The Titanic Secret Page 31

  “Oh, it’s Miss,” she corrected quickly, as if Bell didn’t know what she was up to.

  “Did Joel leave any messages for me?”

  “He did. He called earlier to let you know that he had arrived in Aberdeen and met the captain of the”—she paused as if reading—“um, the Ha, ah, va—”

  “Hvalur Batur,” Bell supplied.

  “Cor blimey, that’s an odd name now, isn’t it?”

  “Miss Bryer . . .” Bell said with a tinge of frustration in his voice. He doubted she could type, sort, or file, but he imagined she was quite the looker.

  “Right. The captain told Joel—um, Mr. Wallace—all about what happened with the fight and how you ran off in some lorries and stole a train. He said to tell you Arn made it back and that he’d been asked to mail a postcard by Mr. Hall and hoped it was okay.”

  “Whose postcard?”

  “Mr. Wallace thought you’d ask that. It was for Mr. Hobart to his wife.”

  Bell wasn’t sure if he’d heard correctly. “Wife?”

  “That’s what he said. Her name is Adeline and she lives in a boulder.”

  “I suspect she lives in Boulder,” Bell corrected absently, his mind running through implications, “not in a boulder. It’s a town in Colorado.”

  “That makes more sense,” the girl said so brightly that he suspected it had been a truly perplexing issue for her.

  “Was Wallace able to book passage for us back to America?”

  “Oh, that. Yes. Yes, he did. It’s right here. Hold a tick.” Although the wire was static-charged, he could hear her searching through papers on a desk. “Found it. He has you on the SS Bohemia, a freighter owned by Bougainville Shippers.”

  Bell wasn’t familiar with the line, but it mattered little. “When and where?”

  “Um, next Wednesday at two from Southampton. Berth 26. That’s away from the Ocean Dock. And, besides, the hullabaloo should be long over by then.”

  Bell wrote the date and time in his journal, ignoring her prattle, and said, “When Joel checks in next, I want you to tell him to meet me at the docks with at least ten men who should be expecting trouble. Can you do that?”

  “I sure can, Mr. Bell. Joel will be calling in the morning. I mean, Mr. Walla—”

  “That’s fine, Miss Bryer. Just make sure he knows to meet me and bring some guys. Okay?”

  “Okay, Mr. Bell.” She paused, calculating. “Maybe I can come with them and we can meet.”

  “That’s not a good idea. It could be dangerous, and I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Wow. You sound so sure of yourself. Have you really done all the things Joel says you’ve done?”

  “Not even half,” Bell said. “Good night, Miss Bryer.”

  He found Brewster in the room he’d share with Vern Hall. It was a quaint space with smoky oak furniture, hand-stitched bedspreads, and portraits of Queen Victoria and the nation’s current monarch, George V, on the walls. Brewster was working on his journal. Hall was tucked under a mound of quilts and as still as a statue. Or a corpse.

  “How’s he doing?” Bell asked.

  “Same,” Brewster said as he glanced at the frail figure of his oldest friend. “Not a peep out of him.”

  “We should leave him here,” Bell said softly, as if he were musing to himself rather than making a suggestion. He was testing for a reaction.

  “Maybe we should,” Brewster said. “He’s not looking good, and we have a ways to go.”

  “We do,” Bell agreed, “and we have a destination. The freighter Bohemia, Southampton Dock, Berth 26. We sail on Wednesday at two.”

  “Can we make it?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem. And I’ll have men there waiting in case there’s trouble.”

  “Think there will be?”

  “Gly’s no fool,” Bell replied. “He was smart enough to ambush us in Aberdeen, and I suspect he knows we’ve come south and are likely here in Newcastle since it’s England’s largest northern city. He can guess our next moves because he knows we want to leave for the States.”

  “And that means he knows we’re heading to Southampton?”

  “That’s the most logical port.”

  Brewster went quiet for a moment before asking, “Are you going to tell me what happened back on the train with Alvin and Johnny and Vern?”

  “The boys are all heading next door for a few pints at the pub before we eat. I’m going to wash up and I’ll meet you there. And explain everything.”

  “But it wasn’t Vern. Right?”

  “No.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the five men were around a table at the corner pub, pints of good English beer at hand. The air was ripe with smoke, and the room buzzed with good cheer. The fire in the stone hearth was cherry red and crackled with warmth. Bell allowed himself to relax just a notch or two.

  “So tell us,” Brewster said impatiently.

  “Johnny Caldwell was in love with a woman he couldn’t have.”

  “What’s that mean?” Walter Schmidt asked.

  “He carried her picture. She could have almost passed, but she’s a Chinese girl, Walt, and while we live in an increasingly progressive society, that’s something a lot of people won’t understand or tolerate.” Bell let that sink in for a second. “I think someone in Paris discovered her picture and, knowing the social situation in America, explained to Johnny that there would be no legal barriers for him and his girl if they moved to France. I think they offered to set the young couple up in company housing with a company job. Johnny saw this as his chance to live happily ever after with the girl he loved.”

  “And the price?” Charlie Widney asked, although they all understood what it was.

  “Betrayal,” Bell said flatly. “He had to act as their agent in your midst, reporting back by radio when you were finished clearing that mountain out of its byzanium ore. That’s why the Lorient was so close by when we snuck you off Novaya Zemlya. They’d been waiting for Johnny’s message from the island that the job was completed. Because Joshua disabled the radio he’d found after Jake Hobart’s murder—a murder Johnny committed, by the way, because Jake had discovered the secret transceiver—Johnny bided his time and used the one on the Hvalur Batur.”

  “Wait. What? Jake was murdered?” O’Deming cried before the others could raise the point.

  “It’s true, fellas,” Brewster said. “Stabbed through the ear, he was. No doubt at all. I knew but said nothing, hoping I could catch the killer. I hope you can forgive me for not telling you all.”

  “Joshua told me about the murder the night I heard footsteps outside my cabin on the ship and confirmed with Arn Bjørnson that one of you guys had spent time in the wireless room. I checked myself, and the set still retained some residual heat.”

  “What’s that mean?” Warry O’Deming said.

  “It’s proof someone used the radio on the whaler,” Charlie told him. “And that Johnny was willing to kill to keep everything a secret.”

  “I’m just guessing here, but I don’t think Johnny planned to kill Jake Hobart. I believe he panicked.”

  “Jake and Johnny were real close,” Joshua Brewster said. “Jake was showing the boy how to be a blaster, like an apprenticeship. Hell of a thing killing your mentor.”

  “That bothered me most,” Bell admitted. “In talking with you all, I knew how tight those two were, so it had to have really eaten at John’s conscience to do what he did. But back on the train outside of Aberdeen, it was different. He must have seen we were escaping from the French and he was losing his chance at happiness with his girl. He saw his opportunity when I went back to unhook the cars. He threw Alvin out of the cab and then turned on Vern Hall. Vernon gave better than he got and he’s alive while Johnny’s dead.”

  “Awful,” Walt Schmidt said.

  “The truly
awful part is, Gly would have likely killed Johnny the first chance he got, only the lad was too naïve to know it.”

  “What happens now, Mr. Bell?” O’Deming asked, wiping the foam mustache from his upper lip and setting his pint back on the table.

  “We make our way to Southampton, where there’s space aboard a freighter bound for New York, and somehow we find a way to put this mess behind us.”

  Brewster suddenly laughed in a tittering falsetto that was completely unlike him. “It’s only the past we can put behind us, Bell. This will never be our past. This will always be our present. We can’t escape it, you see, because we chose it in the first place.” He looked at his remaining men. “We made a pact with the devil. We wanted that ore and we made a deal with him for the stones and now we have to live up to the bargain. Right?”

  He covered his face with his hands and rested his head on the table. His voice was a hoarse croak. “We all have to pay the price.”

  Bell caught the embarrassed eyes of each remaining man. They knew all too well into what depths of madness the leader had sunk. They finished their beers in silence and went back to the hotel, Brewster walking like an automaton supported by Charlie and Bell.

  36

  Bell woke late the following morning and was immediately annoyed. Knowing his level of exhaustion, he’d left word with the hotel owner to wake him at seven. It was almost eight-thirty. They’d lost precious time.

  Charlie Widney was asleep in the other bed. Bell called his name to wake him and dressed quickly. The inn was quiet. He knocked on the door for the room Schmidt and O’Deming shared and went down the stairs to rouse Brewster.

  “Let’s go. We’ve all overslept.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Eight-thirty.” Bell checked on Vernon Hall. He looked a little better this morning yet remained unresponsive.

  “I’m sorry about my little outburst last night,” Brewster muttered. He focused his attention on lacing his boots. “I get these wild ideas sometimes. Don’t know where they come from, but it feels like I have to say it out loud or it’ll only get worse in my head.”

  “Nothing to apologize for,” Bell said, checking Hall’s eyes. They were reacting normally to light. “We’re all feeling the pressure. You most of all, since this is your crew.”

  Brewster shook his head dismissively. “Some leader I am. Four men dead, one injured, a traitor living among us for months.”

  Bell said, “You succeeded, Brewster. Keep that in mind.”

  The miner just looked at Bell, his face wrinkled beyond its years, sunken and sallow, and framed by long gray hair as wispy as spider’s silk. There were stains on his chin from him coughing up blood in his sleep.

  There was no sign of the innkeeper or his wife. Bell let himself into the kitchen to see what he could rustle up. He heard the back door open and guessed Charlie was heading out back to check on the trucks the way he’d checked on the draft animals back at the mine in Russia. On the table was a local newspaper.

  Bell picked it up to see if there was news about the train theft. It was splashed across the front page, with details about the dead men found on the train and a description of the men and trucks that left the factory outside of Glasgow. Below the article was a separate box with a plea to the public to help apprehend the thieves and a telephone number to call with information. A reward was offered.

  Bell’s heart slammed into his ribs. That’s why the hotel was quiet. The police were on their way. The innkeeper had read the article and called the number and was told to vacate the premises because the renegades were dangerous. He fought the stab of panic and read the newspaper’s plea for information again. Something bothered him. He read it a third time. It didn’t mention the police specifically or who posted the reward. The telephone listing meant nothing to him. Just numbers preceded by a three-letter exchange.

  Then he saw it. The exchange was the same as he’d used the night before to speak with Joel Wallace’s assistant, Miss Bryer. The exchange was for London, not Glasgow or Aberdeen.

  “Fellas, get moving!” he bellowed, and raced for the telephone. He got an operator and had her put the call through. It was Saturday so there were free lines. After a moment of clicks and hisses, a male voice answered.

  “Allô?”

  Bell smashed down the earpiece so hard that its cord whipsaw-danced. The English hello and the French allô sounded close enough that many bilingual speakers never bothered to translate the word. They just pronounced it as they always had. Like the man who’d answered the phone just did. Bell would bet anything that call went straight to the French Embassy, near Hyde Park.

  Bell was fully expecting to encounter Foster Gly again, but he had to admit Gly was craftier than just about anybody he’d ever faced. He’d placed an advertisement in the paper and had it look like it was from the police when in actuality it was a direct line to agents acting on behalf of the Société des Mines. He’d had all the previous day to set this in motion, and Bell was certain the ad ran in other cites as well. Foster Gly had turned the entire nation into his own private spy network with just a few inches of ad space. Even as he felt disaster descending, Bell had to acknowledge his own grudging respect for the strategy.

  He rushed for the back door, meeting Walter and Warry as they came down the stairs. With Joshua Brewster close behind, they ran out into the backyard. The morning was cool and still, with just a few clouds in an otherwise blue sky. The industrial pall of Newcastle was still some miles to the south.

  Charlie Widney had just reached the doors of the distant barn and didn’t hear Bell’s shouted warning. Nor did he hear the roar of the Leyland truck’s motor just before it slammed into the doors from the inside. Charlie was struck first by the swinging door and went flying back some feet, landing heavily on the hard-packed earth and lying there quite still. The driver could have swerved at that moment and maybe given him a fighting chance, but he deliberately ran over the prone miner. The truck’s narrow tires and heavy load made sure the pressure across Charlie’s body crushed his internal organs.

  Bell roared incoherently at the senseless murder and ran doubly hard. He gestured to the others to head for the barn to prevent the second truck from being stolen. Pushing himself as fast as he could go, Bell couldn’t cut an angle to reach the truck before it was past him without risking the driver running him down as well. The vehicle shot the alley between the inn and the neighboring building with Bell in pursuit.

  The Leyland had to go wide as it turned onto the unpaved street and brushed up against a parked delivery wagon. The mild impact barely slowed the vehicle, but the two draft horses yoked in the traces reared, their hooves pawing the air, their neighs like the screams of frightened children.

  Bell made up some ground, as the driver had to work the gears, but he knew it wasn’t going to be close. Once the truck came up to speed, the road was open enough to outpace him easily. Half the byzanium would be gone, and if the miners failed to prevent Gly’s men from stealing the other truck, then the whole mission was for naught.

  To the uninitiated, the contraption parked in front of a store just down the block resembled a long, robustly built bicycle with an engine slung on its frame. To Bell, it looked like the fastest Thoroughbred he’d ever ride. It was a Norton 16H, a nearly 500cc single cylinder motorcycle that Bell had read was about to take the race world by storm. The engine was running, while the rider was down on his knees adjusting something on the motor.

  Bell was astride the bike and had the clutch popped by the time the owner knew anything was amiss and was down the street fifty feet before the man got to his feet. The truck had gained some more distance, but when Bell cranked back on the throttle, the Norton came alive between his legs. He had to slit his eyes against the wind, while his hair was blown flat across his skull.

  In seconds, he’d cut the distance to the truck. The problem was, the man in the p
assenger’s seat had heard the motorcycle in pursuit and alerted the driver that they were being followed. Bell didn’t recognize either of them from the dockyard fight. Gly had brought in more muscle from Paris. His supply of heavies seemed limitless.

  When Bell tried to pull up alongside, the driver would swerved into his path, forcing him to ease off the Norton’s accelerator to avoid being crushed beneath the lorry’s wood-spoked wheels. Three times he tried it and three times he was beaten back, the third sending him on a wobbly trajectory that almost forced him to crash into a sanitation wagon used by workers to clean manure from the streets.

  Bell was well aware their antics were likely to attract attention. He had to end this quickly, and reached behind his back for the .45, hoping he could place an accurate shot. Before he tugged it free, he saw another opportunity. A tip wagon drawn by oxen was on the side of the street, lowered so its trailing edge was on the ground and the rest of it elevated in a perfect ramp. Next to it, some workers had just unloaded a dozen fat, oak-staved barrels.

  The angle and timing had to be perfect, but Bell had confidence in his machine and his abilities to ride it. It was similar to the Indian cycle he enjoyed back home. He came up almost to the rear bumper of the truck. In anticipation, the driver swerved to the left to block him. It put the Leyland exactly where Bell wanted it. Bell peeled away farther to the left so that he was approaching the trailer at a diagonal and he cranked the throttle.

  The front wheel rattled the rig, but the oxen that had dragged it there remained motionless and kept it from sliding forward. The Norton rocketed up the ramp and off the edge at close to forty miles per hour. The bed of the Leyland was under the bike as it came back down to earth. The bike slammed into the crates of ore, slicing its drive belt, which ripped free like a snapped whip. Bell was jolted by the Norton’s stiff suspension but kept enough control so that he had the bike stopped before it rammed into the back of the truck’s cab.

  Moving fast, he let the motorcycle spill onto the bed and stepped up over the side of the truck and around to the passenger’s side of the cab. There was no door, so he merely reached in, grabbed a handful of the co-driver’s jacket, and heaved him from the moving vehicle. The man tumbled across the dirt road like a stringless marionette and lay there, not moving.