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DANGEROUS BETRAYAL
DANGEROUS
BETRAYAL
THE VENDETTA THAT SANK TITANIC
BILL BLOWERS
DANGEROUS BETRAYAL
THE VENDETTA THAT SANK TITANIC
© 2016 BILL BLOWERS.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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ISBN 978-1-63047-574-1 paperback
ISBN 978-1-63047-575-8 eBook
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015902152
Front Cover Painting by:
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Interior Design by:
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To the memory of 1,517 innocent men, women, and children who lost their lives in the freezing North Atlantic in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
PREFACE
BOOK 1
CHAPTER 1: April 14, 1912—11:50 PM
CHAPTER 2: April 14, 1912—11:35 PM, Aboard Titanic
CHAPTER 3: April 14, 1912—11:50 PM, Aboard Titanic
CHAPTER 4: April 15, 1912—12:15 AM, Aboard Titanic
CHAPTER 5: April 15, 1912—12:45 AM, Aboard Titanic
CHAPTER 6: April 15, 1912—1:20 AM, Aboard Titanic
CHAPTER 7: April 15, 1912—12:15 AM, Aboard SS Carpathia
CHAPTER 8: The Beginning—White Star Line
CHAPTER 9: April 1907, White Star Line Conference Room
BOOK 2
CHAPTER 10: Nikola Tesla
CHAPTER 11: Depression and Despair
CHAPTER 12: Nikola Tesla—Genius
CHAPTER 13: Tesla the Recluse
CHAPTER 14: Retribution
CHAPTER 15: Tesla Meets Edison—Oil and Water Don’t Mix
BOOK 3
CHAPTER 16: Viktor Gracac, Nikola Tesla’s Nephew
CHAPTER 17: Three Years Later (1895)
CHAPTER 18: Death Enters Viko’s Life
CHAPTER 19: Salvation
BOOK 4
CHAPTER 20: Viko in America
CHAPTER 21: January 1903—Viktor Gracac Becomes Viktor Tesla
CHAPTER 22: Nikola Tesla and the Johnsons
BOOK 5
CHAPTER 23: 1904—J.P. Morgan and the Fluorescent Lamp
CHAPTER 24: The Lamp Fiasco Begins
CHAPTER 25: Treachery and Deceit
CHAPTER 26: Justice
CHAPTER 27: Caught in the Act
BOOK 6
CHAPTER 28: 1904—Colorado Springs, Colorado
CHAPTER 29: Reconciliation and Discovery
CHAPTER 30: May 1909—Financial Salvation
CHAPTER 31: The Seagoing Experiments
CHAPTER 32: Titanic and the New Wireless
CHAPTER 33: May 1910, New York
CHAPTER 34: Another Tesla Failure
CHAPTER 35: Bad News from Great Britain
CHAPTER 36: Morgan Learns of the New Wireless
CHAPTER 37: Disaster
BOOK 7
CHAPTER 38: Targeting Titanic
CHAPTER 39: Viko the Terrorist
CHAPTER 40: Viko’s Final Farewell
CHAPTER 41: The Final Solution
CHAPTER 42: Revenge or Disaster
CHAPTER 43: April 11, 1912 New York Harbor—Viko’s Final Goodbye
CHAPTER 44: April 14—Early Morning
CHAPTER 45: April 15, 4:00 AM—Californian
CHAPTER 46: April 15, 10:00 AM—Aboard Carpathia
EPILOGUE: 1943
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AFTERWORD
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FOREWORD
By E.J. Stephens
Historian and Author
The creation of prose, whether based on fact or fiction, is always a challenging endeavor, but when an author can cleverly combine the genres, true magic emerges.
In Dangerous Betrayal: The Vendetta That Sank Titanic, Bill Blowers has exhaustively researched seemingly unrelated facts surrounding the Titanic disaster and woven them into an intriguing narrative that leads to a frightening possibility.
Titanic was built at a time when mankind was shifting faith toward the twin modern religions of science and machinery. Hard lessons learned by generations past were quickly forgotten, and respect for the hazards of sailing the North Atlantic was replaced by the illusion of safety granted by massive steel hulls and steam power. Nowhere was this more evident than in the errors in judgment made by the builders, owners, and crew of Titanic.
Dangerous Betrayal uncovers a vendetta against Titanic’s financier, J.P. Morgan. The ingenious plan collides with nature, resulting in a tragedy of catastrophic proportions.
A masterful mingling of fact and fiction, Dangerous Betrayal presents a story written so seamlessly that the reader is left pondering the question—did this really happen?
PREFACE
Dangerous Betrayal: The Vendetta That Sank Titanic, based on the Titanic disaster, is a work of historical fiction.
The narration of the details of Titanic’s creation, the events surrounding the sinking of the ship, and the impact with the iceberg are approximations of historical events. As the story unfolds the author interjects events, situations, and characters whose occurrence and/or existence may be fictional in nature.
The scenario described in this book is chillingly possible.
BOOK 1
CHAPTER 1
April 14, 1912—11:50 PM
Titanic was motionless on a silky smooth, freezing North Atlantic, her bright lights little more than beacons calling attention to her pathetic crippled state.
Viko had done the impossible. He had disabled the great ship mid-ocean, pulling off the greatest kidnapping in history. RMS Titanic was adrift and silent, unable to proceed forward, rendered crippled and mute by the destruction Viko had wrought.
Everything had worked exactly as planned. The ship’s steering mechanism had been destroyed and her Marconi wireless was unable to transmit calls for help. Both had been reduced to little more than mangled collections of scrap iron, copper, and cordite residue. Damage that was irreparable at sea had been inflicted by two carefully placed explosive charges, detonated by wireless signals from the nearby Californian. Until he arranged for her rescue, Titanic would wander aimlessly about a freezing ocean, the money and prestige of her hapless passengers now meaningless as they faced the harsh reality of their hopeless situation.
The cold clear air gave Viko Tesla a perfect view as he stood watching through his binoculars, sav
oring his victory. His was a perfect vantage point to watch the aftereffects of his handiwork on the so-called “unsinkable” ship. He smiled to himself. Titanic might be unsinkable, but she wasn’t unstoppable. He had proven that conclusively.
Titanic was five miles to the northeast. From his perch high on the upper decks of the Californian, Viko had watched as she came to a most unscheduled stop. Her lights were shining like a crown of jewels, outlining her superstructure against an ink-black, star-studded sky. She was motionless, her officers daring not to proceed westward without an operational rudder.
His tension subsided as the full realization of his conquest seeped through his body. The freezing air around him became clouded with the fog of his breath as he released the pent-up air from his lungs. He thought back over the events of the past few hours and weeks, of how everything had fallen into place. When the ice pack forced Captain Stanley Lord to stop the Californian for the night, it was stationed directly in the path of the approaching Titanic, the perfect place for Viko to carry out his vendetta. Nature was conspiring with him against his enemies, cooperating to bring justice where mankind had failed.
With little more than the push of a button—the action that triggered his wireless—Viko Tesla had brought J.P. Morgan’s most ambitious financial venture to a pathetic stop. Titanic, man’s latest testament to luxury, speed, and oceangoing safety, had been turned into a floating pile of worthless iron.
Delicious thoughts of retribution ran through Viko’s mind. Let’s see how they fare when their money, influence, and prestige can reach no further than the frozen railings of their precious ship. How little their luxuries will mean to them as Titanic runs out of coal, when the heat stops flowing, as they have to eat cold food, maybe even raw meat, bitter food served in freezing dining rooms appointed with meaningless tapestries and stiff frozen furniture to remind them of their useless wealth.
He had warned Morgan, told him to leave his uncle alone, but the fat little bastard laughed at him—dared to call him a little pissant. No one took him seriously. But now they belonged to him. He, Viko Tesla, had stripped away the victory of their finest hour and would hold them hostage until the day they would pay him the ransom of their humility, on their knees before the man they had tried to destroy.
Once again his mind drifted to images of his uncle, the world-famous Nikola Tesla. How Viko loved and despised him in a jumbled mass of confused feelings of protectionism and disenchantment. Nikola was at once the most brilliant technical mind alive, yet at the same time the victim of his own naiveté. He was such a small man in the ways of the world—but he would be ignored and shoved aside no longer. Not after this eventful night. And Nikola would be the most shocked of all because Viko had done this by himself in complete secrecy, knowing that Nikola would never have allowed such a thing to happen.
When Titanic was finally located, its position discovered through the amazing technology that Tesla himself had created, then those sniveling barons of power would be at Nikola Tesla’s feet in thanksgiving.
One a.m.
Viko peered through his binoculars at the stationary ship. He watched as their panic took over, as they fired flares into the clear night sky.
He went into the wireless room and put on the Marconi headphones. In the stillness of the room he listened intently. There was not a sound; Titanic was unable to transmit. The explosive charges had worked just as he had planned. Titanic was stationary and silent, stranded in the middle of the North Atlantic.
Two-twenty a.m.
He watched as the lights of the ship seemed to be turned off, first the steerage deck, then second class, and finally first class until she went totally dark and was no longer visible in the distant darkness. They were obviously reducing the ship’s electrical demands to preserve their limited supply of electricity.
Viko chuckled to himself as he let his fertile mind imagine the newspaper headlines that would brandish the news of the sudden disappearance of the ship everyone had been talking about. Panic would grip the financial centers in London and New York when it was revealed that J.P. Morgan was among the missing. What would happen to the fortunes of the likes of John Jacob Astor? He was sure that religious leaders would decry the gluttonous appetites of the first-class passengers and point accusatory fingers at such sinfulness as the reason why God had inflicted his wrath upon them.
In his delirium it was all too perfect, and he had brought it about—his own solitary effort!
As he contemplated all he had accomplished and the unexpected events that had helped carry it out, Viko began to think that perhaps God agreed with him. Morgan and his ilk deserved punishment.
He smiled.
He was in charge, in control—the fate of the Titanic and her passengers was in the palm of his hand.
CHAPTER 2
April 14, 1912—11:35 PM, Aboard Titanic
Back in his room, Thomas Andrews was exhausted and angry. Would he ever be freed from the interference of Ismay? From the first day he was introduced to J. Bruce Ismay five years earlier, he had been forced to put up with his meddling. At first it was Titanic’s design. Then after construction began he was constantly interjecting himself where he had no place being. He interrupted with nitpicking comments, always trying to cut costs in the ship’s superstructure so that he could add more luxury to first class. On more than one occasion Andrews had faced a mutiny from his workers if he did not put a stop to Ismay’s overbearing idiotic interruptions.
It wasn’t Ismay’s constant interruptions as much as his overbearing personality. Either by word or deed Ismay never failed to make all around him aware that he was the CEO of White Star Line, that he was the final approval on everything, and that they, no matter their title or position, were simply minor cogs in his operation. He had a unique ability to make all who met him dislike him intensely. The last thing Andrews needed was a daily reminder of Ismay’s self-appointed position of second in command to God himself.
Andrews lay down on his bed and closed his eyes. He stroked his temples, attempting to drive away the tension and headache that had settled in. How could Captain Smith have allowed Ismay to get away with this increase in speed? Was he spineless in the face of the chairman of White Star Line?
The speed increase was going to damage Titanic. It would be no simple repair. The engines had been lowered into the hull before the superstructure above them was built. To repair them, the stern would have to be dismantled. At a minimum, Titanic would have to go back into dry-dock. But if the worst thing happened, if the engines seized up at sea, the ship would need to be towed to the nearest port.
Andrews forced himself to calm down. It’s just a ship—theirs, not mine. Let them run her as they please. I have done my job and I have done it well. But with his inbred dedication to his work, such effort proved futile, much like trying to convince a mother to stop worrying about a daughter just because she reaches the age of eighteen.
The rhythm of Titanic’s engines relaxed Andrews as he lay there. The gentle vibration rippled through the steel hull like the gentle breathing of a child asleep in his arms.
What was that? He heard something, or perhaps felt something was more like it. Maybe the engines had skipped a beat, making a popping sound. Or perhaps it was a dull explosion far away, lasting only a fraction of a second, followed by the steady vibration of the engines again. Had he actually heard something? He was tired, but also a trained engineer and a professional. He knew the feel and sound of the ship, and the noise he had just heard didn’t belong.
His telephone rang. Andrews sat bolt upright, startled by its loudness. This was the first time he had been rung-up on the voyage, and the unexpectedness of it rattled him. He almost fell in his haste to answer the call. At this late hour, the phone ringing could only mean serious trouble somewhere in the ship.
It was Fourth Officer Boxhall. “Get up here right now! We have lost control of steering.”
“What do you mean lost control? That’s impossible.”
Surely Boxhall had to be mistaken. The steering mechanism, newly conceived for this class of ship, was based on electrical control from the wheel to the rudder control steam engine. Gone were the endless mechanical links and steam pipes that required constant maintenance. It was an ingenious system and one guaranteed to work through the most dreadful of circumstances.
Andrews ran out of his room leaving the phone receiver hanging by its cord. He took the stairs two at a time, rushed along the portside railing, and burst into the bridge control room to find the helmsman, Robert Hitchens, spinning the wheel from side to side with no effect on the ship. It was loose in his hands, turning freely with no resistance. Unknown to them, the mechanism under the deck had been ripped apart by an explosion, the sound that Andrews had heard.
“What happened?” Andrews barked.
“We were steaming along steady-as-she-goes, and suddenly the wheel jerked in my hands. There was an explosion, a loud popping sound from below decks, and the wheel went limp. I instinctively tried to turn it but it had no effect on the ship.”
“Get Smith up here at once and stop this ship!” Andrews shouted to Boxhall.
Joseph Boxhall stood resolute. “We are steaming at full speed under direct orders of Captain Smith, and this ship will not stop without his order.”
“You fool! We may be out of control! We can be turned by ocean currents.”
“We don’t know that we are out of control, and we will not change course without a direct order.”
Andrews couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This was not a military ship in a battle condition, it was a passenger ship full of innocent sleeping passengers—and it was out of control. The largest inhabited floating vehicle ever set upon the sea was speeding through the ocean with no control over its direction, and Boxhall wouldn’t stop it? Who needed a commander to explain this? How could protocol and chain of command stand in the way of common sense?
Dangerous Betrayal