The Company of the Dead (13 page)

Hirohito had left three sons to rule the Eastern World. To Morgan, the potential fracas that brewed here was indicative of mounting tension between those three factions. Hadn’t Hirohito read
King Lear
?

The horned-devil faces of the samurai’s helmets clashed oddly with the machine pistols that hung from their shoulders. Angered shouts gave way to bows and apologies as the representatives of Emperor Ryuichi and his brother Hideyoshi swiftly made their peace.

Morgan crossed to Fourth Avenue, avoiding the scrutiny of soldiers who now turned their attention upon the gathering crowd. Encountering Lightholler again had been a disappointment. Time and circumstance had prevented asking the questions that burned inside him—the same questions he had wanted to ask on the centennial voyage. As far as Morgan was concerned, Lightholler was the mother lode. He carried the genetic distillation of three generations of the two families that had fuelled Morgan’s interest throughout years of historical research. In truth, he’d never imagined he would meet the man—especially under these circumstances.

But then again, who could have imagined such circumstances?

Morgan found what he was looking for in the fifth book store he visited. He emerged with his prize bundled carefully in a plastic bag under his arm.

He reached Canal Street, where the midday crowds were particularly thick, and stopped at a street corner to buy some sushi. A few businessmen stood nearby, eating their meals. He was surprised to note that a couple of them were Japanese. Try doing that on the streets of Hiroshima and you would be politely cautioned, if you were lucky. As with all empires, here at the outskirts things had grown lax.

Many of the stores were closed but the tourist trade had offered the tired street a boom. Hawkers plied their trade from makeshift booths. Spying a vacant step leading up to an abandoned shopfront, Morgan sat down heavily. He opened his own bag and slipped one of the sushi rolls into his mouth. Savouring the taste, he pulled out the book. It was a cheap paperback edition, the embossed title reading
Titanic: Calamity and Consequences
. Beneath the bold lettering was the illustration of an iceberg, its crystal facets reflecting the ill-fated ship’s approach. At the bottom of the cover was the name Darren Daniel Morgan.

He’d never liked that tawdry cover.

On the back, beneath a blurb oozing praise, was a black and white photo. The eyes the same, the hair a little longer, perhaps a little thicker. His cheeks were sallow. He’d been hungrier then. And there had been a wedding band on his curled finger.

He examined the bare fingers of his left hand. With a sigh he opened the book, turned past the acknowledgments and dedications—which he knew by heart—to the foreword. Reading his own words, he found himself mouthing the syllables, and slowly disdain crept across his face.

The book had first been published in 1999, just weeks before the discovery of the wreck. He’d thanked good fortune back then that the fruit of so many years’ labour had received such a timely release. The fact that his research had concentrated more on the far-reaching repercussions of the sinking, rather than on the event itself, did little to turn away its avid readers. The book had brought him money, a modicum of fame and—much later—the attention of Major Joseph Kennedy.

He set aside the remainder of his meal and began to read.

As the second millennium hastens toward its close, our urge to find meaning in its bloodshed and its discoveries, its dreams and disappointments, becomes all the more apparent. Everywhere one looks, from the cinema to the novel, from advertising to architecture, there is the attempt to transmute the lessons we
think
we have learnt into what we imagine is to come. The majority of these visions portray a bright future. The novels of Anne Frank, despite their evident propaganda, show a new Germany. Echoed by the provocative art of Hitler and the stirring symphonies of Karajan, they embrace the transformation of the cold Teutonic lands into a fertile expanse, from whose fecund soil will emerge a guiding light to the future.

Across the oceans, Mishima’s novels, and the films of Takeshi and Sato, mirror these sentiments. However, from their point of view it is obvious that the only joy and prosperity offered by the twenty-first century lie within the boundaries of the Greater Empire of Nippon.

While these promising futures are mutually exclusive, they reveal each culture’s preoccupation with examining the roots of its recent past before embracing the promises of a new millennium. Of more interest are those visions of a more dystopian nature. Employing the same sources and examining the same events that shaped this century, the works of Vonnegut, Barnes, Murasaki and Moore, as well as the films of Welles and Kurosawa—particularly those made after the latter’s self-imposed exile—display a startling similarity. With a vast difference in cultural ancestry, and hailing from disparate backgrounds, they portray a bleak world of discontented colonials, and empires on the point of dissolution. They suggest that all we have learnt from this century’s warfare is a better way to fight.

The dystopian view is a contemporary one, and in no small measure has the recent invention of atomics contributed to its rise. The fact that now we have the ability to cause destruction on an unforeseen and apocalyptic scale has made the world a smaller, more fragile place.

There were undercurrents of doubt as far back as 1920, however, when the world’s nations were rising from the ashes of the greatest conflict humanity has ever fought. In the shadow of the German victory and hot on the heels of the formation of the Soviet Union, Sir Wilfred Owen wrote his epic
Wasted Lands
. An elegy to the senseless loss of the world’s youth, from the fields of Flanders to the steppes of Russia, it arrived on the scene to receive scorn and vilification both sides of the ocean.

It is of interest to note that, in retrospect,
Wasted Land
s may be read as a template for the subsequent aft airs of Europe and indeed the world at large. Even in the twenties, there existed a vision of the world separating itself into two armed camps, each eyeing the other across the ocean with increasing fear and hatred.

On April 15, 1912, the
Titanic
, sailing on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, struck an iceberg and sank. On July 3, 1999, the wreck of the
Titanic
was discovered, lying in 10,000 feet of water, south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

The loss and subsequent rediscovery of the ship may be seen to form a framework for our century. And notwithstanding the passing of the years, interest in the ship has never been greater. For, then as now, the loss of the
Titanic
has become a modern-day myth to rival the Greek legends of old.
¹
Mankind’s boldest creation, setting out on her first voyage from the Old World to the New, doomed never to arrive.

The sinking of the great liner on her maiden voyage became symbolic of the struggle of minorities, ranging from the short-lived Suffragette Movement to the negroes. Religious groups used the event to respond to the claim that
Titanic
was “the ship God himself could not sink”.
²
For political groups, be they Democratic or Republican, Tory or Whig, “rearranging the deckchairs on the
Titanic
” has become common parlance for any delaying tactics that appear to serve no purpose.

Over the years the iceberg has come to represent fate, destiny, God’s will, and the evils of technology. The
Titanic
has been used to describe arrogance and foolishness, but also bravery and courage. The purpose of this work, however, is not to examine why this single event has so captured the public’s eye for almost a hundred years. That may be left for psychologists and sociologists to debate. The main goal here is to reveal how the events of the morning of April 15, 1912 may have influenced the early course of the century.

Looking back, it remains difficult to depict the magnitude of the event from our present perspective. We have since experienced the Great War, the European War, the division of France, and the numerous Wars of Japanese Expansion, including the conquest of the American Union and China. Even if we ignore other squabbles, such as the numerous battles fought between the Confederate States of America and the Mexican Empire, we confront the loss of tens of millions of lives. Thus the loss of two thousand souls on an ocean liner may seem insignificant.

Yet tales of the disaster dominated the newspapers for years. Up until the actual outbreak of hostilities in Europe, the sinking of the
Titanic
and the tribunals in America and England were the leading stories in nearly seventy per cent of the existing periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic.
³

The conflicts arising from the differing opinions held by the British and American investigations make for interesting reading today. On close examination, they bear the seeds of discontent that were to flower into the American Isolation Policy that prevented the former United States from entering the Great War on the side of the Allies.

One cannot contemplate these events clearly without considering the singular role played by Colonel John Jacob Astor during the American Tribunals. That he, as a survivor himself, might show undue bias in the proceedings was ignored at the time. It was an amazing oversight, considering that his young pregnant bride, Madeleine, was among the small number of first-class passengers lost that night. Perhaps the fact that the investigation was being held in the Astoria Lounge of the Waldorf Hotel, as well as Astor’s substantial contribution of monies to the Titanic Relief Fund, went some small way to alleviate the consciences of the senators making up the tribunal.

Before we can look to the future, we must re-evaluate our past. Our governments dream of raising rotting hulks from the ocean’s depths. They dream of sending men into space. Meanwhile, they test their weapons of mass destruction in the vast rice fields of occupied China and on the Pacific atolls of Colonial Germany.

The historian is a detective of sorts, investigating a sublime mystery. There is the Event, and the historian must sort through its causes and after-effects. He must question the motives of all the parties involved. Who has gained and who has lost? Any alibi must be thoroughly tested out. And at the end, rarely, the truth may be found.

However, by then it is invariably too late to punish the criminals.

Morgan looked up from the book to see that the crowd had thinned out. He glanced back at the pages wistfully.

“All wrong,” he said to himself. “All wrong.”

He rose from the steps.

Major Kennedy
, he thought,
I forgive you your arrogance. It has some basis. I forgive you your callousness, the choices you have to make time and again. It goes with the territory, goes with the job. It’s in your blood, for God’s sake.

He picked up the sushi’s remains and tossed them into the bag with his book. Sealing the bag in a tight knot, he cast it into an adjacent bin.

I just can’t forgive you for showing me that everything I ever knew or held dear is a lie.

_______________

1
. A comparison of the war between the gods of the Greek Pantheon, wherein Zeus and the Olympians overthrew the Titans, to the sinking of the
Titanic,
has not been lost among the more sensationalist accounts of the disaster. However, it is interesting to note that following the loss of the
Titanic
, the directors of the White Star Line chose to rename the third of its superliners
Britannic
, rather than the now auspicious title of
Gigantic.
Perhaps a further perusal of Greek mythology informed them that while the Olympians conquered the Titans, it was the Titans who conquered the Earth’s first inhabitants, the Giants.

2
. The
London Times
: April 17 and 21, 1912

3
. Statistically, the
Titanic
is the fourth most popular topic in Western literature, following Jesus, the American Civil War, and the Southern Secession. Some authors, however, choose to regard the last two subjects as a single topic.

Down at the pier, a cool breeze sauntered along the Hudson’s sluggish current. It hinted at the oil of machinery, yearned for the briny taste of ocean. Standing near the bow of the new
Titanic
, Hardas felt almost relaxed. Looking out past the massive pontoon that served as a pier for the ship and averting his eyes from the opposite shoreline, he could just about imagine he was there. Aboard the
Titanic
. The original ship.

His hands were still clammy but his breathing had settled down. Back at the brownstone, the major had said, “Locate the first officer. He’s an Abwehr operative. Fordham’s the name he goes by. Ask him if he likes Wagner.”

“The composer?”

“The composer.”

“Who the fuck likes Wagner?”

“Mention his name and our association and Fordham should start talking. We need to know how much time we have before this whole thing blows up in our faces.”

Hardas had gone straight to the Lower West Side of Manhattan. Flashing identification that confirmed him as a member of the International Maritime Commission, he’d had no trouble boarding the massive ship. One of the crewmen swiftly brought him to the first officer, hardly giving him the opportunity to take in the extravagant surroundings.

Fordham was in the gymnasium, just aft of the bridge. Here, as elsewhere aboard ship, no effort had been spared in replicating the splendour of the original
Titanic
. The walls were decorated with illuminated pictures of the ship. The various apparatus spread throughout the large room were of a bygone age. Fordham stood between a rowing machine and a complicated series of pulleys and weights, gazing at a framed map of the world. It was a map from 1912 stained heavily with the crimson of the British Empire’s holdings; criss-crossed with a network of lines showing the White Star Line’s steamship routes.