The Titanic Secret Read Free

emerged from the doorway of the embassy and stared down the street towards him, obviously alerted by the sounds of the shots. Both had rifles slung over their shoulders, but Curtis knew they had probably been ordered not to shoot, because of the diplomatic implications if they did.
    Behind him, he heard an ominous metallic clicking as the man with the rifle reloaded his weapon, the empty cartridge case tumbling out of the breech to land with a clatter on the cobbled street.
    Twenty yards to go. Blood was pouring from a gaping wound on his left shoulder, leaving a crimson trail in the fresh snow.
    ‘Help me,’ he gasped, reaching out with his right hand as if he could grab one of the men a few yards in front of him.
    One sentry was just standing there in the street, his mouth open and eyes wide as he stared at the drama unfolding in front of him. The other man had stepped off the pavement and into the road, moving away from the entrance to the embassy, and was unslinging his rifle.
    Ten yards, maybe less.
    Then Curtis felt another solid, crashing blow. A shaft of agony speared up his left leg and he collapsed onto the unyielding surface of the pavement, his scream of pain a counterpoint to the flat crack of the rifle shot. And this time he knew he wouldn’t be getting up again. The bullet had ripped through his left thigh, smashing the femur and tearing apart his flesh. Thick, dark arterial blood erupted from the wound.
    He heard another shot, but much, much closer. Through his tears of agony, he saw that one sentry had raised his rifle to fire a warning shot over the heads of the pursuing men.
    The other sentry ran over and knelt down beside him. Curtis grabbed the lapel of the man’s jacket, his bloodied right hand leaving dark smears on his uniform. He had to pass on what he knew.
    ‘Three men. Voss. You—’
    And then a third bullet smashed into Curtis’s ravaged body, ploughing through his skull and killing him instantly.

Chapter 1
    6 April 1912
East Anglia
    Alex Tremayne shifted position slightly to relieve the strain on his elbows and lowered the binoculars to the ground. He’d been lying prone in the hedgerow watching the farmhouse at the edge of the fens for over three hours, and he still hadn’t seen what he was looking for. Not for the first time he wondered if he was right, if the trail he’d followed was the correct one.
    He glanced down at his watch. It was late afternoon, the pale light of the early spring day already shading into the grey of evening. Quite soon, he hoped, the lamps in the farmhouse would be lit and then, perhaps, he might be able to see what was happening inside the building.
    Tremayne lifted the binoculars again and resumed his scrutiny of the windows, and particularly those on the upper floor. And while he studied the dark oblong shapes, he mentally reviewed the steps he’d taken, the clues which had led him to this isolated and desolate spot. The trail had started, of all places, outside a jewellery shop in London’s West End, but the men involved had then seemingly vanished from sight, and it wasn’t until the letter had arrived at the Whitehall address that Tremayne had had any hard information to work with.
    The single clue had been the name of the post office from which the letter had been sent. A tiny piece of evidence that was indicative, no more, of where his quarry might be found. Even then, Tremayne hadn’t been particularly hopeful, reasoning that the letter would have been dispatched from a village some distance away from where the men were staying. But at the very least, the postmark had given him a starting point, and for almost a week he had been haunting the public houses and shops in the area, listening to local gossip and asking the occasional discreet question.
    The previous afternoon, a chance remark overheard in the street had led him to a tiny hamlet, far too small to be dignified by the term ‘village’, and from there to the long and unmade track which