XX.

Kennedy reached for the satchel and withdrew a number of photographs. He handed them to Lightholler.

"What do you make of these?" he asked.

Lightholler placed them before him carefully. After a moment, he asked, "Where did you get them?"

"They're from a recent expedition," Hardas answered.

"I didn't know they'd scheduled any dives recently," Lightholler said, his eyes fixed upon the images spread out on the table.

Three of the photographs showed the wreck of the Titanic seen from various angles. Its massive hull stretched out, intact and rising from the floors of the Grand Banks as though cresting one last muddy wave. Two of the great funnels were visible. She seemed remarkably well preserved. The images were the clearest Lightholler had ever seen.

He'd participated in one of the later dives, following the failure to raise the wreck in 2007. It had been part of the media lead-up to the centennial cruise. The trip had been made in an over-crowded bathyscaphe, brimming with journalists and retired naval officers. They'd hovered for half an hour, approximately fifty feet above the wreck. Despite the powerful beams of light that bathed the ship, all detail had been lost within those seemingly impenetrable depths. He thought he'd seen all of the available footage, but the details of these photos astounded him.

"You must have gotten pretty close. What kind of submersible did you use?"

"A special one," Hardas said, smiling for the first time.

"What about these?" The last two photographs were the only ones he couldn't make out distinctly.

"Sorry about those two," Hardas said. "I took them myself."

Lightholler stared at him.

"By remote camera, of course. They're from inside the ship."

Lightholler observed the faces around him. There was no hint of amusement among them. As far as they were concerned, this was no joke.

"These photos are from the purser's office on C deck." Hardas leaned forwards, pointing with a stubby finger. "And this here's the purser's safe."

Lightholler peered at the grainy images. The flash from the camera was reflected a hundred times in a cloud of floating debris. He could make out a wall only with difficulty. It was lined with shelving, streamered by seaweed. A barnacle-crusted shape squatted beneath it.

"Now you see it," Hardas indicated one of the images, "and now you don't." He pointed at the last photograph.

Lightholler leaned back in his chair. "Why the secrecy about the dive?"

"Dives," Hardas corrected, smiling again.

Kennedy turned his attention back to Lightholler. "The dives weren't supposed to be a secret. At least not initially," he said. "Hardas is ex-navy. He was part of a team appointed to put a new series of German submarines through their paces."

"In Japanese waters?" Lightholler asked.

"Part of the tests were to see if we would be detected by any of the new Japanese destroyers," Hardas said, warming to the subject. "If we were detected, we could always say we were mounting an independent dive to the Titanic."

"Without a surface vessel to support you, that would be a pretty weak excuse," Lightholler replied.

"With the current fervor for the Titanic sweeping the world, and considering the recent Japanese infringements of German territorial waters, it was hoped that such an expedition would be ... overlooked," Kennedy said.

"Besides," Hardas added, "we weren't detected."

"So why were you testing submersibles for the Germans?" Lightholler asked.

"It was a fringe benefit of the Camelot project," Hardas replied. "We give them some of our submersible technology, they let us in on stratolite construction."

"I always wondered how you guys got strat technology before we did," Lightholler said. He'd never seen a stratolite. Not outside of newsreel footage, anyway. The first one, the Kaiser Wilhelm I, had been launched back in '99, amid much fanfare. The first permanent high-atmosphere dwelling. It was still up there. Somewhere over the South Pole as he recalled. The cynics had said that if the Germans couldn't make it to the Moon, they would settle on building one for themselves. With a radius of just under a mile, it was, at the time, the largest vessel ever built. The Germans conceded to having seven in operation, the Japanese, five, but back in the navy he'd been told to double those figures. And three years ago the Confederacy had commissioned its first one, the CSS Patton. The Times had done a write-up on it, reporting that its construction had sent their national budget skyrocketing.

Lightholler lit another cigarette, his eyes again falling to the last two photographs. "So what was in the safe?"

Kennedy pressed forwards in his chair, waiting for Lightholler to meet his eyes. "Some gold, some jewellery, stocks, bonds, and this." He reached into the satchel and withdrew a book.

Morgan pulled his chair closer, staring at the object as though it were some holy relic. Kennedy slid it across the table to Lightholler. Its front cover was thick cardboard, water damaged and stamped with a splash of rust-coloured material. He could make nothing of the smudged writing that appeared there. There seemed to be someone's name, handwritten, on the top right corner. Its binding and the roughly cut edges of its pages were encrusted with a thin layer of green mould. The pages themselves were curled back, coated with a slender sheet of plastic. Probably some form of preservative.

Lightholler studied the book, but didn't touch it. What could it possibly contain that would be of any significance now?

"Are these Archibald Butt's private papers?" he asked. He recalled that Butt, adviser to President Taft, had been aboard the Titanic. It had been speculated that he'd carried some important documents meant for the president, yet lost at sea.

"Morgan?" Kennedy cued, settling back into his chair.

"What shapes history, Captain?" The historian leaned forwards. "Events or personalities?"

Lightholler, struck by the non sequitur, made no reply.

"Are you familiar with your great-grandfather's memoirs?"

Lightholler tendered a tight-lipped smile. "It was required reading in my home. Yes, I know them. A long list of rantings and justifications by an inept fool." It felt good to say it aloud.

"A list, you say." Morgan's expression turned contemplative. "How much do you recall from his chapter on the sinking of the ship?"

"Just scraps. I always thought his view of the event was somewhat jaundiced. Where are you going with this?" Lightholler glanced again at the book. "Are those Astor's papers?"

"No," Kennedy replied. "But he does rate a mention," he added darkly.

Morgan pressed on. "Astor only devotes a small portion of his memoirs to his actual rescue. He dwells quite a bit on Charles Lightholler, of course."

"Of course." Lightholler suppressed a frown. Through that one pivotal event, an unholy dynasty had been born.

"In his writings, Astor's distraught, bereaved," Morgan continued. "Taken aboard the Carpathia, still damp from the Atlantic, he's told that his wife and their unborn child were lost at sea. So of course he fails to make mention of any list."

"List?"

"According to the Carpathia's log, Astor was somewhat preoccupied with a list when he was first brought aboard. The captain also noted that Astor mentioned a strange encounter in the cargo hold, just before the Titanic foundered. He'd been told by someone that he was on some list. Told that he wouldn't see New York."

"I've never heard this," Lightholler said. "But what of it? The man was clearly raving, and with damn good reason."

"That's what it was put down to, and Astor never mentioned it again. It was left as a minor footnote to a terrible catastrophe." With that, Morgan reached for the journal. He handled it gingerly, opening it to a pre-selected page. "Until now."

He slid it over to Lightholler.

The names were handwritten. It appeared to be a register of some kind. He scanned down the page. Smith, John: Captain. Murdoch, William: first officer. Andrews, Thomas: Ship's builder. Astor, Colonel J.J. Butt, Major Archibald. Guggenheim, Benjamin. Rothschild, M. Stead, William T. Thayer, J.B. Widener, Harry.

"What is this?"

"A who's who of some very powerful, very wealthy, very influential people," Morgan said. "All of them sailed on the Titanic, and all-with a singular exception-were lost at sea."

"This could be about anything. A lot of people died that night."

"True enough," Kennedy said. "But that's not the only list in the book."

Lightholler leafed through a few pages. The next sheet that caught his attention had been divided into two columns. The left bore another series of names. He recognised most of them. Picasso, Kandinsky, Duchamp, Chagall; artists who'd left their mark on the twentieth century. The names on the right were a different breed. Stalin, Sorel, Mussolini-tyrants and murderers all. There were more names he didn't recognise.

"Who are Mengele and Eichmann?" he asked.

Morgan shrugged.

"And you've got Hitler on the wrong side of the ledger. Why isn't he with the artists?"

Morgan shrugged again.

He turned over and read on. American Telephone and Telegraph. General Motors. Krupp. Lockheed Aircraft. October 1929. Wall Street.

"A projected investment portfolio, we believe," Morgan said. "As for the date and location, I'm thinking it's close enough to the Great Depression."

A fragment at the bottom of the page caught his eye. Sarajevo: Princip. Archduke Franz Ferdinand and wife. June 28, 1914.

"And you found this intact, in the purser's safe."

Morgan nodded.

"This last line describes the assassination that sparked off the Great War."

"That's correct."

"The ship went down almost two years prior to that."

"Also correct."

"It's a hoax," Lightholler said. "What else could it be?"

Hardas shook his head.

"You retrieved this document from the Titanic, right?"

Hardas nodded.

"So why couldn't someone else have left it there, to be found?"

Kennedy placed his fingertips on the manuscript's edge. "Considering the expense involved in the dives, that would be a fairly costly deception. Having said that, we considered the possibility. We considered every possibility. This manuscript also contains a diary. It outlines a series of events that happened long after the sinking. Some are accurate, and some quite bizarre. There's an agenda that involves making timely purchases in some very lucrative industries. There's also what appears to be a hit list: select individuals the author may have targeted for assassination. Sarajevo may be a case in point. Certain passengers on the Titanic, another. This manuscript is many things, but I assure you it's no hoax," he said, his eyes steady.

"You're trying to tell me that some madman ran around killing all those people while the ship was sinking?"

"No," Morgan cut in. "At the time, the Titanic was considered man's greatest creation. It was built to be virtually unsinkable. I stress the word 'virtually' because clearly, in retrospect, she demonstrated some obvious design flaws. But tell me, who could have appreciated that at the time?" He gave Lightholler a pointed look. "We believe she may have been deliberately sunk, in order to remove those men."

"She hit a fucking iceberg."

"The question that intrigues us, Captain," Kennedy said, "is why did she hit that iceberg?"

"I could give you five reasons right now," Lightholler replied hotly.

Kennedy said, "The death of all those men created a powerful vacuum in turn-of-the-century America. A vacuum that could be exploited by someone privy to the knowledge contained in this journal. The author of this text had enough information at his fingertips to engineer any number of events. He also clearly documented his intention to intervene on the ship. We don't know the details of what happened on the night of the sinking. We don't know how he figures into what happened at Sarajevo, or the years that followed. We just know where it starts."

Lightholler was in a daze. Three men were dead in the Midtown Tunnel-for this? He shook his head, aghast. "How could you possibly believe what you're saying? Your sordid tale about reuniting America was preposterous enough. Camelot..." He spat out the word. "How could anyone come to possess this knowledge in the first place?"

Kennedy remained calm. He nudged the manuscript across the table again and said, "The man your great-grandfather spoke to in the cargo hold of the Titanic wrote this journal. His name was Jonathan Wells. As to how he came about this knowledge, it's all here."

Lightholler reached out for the journal and was surprised to find that his hand was shaking. His fingers left small rings of moisture on the cover. "What is this?"

"The memoirs of a time traveller, Captain," Hardas replied.

Lightholler sat back in his chair. How could these madmen have influenced people at such a high level? Who, outside of this room, knew what they were up to? Kennedy and his cronies had misled the intelligence agencies of at least four countries, all for the sake of what lay on the table before him.

"You were right," he said to Kennedy, rising from his seat. "I don't believe a fucking word of it."

"We'll discuss it further after you've read it. And don't worry, I don't expect you to cover all of it in one sitting."

"Not interested. You've got me here under false pretences, and I have no intention of staying."

"You don't really have much choice. You're wanted by the CBI. You're integral to our plan, and you're not moving from this room until I say so. So you might as well settle back and read, Captain."

The three Confederates left the room. He heard the tumble of a key in the lock.

Lightholler sat there for a few minutes, the anger welling up inside him. He kicked over the chairs and gave the ashtray a backhand that swept its contents across the floor. He went to the door and kicked it. No one responded.

He returned to the table.

Despite all his fury he opened the journal with care. It was handwritten throughout, with bold cursive strokes. Compared to the cover, the writing within was quite clear. The first page contained a list of names. It was smudged. A thumbprint here, an ink-stained impression there. The next few pages contained widely spaced paragraphs that had been crossed out roughly. In places, the nib of the pen had torn through the coarse-cut paper, indicating the writer's dissatisfaction.

He sat amongst the scattered furniture, the cups and glasses and the spilt ash, and began to read.