‘Bathroom?’ he asked the barman. The man pointed to a door just beyond an overhanging shade at the front of the bar.
Newman walked quickly over to the washroom, pushed on the door and rushed to the urinal. He heard the door swing open again behind him but was too engrossed in relieving himself to take any notice.
Jing Bojing, Secret Police designation Chai454, moved silently across the floor to stand two feet behind the man he had followed from Kota Kinabalu airport the previous night. He lifted the garrotte and slipped it around Newman’s neck.
Newman struggled, his brain trying, through the pain and terror, to understand what exactly was happening. He caught a glimpse of his assailant in a faded and fractured mirror above the urinal and seeing the man’s features, he knew which of his enemies had caught up with him first. The last of the air in his lungs left him, the wire of the garrotte caught his jugular and for a few seconds he saw blood spray from his neck before the light darkened to nothing.
49
Kate was wearing a loose-fitting top and baggy running shorts, her hair tied back as she sat up in bed in her apartment, late afternoon sun streaming through the drawn curtains. Her leg in an aluminum cast was held in a support at a forty-five degree angle.
Jerry Derham had done everything he could to make her comfortable. When she had insisted on being allowed home, the navy had provided her with a private nurse.
Even so, she felt physically and emotionally drained. Her body needed to recuperate, but the real pain came from her sense of loss, the terrible things that had happened to her godparents, the horrible death of Jane Milford. She knew that she needed to get back to work to help eradicate the pain.
She touched the screen of her iPad and her BBC World News app appeared. A reporter was standing aboard a naval vessel, the ocean wind ruffling his hair.
‘The story has been a hundred years in the making,’ he said, ‘but only during the past few days has the astonishing truth emerged.’ The picture changed to a faded sepia photograph of a stiff-looking Egbert Fortescue in a round-collared shirt, tie and raffish bowler.
‘… and we know, of course, that Fortescue’s amazing theories were several decades ahead of their time,’ the presenter was saying over the picture. It cut to a montage of images from Manchester University to Los Alamos and the devastation of Hiroshima.
‘After official complaints from Russia, China and a number of Middle Eastern states, and the mobilizing of Chinese naval forces earlier this week, NATO has agreed to place the findings and the documents recovered from the wreck of the Titanic with an international body tasked with the job of deciphering Egbert Fortescue’s complex mathematics. This has appeased several nations who were incensed by the partisan behaviour of the Western allies in establishing the Exclusion Zone when the radiation from the vessel was first detected a week ago.’
There was a tap at the door and Kate turned to see Lou and Jerry, each with a bouquet.
‘May we?’ Lou asked.
She beamed and switched off the iPad.
‘Thank you, they’re beautiful,’ she exclaimed taking the flowers.
Kate’s home nurse came in behind the men. ‘Shall I put those in water for you, Dr Wetherall?’
Kate inhaled the fragrance. ‘Yes, please.’
Lou kissed her on the cheek. She patted the edge of the bed and he perched there, an arm along the top of her pillow.
‘So, how you feeling?’ Jerry asked. He pulled over a chair and sat down.
‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘I still can’t believe I damaged my leg so badly.’ She flicked a rueful glance at the cast. ‘But then I think we’re all lucky to be alive. Has Jane Milford’s body been recovered?’
Derham nodded. ‘And I’ve heard talk of a special commendation.’
They fell silent for a second.
‘The story is everywhere,’ Kate said, trying to break the mood.
‘Yes, there are some people who are not very happy about that, but the decision was taken out of the government’s hands… The UN Security Council forced the issue. The Chinese were particularly aggressive.’
‘Can’t say I blame them,’ Lou commented.
‘And what about the saboteurs on the Armstrong?’ Kate asked.
‘The CIA are still coming up empty in their efforts to find out who they were working for.’
‘There must be some suspicions.’
‘There are rumours MI5 know more about who is involved than they are letting on.’
Kate raised an eyebrow. ‘And Professor Newman? Nothing on him either?’
Derham shook his head. ‘Appears to have simply vanished from the face of the earth.’
‘He must have been paid some serious money,’ Lou commented.
‘Sure, but somehow I don’t think he will enjoy it much knowing that his scalp is wanted by the British and US governments as well as the Chinese, not to mention whoever he was working for originally… the mysterious organization who employed Van Lee and his thugs. The chances are he’ll turn up dead before long.’
‘I guess,’ Kate mused. ‘So what now? I saw on the news the material from the wreck is being placed with an international non-political body.’
‘The only compromise the Security Council would accept,’ Derham said.
‘But we only have half the material anyway,’ Lou said glumly. ‘The documents that were in cargo hold 4 have been lost for ever.’
‘That’s assuming they had not already crumbled to powder in Box 19AS,’ Derham replied.
Lou sighed and nodded resignedly. Kate gave him a gentle smile and ran a finger along the top of his hand where it lay on the pillow close to her cheek.
Her cell phone trilled. Lou reached over to the side table and handed it to her. She glanced at the number, but looked blank.
‘Hello?’
‘Is that Dr Kate Wetherall?’
‘It is.’
She heard a brief sigh down the line. ‘Kate, it’s Professor Geoff O’Donnell. We met at a conference in Houston last year…’
50
Professor Geoff O’Donnell pulled onto the drive of his late parents’ house and sat for a minute listening to the end of the news on the radio. The top story was the amazing account of how scientific documents from a century ago had been retrieved from the wreck of the Titanic along with a radioactive source. He’d been following the story closely as he did anything connected with the famous shipwreck. The Titanic had been constantly fascinating for him ever since he was ten years old and learned that his grandfather had been a survivor.
‘Wow!’ he said quietly to himself. ‘Kate Wetherall.’ He remembered they had met at a conference in Houston last year and he had liked her straight away.
The bulletin ended, Geoff plucked up the roll of rubbish sacks he had gone to the store to buy and trudged up the drive. His sister, Amanda, had already made a start on sorting out the kitchen. Geoff walked in. She waved and blew at a strand of hair that had slipped from under her baseball cap. He placed the roll of rubbish sacks on the counter and went up the stairs.
Reaching the landing, he wandered into the bedroom he had once slept in. Until he had left for university, this house was the only home he had known. He and Amanda now had a mammoth task ahead of them sorting out two generations of accumulated possessions. Both his parents and grandparents had been hoarders.
Then he recalled something long forgotten. His father, Thomas O’Donnell, had told him that Grandpa Billy had kept a box of papers and pictures from his earliest days as an immigrant in New York. He had never seen this box and had often wondered what had happened to it. He hadn’t dared to ask him because everyone in the family knew Grandpa Billy always refused to talk about the Titanic. But what if his grandfather had passed on the box of memorabilia to his son Thomas? Geoff mused.