The Titanic Enigma Read Online Free PDF Page A

floor of the Atlantic Ocean and drew on the fat cigar. ‘Who
could have imagined such a thing?’ She handed the papers to Secker then strode across the room, through the hall and out onto the gravel driveway towards the waiting chopper.

5
    NATO Exclusion Zone, 375 miles SE of Newfoundland. Present day.
    NATO had deployed four surface warships to patrol the perimeter of the Exclusion Zone – two destroyers, the USS
Brooklyn
and USS
Toledo,
along with
the Australian ship HMAS
Darwin
and a British aircraft carrier, HMS
Ipswich.
An AWACS Boeing E-3 Sentry patrolled the skies over the region and was in constant communication with
HQs on both sides of the Atlantic. The Exclusion Zone itself was an area of twenty-seven square miles centred on the point above the wreck of the
Titanic.
    All vessels were operating under Extreme Radiation Risk status, which meant that no crew were allowed on deck unless they were wearing full radiation suits. The ocean was strewn with dead and
decaying marine life ranging from a host of tiny minnows to larger fish, octopuses and plants. The stench was ferocious.
    Only twenty-four hours had passed since Captain Derham had walked into Kate and Lou’s lab, and now they were inside the Exclusion Zone aboard USS
Armstrong
, the mother ship for
the
JV1
and
JV2
deep-ocean subs. The ship was a small, purpose-built vessel, with a crew of just twelve. Heavily shielded to protect it against high radiation levels, it was only
lightly armed with two 5-inch/54 calibre mark 45 guns.
    ‘These are the latest probe images just in,’ Jerry Derham said. He, Kate and Lou were alone in the ready room of the
Armstrong.
There was a knock on the door and a woman
wearing a naval commander’s uniform stepped in. She had short auburn hair and a hard face. Kate and Lou had met her briefly at Norfolk Naval Base. Commander Jane Milford was the navy’s
number one
Jules Verne
submarine pilot and had put in over five hundred submersed hours in
JV1
and
JV2.
She had been in the Exclusion Zone for twenty-four hours before
Derham, Lou and Kate had arrived, and she had already made a surveillance dive to the
Titanic
wreck in a conventional deep-ocean submersible.
    ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, ‘last-minute checks on
JV1
.’
    Derham looked up. ‘Commander. Please, sit down. I was just showing these guys the latest probe images. The wreck looks kinda eerie, don’t you think?’
    ‘It does,’ Kate said and flicked a glance at her colleague. ‘I know Lou is a pretty hard-nosed pragmatist about it. I guess you’re used to it too, commander.’
    ‘I don’t think you ever get used to it, doctor, especially seeing it in the flesh.’
    Lou looked up from the large colour prints. ‘The
Titanic
is different,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask me why. It’s not just the scale of it.’
    ‘It’s because the ship was meant to be unsinkable. It was a symbol of man’s technological prowess and it was brought down by a chunk of ice,’ Kate said. ‘I mean,
just look here.’ She pointed to an opened book close to the prints. It was an annotated collection of photographs of the interior of the gigantic liner all taken by a photographer from the
Illustrations Bureau a few days before the launch. The photo on the left-hand page showed one of the First Class lounges. It was so incredibly opulent – gorgeous cornicing, ornate brass
lamps, sumptuous chesterfields. Then she sifted the prints from the probe and found the one she was after. ‘If I’m not mistaken, this is the same room now.’
    The image showed a shattered mockery of the first picture: the cornicing had crumbled, the beautiful hardwood floorboards were entirely gone, the furniture was now no more than a pile of nails
and a collection of corroded steel truss rods. A piece of brass lamp lay in the centre of the room.
    ‘Something like 6,000 artefacts have been removed from the wreck since its location was discovered in 1985, all retrieved by robot probes,’ Derham