The Titanic Secret, page 1
The
Titanic
Secret
Jack Steel worked in a garage, a factory, a mortuary and an operating theatre before joining the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm as a pilot. He served for over twenty years, including active service during the Falklands War. As a senior officer, he became involved in intelligence gathering and dissemination, in covert operations in places like Yemen, and on projects classified above Top Secret. After leaving the service, he ran his own company in his adopted home of Andorra for several years before becoming a professional author. He now divides his time between writing and lecturing, principally on ships of the major cruise firms, including Cunard. Jack Steel is a pseudonym.
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Jack Steel, 2012
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Jack Steel to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-85720-862-0
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-85720-863-7
eBook ISBN 978-0-85720-861-3
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
To Sally, for now and for always
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Prologue
6 April 1912
Berlin
A shadow moved on the opposite side of the street, a darker shape in the gloom of the alleyway. A match flared, briefly illuminating the man’s face as he bent forward to light a cigarette.
David Curtis glanced through the discoloured glass towards the figure, but even in that brief split second, he knew he’d never seen the man before. That wasn’t surprising. The Prussian secret police, the Preußische Geheimpolizei, appeared to have enough agents working the streets of Berlin to ensure he would have no chance of seeing the same man twice. But that didn’t alter Curtis’s certainty about the man’s employer, or what he was doing. Why else would he be loitering at the entrance of an alleyway on Mittelstraße, at midnight, watching the café opposite?
Curtis knew he was under surveillance. He’d been under surveillance ever since he’d arrived in Germany, most probably, and certainly since he’d checked into his hotel in Berlin. Almost subconsciously, he pressed his left arm downwards, feeling the reassuring weight of the Webley Mark II revolver in his leather shoulder holster, a firm and reliable friend in the event of any trouble.
He wondered how much time he had left before they made their move. It would be tonight, he guessed, or tomorrow at the latest. It all depended on how accurate their information was. For the moment, he dismissed the silent watcher from his mind and concentrated on his companion.
The man sitting opposite him was a minor government official, in reality little more than a clerk, but Curtis knew that it wasn’t the man’s job which was important, but where he worked, and what he had seen as a result. And the previous week he had seen something startling, something which Curtis had scarcely been able to comprehend when the German clerk had explained it to him. And now he needed more details – one detail in particular.
‘I need the name, Klaus,’ Curtis said again, his German fluent and colloquial. ‘You have to give me that, or the information’s useless.’
The German picked up his glass of schnapps and held it up to the light which faintly illuminated the corner of the bar where the two men were sitting. Outside, the yellow glow from the gas lamps which lined Mittelstraße picked out the first few flurries of falling snow, adding to the layers already covering the roads and pavements. It was going to be another hard, cold night.
Klaus Trommler nodded in satisfaction as he looked at his glass, then drained the liquid in a single gulp and slammed the base of the tumbler down onto the scarred wooden table. He stared at Curtis and nodded again.
‘I have a name for you, my friend,’ he said, ‘but I’m beginning to wonder if you can afford it. This is important information I have. You know that I’m risking my job just by talking to you.’
Curtis glanced surreptitiously out of the window towards the alleyway where a red pinprick of light marked the position of the watcher and his cigarette. Trommler, he knew, was actually risking far more than just his job. But that wasn’t his problem.
‘We agreed a price, Klaus.’
‘For the information, yes. But the name is different, separate. The name, that will cost you more, a lot more.’
‘How much?’
The German clerk glanced round the corner of the bar, but there was nobody within earshot. He leant forward and unclenched his left fist. A grubby, crumpled piece of paper dropped onto the wooden table between the two men.
Curtis reached forward, smoothed it out and read the figure that was written on it. As he did so, he tried not to show his relief. Before he’d headed out for the rendezvous, his third meeting with his new source in the German government, he had discussed this very matter with his superior at the embassy. They already knew Trommler was greedy – he was a mercenary spy, no more, no less – and Curtis had guessed that the German would make a further demand for money before he revealed the last, vital piece of the puzzle. Luckily, they had overestimated the man’s avarice, and Curtis carried enough cash in his pocket to pay the sum he was demanding twice over.
‘That’s an awful lot of money,’ he said now.
‘It’s a fair price for what you’re getting,’ Trommler insisted. ‘And it is not negotiable.’
Curtis nodded, reached into one of his pockets and extracted an envelope, one of two, each containing an identical sum. He knew exactly how much money was inside it, but he lowered it beneath the table, and made a show of checking the contents. Then he placed it in the centre of the table in front of him.
Trommler grabbed for it, but Curtis immediately placed his left hand over it. ‘N
‘How do I know that it isn’t just full of cut-up pieces of newspaper?’
‘I’ve paid you what you asked each time we’ve met. Why should this time be any different?’
But Trommler shook his head. ‘This time is different because this will be our last meeting. I have the information that you need, and this is the end of it. It’s getting too risky, far too risky, for me to carry on. So unless I’m sure that you’re being straight with me, I’m just going to get up and walk out of here, right now.’
Curtis stared at the German for a few moments, then almost imperceptibly inclined his head. ‘Very well,’ he said, rotated the envelope so that the open side faced his companion, and riffled the edges of the banknotes inside it, so that Trommler could clearly see what they were.
‘Good.’ Trommler leant forward and, in a voice that was so quiet Curtis had to mirror his actions, uttered just two words.
‘You’re sure of that?’ Curtis asked.
‘I saw it. That’s the name on the document. There are two others as well, but I don’t know their names, they weren’t typed on the pages that I saw. But he’s the important one, the leader. Everything, the whole plan, it’s all his idea.’
Curtis slid the envelope across the table and nodded his head. ‘Thank you,’ he said simply. ‘You’ve done us a fine service. Good luck.’
Right at the back of the bar, in gloomy shadows that the dim electric lighting didn’t seem able to penetrate, two men sat at a table, half-drunk glasses of beer in front of them. But their attention was not directed at their drinks, or even at each other. Instead, both men were looking directly at the table where Curtis and Trommler were sitting.
A whispered secret in exchange for an envelope of hard cash. That’s what it had looked like, and the evidence – the envelope that was now in the clerk’s pocket – would be all they’d need to prove their case.
One of the men murmured something to his companion, and then they both stood up, their beers forgotten, and walked swiftly through the bar, weaving around the other drinkers.
As he prepared to leave, Curtis knew that Klaus Trommler was going to need all the luck he could find, because if the Preußische Geheimpolizei were following him, they almost certainly had people mounting surveillance on everyone he met. He guessed that Trommler would probably be studying the four walls of a prison cell before the week was out. But, as he’d thought before, that wasn’t his problem.
Curtis saw movement in his peripheral vision and glanced to his left. Two hard-faced men wearing long black leather coats were heading purposefully towards him, and he didn’t think they wanted to join him for a drink.
Curtis stood up, grabbed the back of his chair and swung it as hard and accurately as he could directly towards the two men. Then he ran for the door, ignoring the shouts from behind.
The flying chair cartwheeled through the air. Both the approaching men ducked sideways, in opposite directions, but one of them wasn’t quite quick enough and a wooden chair leg caught him squarely on the cheek. The blow knocked him backwards, and he tumbled to the ground, shouting in pain.
His colleague pulled open his coat, drew out a semiautomatic pistol and aimed it at Curtis, at the same time shouting out an order in German for him to stop.
Curtis reached the door, grabbed the handle and yanked it open. As he did so, the man behind him fired. The bullet smashed through the glass in the door, just inches in front of Curtis’s face, showering him with needle-sharp splinters that stung his cheek and forehead, opening up tiny cuts that immediately started to bleed.
He didn’t wait for the second shot, just bolted through the open doorway and out into the street.
He glanced quickly in both directions as he did so. Mittelstraße appeared deserted, apart from the lone watcher opposite, but he knew that appearances could be deceptive. He also knew that the shot the policeman – he presumed that was who he was – had fired would have been heard, at the very least by the watcher on the opposite side of the street.
As he started to run, he looked in that direction, and saw the red firefly of the cigarette fall suddenly to the ground. The watcher stepped into view and then began to run after him.
Curtis reached for his own weapon, the heavy Webley revolver that he’d collected from the British Embassy the day he’d arrived in Berlin, turned his body slightly as he ran down the street, and pulled the trigger. The bullet probably passed no closer than within twenty feet of the watcher, but immediately the man stopped running and began unbuttoning his own coat, clearly intending to draw a weapon.
There was another shot from behind Curtis, the bullet ricocheting off the pavement several yards in front of him. He risked a quick glance over his shoulder. The man who’d fired at him in the bar was now out on the street as well, but about fifty yards behind him, well outside the accurate range of any pistol, no matter how expert the shooter.
Curtis kept running, holstering the pistol as he did so. The conditions were so treacherous he needed both hands free to help him keep his balance.
Two more shots rang out. One missed him completely, but the other smashed into the stone wall of the building beside him, sending stone chips flying. A third ripped across the right-hand side of his forehead, opening up a jagged cut that felt as if it had gone right down to the bone. Blood poured out of the wound and ran down his cheek.
He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and pressed it against the cut, trying to staunch the flow of blood. The wound was more numb than painful, though Curtis knew it would sting later. He kept running.
He headed west towards the T-junction at the end of the road. If he could just get round the corner, and out of sight of the two men now running after him, he could turn left into Schadowstraße and then get to Unter den Linden. And then he’d be about four hundred yards from his destination. And safety.
He was still about a dozen yards short of the junction when he heard louder shouting from behind him. He risked another quick glance back. A group of men, some wearing police uniforms, others in civilian clothes, were coming out of the bar he had just left, Klaus Trommler a struggling figure in their midst. Even as he registered that, one of the uniformed men brought his truncheon down in a vicious arc onto the back of Trommler’s head, and the clerk slumped to the ground.
Curtis looked ahead again, trying to move faster over the ice-covered pavement, the surface slippery and treacherous. He took another glance back, and saw that a third man was now running down the centre of Mittelstraße towards him, carrying what looked like a club in his right hand.
Curtis reached the corner with Schadowstraße and stopped for a few brief seconds, again pulled the Webley from his holster and fired a single shot in the general direction of his pursuers. That might, just might, slow them down a bit.
Then he holstered his pistol again and ran on. The lime trees of the Unter den Linden – the rows of trees which had given the wide street its name – were only about a hundred yards in front of him. Perhaps because Schadowstraße ran north to south and received more direct sunlight than Mittelstraße, more of the snow seemed to have melted from the pavements, and Curtis was able to run faster.
He’d just reached the end of the street when another shot came, the bullet exploding into the wall of the building a few feet to his right. The crack of the rifle was very different to the noise of the pistol shots, and that changed the odds. The third man, the one he’d seen running down the middle of the street, had obviously been carrying a rifle, not a truncheon. Curtis knew that if that man got a clear shot at him he’d be dead.
He dodged to the right as soon as he reached the end of the street, then ran over the central reservation with its parallel lines of lime trees, across to the south side of Unter den Linden. He knew that the tree trunks would offer him some protection from the bullets of the pursuing men. As he ran past a few late-night drunks, they stared at him, open-mouthed, transfixed by the blood covering his face, and a couple reached out to try to grab him. But Curtis ignored them all. Getting to his destination was all he cared about.
He stuck close to the line of trees on the south side of the wide boulevard, to make himself a more difficult target.
His breath was coming in short gasps as he reached the crossroads with Wilhelmstraße, and he glanced behind him again. There now seemed to be only two men chasing after him and they were about a hundred yards back.
