Free The Titanic Enigma by Tom West Page A

there.’
    She said nothing, lost in concentration.
    Inside the radiation-proof chamber the atmosphere was almost pure nitrogen, inert and kept at a low pressure to ensure the preservation of whatever may lie inside the metal box. She had opened
it to reveal a partially rotted leather briefcase.
    The chamber was a standard piece of equipment for handling delicate fragments of ancient materials. The bag under the scope was relatively modern – a little over one hundred years old
– but it came from the most famous wreck in history and it might just hold the secret to what the mysterious ‘EF’ was doing with a deadly radioactive isotope on the long-lost ship
in the first place.
    Guiding the robot arms and using the pincers to open the case and extract the contents was a slow and tricky business, but Kate was a veteran. Lou watched as she unclasped the latch, pulled up
the flap and dipped the pincers inside.
    The first thing to emerge was a sheaf of papers covered with dust. She placed it on the flat surface inside the chamber, then tilted the briefcase. There was only one other object inside. A
single sheet of folded paper covered with illegible words and symbols.
    She picked it up and placed it next to the pile of papers. Then, removing her hands from the controls of the robot arms, she tapped at a panel to her left. On the other side of the chamber Lou
was seated at a control module. He ran his hands over a keyboard and a rectangular plastic box about a foot in diameter scooted across the inside of the chamber’s roof. It moved down to a
position a few inches above the papers.
    As Kate set up the pages, Lou adjusted the controls and with a click of a mouse he took a photograph of each one. After they had gone through the total of twenty-two sheets, Kate slid the single
separate piece of paper carrying the encoded line of text under the camera’s crosshairs and Lou ran off another shot. Ten minutes later, they had finished and were seated at a table on the
other side of the lab with hard copies of all the pages laid out before them.
    Lou picked up a few and stared at the writing. ‘What do you make of it?’ He handed them to Kate and plucked the single sheet of notepaper with the line of code from near the bottom
of the pile.
    ‘Formulae. Maths was never my strong suit.’
    ‘Nor mine.’
    Lou held up a photocopy of the sheet that had been in the bottom of the briefcase. It contained a single line of numbers and letters quite different from the writing in the main sheaf.
    ‘Looks like a coded message.’
    ‘It’s not mathematical, nor is it English.’ He put it to one side. ‘Pages of formulae kinda make sense. The owner, EF, must have been a scientist. Why else would he be on
the
Titanic
with a radioactive substance?’
    Kate was staring at the pages of symbols and equations, trying in vain to work it out. To find anything even vaguely comprehensible.
    Lou’s computer buzzed – a Skype video call. He swivelled in his chair and scooted it across the floor, stopping at his terminal and tapping his keyboard. ‘Jerry . . .
What’s happenin’?’ he said.
    ‘Anything interesting?’ Derham asked.
    ‘Impossible to tell yet,’ Lou replied. ‘We were just looking at some papers from the briefcase inside the box we found – a collection of pages of formulae and a single
sheet of fragile notepaper. We copied them in the inert gas chamber. The math in the formulae is indecipherable.’
    ‘And the single sheet?’ Derham leaned back in his chair and ran a big hand over his crew cut.
    ‘Some sort of brief encrypted message or statement by the look of it. Hard to tell and impossible to translate without careful analysis from an expert.’
    ‘OK, look, you’d better get over here. I have some people who can get on to it. Coffees are on me.’ Derham clicked off.
    *
    They met up in the captain’s office at the naval base ten miles north of the lab. They had been given security clearance and passes