Carpathia (2 page)

  "It's the
Titanic
, sir," Harold said. "It's struck an iceberg and is going down. CQD OM, that means
'Come Quick, Danger Old Man
.' They won't have long."

  Brody rubbed his chin as he took the paper from the radioman's hand and considered what he should do. It would be simple enough to crumple up the note and force Harold to forget it had ever been sent. That would be the easy thing to do.

  Harold spun about on his worn brown leather chair and tapped out a response to the
Titanic
, speaking the words aloud as he transformed them into code.
"Shall I tell my captain? Do you require assistance?"

  Brody already knew what the response would be. No one mentioned that they'd hit an iceberg simply to start up a conversation. For sure, it was the sort of news that could start a panic.

  Harold narrowed his eyes as he listened for the
tap-tap-dash-dash
of the Morse code answer to come back to him. He copied down the letters as they came in and then read the result out loud again. "She says, '
Yes, come quick
', sir."

  Brody grunted at the man. He still hadn't made up his mind about what to do. They weren't on the kind of voyage that should be interrupted. Dushko wouldn't be happy about this at all.

  That thought made Brody smile.

  He handed the original message back to the radioman. "Go rouse your Captain Rostron," he said. "He'll know what to do."

  Harold snatched the note away from Brody as if the man's hands were on fire. Then he bolted from his chair and charged toward the captain's private quarters.

  Brody stared down at the empty chair sitting in front of the Marconi wireless set. More than once he'd been tempted to destroy the thing, knowing that it would leave him with nothing to monitor, no duty left to perform. He knew that Dushko would just find something new to hassle him with though. It wouldn't end there.

  It never did with that one. Not only was he the eldest of the group but the strongest. If Brody tried to challenge him directly, Dushko would tear off his head. That alone kept him in line.

  Brody considered not going to inform Dushko about what had just happened. After all, what did it matter? It wasn't like he'd allow Brody or any of the other passengers who'd come along with them to get involved with the
Titanic
, no matter how much fun it might be.

  At the moment, though, Brody needed a bit of fun more than anything. Once Dushko had them back in the Old World, back in his own little backwater homeland, there would be damned little fun to find, not like the kind that offered itself up in New York City, at least.

  Brody missed Manhattan already. It had been his home for more years than he cared to count. They'd all blended into each other anyhow.

  New York was the most alive city that Brody had ever been in. The place had a pulse, and it always seemed to be beating faster and faster, drumming out a wild dancer's beat that he couldn't help but respond to. His old home in Ireland was a rustic idyll by comparison, a ramshackle hut in the hills, alone and isolated from the rest of the world.

  Brody had never been to Serbia before, but from Dushko's manner, he suspected it would be just as warm and inviting as an abandoned outhouse in the mountain snows.

  Brody didn't just deserve some final bit of fun. He needed it. Without it, he was sure the wilds of Serbia – or wherever the hell Dushko really planned to drag him and the others – would drive him mad.

  If he were to be honest, he had to admit to himself that it would happen sooner or later there anyhow. He'd step out of line, and Dushko would come down on him hard, perhaps in a fatal and final way. Better to go out now, then, and with as much of a bang as he could muster.

  Brody chuckled to himself and licked his pale lips as he sauntered off to gather a few of the others, the sort of tortured souls he knew needed a spot of fun as much as he did. He grinned, his white teeth wide in a vicious smile.

 
 

 
 
 

"Quincey Harker. Tell me, where has your mind wandered off to?"

  Lucy Seward's warm laugh brought Quin back to the conversation he'd been half listening to between her and Abe as they whiled away the moments past midnight in the Reading Room. Since women weren't allowed in the Smoke Room and the First Class Lounge had closed for the night, they'd holed up here for one last nightcap before bed.

  He gave her a wan smile. "I don't mean to be rude, Luce," he said, "but, perhaps it's time we took this iceberg thing a bit more seriously."

  Abe rolled his eyes, and Lucy laughed again, although this time with a hint of nerves in her voice. "I don't think we ever need to take anything particularly seriously," Abe said, gesturing to himself and Lucy. "After all, that's what we have you here for."

  "Is that why you ran off with him rather than me this evening?" Lucy asked Abe.

  Abe chuckled while Quin blushed. "I couldn't rightly run off with you, now could I?" Abe said with a wicked smile. "There's already enough scandalized whispers around the ship about you traveling with two young scalawags without a proper escort to protect you from us."

  Lucy gasped in mock outrage, holding a gloved hand to her pretty mouth. "I can manage to protect myself just fine without a chaperone," she said, "especially from dogs like the two of you. All bark and no bite, doesn't make for much of a threat."

  "I prefer to think of us as a pair of seeing-eye dogs," Abe said.

  "So I'm blind now, am I?" Lucy arched an eyebrow at the young man.

  "Only to the possibilities that lay before us, but don't you worry about that. I'll show you the time of your life during our travels."

  Lucy pursed her lips together. "I don't have too long before my studies at Radcliffe begin in the fall," she said.

  "We'll just have to make the most of it until then." Abe patted her on her forearm.

  "I'm sure you will," Quin said, permitting himself a pang of jealousy. "You'll be whooping it across all fortyeight states while I'm stuck in an oak-lined closet somewhere in Manhattan, I'm sure."

  "If you're lucky!" said Abe. "Come on, old man. There's still time to change your mind."

  "Yes, Quin," Lucy said, her eyes shining with something like mischief. "Do come with us."

  Quin sucked at his teeth. "Would that I was born as independent and wealthy as our friend Abe here. I don't have a future as a lord looming over me or my pocketbook, I'm afraid."

  "Oh, this again?" Abe scowled. "It's not my fault I was born to nobility, is it? And that's not stopping Lucy from accompanying me. Why should it stop you?"

  "My father's not a wealthy doctor like Lucy's, complete with his own sanitarium. I'm so very fortunate he was able to pay for my education, much less send me off on a trip around the Colonies."

  "Growing up surrounded by crazy people wasn't nearly as romantic as it sounds," Lucy suppressed a false shiver.

  "It was for me," Abe said, "but then that's life among the lords, isn't it?"

  "Look." Quin had left this unsaid for long enough. He turned to Abe. "It's not that I'm ungrateful that you allowed me to join you in your cabin."

  "There's a 'but' there," Abe said. "I can hear it."

  "But I would have been happy to pay my own way across through steerage."

  Abe rolled his eyes. "And what would have been the point of that? I'd have spent every moment dragging you back up into first class then – or, worse yet, slumming with you down in the lower decks. It's so much easier for us all this way, don't you see?"

  "I'm here, aren't I?" Quin said.

  "And don't think we don't appreciate it," said Lucy. "Just imagine how dreadfully boring it would be if I'd had to spend the entire trip with only Abe around for conversation. I would have had to strike up a friendship with some of the other young ladies here, and you know that would only lead to conversations with them that would irritate their parents to the point at which Captain Smith would have to consider tossing me in the brig or throwing me overboard if only to put an end to the constant dissent."

  "Do they even have a brig on this boat?" Abe said. "Seems like they should have a proper prison instead, considering how large it is."

  "The point is," Quinn said, pressing on, "I just don't have the resources that the pair of you do, and I'd appreciate not being constantly reminded about it."

  The other two, who had been giggling at each other, fell silent at this. Abe glared at Quin, while Lucy lowered her dark eyes, embarrassed.

  "So, we're back to this again," Abe said when he managed to open his mouth. "It's always about class with you. How passé."

  "Of course it would be to you," Lucy said. "Those standing on the top of the mountain rarely have reason to curse the darkness below."

  "Is that really how you think of me? I wonder what I ever did to deserve such a fiancée?"

  Lucy held her gloved hand out in front of her, as if peering at her ring finger. "Are we engaged? How did no one inform me of this?"

  Quin grunted at this running joke between his two best friends. Lucy and Abe had always seemed to be destined to be married. Both sets of their parents approved of the match, which was one reason they'd allowed the couple to go off on this mad junket around the States. Not that Lucy would have waited for that blessing either way.

  Quin knew it was only a matter of time before Abe pulled a ring out of his pocket and proposed to Lucy. She'd put him off so far by insisting that she be allowed to concentrate on her education, but Abe was used to getting what he wanted. Quin didn't think Abe could force himself to wait until Lucy had graduated. In fact, he'd been surprised that Abe hadn't proposed to her during their first night aboard the ship.

  He was just glad that it hadn't happened yet. He wanted to be happy for his two friends, but he didn't know if he could manage to muster a smile for them if forced to bear witness to their engagement. It had been hard enough for him to agree to come along with them on this portion of the trip. If his parents hadn't insisted on them all traveling together, he would have been happy to leave England a week later and not put himself through the torture of watching his best friend woo the girl he loved.

  "That's not the sort of ice you should be worried about," a man said as he sauntered into the room. A wide and thoughtful American wearing small, wire-rimmed glasses, he fixed them with a serious look that chilled Quin's blood.

  "I hope you're not referring to the iceberg, Mr Futrelle," Abe said. "You're letting that novelist's imagination of yours run away with you if you think a little dent is going to bring down the
Titanic
. What would your Thinking Machine say about that?"

  The writer raised his eyebrows at Abe. "I don't have to bother my imagination about this one at all. Can't you feel the ship listing toward the starboard bow?"

  His voice sounded so calm and even in contrast to the words he spoke that Quin wondered if the man might be pulling their legs. He looked over at Abe's refilled whisky glass, though, and saw that the man had not exaggerated in the slightest.

  "What does it mean, Mr Futrelle?" Lucy's voice filled with concern as she turned to face the man fully.

  "Call me Jacques, Miss Lucy," he said. "After all, if we're all going to die together, it's best that we do so amongst friends."

 
 

 
 
 

"You're sure about this?" Captain Arthur Rostron said as he stared at the scrap of paper Harold Cottam had handed him, running one hand back through his thinning hair.

  "Aye, captain," Harold said. "I confirmed it with them.
Titanic is going down."

  The captain pressed his lips together so hard that they turned white. "Damn it." He rubbed his eyes. It had already been a long day for him and his crew, but that paled against the troubles of the people trapped aboard the
Titanic
.

  "Right," he said with a sharp nod. "Take this to the bridge. Tell them to head out, full speed ahead. I'll be there presently."

  Harold spun on his heel and left, shutting the door to the captain's cabin behind him. Rostron pushed himself to his feet and climbed back into his uniform. He'd been asleep when the radioman had knocked on the door of his cramped cabin, but he was as wide awake now as if he'd fallen overboard into the frigid waters of the North Atlantic.

  As he readied himself, he did some quick calculations in his head. At the moment, they had just under seven hundred and fifty passengers on board, but the
Carpathia
could hold over twenty-five hundred, more than three times that. They often had plenty of passengers when hauling emigrants from Europe to New York, but few people came back the other way, mostly American tourists looking to explore the Old World.

  The
Titanic
wasn't a Cunard ship like the
Carpathia
. It belonged to the rival White Star line, which meant that the captain didn't know as much about it as he might otherwise. Still, it had been impossible to avoid news about the gigantic ship and its maiden voyage over the past few weeks. He'd absorbed a few facts about the
Titanic
just by the fact that his ship sailed the same lanes.

  From what he remembered, the
Titanic
could hold as many as thirty-five hundred souls. He doubted they'd been packed to capacity though, given the premium prices the White Star offices had been charging for travel aboard its new flagship. He didn't know where they'd find the space for so many people on the
Carpathia
if it came to that, but he'd be damned if he wasn't going to try and save as many poor souls as he could either way. They'd double up bunks and have people sleep on the open decks if they had to. Anything would be a far sight better than a watery grave.