The Titanic Secret (22 page)

After about an hour, he noticed that Jonas Bauer, Voss’s heavyset companion, was easing his chair back from the table. Immediately, before the man had even stood upright, Tremayne stood up and crossed swiftly to the door of the smoking room. He walked down the first-class staircase to the half-landing, and waited there for Bauer to appear. The man could have been returning to his cabin, going out on deck for a breath of fresh air, or heading for the lavatories, and at that moment Tremayne had no idea which. He could even, in fact, have been going to find a waiter to order another round of drinks, and might not be leaving the smoking room at all.

It had just seemed like a propitious moment, which Tremayne had decided to seize; it might provide the opportunity he needed to tackle Bauer alone, out on the open deck.

He heard a door swing open on the deck above him, and immediately began climbing the staircase, as if he was just arriving on that deck. When he reached the Promenade Deck, he saw that the door on the port side of the lobby, which gave access to the open deck, was just closing, and he immediately strode across to it and stepped outside.

As he did so, he almost walked into two people – a man and a woman – who were taking a late-night stroll in the open air. Tremayne apologized, stepped around them, and walked across to the rail that marked the side of the ship. If there were witnesses on deck, he knew he couldn’t act.

He glanced ahead, and saw a large man walking away from him along the deck towards the nearest lavatories. He didn’t know for certain that it was Jonas Bauer, but it was probable that the figure was the Prussian banker. He would have to wait until the man returned and went back towards the smoking room, and hope that then the coast would be clear.

Tremayne glanced down at the black waters of the Atlantic far below, the wake caused by the hull of the ship a constantly changing, foaming white shape against the darkness of the sea; then up towards the heavens. He wasn’t a religious man, but just for an instant he was tempted to ask God for forgiveness for what he was about to do.

He felt in his pocket for the cosh, ensuring that it wouldn’t snag when he pulled it out, checked that his pistol was secure in his other pocket, and then glanced around again. The couple he’d seen had now moved out of sight, and were presumably continuing their perambulations along the starboard side of the ship.

He looked back, to where the dark figure had vanished a couple of minutes earlier, but for the moment the deck was empty.

Then he saw a sudden movement in the shadows ahead of him, and a man appeared. But he was obviously not Jonas Bauer. His body was the wrong shape. This man appeared to be strong and athletic rather than corpulent. It looked as if he was wearing a dark suit. And then, as he moved into the glow cast by the deck lights, Tremayne was finally able to see his face.

He knew he had never seen him before, but even so Tremayne had no doubt about his identity. It was one of Voss’s bodyguards, and the smile plastered across his lips provided a stark contrast to the gleaming steel of the knife which he held in his right hand.

12 April 1912
RMS
Titanic

For an instant, Tremayne simply wondered what had gone wrong. How had Voss realized why he was on the ship? Because this was clearly not some opportunistic attempted robbery being carried out by a thug on a lone and vulnerable passenger. He and Maria had obviously made some mistake, and had been identified for what they were. And this was Voss’s idea of a permanent solution.

Now he saw that Bauer’s departure from the smoking room was simply a clever ruse, something to entice him out onto the open deck, where the bodyguard would be waiting. Bauer was probably already back in the smoking room, sitting down at his table and acting as if nothing had happened.

Then he sensed movement over to his right, and saw a second figure approaching. Another powerfully built man, almost a clone of the first. Another of Voss’s bodyguards, he presumed. He, too, was carrying a knife.

Tremayne knew he had the Browning pistol in his pocket, but he also knew that the suppressor for the weapon was locked away in his portmanteau in the stateroom. If he fired the weapon without the silencer, it would alert everybody on the Promenade Deck of the ship, whether they were outside walking on the open deck or in one of the first-class public rooms. And if that happened, there would be no chance of completing the assignment.

Somehow, he had to finish this without firing a shot. He knew the odds were stacked against him: two men with knives should be more than a match for one man – for any man – whose only usable weapon was a cosh.

But Tremayne wasn’t just any man. He’d operated in some of the roughest and most dangerous cities in the world, and he was no stranger to street fighting. He’d learned his trade in the back-streets of London’s East End and the alleyways of Hamburg, and had suffered more than his fair share of unarmed combat courses since Mansfield Cumming had recruited him. And all those forms of brutal, no holds barred, hand-to-hand combat did have some rules, basic though they were. Or, to be exact, it had one very important rule: if you were going to fight, you hit first, you hit hard, and you kept on hitting.

The trouble was, Tremayne guessed that the two men, who were even then trying to crowd him towards the guard rail at the side of the ship, had probably been educated in the same way, and had learned the same hard lessons.

He slid his hand in his pocket, slipped his wrist through the loop of the cosh and eased it out, covering the end of it with his fingers so that it would remain out of sight for as long as possible.

The man on his right was bulkier, and a fraction closer than the first man he’d seen. That was another unwritten rule of street fighting – you always picked the biggest opponent and went for him first – so that was exactly what Tremayne did. He dropped the cosh so that it extended below his hand, grasped the leather handle tightly and took two quick steps straight towards the man.

His opponent’s face registered surprise. Maybe he’d been expecting Tremayne to stand there and wait until they got close enough to stick their knives in him and then throw him over the side. Then he grinned and drew back his right arm, his hand gripping the knife with the cutting edge of the blade facing upwards, the way an experienced knife fighter would hold his weapon.

He lunged forward, covering the remaining few feet between him and Tremayne in a rush, his knife stabbing towards his victim’s stomach in a savage arc.

But the blow never connected. The bodyguard had telegraphed his actions, and when he reached the spot where Tremayne had been standing, all his knife cut was the empty air.

At the last possible moment, Tremayne danced sideways, to the right and away from the blade. At the same instant, he powered his right arm upwards, towards his attacker’s face, and the lead-filled cosh smashed into the man’s jaw, sending him reeling backwards.

That wasn’t what Tremayne had been intending, and he sighed in irritation. He’d been aiming the cosh at the bodyguard’s nose, because a hard uppercut delivered to the end of the nose was normally a killing blow, splintering the fairly fragile nasal bones and driving them up and backwards into the brain.

The bodyguard tumbled to the deck, the knife dropping from his hand. Tremayne knew that he was only dazed, not out of the fight. Not by a long way. But there was nothing he could do to finish him off, because the other man was already stepping forward. And after what he’d just seen, he was moving more cautiously.

The bodyguard feinted, stabbing his weapon towards Tremayne, aiming low, at the soft tissue below the rib cage. Not committed attacks, just probes to see how his intended victim would react.

Tremayne knew the steps of this particular dance very well, knew that every pace he took backwards, avoiding the stabbing blade, would be taking him closer to the guard rail and closer to a position from which he wouldn’t be able to escape. He’d be pinned there, and only then would his attacker step forward and deliver a lethal blow. At all costs, he had to avoid that. And he had to finish this soon, because he could see that the other bodyguard was already getting to his feet and rubbing his jaw, clearly still dazed but already looking around for his knife.

His attacker lunged again, and again Tremayne moved. But this time he didn’t step backwards, but sideways, to his right. And as he did so he lifted his cosh and swung it in a vicious horizontal arc, the head of the weapon smashing into the bodyguard’s left side. Delivered accurately, a blow like that could crack ribs, but the man was wearing a heavy jacket which would help protect him. Even so, it would hurt.

The man howled in pain, a yell he quickly muffled. Like Tremayne, he also had no wish to attract witnesses to what was going on. He whirled round, lunging powerfully with his knife, but again his victim stepped sideways and the blade whistled harmlessly through the air.

The stabbing blow had unbalanced the bodyguard, and Tremayne seized the minimal advantage that offered. He swung the cosh again, this time driving the weapon down hard towards the man’s left upper arm, aiming to break the bone. But even as he swung his weapon, the bodyguard twisted away, and the blow never landed.

The dynamics of the fight subtly changed at that moment. For the first time since the two men had confronted Tremayne, it was they who were retreating, not him. As the bodyguard stepped away, drawing back his arm for another strike, Tremayne swung the cosh again, and this time the blow landed precisely where he was aiming it.

As the man’s right arm drove forward, the blade glinting in the deck lights, Tremayne stepped close to his attacker, bringing the cosh down with every ounce of strength that he could muster. The head of the weapon connected violently with the man’s arm just above his wrist, and Tremayne clearly heard the crack as the bone shattered.

The knife fell from the bodyguard’s hand and dropped to the deck, and this time the man’s scream of pain was loud and penetrating. Instinctively, he clutched at his wrist with his left hand, to try to ease the pain. Tremayne stepped back and swung the cosh once more, aiming the weapon at the back of the bodyguard’s head. It connected with a solid thump, and instantly the man fell senseless to the deck.

Tremayne turned quickly towards the spot where he’d last seen the other man, but he wasn’t quite quick enough. The second bodyguard had recovered both his knife and his senses and, as Tremayne turned, he lunged forward, the blade of his knife aiming straight for his victim’s chest.

The lethally sharp blade ripped through Tremayne’s shirt and he felt a sudden agonising pain as the knife slammed into his ribs.

12 April 1912
RMS
Titanic

Tremayne swayed backwards, trying desperately to move out of range as the man drew back his arm for a second, and final, stab.

But as his attacker lunged forward again, Tremayne knocked the man’s knife hand to one side, and reacted faster. He stepped forward and drove his left fist into the bodyguard’s stomach, knocking the breath from his body. Simultaneously he lifted the cosh high above his head and, as the bodyguard involuntarily bent forward, Tremayne brought the weapon crashing down onto the top of the man’s skull. Like his partner, he too crashed down to the deck, unconscious.

Tremayne looked around, but the Promenade Deck was still mercifully empty of any passengers or crew. He didn’t hesitate. He slid the cosh back into his pocket and grabbed the closest bodyguard around the shoulders. He struggled to drag the unconscious man to the rail, bent him forward over it and then simply lifted his legs. The bulky figure tumbled over the side of the ship and plummeted down into the Atlantic far below.

The second man was bigger and heavier, but Tremayne was strong and in a matter of seconds he, too, had disappeared from sight over the rail. Tremayne hadn’t heard a splash as either man entered the water, because the Atlantic Ocean was a long way below the deck he was standing on, and he doubted if anyone else on the ship would have heard anything. Both of his victims would still have been unconscious when they hit the water, and would probably drown in a matter of minutes, but frankly Tremayne didn’t care whether they recovered consciousness or not. They’d try to kill him and failed and, whatever happened to them, they were no longer his concern.

He looked around the deck again, found the two knives which the men had been carrying, and tossed one of them over the side rail as well. But he slipped the other knife into his pocket, because he knew he was going to need it. Only then did he open his jacket and look down at the wound on his right side. His shirt was soaked red with blood, but his probing fingers found no sign of a penetrating wound, only the ragged gash where the blade had opened up his skin.

Holding his hand over the wound to try to staunch the bleeding and conceal it from any passengers he might meet, Tremayne walked on and entered the superstructure by the forward first-class staircase, then strode down the port-side corridor. Almost at the end, he turned right into the cross passage and then right again into the gentlemen’s lavatory. He locked the door and immediately washed his hands. Then he slipped out of his jacket, taking care not to get any more blood on the material, and hung it up. Next he peeled off his shirt, wincing slightly as the movement aggravated his wound, and looked carefully at his injury. Like many superficial wounds, it had bled a great deal, and looked a lot worse than it really was. He guessed it would hurt, hurt a lot, for a few days, but would not require medical treatment. Just strapping it up would be enough, but that would have to wait until he got back to the stateroom, where Maria could help him.

In the meantime, he washed the wound with warm water, which started some fresh bleeding, then took a towel and wrapped it around his torso. He took a second towel, removed the bodyguard’s knife from his jacket pocket, and cut it into strips, which he bound around the first towel to hold it in place. That should stop any further bleeding, at least for a short while.