Coeur de la Mer

Prologue

2074, far future.

Rod Lubbick strolled tiredly to the phone on the main deck of the ship. A stupid call, some old lady. He didn't even really care what the old bitty had to say, he wanted to find his diamond and get the hell home. His assistant handed him the phone when he approached and he sighed, mumbled how he didn't want to take any calls.

"Oh trust me, you want to take this one. Oh an uh, she's kind of old, so you might wanna speak up!"

"Oh great." Rod sighed and put the phone to his face. "Hello Mrs . ."

"Oh, Lliam. Mimi Lliam."

"Mrs. Lliam?"

"Uh, yes. I was wondering if you've found the Heart of the Ocean yet?"

Rod's eyes widened to the size of frisbees and he looked to his assistant, who looked triumphant. He adjusted the phone slightly. "You have my attention Mimi. Can you tell me who the woman in the picture is?"

"Oh yes," in her home thousands of miles away Mimi fixed the cordless that she grasped in a shaking hand. "The woman in the picture is me."

"She's a goddamn liar! Some nutcase seeking money or publicity! God only knows why. Like that Russian babe, Anesthesia!" Rod sighed as his friend and co-worker, Lewis Bodine followed him to where Mimi's helicopter would soon be landing. "Mimi Marquez died on the Titanic when she was 17, right?"

"That's right." Rod said, avoiding running face first into a rope.

"So that would make her what, over a hundred now?"

"A hundred and one next month."

"Ok, so she's a very OLD goddamn liar!" Lewis cried, waving his hands in the air. "Look I did the background check on this chick all the way back to the 1990's when she was an actress, an actress, eh? She went by Mimi Davis back then. Then she married Pedro Lliam moved to Buffalo and punched out a couple of kids! Now Lliam's dead and from what I hear, Buffalo's dead!"

Rod approached the helipad, spoke loudly over the hum of the chopper's engine as it neared. "Everyone who knows about the diamond is supposed to be either dead or on this ship but she knows!"

The helicopter landed successfully and Mimi and her granddaughter Kati were brought off and welcomed aboard the Keldysh. They were taken to their staterooms and left to unpack for a while when Rod came to the doorway with Lewis, smiled gently. "Are your rooms all right?"

"Oh yes lovely." Mimi replied, sitting in her wheelchair, setting up pictures. Her soft Spanish accent made the words warm. " Can't go anywhere without my pictures. Oh! Have you met my granddaughter Kati? She takes care of me."

Kati smiled shyly at Rod, then warmly at her grandmother. "We met on deck, Abuelita Remember? Just a few minutes ago."

Mimi gestured at her head with a hopeless hand and shrugged, Lewis looked doubtfully to Rod but Rod just swallowed and tried to remain optimistic. He cleared his throat and said, "So, Mimi. Can I get you anything?"

Mimi paused and looked at him. "Yes." She said softly. "I would like to see my drawing."

Moments later she was wheeled down a long corridor to a surveillance looking room, where the sketch lay in preservative fluid. It was yellowed, mainly because of what it was made of and also for being under water for 85 years. She was so young in it, lying on her side on a couch, nude. The only thing on her body was the expensive heavy necklace. Rod began to speak as she stared at it, misty eyed.

"Louis XVI wore a fabulous stone. It was called the Blue Diamond of the Crown. It disappeared in around 1792, right about the time Louis lost everything from the neck up. The theory goes that the diamond was chopped too, and recut into a heart-like shape, and called the Heart of the Ocean. Today it would be worth more than the Hope Diamond."

Mimi shook her head, smiling wryly. "It was a dreadful heavy thing. I only wore it this once."

Kati looked at her with a raised brow. "You actually think this is you, Abuelita?"

"It is me, dear." She smiled. "Wasn't I hot stuff?"

Mimi wanted so badly to reach and touch that signature. Rod continued. "I tracked some old insurance records, a claim was settled under terms of absolute secrecy. Do you know who the claimant was, Mimi?"

Mimi paused and wet her lips, then replied. "I should imagine someone named Coffin."

"That's right," Rod said, smiling, along with all the researchers in the room. "Benjamin Coffin II. CyberArts Studios tycoon. The claim was for a diamond necklace his son Benny bought his fiancée, a week before he sailed on Titanic. You. It was filed right after the sinking. So the diamond had to have gone down with the ship."

Mimi opened her mouth to protest but remained silent to listen to the chatter of the people around her.

"See the date?" Rod asked Kati, who bent and read it off of the old piece of paper. "April 14th, 1989."

"So if your grandma is who she says she is, she was wearing the diamond the day it sank."

Rod smiled softly over to Mimi. "Which makes you, my new best friend."

Mimi gasped as a cart carrying some rusted and discolored silver and copper was wheeled close to her. Rod spoke as she reached out and picked up a mirror, which seemed to be forever cold as those currents had been that night. . .

"These are some of the things we recovered from your stateroom."

She ran her old hands gingerly over the handle and back of the mirror, smiling. "This was mine," she laughed. "It looks the same as it did the last time I saw it." She turned it to look into the cracked, dirty glass, sighed softly. "The reflection has changed."

Rod watched her and asked quietly. "Are you ready to go back to Titanic?"

She only nodded slightly.

Mimi was wheeled in front of a computer where Titanic sat perpetually on still waves on some sort of graphics program. She gazed at it, fascinated, waiting to see a younger her and him run out onto the deck, breathless and laughing. She blinked when Bodine clicked and it began to move as he spoke.

"Ok, so the 'berg hits on the starboard side and starts punching holes like morse code below the waterline, Dee dee dee dee dee. The watertight compartments start to flood, and water spills over the watertight bulkheads, which unfortunately don't go above E deck. So as the bow goes down, the stern rises up, slowly at first then faster and faster until finally she's got her whole ass up in the air! And that's a big ass! We're talking 20,000 or 30,0000 tons! Now the hull isn't designed to handle that kind of pressure so what does it to? Kkkch, it splits, right down to the keel. The stern bobs there for a couple of second and the bow detaches. The stern kinda bobs there for a second like a cork for a couple of minutes, floods and finally goes under at around 2:20 A.M. Now the bow planes away while it plummets, going at 20 or 30 knots until it hits the floor, booohm, kchfow! Pretty cool, huh?"

Mimi wet her very dry lips and swallowed delicately. "Thank you for that fine, forensic analysis Mr. Bodine. Of course, the experience of it was. . . Somewhat different."

Rod knelt by her. "Will you share it with us?"

Mimi Lliam stood from her wheel chair and very tentatively made her way over to a screen, where the sunken, rusting Titanic sat alone and cold at the bottom of the ocean. She sobbed quietly after some memories began to flood over her like a warm wave, and so Kati walked to her and took her by the shoulders. "I'm taking her to rest."

"No."

"C'mon, Abuelita."

"NO!"

Rod took a tape recorder and sat by Mimi where she had taken a seat by the screens. "Tell us, Mimi."

Mimi took a deep, unsteady breath. "It's been 85 years. . ."

"That's ok," he was quick to play sympathetics and understanding. "Just say anything you remember."

Mimi regarded him with annoyance and sarcasm. "Do you want to hear this or not, Mr. Lubbick?" He was silenced by that. "It's been 85 years, and I can still smell the fresh paint. The china had never been used, the beds had never been slept in. Titanic was called, the ship of dreams. And it was, it really was. . . ."

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