He never thought this day would come, but even so, as he stared at the image on the television, he realised that he had been waiting for it. He had assumed that any diamond hunters would have thought to check the safe long before now, but then, as he reminded himself daily, not everyone's mind worked like his. He thought of the hiding place as obvious, but it had taken them 84 years. He felt the hint of a blush creep across his cheeks as he stared at the drawing they were examining. He had assumed that it was destroyed, irreparably damaged by the water, lost forever in the wreckage. One more thing that existed only as a memory.
"Anthea, turn that up, will you?" he asked, and his assistant dragged herself away from her new Nokia Communicator text-messaging machine for just long enough to do as he asked before returning to the thing as though it were glued to her hands. He listened to the conversation between the reporter and the head of the expedition for as long as he could bear it. The man, Lovett, was pretending to be excited about the picture because it was a beautiful piece of art that deserved to be admired. It was beautiful, and Mycroft smiled to himself at the memory of the skilled hands that had drawn it. But Mycroft could see the disappointment in the diver's eyes, and the desperation in the slant of his shoulders. The picture was not the find he had hoped for.
Was there a date on the drawing? Of course, there must be; the artist was a professional after all. So this Lovett man must know that the picture was drawn on the day of the sinking. Irrevocable proof that the diamond must be somewhere on board. He smiled a knowing smile before asking Anthea to bring him the phone and a stopwatch.
He let her dial the number, and set up the timer. Under a minute, he estimated, between him saying his name and travel arrangements being made for him. A minute and a half at a push.
The line was crackly and the voice on the other end was punctuated with bursts of static, but he managed to convince the lackey who answered the call that he deserved to be redirected, and waited impatiently for the line to connect.
"This is Brock Lovett. What can I do for you, Mr... ?"
"Mycroft Holmes," he answered, and pointedly ignored the furrowed brow and questioning look of Anthea, starting the timer. It was a name that he hadn't used in a long time.
"Mr Holmes."
"I was just wondering if you had found the 'Heart of the Ocean' yet, Mr Lovett." Mycroft smiled at the flurry of activity on the other end of the call as Mr Lovett almost dropped the phone in shock.
"Alright. You have my attention, Mycroft. Can you tell me who the man in the picture is?"
Mycroft smiled. "But of course. The man in the picture is me."
There was another scramble of movement on the other end, and when Lovett asked whether it would be possible for Mycroft to visit the dive site, the old man stopped the timer and handed the phone to Anthea. She was better at arranging that sort of thing than he was. The timer said 54 seconds. He had been right. His age may have been in triple figures, but his mind was just as sharp as it had always been.
They sent him a helicopter. They were so desperate for information leading to the discovery of the diamond that they sent a helicopter to collect him within the hour. It was the furthest out to sea Mycroft had been since it happened. He had no desire to return to England and had certainly never wished to set foot on another boat again. Anthea sat beside him; her presence alone was a comfort to him. He knew what theories the explorers would have formed about him, and Anthea would be his shield against them. They would think him a liar, senile, after money or publicity. He just wanted to see his picture. A physical piece of evidence that it actually happened, that it was real.
They refused to let him walk, a team of young men instead choosing to lift him, wheelchair and all, from the helicopter and onto the deck. The noise, the sway of the boat, and the bubbling anticipation of seeing his drawing after so many years; it was too much. He could hear shouting, people calling to him, but he just had to try and block it out. He wanted to save his analytical prowess for the picture, perhaps notice details in it that he had forgotten, or had not noticed the first time.
Anthea noticed his agitation and wanted him to rest, but he refused, insisting on being taken directly to the picture. His picture. Mycroft raised his eyebrow at her, and she didn't argue, accepting instead the silent compromise that he had to stay in the chair.
The drawing was beautiful, the lines were sure and the shading perfect. Even without the memories associated with it, Mycroft liked to think that he would still have admired it, just for the pure joy of the piece of art. He stared at the page, and a version of himself 84 years younger stared back, an expression of wonder and defiance on his face (or was he just seeing it because of the memories that came rushing back to him? He couldn't be sure). The paper was submerged in a tray of water in order to preserve it, and the sway caused by the movement of the boat made it look like the subject was moving, like he was alive once more.
He remembered what it felt like, to lay there like that on the sofa in the middle of the room, clutching his fiancée's necklace in his fist, the gem a cold weight against his bare hip, feeling the eyes of the artist upon him, the thrill of vulnerability as he allowed the other man to just look, hiding nothing, allowing those brown eyes to sweep over every inch of him, committing the image of his body to paper.
Mycroft was aware that the young man, Lovett, was trying to attract his attention, and dragged his eyes away from the drawing, and his mind away from the memories. Lovett wasn't exactly 'young' as the term is generally used, but to Mycroft, who was rapidly approaching 101, everyone was young. Lovett was pale and blonde, with bright and suspicious eyes. Mycroft could see that the dive was putting a great amount of pressure on him; his employer was badgering him for updates hourly, and his wife was threatening to leave him if he didn't spend more time at home. A lot was riding on the information that Mycroft could give him.
Lovett crouched before Mycroft's wheelchair and placed a photo of the blue diamond necklace upon his knee.
"Louis the Sixteenth wore a fabulous stone, called the Blue Diamond of the Crown, which disappeared in 1792, about the same time that Louis lost everything from the neck up. The theory goes that the crown diamond was chopped too... recut into a heart-like shape... and it became The Heart of the Ocean. Today it would be worth more than the Hope Diamond." Lovett looked more at Anthea as he said this, possibly attempting to impress her, probably thinking that Mycroft was too old and decrepit to understand such complex details.
"It was a dreadful, heavy thing," Mycroft said, not bothering to hide the disgust that came out in his voice. "It only came out of the box that one time."
"You actually think this is you?" Anthea asked. She gazed at the image with apparent disinterest, but Mycroft could see the curiosity blooming beneath the mask.
"It is me, dear," Mycroft asserted, "Though perhaps a direct visual comparison would be ill advised." An undercurrent of quiet and slightly embarrassed laughter filled the room, as the occupants tried not to connect the image on the page with the wizened and wrinkled old man before them.
Lovett smiled again, and pointed to the photo that still sat in Mycroft's lap. "I tracked it down through insurance records... an old claim that was settled under terms of absolute secrecy. Can you tell me who the claimant was, Mycroft?" His tone was condescending, as though he was talking to a child. His brother would have responded by reeling off every shocking fact that he could deduce about everyone in the room, but Mycroft was more dignified than that. Besides, he was too old for theatrics.
"I should imagine someone called Moriarty," he replied, and knew from the shift in the air that he had given the right answer. Lovett stood up, and finally dropped the condescending tone.
"James Moriarty, yeah. He bought the stone in France for his niece as an engagement present, and was travelling on Titanic with her fiancée, M Holmes, who was on the list of those unaccounted for after the sinking."
"Me. Of course, I stopped going by that name when we got to shore," he sighed. Anthea almost dropped her phone. Mycroft took her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze, a silent promise to explain everything. The poor woman had spent nearly 24 hours a day with him for going on eight years. He hoped that she wouldn't be too upset to find out just how little she knew of him and his life. He had grown to care for her company very much, even if he never told her so. Lovett noticed none of Anthea's discomfort, and carried on undisturbed.
"The claim was filed in America right after the sinking. So the diamond had to have gone down with the ship. See the date on the picture?" Lovett pointed to the drawing and Anthea squinted slightly at the blurred numerals.
"14th April 1912."
"Which means, if your grandfather is who he says he is, he was holding the necklace on the day the Titanic sank." Neither Mycroft nor Anthea bothered to point out that they weren't actually related. It was neither important nor insulting, so they didn't attempt to deny it. "Making you my new best friend," Lovett added, the condescending tone creeping back into his voice. Mycroft was tempted to tell him that if he didn't call his wife soon then she would be driven back into the arms of the older man she had previously had an affair with, but he resisted.
Lovett led them through to another room, filled with computer equipment. Mycroft didn't recognise most of it; he left that sort of thing to Anthea, as she was young and more technologically inclined than he was. The television screens showed live footage from two divers who were wandering the wreck below; one in the dining room and the other in a corridor on deck B. A big, burly man with a large amount of facial hair and badly-managed diabetes who had lied to his boss about his qualifications watched Mycroft carefully. Lovett introduced him as Bodine.
"Live from 12000 feet," Bodine said proudly. Mycroft suppressed the urge to state that this was obvious. "We got a simulation of the sink. Wanna see?" The bearded man was excitable; he had created the simulation himself, and clearly didn't get to show it off very often. Mycroft offered him a strained smile.
"Is that a good idea, Mr Bodine?" asked a mousy woman from the corner of the room, an unpaid intern by the look of her wrists. "The gentleman might not want to see..." Bodine ignored her, starting up his simulation.
"It's quite alright," Mycroft reassured her with a smile. "I'm actually quite interested." By the look on her face, Mycroft surmised that his was the most attention anyone had paid to her since her arrival on the boat.
Bodine hit a few buttons on a computer, an image of the ship appeared on a screen, and the animation moved along at the same pace as his well-practiced narration.
"She hits the berg on the starboard side and it sort of bumps along . . . punching holes like a Morse code, dit dit dit, along the side, below the water line. Now the forward compartments start to flood . . . and as the water rises, it spills over the watertight bulkheads, which unfortunately don't go any higher than E deck. As her bow is going down, her stern rises up . . . slow at first . . . and then faster and faster until finally it's got her whole ass is sticking up in the air, and that's a big ass, we're talking 20 or 30 thousand tons . . . okay, now the hull isn't designed to deal with that pressure . . . so what happens? SKRTTT! . . . She splits! Right down to the keel. Now stern falls back level . . . then as the bow sinks, it pulls the stern vertical, and then finally detaches. The stern section just sort of bobs there like a cork for a couple of minutes, floods, and then goes under about 2:20 a.m. Two hours and forty minutes after the collision."
The animation followed the bow of the ship as it slipped under the water. Lovett and Anthea were watching Mycroft for his reaction, but he gave them nothing, listening closely to the scientifically accurate appraisal from the bearded man. It was an increasingly common scenario; this man, this treasure hunter who called himself a historian, felt no connection to the events he researched. For Bodine, and many others, events of the past were just things that happened, things to be analysed, to have cause and effect and a timeline established, and then to be left alone, consigned to the history books. It wasn't real to them like it was to Mycroft. It was just a story, it didn't involve actual things happening to actual people.
"The bow section planes away, about half a mile, going 20 or 30 knots when it hits the ocean floor KABOOM! Pretty cool, huh?" Mycroft smiled again, almost genuinely this time.
"Thank you sir, for that fine forensic analysis. My brother would have been most impressed."
"You could explain it better," Anthea told him quietly, and he didn't disagree.
Lovett looked like he could have kissed her, but thankfully refrained. "Will you tell us about it?" He was fighting with himself, trying not to act too much like an excited puppy at the thought of the information Mycroft could give him.
Mycroft looked over at another of the computer monitors, where the video from below deck was still playing a live feed. He pulled himself to his feet, stepping closer to get a better look. Yes, this was the upper deck. It was now just a semi-rotten lump, but once it had been a grand doorway, with a footman on either side, each dressed in elegant suits, leading through to a room full of life and dancing. He could almost hear the music playing, the night when he was there, in his borrowed finery with his stunning smile… Mycroft's knees gave way, and Lovett dashed forward to catch him before he hit the floor, practically carrying him back to his chair.
"I'm going to take him for a lie down," he heard Anthea say, and could imagine Lovett nodding, the bearded man's silent agreement, the mousey intern's quiet concern. He tried to object, but the hands pulling him were stronger than his own.
"No!" he cried, and everything stopped. All eyes were upon him, questioning, assessing. He closed his eyes, allowing himself to drift into a meditative trance in order to slow his heart-rate. Hold my brain; be still my beating heart. Well that memory certainly wasn't going to help proceedings.
Lovett was the first to move, taking a voice recorder and setting it up on the table.
"Tell us, Mr Holmes."
"It's been 84 years," he tried to protest. It was a lousy excuse and he knew it. He had been clinging to those memories so hard that he could remember the details of those days better than the details of the previous week.
"Just tell us what you can." Mycroft looked at the eager and expectant faces of the other four people. Anthea's phone had been abandoned somewhere, all pretence of disinterest gone with it. He owed it to her at least. She deserved to know.
"Do you want to hear this story or not, Mr Lovett?" Mycroft asked, in protest to the interruption. The bearded man laughed, and Lovett remained thankfully silent.
Mycroft cast his mind back to the beginning, to memories he had never allowed to fade with time. He had pretended to himself for so long that these were events that happened to somebody else; a tale he had been told by an old friend from long ago. A name he no longer used, a history he no longer admitted to. A story he wished had never come to an end.
