Free The Last Passenger by Manel Loureiro

it poured down the gutters. Carroll gestured for Kate to have a seat.
    “What I’m about to tell you happened at the end of August 1939, just before the war broke out,” he said, sounding distant, almost as if he had returned to that very day.
    Kate frantically took notes—she cursed herself for not having the foresight to bring her recorder—as Carroll told the story of finding and boarding the Valkyrie .
    “Officer O’Leary nearly ran me over when we met in the doorway. He had been trying to get out of there as quick as he could, and he was carrying poor old Stepanek on his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. Stepanek looked about a thousand years older. His mind was gone. And O’Leary had that little baby in his arms.”
    “Baby?” Kate’s head perked up, and she stopped taking notes. “What baby?”
    “The little boy we found on the dance floor, of course.” Carroll looked at her fixedly, changing the tone of his voice to one of grave concern. “Didn’t you hear about that?”
    Kate shook her head. She had reviewed the file Robert had left behind, and there was nothing that referenced any baby.
    “Are you sure?” she asked cautiously. “Could you be mistaken?”
    “Miss”—Carroll began to count on his hands—“I’ve been torpedoed twice, I’ve crashed into a reef, I’ve sailed through typhoons, and I’ve even battled Malay pirates on a couple of occasions. But I promise you, only once in my life have I encountered a passenger liner adrift with a baby on board. So, yes, I do believe I’m sure.”
    “What happened to the baby?”
    “I have no idea.” Carroll shrugged. “I suppose he was taken to an orphanage or some kind of facility. The day we arrived back was the day the war started. Within a few weeks Europe was filled with thousands of orphaned babies. He was abandoned on a German ship. Just imagine the attention he’d get.”
    “Indeed,” Kate murmured. “What about the other two men who climbed aboard with you? O’Leary and Stepanek? What happened to them?”
    “O’Leary was a good man. Too good.” The old man’s voice was starting to sound weak. He had been talking for some time now and was beginning to look fatigued. “They called him up for duty, and he went into the Royal Navy. But that damned Valkyrie left him wrong in the head. He’d say he was hearing things or that he could see—” Mr. Carroll did not finish his sentence and shuddered. “I have no idea what was going through his head. But I do know he left something of himself behind on that ship, and she left something of herself in him. He shot himself in Gibraltar six weeks after we ported with the cruise ship in tow. They say he left his cabin filled with writings he’d done.”
    “My God,” whispered Kate, “that’s awful.”
    “Stepanek spent the next seven years in a mental hospital in Croydon. He was reduced to a helpless vegetable.” Carroll’s breathing sounded more labored than before. He was trembling, on the verge of collapse.
    “We don’t have to keep going,” Kate said, taking his teacup before he dropped it. “We can pick this up another day.”
    Carroll shook his head. His eyes glimmered with fierce resolve. “Someone has to know about all this,” he wheezed. “Please, listen. There’s still more. The mental ward helped Stepanek’s body but not his mind. He ate, drank, and slept but did nothing else besides babble and stare off into space. I went to visit him a couple of times, and he didn’t even recognize me. One day I got a phone call that he had jumped out of a window.”
    “Jumped out of a window? But didn’t you say he was like a vegetable? How is that possible?” A chill ran through Kate.
    “It was May 15, the same day they moved the Valkyrie from the port in Liverpool to here.” On the verge of desperation, Carroll clung tightly to the edge of the table, his knuckles white. “Do you understand?”
    “Understand what?”
    “The move threw the curse for a loop.