The Titanic Secret (26 page)

‘You mean you want me to do the killings?’ Maria asked.

Tremayne shook his head. ‘No. What I was thinking about was using you as a decoy, or maybe as a lure, putting you in a situation where you could persuade one of the men to drop his guard. Then I can step in and take care of him in a permanent fashion.’

Maria didn’t look convinced. ‘I’m not entirely sure you’ve thought this through,’ she said. ‘Let’s just suppose I fluttered my eyelashes at Bauer – which is not something I’d normally contemplate doing in even my worst nightmares – and managed to persuade him to follow me down some dark corridor so that you could bash him on the head and then throw him over the side. That might work once but, even if I changed my appearance with a wig or something, and I do actually have a couple with me, I can’t see all of them falling for it, one after the other, and certainly not Voss. We need to eliminate all three of them, not just one or two, and they’re almost always together, so how could we split one off?’

‘We think the same way,’ Tremayne said, ‘and as I see it there are only two possibilities now. We could try and tackle them all at once, by waiting until the smoking room is empty and then simply shooting them and getting rid of our weapons immediately, but that situation might never present itself.’

‘I’d be amazed if it did,’ Maria commented. ‘And the other option?’

‘What I was about to suggest. We hit them the only time when we can be certain they’ll be alone: in their staterooms. You appear at the door, maybe dressed as a stewardess, and either ask them to go with you to the Purser’s Office or somewhere, or just persuade them to let you inside to check something. Either way, once they’ve dropped their guard, they’ll be vulnerable.’

Maria nodded slowly, then sighed.

‘What is it?’ Tremayne asked.

‘I know this is going to sound stupid, but this all feels a bit unsporting, almost. I mean, I know what these three men are trying to do, and I absolutely agree that they have to be stopped. But to trick them into letting me inside their cabins, and then for you to burst in and knife them or whatever, it’s like shooting a sitting bird. It’s just not fair.’

‘They are armed,’ Tremayne pointed out. ‘It’s not as if they’re three defenceless victims. Even if I did burst into their cabin, there’s no guarantee I wouldn’t come off worse.’

‘I know that, Alex, I do know that, but it still leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.’

13 April 1912
London

One of the problems that Mansfield Cumming was facing was the complete lack of any information about what was happening on board the
Titanic
. Or, to be absolutely accurate, he was still getting updates from his contact at the White Star Line headquarters about the ship’s position, heading, speed and so on, which he was still religiously plotting on the North Atlantic chart in his office. He was also receiving a daily summary of information relating to events on board the ship, but all of this information was essentially routine, and that was now beginning to concern him, because the lack of any reports of missing passengers or unexplained deaths suggested that Tremayne had so far failed to carry out any part of his mission. Cumming had hoped that by now his agents would have eliminated at least one of their three targets.

Or, if they had achieved it, they must have managed it in such a way that nobody on the ship had any knowledge of it, which seemed unlikely at best. The absence of three first-class passengers would surely have been remarked on by somebody, and that would eventually have filtered up the chain of command to the captain, and hence would have been transmitted to the company.

Cumming, of course, had his backup plan in case the mission on board the ship failed for any reason, but he had hoped that he would not have needed to reveal details of it to Tremayne and Maria Weston; it really was a drastic solution, an absolute plan of last resort, which he had believed all along he would never have to use, and that he would have been able to keep secret for all time. But he was also conscious that time was passing, and that if Tremayne’s mission didn’t succeed in the very near future, he would have absolutely no option but to implement that plan.

With the greatest possible reluctance, Cumming took a new sheet of paper and began composing another message to be sent to the
Titanic
, which he again marked ‘Most Urgent’, and had it sent by the fastest possible method to the ship.

Then all he could do was wait for Tremayne’s response.

13 April 1912
RMS
Titanic

Tremayne and Maria were still in their stateroom when there was a knock on the door. In one swift movement, Maria opened her handbag, extracted her Browning pistol and stood up, hiding the weapon behind her back. Tremayne checked that he was clear of her line of fire, then stepped across to the door.

‘Who is it?’ he asked.

The reply was slightly muffled, but clear enough. ‘I have a message for you, Mr Maitland, sir.’

‘One of the pageboys,’ Tremayne said, taking his own pistol out of his pocket and tucking it into the rear waistband of his trousers, where it would be easier to reach if he was wrong about the identity of the person standing on the other side of the door. Then he released the bolt and eased the door open a few inches.

Standing in the corridor outside was one of the pageboys, clutching another white envelope, which he handed over, and then walked away. Tremayne closed and locked the door again, then tore open the flap on the envelope and removed the message that was inside.

‘More orders or changes,’ he muttered, then sat down and began the decoding process.

The message was long, and Tremayne worked on it for about twenty minutes before he was able to read the plain text original. Then he read it again, the colour draining from his face as he did so.

‘This is madness,’ he said, ‘sheer madness.’

‘What?’ Maria demanded.

‘I think Cumming has literally gone mad.’ Tremayne turned in his chair at the occasional table and looked across at Maria. ‘First of all, he has specifically instructed me not to divulge the contents of this message to you.’

‘So why are you telling me?’ Maria asked.

‘Because I don’t work that way. We’re a team, and that means we share the risks and the rewards, and especially we share information. I’m not prepared to keep any secrets from you, and I would hope that you would have the same attitude. We’re in this together, so what I know, you know.’

Maria nodded. ‘I can’t work any other way,’ she agreed.

‘Exactly.’ Tremayne glanced back at the decoded message in his notebook, then looked over at Maria again. ‘You remember one of his earlier instructions, when he told us we had to send a particular message from the ship once we’d completed the operation?’

Maria nodded.

‘Do you know why he wanted that message sent?’

‘Yes. It seemed fairly obvious. It was so that he could cancel whatever reception committee he was organizing to meet Voss and the other two men in New York after the ship docked there, assuming that we hadn’t managed to kill them on the ship.’

Tremayne nodded. ‘That’s exactly what I thought as well, but we were both wrong. According to this message, Mansfield Cumming has put a rather more brutal solution in place. He claims that he has the full support of the British government, and that the Prime Minister has personally agreed to the course of action he has arranged. Apparently, they all believe that the threat posed by Voss and the other two men is so great that almost any sacrifice is worth making to prevent this alliance from being achieved. They are certain that if America and Germany do join together, a devastating war will start within a matter of months, and will probably involve most of the countries of the world as the British Empire fights for its very survival. There’s also the matter of the counterfeit printing plates and the special paper in the crates in the hold, which Cumming is adamant should not be allowed to reach New York to avoid a massive run on the pound starting as soon as the fake currency hits the streets.’

‘But we knew all that. That’s why we’re here.’

Tremayne nodded. ‘I know. I’m just telling you what the message says. Cumming finishes that section with a sentence which I think I’ll remember for the rest of my life. He says: “In this perilous situation we must act for the greater good of the greatest number.” He’s trying to justify the sacrifice of a small number of people against the possible death toll that might result if war does break out.’

‘I know. Those three Prussian conspirators,’ Maria said.

But Tremayne shook his head. ‘No, not just the three Prussians. If we don’t get a message to him by twenty-two hundred hours tomorrow, stating that we’ve completed this operation, orders will be issued to a British submarine to sink this ship using torpedoes.’

‘What? He can’t do that! We’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The loss of life would be catastrophic.’

Her voice died away as she realized that that was precisely why Cumming had chosen the date and time. If the
Titanic
was to sink on this voyage, it had to be in deep water, to prevent the wreckage ever being recovered and showing what had caused the catastrophe, and to ensure the maximum possible loss of life, including the three Prussians.

‘Oh, dear God,’ she muttered. ‘He’s serious, isn’t he?’

‘He’s very serious,’ Tremayne replied. ‘He’s prepared to sacrifice the lives of everyone on this ship – over two thousand people – against the possible casualties in a war that might never happen.’

‘And that includes us,’ Maria said, in a small voice.

For a few moments neither of them spoke, alone with their thoughts. Then Maria broke the silence.

‘We could send the message anyway, and argue about it later,’ she suggested. ‘I refuse to have the deaths of two thousand people on my conscience.’

Tremayne shook his head. ‘I know Mansfield Cumming. I’ve known him for years. He’ll have some kind of a checking mechanism in place. He’ll have a contact in the White Star Line management who would signal the ship and tell them to confirm the whereabouts of Voss, Bauer and Kortig, and if any of the three are still on board, Cumming will know that we failed. And then he’ll authorize the submarine to attack.’

‘So what do we do, then?’

‘As I see it,’ Tremayne replied grimly, ‘the only thing we can do is exactly what he told us to do in the first place. We don’t have a choice. We either kill those three men – somehow – or we’ll be complicit in the deaths of every man, woman and child on board this liner. And, like you, I couldn’t live with that on my conscience.’

13 April 1912
HMS
D4

The good news, as far as the crew of the submarine were concerned, was that the new course the boat was steering was almost directly into the swell which was still running from the south-west. The result was that the corkscrewing motion of the submarine had virtually stopped, and the boat was now simply pitching up and down as the vessel rode over the waves. Although it was still quite uncomfortable – the submarine displaced less than 500 tons on the surface, and was much smaller than most craft that ventured out into the major oceans of the world – the pitching was much easier to cope with.

Lieutenant Hutchinson had also been able to order a slight increase in speed, only another knot, but it would mean that over the next twenty-four hours, at the end of which the boat had been ordered to be in position, he would have covered an additional twenty-four miles, the equivalent of almost two and a half hours’ steaming at normal cruising speed. That would act as a slight buffer in the event of the weather worsening or the sea state increasing, either of which could result in a reduction in speed.

But if all went well, and the weather held, it looked as if the submarine would reach the designated rendezvous position at least two hours ahead of time: a slim enough margin, but a margin nevertheless.

And now it was time for the other preparations to be made, preparations which had been specified in exhaustive detail in the sealed and classified orders Hutchinson had been given. He took a last look round at the empty horizon, now barely visible in the gathering dusk, and clattered down the metal ladder to the control room. There, he checked that all the instruments were reading correctly, then beckoned to the First Lieutenant and led him into his cabin.

‘I know this has been a pretty dammed strange exercise so far, Bill, but I think up to now we’ve acquitted ourselves fairly well. The two refuelling sessions went quite smoothly, and I think we’ve probably proved the point for their Lordships in the Admiralty. We’ve shown that a submarine can successfully operate a long way outside coastal waters, as long as it’s properly supported, as we’ve been. I think we might have surprised a few people, actually.’

William Evans smiled. He, too, had been pleased – and, in truth, a little surprised – at how reliable the submarine had turned out to be. The new Vickers diesel engines fitted in the D-Class boats were proving to be a whole lot more reliable, and an awful lot safer, than the petrol units fitted in the older C-Class submarines. Yes, the fuel didn’t smell very good, but at least there was no chance of the boat filling with highly flammable fumes that could be ignited by the slightest spark, with devastating consequences. Diesel engines, it seemed to him, definitely represented the road ahead, and not just for submarines.

‘I agree, sir. I think we’ve done very well, better than I expected, certainly. But I won’t be sorry when we get the order to turn back and head for home. And I know the men feel exactly the same.’

Hutchinson nodded. ‘That shouldn’t be too long now,’ he replied, ‘but it’s possible that we’ll still have one more evolution left to perform before we turn around. I won’t know for certain until I get another signal from the Admiralty, but we might be doing a live firing on a target when we get to the rendezvous position, and we need to get the preparations underway now, just in case. Tell the weapon artificers to prepare two torpedoes and then load both the bow tubes ready for firing.’