The Titanic Secret (29 page)

Even as he did so, Tremayne was already swinging his right arm down and forward with all the strength he possessed. At precisely the right moment, he released his grip on the blade of the stiletto and the knife hissed through the air, a spinning sliver of death.

The tip of the blade slammed into the bodyguard’s chest, the lethally sharp point burying itself three or four inches deep, and the force of the impact knocking the man backwards off his feet. He tumbled to the ground, the pistol falling from his grasp as he clutched desperately at the knife.

Tremayne had started moving the instant the stiletto left his hand, and almost before the bodyguard had hit the deck, he was on him. He wrenched the knife out of the wound, and stared down at the man’s face.

‘You know your trouble, Vincent?’ he said. ‘You talk too much.’

And with a single powerful blow, he drove the stiletto into the underside of the bodyguard’s jaw, the blade slamming through the bone and tissue to lodge deep in the man’s brain. It was a killing blow, and in moments the light went out from his eyes and he stopped breathing.

Tremayne pulled out the stiletto, wiped off the blood and tissue from the blade on the bodyguard’s jacket, and slid the weapon back into the sheath. Then he stepped back, picked up the pistol Vincent had dropped, and checked to ensure that there was nobody in sight on the deck. It appeared to be deserted, so Tremayne swiftly searched the pockets of the bodyguard’s suit and removed a suppressor and two spare magazines for the weapon, both fully charged. He slid them into his own jacket pocket, then dragged the dead man across to the guard rail. Very conscious of the knife wound he had sustained in his previous encounter, Tremayne carefully propped the body against the rail, then dragged it up until the man’s waist was level with the top. Then he reached down, grabbed his ankles and simply lifted. In an instant the body tumbled out of sight, lost for ever in the darkness.

Tremayne took a moment to examine the pistol he’d taken from the bodyguard. It looked like a Browning 1903, the forerunner of the Model 1910 which he’d been issued with, but when he looked more closely he realized it was the American version of the same pistol, manufactured in the United States by Colt.

He released the magazine, checked that it was fully loaded, and replaced it in the butt of the weapon. Then he screwed on the suppressor, chambered a round, and headed back towards the staircase.

Voss would be expecting somebody to come back from the Promenade Deck, and Tremayne didn’t want to disappoint him.

14 April 1912
RMS
Titanic

Tremayne stepped inside the superstructure, walked over to the top of the first-class staircase, and for a few seconds just stood there, listening.

He heard nothing, no voices, no footsteps. He guessed that meant they were all still in the corridor beside Kortig’s stateroom, on the other side of the internal door in the staircase lobby that marked the end of the passage. Tremayne again checked that the Colt pistol was ready to fire, and began descending the staircase, one step at a time, listening out for any sounds from the deck below.

He reached the lobby without incident. Turning left at the bottom of the staircase would take him back the way he had come, but obviously he wasn’t going to retrace the route he had followed with Vincent, because the moment he stepped through the doorway, he guessed that Voss would simply shoot him down. Instead, he turned right, towards Bauer’s stateroom. That way, he could approach the men using one of the cross passages, which would give him the element of surprise. Tremayne knew that he was still outnumbered and outgunned, and any slight advantage he could find was hugely valuable.

He opened the door at the end of the passageway as quietly as he could, and looked down it. It appeared to be empty, and what puzzled him was that he couldn’t hear even the slightest sound of voices, when he was only a matter of feet from where he had last seen Voss and Kortig.

Tremayne stepped into the corridor and eased the door closed behind him. Then he walked forward until he reached the end of the first cross passage. He looked in both directions, checking that nobody was approaching him from behind or in front, then took a quick glance down the cross passage itself. It was empty, and that was where he had last seen Maria and the bodyguard who had grabbed her. That meant they must have moved, but possibly only as far as the longitudinal passage that ran down the starboard side of the ship, the one opposite to the corridor Tremayne was standing in.

He knew there was another cross passage a few yards further down. He took another look all round him, then moved quickly down the corridor, checked the cross passage, and walked down it. At the end, where it linked with the starboard longitudinal passage, he stopped before looking in both directions.

But the passage was empty. Voss and Kortig – and, more importantly, Maria and the remaining bodyguard – had vanished, and at that moment Tremayne had absolutely no idea where they had gone.

14 April 1912
RMS
Titanic

For a few moments, Tremayne didn’t move as he worked out what he should do next.

He didn’t think that Voss could possibly know what had happened up on the Promenade Deck, so it was unlikely an ambush had been laid for him. As far as Voss and Kortig were concerned, he was already dead.

Maybe they’d just decided that standing in the passageway in the early hours of the morning wasn’t a good idea, and had moved into Kortig’s stateroom. On balance, that seemed to Tremayne to be the likeliest explanation.

He stepped out of the cross passage and walked slowly down towards the two doors that gave access to the Prussian’s suite, checking the length of the corridor constantly. Still he neither saw nor heard anyone: it was as if he was alone on the ship.

Tremayne pressed his ear against the wood of the door which led into the stateroom’s lounge, and listened intently. But he heard nothing apart from the usual sounds of the ship, an amalgam of machinery noises and the distant roaring as the hull cut through the water. That, of course, didn’t mean anything. All the doors on the
Titanic
were thick, and it was quite possible that a group of people talking inside the stateroom would be entirely inaudible outside in the corridor.

He moved the short distance to the bedroom door and repeated the process, with precisely the same result: he heard nothing that resembled people talking.

His lock-picking tools had been taken from him by Voss when the Prussian had disarmed him, so Tremayne had no way of undoing the lock on the door quietly, so that left just two alternatives. He could try kicking it, smashing the heel of his foot against the lock and trying to burst the door open. There were two problems with that approach. First, Tremayne already knew that the doors on the
Titanic
were solid and the locks were of good quality, so it might not even be possible to break one down, even with repeated kicks. The second reason was in some ways even more compelling: if he tried that, the racket he would cause would be bound to wake up the passengers in the nearest staterooms, and the most likely result would be his detention by the ship’s officers.

And he would obviously be unable to find Maria and complete his assignment if he was locked up in a strong room somewhere on board.

So that only left one other course of action, as far as Tremayne could see. He needed to get inside that stateroom and, if Maria and the others were in there, just hope that he would be quick enough to shoot down the three men before one of them could turn his gun on her. He had to take the chance.

Again making sure that nobody was approaching down the corridor, he stepped up to the door which accessed the lounge of Lenz Kortig’s stateroom and rapped smartly on it.

For a few seconds, he heard nothing, and wondered if he’d guessed wrong, if Voss and the others had gone somewhere else on the ship.

Then he heard a distinct click as the lock was released from inside the suite, and the heavy wooden door started to open inwards.

Tremayne didn’t hesitate. The instant he saw the door move, he kicked out with all his might, heedless of the noise. The door flew back violently, and a figure tumbled backwards as the edge of it caught the side of his head, and crouched on the floor clutching his temple and moaning in pain.

Tremayne glanced down at the man – it was Kortig, as he’d expected – and levelled his pistol, ready to take out Voss or the bodyguard if either of them suddenly appeared at the internal door, but he heard and saw nothing. It looked as if the others had gone somewhere else. He needed to find out where, as quickly as possible.

He backed up a couple of paces and reached behind him for the door handle. He swung it closed and clicked the lock to secure it, then stepped forward to the internal door to check that there was no one hiding in the bedroom. With the pistol levelled and his finger on the trigger, Tremayne checked every possible place of concealment, but the room was as empty as it had first appeared.

He strode over to the connecting door and walked back into the lounge. Kortig had moved, and was trying to pull some object out of the pocket of a suit jacket that was hanging over the back of a chair.

Tremayne guessed immediately that the man was going for a gun. He crossed the room in half a dozen strides, and then kicked out, just as Kortig pulled the weapon free and swung it towards him.

His shoe connected with the pistol the instant before the Prussian could squeeze the trigger, and drove it sideways out of his grasp, snapping one of the bones in his right forefinger as it did so. Kortig yelled with pain. The small, black semi-automatic weapon clattered across the floor to land in the far corner of the room, well out of reach.

Tremayne was in no mood to be trifled with. He tucked the Browning into his pocket, bent down and grasped Kortig’s left arm, and thrust him into one of the chairs. The Prussian was still moaning with the pain from his injuries, his left hand cradling his right, the index finger bent back at an impossible angle. Blood trickled from the gash on his forehead and the left side of his face where the door had hit him.

Tremayne looked at him for a few seconds, then pulled out his pistol and sat down in the chair opposite him.

‘I’ll bet that stings a bit,’ he said gesturing to the banker’s ruined hand, ‘and your face looks a mess as well.’

Kortig didn’t reply, just rocked backwards and forwards with the pain.

‘It’s easy enough to hand it out, isn’t it?’ Tremayne went on in a conversational tone. ‘But it’s a bit different when you’re on the receiving end. You were quite happy to shoot me in the corridor outside, and I promise you that the pain you’re feeling from those two little scratches are nothing compared to what being shot feels like. And I know that from personal experience. Three men have fired bullets into me, and all three made the same basic mistake: they didn’t hit anything vital, and because of that there are three bodies rotting in unmarked graves, one in England and two in Germany. But I’ll tell you, getting shot hurts.’

‘I need a doctor,’ Kortig said hoarsely.

Tremayne shook his head. ‘No you don’t,’ he replied. ‘You’re not going to live long enough to need a doctor.’

‘What?’ Kortig stopped rocking and stared at him. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

‘Try me.’ Tremayne’s eyes were hard and cold as he looked at the injured man.

Kortig couldn’t hold his gaze, and hunched over again.

‘I need you to tell me where Voss has gone, and where I can find Maria, the woman I was with.’

‘Why should I tell you anything, if you’re going to kill me anyway?’

‘Because there are easy ways to die and there are hard ways. In your last few minutes on this planet, I can take you to places where you’ll know pain more intense than you could ever have imagined. And I won’t even need to lift a finger to do it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The black can on the end of this pistol is a suppressor. Some people call it a silencer. What it does is take away the bang, so that when I fire this weapon, the normal noise is reduced to just a dull thud. So I can gag you and then sit here, in this comfortable chair, and for the next half an hour or so I can just shoot bits off you, and nobody outside this cabin will hear anything to alarm them.

‘I’ve never been shot in the stomach,’ Tremayne went on, ‘but I’m told that’s the worst pain imaginable, so I’d probably save that until towards the end of our little question and answer session. But there are plenty of other places I can shoot you to persuade you to see things my way. I think the expression your friend Voss used was “concentrate the mind”. By the time I’ve finished putting bullets through your ankles and knees and groin – that’s always a favourite place – I can promise you that your mind will absolutely be concentrated.

‘Or, as I said before, you can just make it easy on yourself and tell me what I want to know. Now, this is your last chance, Kortig. I’ve only got two questions, and I want two straight answers. First, where can I find Voss? Second, where’s Maria?’

The Prussian stared at Tremayne, and obviously read something in his eyes that frightened him even more than the blunt threats the Englishman had made. Threats are easy to make. But Tremayne was clearly the kind of man who would always deliver what he promised. And that was the difference.

Kortig started talking.

‘Gunther was going back to his stateroom when he left here,’ he said. ‘He told the bodyguard to take the woman to his own room and hold her there, but I don’t know where that man’s stateroom is, so I can’t tell you. But Gunther will know the number, of course. He said he was going to question her, because he wanted to try to find out how much you really knew about our plan.’

Tremayne nodded his thanks. ‘Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?’ he said, and stood up. ‘And because of that, I’ll even give you a chance.’

He walked across to the corner of the room, picked up the small automatic pistol which was lying there, took a couple of paces back towards Kortig, and tossed the weapon to him. It landed in his lap.