The Titanic Secret (Isaac Bell 11)

A shadow of confusion passed over Pitt’s eyes. While he couldn’t recount the names of the other miners, he did remember none of them were named Bell. “You’ve lost me.”

“I’m not surprised. Are you familiar with the Van Dorn Detective Agency?”

“Yes. I know they were as big and famous as Pinkerton.”

“In an age when hotels had their own in-house detectives, and railways hired armies of guards, Joseph Van Dorn built a thriving business around the motto ‘We never give up! Never!’ Isaac Bell was the lead investigator. Perhaps the greatest detective of his—or any—generation.”

“Okay,” Pitt said cautiously. “I don’t doubt that, but you need to believe me when I say that he had nothing to do with mining the byzanium or working to smuggle it aboard the Titanic. I lived that project for what seemed like the better part of a year. There were no private investigators involved.”

“Mr. Bell kept his presence out of all records. He even rewrote Brewster’s notes so that his name was expunged.”

Pitt’s face still showed nothing but confusion.

“Let me explain it this way, Mr. Pitt.”

“Dirk,” he said absently. “Please.”

“Sure, Dirk. Okay. So, Isaac Bell, over the course of his long career, came into possession of a great many secrets. Things that could ruin family dynasties, destroy the credibility of companies and even nations, and reveal hidden motives and behind-the-scenes players of some of the most pivotal events of the first half of the twentieth century. He had all this information, but unlike J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s first director, Bell had no interest in furthering himself through blackmail or intimidation. He was just a man who knew a lot of secrets.

“When he retired, he decided to record secrets and stories. I must say, had he not been so good as a detective, he could have been a pulp fiction writer. Tales of his exploits read like adventure books. He also knew that while some of what he wrote about must never see the light of day—and those journals were likely burned upon his death—he felt that other stories could be made public at some future date when those most involved were long dead and the legacy had been relegated to the ‘dusty corner of history.’ Those are his exact words.

“These files he placed in trust with his attorney with detailed instructions as to when and with whom they could be shared. Much of it was straightforward, like ‘Thirty years after the death of so-and-so, please see that his surviving children are given this envelope. If they are deceased, please see that it is given to a grandchild.’ That sort of thing.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“There were other files that he left up to the attorney’s discretion as to who to share the information with, although Bell did specify the year in which to make the disbursement, usually some benchmark important to the tale, although I’ve seen a few that just give a date with no explanation.

“So now, we spring ahead decades after Bell’s death, and his attorney built a practice into what is now Gitterman, Shankle, and Capps. My current employer and one of the city’s largest law firms. And to this day we continue to honor our commitment in seeing the last few Isaac Bell files find their proper home.”

“And you think that’s me?” Pitt still didn’t quite get the connection.

“Yes, well, when the date on this particular file came due, one of the senior partners had the honor of reading it first. He wasn’t sure what to do, but his secretary knew that I was something of a Titanic buff. My namesake uncle was part of the recovery operation. He once told me you were the man who raised the Titanic. He was a hoist operator on one of the support ships. The Modoc.”

“I’ll be damned,” Pitt said. “I thought your name rang a bell. Tommy Gwynn. You don’t look much like him, I have to say.”

“I know. Right? He was huge.”

Pitt caught the tense the lawyer used. “Was? What happened?”

“He left NUMA a short time after the Titanic operation and worked as a crane operator here in New York. There was an accident at a construction site. Uncle Tommy and two other men were killed. That was eight or nine years ago.” Councilor Gwynn paused for a moment, grief darkening his eyes before he thrust it aside. “Back to the story. The senior partners tapped me to find the right person to share this with and I immediately thought of you once I’d read it and did some digging into the lives of Brewster and the rest of his miners—”

“They called themselves the Coloradans,” Pitt interjected.

Gwynn nodded eagerly. “Bell mentioned that. There’s no family left for any of them, since all but one never married except—”

“Jake Hobart.” Now that he was thinking again about that long-ago mission, more and more details were flooding Pitt’s mind.

“That’s right. Hobart was married, but his wife is long dead, and they didn’t have children. Since no one remains from the time the mineral was mined and put aboard the Titanic, I figured why not give it to the guy who found it in the end? Bell’s journal doesn’t change the basic facts, but I thought you might be interested in the backstory of how the events unfolded more than a hundred years ago.”

From a deep pocket inside his trench coat, the young attorney withdrew a sheaf of yellowed papers in a sealed plastic bag. The first page just had a simple two-word title. The Coloradans. Pitt was about to open the bag when Blankenship interrupted.

“Just so you know, we’re only five minutes away.”

“Okay,” Pitt said, so engrossed in what Gwynn had to tell him, he hadn’t realized how swiftly they’d crossed the East River.

Thomas Gwynn said, “I told you I didn’t mind meeting on the fly like this, but what’s so important about some turtles at a riverside construction site in Queens?”

“Not some turtles,” Pitt corrected. “The Turtle. In the cargo space behind you is a leather overnight backpack and a waterproof dive bag. Could you hand me the bag?”