The Company of the Dead (80 page)

His history—like any child’s primer—focused on the wars, disasters and sweeping social movements that had slashed across the twentieth century; the contest between socialism and monarchy, despotism and freedom. He touched briefly on the advances. Mentioning the stratolites, though, he felt a shudder run through his body, recalling what those great behemoths had wrought. Despite the presence of Doc’s gun, cradled in his lap, the occasion exhibited all the civility of a college tutorial.

Kennedy, Doc and Wells remained silent throughout the dissertation.

Kennedy spoke up now, saying, “Why don’t you tell us the way things are supposed to be, Doctor Wells, and why you set about changing them?”

Wells had polished off two glasses of whisky during the discourse and his reply was marred by a slight slur. “Joseph Robard Kennedy,” he said, trialling the name. “Who was your father?”

“Richard Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

“And his father?”

“Joseph Patrick Kennedy.”

“Which one?” Wells sounded agitated now.

Kennedy replied, “I know that a John F Kennedy died in your world. In this world. Was he running for president?”

Wells said, “He
was
the president. He was assassinated at Dealey Plaza.”

“In 1963?”

Wells nodded.

“That would be my great-uncle.”

“I never heard of any Joseph Robard Kennedy in my world,” Wells said.

Kennedy said, “My grandfather was John F Kennedy’s older brother.”

“Ah. Your grandfather was part of a bomber crew. He died childless over Germany during the war. What else would you like to know?”

“He’s lying,” Gershon said. “I say we just get this over with and kill him now.”

Wells said, “It’s no lie.”

Morgan felt the truth of his words. Kennedy’s face, set in despair, mirrored the sentiment.

“How did you find that?” Wells asked. He pointed at the sea-soiled journal without touching it.

“We found it here,” Kennedy said. His voice had become a cold monotone. He was cutting to the chase. “Where you left it, in the rotting corpse of this ship.”

Morgan watched Doc finger the pistol’s grip.

“Why did you do that, Doctor Wells?” Kennedy asked. “Why did you sink the ship and then leave the record of your crime in its belly? Do you make a habit of tempting fate?”

“I sank the ship?” Wells seemed incredulous now.

“This is the
Titanic
,” Morgan said. “With a length of eight-hundred-and-eighty-two feet and a displacement of sixty-six thousand tons, she is the grandest creation of mankind to date. Her captain is renowned worldwide. She is described as being virtually unsinkable, yet she strikes an iceberg on her maiden voyage with a loss of two thousand lives. Thing is, she’s been visited by a time traveller. A time traveller with an agenda that includes the date of the assassination of the archduke of the Austro– Hungarian empire. Tell me, Doctor, what are we supposed to think? That you came here for a joyride?”

Wells stared at him, aghast.

“As a consequence of your actions, a bitter falling-out between America and England circumvents an alliance which might have won the Great War. The rest is a nightmare.”

Kennedy said, “What we’d like to know is how you did it.”

“This is a nightmare.” Wells’ mouth was open, his eyes two pools of dread.

“Frankly, I don’t give a shit.” Doc raised the pistol.

Kennedy placed a hand on the barrel, guiding it gently away. Morgan wondered if sometime in the afternoon they’d arranged this little game of good cop, bad cop.

“One thing about you is familiar,” Wells said to Doc.

Doc eyed him curiously.

“I don’t know how or why you got involved in all this, but you’re as trapped by Kennedy as you ever were by Jenkins. You were my friend and it breaks my fucking heart, so why don’t you just do it. Pull the fucking trigger.”

Doc gave Kennedy a look and put the pistol under his coat.

Kennedy turned and said, “How and why, Doctor?”

Wells glanced at the clock. It was eleven-thirty. “In my world, in forty-eight hours and ten minutes, we strike an iceberg. It’s a glancing blow along the starboard side. A gash, three hundred feet long, is carved, taking out the first four compartments and the forward boiler room. She takes on fifteen feet of water in the first ten minutes. She’s under by two-twenty.”

Kennedy and Doc turned to Morgan.

Morgan said, “She strikes at 3 a.m. Monday morning. Port side.”

“Is it so unthinkable?” Wells asked. “She was travelling fast through an ice field. There was no moon, no wind, and no fucking binoculars in the crow’s nest. The wonder is that she didn’t strike anything sooner.” He drained the remains of his glass and slammed it on the table. “I’m here to avert all that. If there’s any truth to your words, the only thing you can accuse me of is failing at my task.”

“What about Sarajevo?” Kennedy asked. “What about your lists?”

“I’m a surgeon, damn it, not a butcher.”

Morgan looked at Kennedy. “What do we do now, Major?”

Most of the running lights had been turned off for the night. The ship cast a dim glimmer on the black waters. It was after two o’clock in the morning.

If there was anything to Wells’ account, two days would see her foundering right about now. He’d outlined the fate of the ship, his story scattered with anecdotes that had a haunting resonance with the tale Kennedy had known. The Strauses leaving together for one final embrace. Ben Guggenheim and his valet standing on the deck in evening wear. Ismay fleeing in an undermanned lifeboat, and Hartley’s band playing till the last.

Resigned to his captivity, Wells had finally retired to a bedroom.

Kennedy, Doc and Morgan faced one another across the sitting room.

“What do you make of it?” Kennedy asked softly.

Morgan said, “The journal could be interpreted to support Wells’ claim.”

Doc spoke for the first time since putting away his gun. “No decent criminal ever views his act as a crime. Take a look around you.” His gesture included the cabin and everything beyond. The whole ship was held in his embrace. “She has more lookouts than any other vessel currently at sea. She’s built like a brick shit-house. I don’t see it playing out that way. I just don’t buy it.”

“A lot of people won’t,” Morgan said solemnly. “Even with the last of the lifeboats putting out to sea.”

Every passing moment lent more truth to Wells’ assertion. Kennedy found it increasingly difficult to reconcile the broken figure of the surgeon with the mastermind his thoughts had crafted from the journal. Had the
Titanic
made it to New York, her arrival would barely rate a postscript to the events preceding the Great War. The sheer wealth of information at Wells’ fingertips, the disposition of the ships in the region, the list of passengers, dead or alive, spoke of some great calamity befalling the ship. That, or the entire journal was a tissue of lies, the fabrication of a maniac, hidden behind Wells’ dull eyes.

But Wells wasn’t Webster. He wasn’t Kennedy. His scheme, slapdash and half-formed, would be the reaction to a crisis in progress. It lacked the refinement of the chess master or the statesman. It was the slash of the knife rather than the cool calculation of prevention. And Kennedy had misread it all.

Had he ever been so blind?

Morgan said, “Astor is the problem.”

“I was thinking along those lines myself,” Kennedy replied. “Let’s take Wells at his word for the moment. According to him, none of the lifeboats went down with the ship, and it was the
Carpathia
, rather than the
Californian
, that arrived first. There were more survivors too. Astor’s wife makes it, and he isn’t around to antagonise the tribunals.”

“Where are you going with this, Major?” Doc asked.

“I’m not sure. We need to know what he plans on doing.”

“So you believe him?” Morgan asked.

Kennedy nodded slowly.

“We know he hasn’t intervened yet,” Doc said. “Whatever he plans on doing is just a half-assed measure if it only buys the ship three hours.” He looked over at the bedroom entrance. “We just need to keep him holed up here for the next two days and it’s a moot point.”

“Followed by a mad rush to the lifeboats,” Morgan added dully.

“As opposed to?” Kennedy ventured.

“There are
three
of us here now,” Morgan said. “Maybe we can get it right this time.”

“Getting it right,” Kennedy said pointedly, “entails letting history take its course.”

Morgan shook his head. “I know what Patricia told you, Joseph, and I appreciate your faith in Tecumseh, but they didn’t know that Wells was trying to
save
the ship. We can make a difference here.”

“Difference is what condemned our world, Darren. We’re not here to judge the form of Wells’ intervention. We’re here to stop it cold.”

“But we’re already intervening,” Morgan said. “Look at the divergence in the journals.”

“I can’t explain that. I don’t know if it points to our success or failure. But you were happy enough to stop Wells when you thought he was the villain.”

“That was when we were trying to save two thousand people, not consign them to the bottom of the Atlantic.”

“We’re not here to save a ship, Darren. We’re here to correct an imbalance. I agree with Doc. We hold Wells under house arrest till midnight of the fourteenth.”

“I need to think about this,” Morgan said.

Doc said, “I’m just hoping that we read it right all along. I’m hoping we get to joke about this on Monday morning.”

Kennedy tried to mask the bleakness in his reply. “Here’s your chance to think up some one-liners. You’re on first watch.” He rose from his seat with a sigh and beckoned to Morgan. They both made for the door. He turned to Doc and said, “Please, try not to shoot him.”

The
Titanic
was a catacomb. They crept along the passageway as if heavier steps might set the great ship downwards in its first spiral into the depths. Kennedy ignored Morgan’s hushed protests all the way back to the cabin.

Morgan cornered him in the suite. “Joseph, I can’t believe that all this has to pass when we have the power to stop it.”

“You’re thinking like Wells now,” Kennedy replied shortly. “We might have the power, but we don’t have the right.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Morgan pressed. “None of us did. You were surrounded by conspirators from go to woe. You couldn’t have suspected that Wells’ motives were any purer than anyone else we’d dealt with.”

“This isn’t about me, Darren.”

“There are women here. Children. Would you consign them to a death sentence? What gives you
that
right?”

Kennedy emptied his pockets. He placed the Colt and the journal on the mantle and removed his coat. “I didn’t tell you everything Patricia told me.”

Morgan eyed him darkly and said, “Go on.”

“We’ve been here before. Done all this before.”

“Done this how?”

“Time and again, we’ve journeyed back here, over and over, and each time we’ve stopped him. There are subtle variations, but the consequences remain unchanged.”

“How can you know this?”

“Tecumseh knows this. He told Patricia.”

“You can’t believe that.”

“I do. I believe it now more than ever. We stop him. Maybe we kill him, maybe we dissuade him, but each time we get it wrong and reality doubles back on itself. A double-stranded helix, stretched tight between our intrusions. And it’s old, Darren, old beyond its years. It won’t endure another playback. It’s going to give.

“That’s the knowledge my ghost dancers died for. Those experiences with the carapace, the ones we dared not share with each other, weren’t delusions. They weren’t premonitions. They were scraps of memory, drawn from our previous attempts. They were warnings.”

“No,” Morgan said. “I don’t believe you.”

“Doc tells me that sometimes he hears Lightholler talking to him. He thinks it’s guilt. He thinks he could have saved him in the desert. I haven’t the heart to tell him that he’s talking to an echo. You see, sometimes Lightholler
is
here with us.” Kennedy threw him a penetrating look. “Sometimes it’s David. Never Patricia, not till now.”

“What does she have to do with this?”

“I don’t know. She told me she was the messenger.”

“Some fucking message. How are we supposed to get it right?”

“By holding Wells back; by not joining his foolish crusade.”

“
Jesus
, Joseph, I don’t know if I can just stand back and watch this.”

“I get the feeling that’s always our problem. You’re a historian, Darren. Standing back and watching is what you do best. If I entertain any doubts about your ability to perform that role...” His voice faded to nothing. He began to unbutton his shirt. “I’m turning in. We’ll talk about it in the morning.” He walked into the bedroom.

Morgan crossed over to the table. A decanter sat by three empty glasses. He hadn’t had a drink since arriving in the desert. He poured himself a finger of bourbon, walked over to the mantle and placed it next to the journal. He stared at the Colt, shivering. The night had grown colder.

If they stopped the
Titanic
from sinking, Wells would have no reason to come back here. The Edwardian decline, instead of gasping with the ship, might be preserved a little longer. The world might follow its path to a war that found its causes in the century’s birth, but without any of the acrimony between America and England. Was that so bad?

Yet the
Titanic
’s loss—in both worlds—had changed maritime rules forever. Patrols would be established to watch the sea lanes for ice. Wireless communications would be maintained at the highest available standards. Hubris, battered by Nemesis, would herald a new era and there would be a lifeboat for everyone, forever more. Was that worth fifteen hundred souls?

He took the glass and knocked on Kennedy’s door. It swung open to reveal him sitting upright on the bed. He had a gun in his hand.