Half a dozen steps along the corridor he saw a door on the right. It was slightly ajar. The ship creaked and groaned. He edged forward cautiously.
The lights flicked off in the corridor. Snapped back on. He could just make out the sound of two, maybe three men far off, shouting loudly, their words indecipherable. He tried to steady his breathing, the pain in his back was almost overpowering.
He was about to move when he caught a flash of colour to his right. Frieda emerged from the doorway a couple of yards away. She had a pistol in her left hand. In her right hand she held the larger of his boxes; the small one containing the isotope was tucked under her arm. She lifted the gun a few inches, pointing it at Fortescue’s heart.
He put his hands up involuntarily and felt the blood drain from his face as he stared at her. She stood like a marble statue.
‘Where is Charles?’ Her voice was barely recognizable as belonging to the woman he had made love to earlier.
‘Dead.’
She blanched. ‘Get in there.’ She flicked the gun towards the doorway. Fortescue edged around the door, never taking his eyes from the barrel of the gun a few feet from his nose.
‘Stop.’
They stood just inside the storeroom in an open space about ten feet square encircled by a jumble of crates and boxes. A few of them had tumbled over. One had split open, a spidery jumble of wires and lengths of metal just visible through the cracked side panel.
She put Fortescue’s boxes on the floor and gripped the gun with both hands.
‘Why are you doing this now?’ Fortescue said. ‘There’s no hope. The ship’s going down… fast.’
‘I will get a lifeboat. It’s always women and children first. Once I reach New York I shall be met by a colleague. You, though, will end up in the Atlantic just as you would have done had the ship not struck the damn iceberg.’
‘But it won’t help you. You won’t know what to do with the isotope. That box,’ and he flicked a glance at the larger of the two, ‘only contains some of the information you need.’
‘Liar.’
‘I’m not lying.’
She shrugged dismissively. ‘No matter. We have been spying on you and Rutherford for a long time; we know more than you think. Contrary to what you may imagine, we do have some rather fine scientists in Germany.’
She took a step closer. Fortescue could see her finger tightening on the trigger.
‘I could help you.’
She held his gaze, trying to read his expression.
‘I have the rest of the theory in my cabin.’
‘No, you don’t. Charles would have retrieved it.’
‘Too well hidden.’
‘You take me for a fool? No, I’m sorry, John… Egbert.’ She tugged on the trigger and Fortescue tensed, waiting for the inevitable. The gun went off, a fantastically loud boom resonating around the metal-walled room. He closed his eyes involuntarily and felt a thud in his guts that knocked the air from his lungs as he fell backwards against a pile of crates two feet behind him.
He opened his eyes and saw Frieda stumble to the floor, her gun twisted sideways about her finger. The bullet had hit the metal floor and ricocheted, sending off a random spray of shrapnel. And there, close to where the woman had stood, was Billy O’Donnell, a thick metal rod in his hands.
He lowered his arms and Egbert took a step towards Frieda’s prone form. Blood gushed from a massive laceration across her neck. Her head was twisted unnaturally. She was quite dead.
41
Fortescue ran over to Billy. The kid looked stricken and started to shake. Fortescue crouched down, grabbed his left arm, lifted the weapon from the boy’s grip and tossed it aside.
‘Billy. Billy, listen to me.’
He stared past him, eyes glazed in shock.
‘Billy. We have to get you onto a boat.’
He seemed suddenly to snap back to reality and grabbed Fortescue’s shoulder. ‘Is she…?’
‘She is, Billy. But you saved my life. That was an incredibly brave thing to do.’
His face was still blank.
Egbert withdrew a wad of paper from inside his jacket. ‘Billy,’ he said. ‘Now listen to me very, very carefully. This ship is going to sink. Many people will die. I probably won’t survive, but you have a chance.’
‘But—’
‘No “buts”, Billy. I am not who I said I was.’
The boy looked confused.
‘What—’
‘I’m a scientist, I have been sent on a very important mission. I have to deliver a special chemical and my notes on how to use it to a team of American scientists. I can’t explain any more. But I know I shan’t make it. You must make sure this document —’ and he held out the bundle of pages ‘— reaches the right people. I’ve written the name and address on the reverse of the title page.’
The ship shook violently. Fortescue almost lost his footing and Billy fell sideways against one of the storage crates, just breaking his fall in time.
‘Mr Wickins…’
‘My name is actually Fortescue, Billy. Dr Egbert Fortescue.’
The boy swallowed hard, trying to hold back his tears.
‘Follow me. No time to waste. Please, just take the papers and pass them on for me. You understand?’ He thrust them towards the boy, but could not risk giving him the isotope. It was far too dangerous.
Billy nodded solemnly and pocketed the notes. Fortescue turned and picked up the boxes.
From beyond the passageway came a confusion of sounds — shouts, screams, the grinding of metal on metal.
They ran towards the end of the corridor and out onto the First Class deck. A few yards to stern a group had gathered about a lifeboat. There were at least sixty or seventy people clustered around it, including half a dozen crewmen issuing instructions.
‘Women and children only… Just women and children,’ one of the crew hollered.
Fortescue tucked the smaller box under his arm and, grasping Billy’s hand, they rushed over to the railings. Peering over the side, they could see the ocean churning. A packed boat was in the water; a young officer stood in it surrounded by seated women and children. He was trying to manoeuvre the boat away from the ship to make room for another fully laden lifeboat sliding down on cables towards the waves.