TITANIC: A STORY TOLD
Chapter Forty-Three
Rose blinked, seeming to come back to the
present. She saw the wreck on the screen, the sad ghost ship deep in the abyss.
"That was the last time Titanic ever saw
daylight."
Brock Lovett changed the tape in the
mini-cassette recorder.
"So we’re up to dusk on the night of the
sinking. Six hours to go."
Bodine got to his feet. "Don’t you love
it? There’s Smith, he’s standing there with the iceberg warning in his fucking
hand..." He remembered Rose. "...excuse me...in his hand, and he’s
ordering more speed."
Brock looked up. "Twenty-six years of
experience working against him. He figures anything big enough to sink the ship
they’re going to see in time to turn. But the ship’s too big, with too small a
rudder...it can’t corner worth shit. Everything he knows is wrong."
Rose was ignoring this conversation. She had
the art-noveau comb with the jade butterfly on the handle in her hands, turning
it slowly. She was watching a monitor, which showed the ruins of Suite B-52/56.
Slowly, she began to speak again.