transform manufacture.’
‘Sounds about right to me,’ Edison offered.
‘But, of course, I had no idea you were thinking in the way you have described,’ Rutherford went on. ‘I assumed this research would be conducted here in England where we have scientists, electricity, laboratory equipment and other resources.’
‘We will need to move far quicker than this and with a team and a budget at least ten times the size you suggest. America can provide all we need — power, isolation, expertise, materials,’ Asquith asserted. ‘Where does one obtain raw ibnium?’
‘It is extracted in minute amounts with tin and dumped as waste by a small British concern… Imperial Mines in the Congo. It is extremely rare.’
‘Very well. So it can be shipped across the Atlantic.’
‘Now hold on!’ Reid exclaimed, barely able to contain himself. ‘I really cannot believe you are serious!’
‘Have you not considered anything but the negatives?’ Churchill said, turning in his chair to face the American.
‘You ’ve not been terribly effusive over the positives, Winston!’
Churchill grinned and waved a hand towards the prime minister.
Asquith ran a hand through his hair then interlinked his fingers on the table in front of him. ‘Mr Ambassador, the knowledge this achievement will provide will be used to transform industry. Now, Whitelaw, are you telling me that the United States government would not like a piece of that?’
Perhaps for the first time in his life Whitelaw Reid was lost for words. He turned to his adviser, Thomas Edison, who had grasped the concept immediately and visualized the enormity of the potential profits involved.
‘You want my personal opinion, Mr Ambassador?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Well, then, I think,’ the inventor said slowly, deliberately, ‘that we should grab this marvellous opportunity to become partners with our British friends with both hands.’
‘Well said, sir,’ Churchill commented.
Reid looked pale, but as the concept began to filter through his mind, the gradual realization of what was being proposed was almost visible in his lined face. ‘I will speak to the president, ’ he said.
10
Kate and Lou’s lab in Virginia had been closed up for three months while they were in Bermuda, but a team of technicians had cleaned it and checked it over while the pair were on USS Armstrong.
Walking into the lab that morning felt odd. The place was much as they had left it but this facility was so different from the lab they had used while studying artefacts brought up from the wreck of the Lavender.
The isotope from the Titanic had gone straight to Norfolk Naval Base a few miles from the institute, but they had been given exclusive access to the other container Lou had retrieved.
Freezing rain beat in a steady rhythm against the lab window.
‘Almost makes me wish we were still in the insect-ridden lab on Bermuda,’ Lou commented as he turned from the rain-streaked window and looked over to where Kate was operating the controls of a pair of automated arms on the other side of a glass partition. ‘At least the rain was warm there.’
She said nothing, lost in concentration.
Inside the radiation-proof chamber the atmosphere was almost pure nitrogen, inert and kept at a low pressure to ensure the preservation of whatever may lie inside the metal box. She had opened it to reveal a partially rotted leather briefcase.
The chamber was a standard piece of equipment for handling delicate fragments of ancient materials. The bag under the scope was relatively modern — a little over one hundred years old — but it came from the most famous wreck in history and it might just hold the secret to what the mysterious ‘EF’ was doing with a deadly radioactive isotope on the long-lost ship in the first place.
Guiding the robot arms and using the pincers to open the case and extract the contents was a slow and tricky business, but Kate was a veteran. Lou watched as she unclasped the latch, pulled up the flap and dipped the pincers inside.
The first thing to emerge was a sheaf of papers covered with dust. She placed it on the flat surface inside the chamber, then tilted the briefcase. There was only one other object inside. A single sheet of folded paper covered with illegible words and symbols.
She picked it up and placed it next to the pile of papers. Then, removing her hands from the controls of the robot arms, she tapped at a panel to her left. On the other side of the chamber Lou was seated at a control module. He ran his hands over a keyboard and a rectangular plastic box about a foot in diameter scooted across the inside of the chamber’s roof. It moved down to a position a few inches above the papers.
As Kate set up the pages, Lou adjusted the controls and with a click of a mouse he took a photograph of each one. After they had gone through the total of twenty-two sheets, Kate slid the single separate piece of paper carrying the encoded line of text under the camera’s crosshairs and Lou ran off another shot. Ten minutes later, they had finished and were seated at a table on the other side of the lab with hard copies of all the pages laid out before them.
Lou picked up a few and stared at the writing. ‘What do you make of it?’ He handed them to Kate and plucked the single sheet of notepaper with the line of code from near the bottom of the pile.
‘Formulae. Maths was never my strong suit.’
‘Nor mine.’
Lou held up a photocopy of the sheet that had been in the bottom of the briefcase. It contained a single line of numbers and letters quite different from the writing in the main sheaf.
‘Looks like a coded message.’
‘It’s not mathematical, nor is it English.’ He put it to one side. ‘Pages of formulae kinda make sense. The owner, EF, must have been a scientist. Why else would he be on the Titanic with a radioactive substance?’