The Titanic Secret Read online

  Fyrie grinned like a pirate. “More than enough time. Mr. Bell, I must say I am not disappointed that you came into our lives.” He cast a glance to his crewmen huddled around in the boiler room. “Magnus, get over to the barge and be ready to tie it off. Arn, get to your cannon and make damned sure you don’t have an explosives tip on the harpoon. Petr, go find Other Petr and be ready to cast off.

  “Once we’re clear of the harbor, provided no one is chasing, we’ll head to the islands just south of Reykjavik. It’s well sheltered, so the transfer should go smoother, but it will in no way be easy. Our next stop will be Denmark for provisions and then Novaya Zemlya, some two thousand four hundred kilometers northeast. Once we drop Mr. Bell and his guests . . . Ah, where do you want us to take you?”

  “Norway is out, obviously,” Bell said. He thought for a moment, and added, “I’d say Aberdeen, Scotland. We’ll find transport to England and sail back to the States from Southampton.”

  “Right,” Fyrie said, and again addressed his crew. “After a quick stop in Aberdeen, we steam for Reykjavik and the loving arms of our families.”

  “Or in your case, Arn,” a crewmate called, “any girl that’ll have ya.”

  Bell gave the crew ten minutes to get into position. He needed to coordinate adding the thermite to the boiler with Ivar because once the reaction kicked in, the steam pressure would build rapidly. He carefully scraped some of the wax from the paper on one spot on the heavy bundle of chemicals. It would take just a few moments for the hot water in the system to dissolve through the unprotected paper. Once that happened, the thermite would ignite, and no force on earth could quench its searing chemical heart.

  The Icelander stood by atop a separate ladder next to Bell over an open inspection port that had been unbolted from the tank. In his gnarled hands was a heavy wrench and a fist full of bolts for the platter-sized hatch.

  “Ready?” Bell asked, and the man nodded.

  The waxed paper bundle was just small enough to fit through the opening, and Bell made sure it didn’t rip on its way into the tank, because any spilled powder would ignite while still pouring from his hands. If such an accident occurred, he and Ivar would be cooked down to nothing but charred bones. The package hit the water with a weighty splash. Bell jammed the hatch back in place, and Ivar started hand-threading bolts into position. Bell took a couple of bolts from him so Ivar could start to tighten the bolts that much quicker. The last one was on and being wrenched down when from inside the tank came a hollow whoosh, like a zephyr caught in a tube. The thermite had lit.

  Bell and Ivarsson scrambled down their ladders. The engineer went to check on the forest of pipes, gauges, levers, and valves that would convert the mounting pressure of superheated steam into mechanical energy sufficient enough to move the ship. Ivar watched the needle of one master gauge as it wound through the numbers until it quivered at the red “Do Not Exceed” mark and then arced past it. He plucked the battered fisherman’s cap from his nearly bald head and ceremoniously covered the dial. “Tell the captain we need to go.”

  “Right.” Bell headed for the bridge three decks up.

  Fyrie himself was at the helm, watching as two crewmen cast off the main lines and jumped aboard. There wasn’t a light on the bridge except for a faint glow around the main compass bolted to the deck on a chest-high liquid-stabilized mount. Out on the ship’s prow, silhouetted against the background lights of Sandefjord, stood the man called Arn. The harpoon cannon next to him looked like something dreamed up by science-fiction author Jules Verne or H. G. Wells.

  “Ivar says to get going,” Bell said as soon as he entered the bridge. “He’s covered up one of the pressure gauges.”

  Fyrie’s eyes flicked over for just a moment. “He does that a lot. Not to worry. The Hvalur Batur is a tough ship.” His hand reached for the engine telegraph and he ratcheted it back and then forward to quarter speed. At the stern, a single screw propeller linked to the whaler’s triple-expansion steam engine came to life for the first time in months. Fyrie worked wheel and throttle to edge the ship away from the dock as smoothly as possible.

  Bell stole a glance at the guard shack. The lights were off and no smoke came from the chimney. He imagined the inebriated guard was asleep on the floor, curled around his now cooling stove like an overtired kitten.

  Up ahead, a barge had drifted ever so slightly away from the pier. It was fifty feet long and almost twenty wide. Its cargo was mounded up over the gunwales and covered by thick tarpaulins. One of Fyrie’s men stood near its bow holding a lantern.

  Already, the Hvalur Batur was picking up speed. Atop the platform on the whaling ship’s prow, Arn Björnsson manhandled the big harpoon cannon into position by pointing its barb-tipped projectile across the barge’s center. Satisfied with his aim, he cycled the trigger. The sound came like a brief thunderclap and any whaler in town who heard it would immediately recognize the sound, but it was one o’clock in the morning and Sandefjord slept on. The harpoon blasted from the cannon and sliced through the tarp to bury itself into the mountain of coal Captain Fyrie had been forced to unload—ironically, as a precaution against his escape—when his ship had been impounded.

  The crewman on the barge—Bell recalled his name was Magnus—rushed to tie off the thick wire the harpoon had carried across to him in order to secure the scow to the whaling ship.

  So confident was he in his crew, Fyrie didn’t slow at all or even pay particular attention. He adjusted the helm to get them out of the harbor as quickly as possible. He would take a moment to check to see if more lights were popping on around the town, but so far it didn’t appear that their escape had been detected. He chuckled.

  Bell was watching astern, concerned as there became less and less slack in the towline, and he said, “Care to share?”

  “I think when it comes time to explain how we pulled this off, they might just have to say magic, like you suggested.”

  Bell grew concerned. The Hvalur Batur was up to six or seven knots and the fully laden barge was barely drifting. The shock of the line coming taut could easily snap the wire and ruin the escape before they’d even made it. “Ah, Captain,” he called a little nervously.

  Fyrie followed Bell’s gaze and grinned knowingly. “A bull blue whale weighs a hundred tons. If we make a mistake with the harpoon, he’s got enough power to capsize this ship. Which is why—”

  The cable running from a special hardpoint at the base of the harpoon gun to the barge bobbing in the whaler’s wake went taut, not with a jerk but with an elongated series of starts and stops that slowly transferred energy to the line itself. Just like that, the barge was up to speed and following behind the ship like a dog on a leash. There should have been a horrendous crash and yet there hadn’t even been a mild jolt.

  “—under the prow is a room with a series of springs and pulleys that absorb and dissipate the energy of a charging whale or, in this case, the deadweight of our coal supply.”

  Bell was impressed. “By doing it this way, you saved ten or fifteen minutes of fumbling around getting into position to take the barge under tow.”

  The captain said, “I thought it worth the risk of firing the harpoon inside the harbor.”

  Just then, Ivar popped onto the bridge. He’d recovered his cap and had it pressed down around his ears. “Just so you know, steam pressure’s holding nicely. We should get a half hour out of her at this speed, no problem. Neat trick, Mr. Bell. I salute you. That’s the good. The bad is, we need coal soon.”

  “We’ll load what we can tonight from the barge and head across the strait for Skagen. We can fill our bunkers there and head north for Russia. It’s a delay of maybe fifteen hours, but we don’t have a choice. We simply don’t have the manpower to load that much coal ourselves.”

  “And how long to get to Novaya Zemlya?”

  “That will depend on the weather. If we get lucky, we will be ther
e two or three days before your deadline, Mr. Bell. If we’re not, we could find ourselves icebound until June.”

  20

  The rest of that night went as planned. They slunk out of Sandefjord Harbor undetected and turned west until coming to a secluded bay that kept them hidden and sheltered. What followed was five backbreaking hours of shoveling coal off the barge and into the Hvalur Batur’s bunkers. Each man took his turn, including Bell and the captain. And even as the fuel was being tossed through special access ports, Ivar and another crewman were working on the automatic feed system to keep the boilers stoked without wasting manpower, as well as balancing the boiler’s need for a fresh supply of water drawn through the sea inlets. Bell had always understood the delicate balance needed to keep a modern boiler properly fed, he’d just never had such an up-close tutorial.

  When the sun finally rose and the men were forced to scuttle the two-thirds full barge so it didn’t become a navigation hazard, Bell’s hands were black with ingrained coal but also split open and bloody with torn blisters. His spine felt like someone had rammed a steel spear between two lower vertebrae, and his shoulders and arms had never ached so cruelly in his life.

  “Not bad, for a city dweller,” Ivar commented when he saw Bell slumped in the galley over a steaming mug. His face was an anthracite mask, and the dawn light streaming in the little porthole drew attention to the sweat runnels snaking through the grime. “You won’t make it as a bluejacket, but you’re not completely worthless either.”

  To Bell, it was about the best compliment he could have been given. “Don’t go soft on me, chief.”

  “Not to worry, Mr. Detective. That was the easy part.”

  The run across the Skagerrak Strait took less time than expected, but securing enough coal for the round trip to the Imperial Russian archipelago of Novaya Zemlya took longer than anticipated. The extra time allowed Captain Fyrie to provision the ship. News that an impounded ship had escaped Norwegian waters reached the commercial fishing town of Skagen on Denmark’s northern tip while a dockside crane equipped with a clamshell bucket was dumping coal onto chutes leading into the Hvalur’s holds.

  None of the harbor authorities seemed interested in the ship, but the scuttlebutt imbued the captain with a new level of paranoia. Fyrie ordered one of his men over the fantail on a ladder rig with a bucket of marine-grade paint with orders to obscure the vessel’s name as a precaution. Even if no one in Denmark cared about them, they still had to cruise up the entire western coat of Norway. They’d stay well beyond shipping lanes, yet as a northern seaman Fyrie believed in prudence above all else.

  They departed the Danish port twenty hours after escaping Sandefjord, and Fyrie turned them on a northwesterly course to get around the Norwegian lobe of the Scandinavian Peninsula. Because of the Gulf Stream’s continuous wash of warm water, their passage was ice-free and the temperature far more moderate than the latitude suggested. They were about level geographically with Canada’s Hudson Bay, and, by way of contrast, those waters would remain under several feet of ice well into May and sometimes June.

  A day and a half out, the ship crossed the Arctic Circle, the line ringing the globe above which the sun never rises in winter and in the summer never fully sets. As with other recognized cartographical sites—namely, the equator—the first transect of the Arctic Circle by a sailor was marked with a ceremony. The tradition dated from nearly a century, and while most such commemorations were dedicated to the world’s professional navies, some civilians got in on it as well.

  Captain Fyrie, Ivar, and the others not on duty didn’t have the props and costumes to give the ceremony its air of mock seriousness. They simply rousted Bell from his bed in a cabin he enjoyed by himself since so many of the crew were home in Iceland. A burlap sack was pulled over his head and he was frog-marched to the galley. Bell fought his natural instincts to escape and mete out retribution. He recognized the spirit of what was happening. When the burlap was ripped away, he saw Fyrie and his men, all grinning. Magnus, the third officer, was there with a daub of blue paint for the tip of the detective’s nose, and before Bell could protest, Arn, who more resembled an oak tree than a man, hoisted Bell off his bare feet and dunked them into a bucket of ice water.

  Just as Bell opened his mouth to protest the shock of his feet and calves going instantly numb, a fair-sized cod was thrust at him so that its lips pressed his for a ceremonial kiss. As soon as this was done, the crew roared its approval.

  “Congratulations, Mr. Bell,” Captain Fyrie said when Arn lifted Bell from the bucket and set him in a waiting chair. A crewman handed over a towel that had been prewarmed on the stove. “You have been welcomed into the Royal Order of the Blue Nose by crossing into the realm of Boreas, King of the North.”

  Another crewman thrust a bottle of akvavit into Bell’s hands and Bell swished a mouthful to rinse away the taste of fish slime while others slapped him on the back.

  Isaac Bell had made a successful career of being able to read people without judging them, but for the moment he allowed himself the indulgence of forming an opinion about his companions and found he couldn’t imagine a better group.

  Eighteen hours later, they came upon the first ice. It was late afternoon and already the sun was almost to the horizon, its light weak and cold. To an untrained eye like Isaac Bell’s, the odd angles of the sun’s rays elongated distances and made determining position next to impossible. He thought the first bits of pancake ice were well away from the ship when in fact the Hvalur Batur passed them in moments. When he looked astern from his spot on the bridge, the ice had been swallowed by the gathering gloom as though it had never existed at all.

  “What do you know about ice?” Fyrie asked quietly. He stood at the helm, both hands on the wheel, and the last of the sun shining through his blond hair.

  Bell could imagine the captain a thousand years earlier commanding a Viking longboat. “I know too much ruins a good glass of whiskey.”

  Fyrie cracked a smile but kept his tone serious. “By the time the jet stream reaches these waters, it’s lost most of the heat it has carried north and east from the tropics, so come winter the surface can freeze from here all the way over the crown of the planet to Siberia and your Alaska territory. At its edges the ice pack is thin because it melts again each spring. Closer to the center, near the geographic pole, the ice persists for many years and can be several meters thick. At times, though, multiyear ice will migrate outward, and we have masses of floes that stretch seemingly forever, some with ridges, called hummocks, that tower as high as fifteen meters.”

  Bell quickly converted that in his head and whistled. It was nearly fifty feet.

  “The point is, we never know what we’re going to find each spring until the thaw comes and we start probing around the edges of the pack. And, truth be told, whalers are doing it less and less. The big ones have all been taken. That’s why some of us tried our hand in the Antarctic below southern Africa.”

  “How’d that work out?”

  “The whales are there, for sure, but it’s expensive to reach the best grounds and hard to find a crew willing to sign on for that length of time. This way of life is dying, Mr. Bell. You mark my word, and, honestly, I don’t mind a bit.”

  “Odd statement from someone who makes a living at it.”

  “It’s a living that comes with a price,” the captain said in a voice just discernible over the throb of the engines below deck. “A soulless person may feel nothing at the death of one of these magnificent animals, but I remember every single one I’ve hunted and rendered into oil to light homes for men who think up better and faster ways to perpetuate the slaughter.

  “So, Mr. Bell,” Fyrie boomed with his normal good cheer, dispelling the pall that had suddenly gripped the bridge, “your fortuitous arrival may well turn out to be the watershed event that sets me on a new path. I have a wife and young son back in Iceland. I will never give up th
e sea, yet I think it’s time I find a better way to balance the priorities in my life.”

  “I’m married myself,” Bell said. “No children yet, but I imagine that when they come along, I won’t be too keen to jaunt all over the world looking for criminals and other ne’er-do-wells.”

  As the night progressed, their pace eastward across the north coast of Norway slowed. They weren’t yet in pack ice, but they encountered an ever-increasing amount of drifting sheets, some as small as carpets, others many acres in size. This was the year-old ice Fyrie had mentioned.

  While the ship’s bow was reinforced to cleave through the thinner ice, she could not do so at anywhere near her top speed, and each time she hit the ice, she slowed and shuddered until the floe split apart and she could proceed, oftentimes with ice bumping along her hull as she passed. Captain Fyrie let Magnus spell him at the wheel just after the watery dawn broke. He lay down on the floor of the bridge under a woolen blanket and didn’t stir for four hours, but when he woke he was not only refreshed but clear-eyed as well. Fresh coffee from the galley and a breakfast of soft eggs over shredded beef and potatoes with onion brought him to full wakefulness. He stayed at the helm the rest of the day.

  Fyrie had warned there were the ghostly ice castles that calved off the glaciers of western Greenland and eventually drifted southward into the Atlantic shipping channels. These were formed as pressure drove floes into and over one another, mounding up ice that compacted and reformed into new solid blocks that were as hard as iron.

  The rigid bergs weren’t yet as tall as Fyrie had mentioned, but Bell could tell they were dangerous. A mere brush against such a formation could rip the hull plates straight off the ship’s support ribs and sink it in seconds. He also knew from going out on deck for a bit of fresh air that the chill coming off the ocean meant an exposure to such icy water for only a minute or two made death all but certain.