The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (11 page)

"Three days to get all the way to Italy? Goodness!" said Tom Sawyer. "Can
this canoe do it?"

"Do not underestimate the
Nautilus
." Nemo went to stare out at the
swirling undersea view. The ship cut through the waters at incredible speed, her
long, lean lines demonstrating the accuracy of her nickname, Sword of the
Ocean.

The League gathered in the amazing vessel's conning tower as the submarine
boat cruised the surface of the Atlantic off the coast of Portugal. A white wake
curled from the bow as the beautifully ornamented vessel glided ahead. The salty
air was as refreshing as the bright daylight.

"This is a whole lot different from riding a paddle-boat," Tom Sawyer
said.

Beside him, the famous hunter cleaned his big elephant gun in silence. Sawyer
watched him, unable to keep silent. "So, you named your gun, Mr.
Quatermain?"

"Matilda."

"Who's Matilda?" The young agent seemed eager for conversation. "Somebody
special?"

"My gun." The old hunter sighted the gun out to sea, past where Mina Harker
and Dorian Gray stood together on the far side of the
Nautilus's
deck.

Gray smiled curiously as he looked at the woman in her formal blue dress,
white scarf, and long gloves, all of which were certainly inappropriate for
standing outside on the open deck of a submarine vessel racing across the water.
He had witnessed the terrible changes in her, knew the demonic creature that
lurked half-hidden beneath her perfect exterior. Just like himself. He edged
closer. "Mina—rediscovering you… Ah, the mullahs of Arabia would call it
kismet."

Mina did not find the moment quite so magical. "Don't get any ideas, Dorian.
Our past is just and only that."

"Did I hurt you so?" His thin patrician lips formed a pained expression,
which had no effect on the pale, beautiful woman.

"Don't flatter yourself. Until M mentioned your name, I'd all but forgotten
you existed." She sniffed. "You were always strange, Dorian. Until the incident
in your library, watching you riddled with bullets and remaining completely
unaffected… I just didn't realize
how
strange."

"Strange? I prefer 'timeless."

"At least your appearance finally makes sense to me. Quatermam knew you as a
grown man when he was just a boy? Even before, when we were together, I wasn't
naive enough to think that your 'youth' was due to clean living. You haven't
aged a day."

"Its an overrated practice. And you yourself don't appear a moment
older."

"I have an excuse."

"So do I."

As she turned away from Gray and started toward the conning tower's hatch,
Sawyer watched the beautiful woman with obvious admiration.

Quatermain continued to study his elephant gun, gazing through the sight and
never taking his eyes away, but still he sensed Sawyers fascination with Mina
Harker. "She's out of your league, boy."

With good-natured American cockiness, Sawyer said, "Fortune rewards the bold,
Mr. Quatermain." He stepped forward with his disarming grin, intending to be a
gentleman and open the hatch for Mina. "If you require any help during the
voyage, Mrs. Harker, let me know."

Mina let him work the heavy hatch. "Help? I'm curious as to how you think you
could assist me, Agent Sawyer."

The young man struggled with the wheel, still grinning. "Oh, heavy lifting.
Light banter. Whatever you need. I'm a useful guy."

"Not to me," Mina said as he finally hauled open the hatch. "You're sweet and
young, Mr. Sawyer. Neither of which are traits I hold in high regard."

Sawyer managed to keep a straight face as Mina descended into the confues of
the
Nautilus
. "Well, you're sure to the point, Ma'am. I'll give you
that."

Gray followed a moment later with a smug smirk, enjoying a moment of
amusement at the young agent's expense. Sawyer stayed outside on the upper deck,
not sure what to do next.

As he stared across the open, peaceful waves, Captain Nemo received a message
from Ishmael. He called to the others still on the conning tower. "We will be
diving in a moment. Please come back inside."

"Good," said Sawyer, humiliated. He glanced back at Quatermain, who remained
farthest from the hatchway.

Their eyes locked as the old hunter cracked open the gun and ejected
shells.

Only a few minutes later, the
Nautilus
dove beneath the waves,
slowly descending like a leviathan. Turbines churned, propellers cut the water,
and a great belch of ballast bubbles boiled upward.

The golden statues on the conning tower and the bow stood against the brine,
as if resisting the depths to the last moment, and then they too sank deep
beneath the waves.

Nemo sat in his scrolled captains chair, using nautical logs of his own
design to plot their best course to the northeastern coast of Italy. Lead
scribing pencils and protractors lay spread out on the chart table.

Outside, schools of silver fish swirled about, attracted by the submarines
dazzling running lights, but fleeing from the swift approach of the armor-plated
vessel.

So far they had traveled down the Thames and out of London, across the
English Channel and along the French coast to the Seine, which they had followed
to Paris. They had navigated back out to the Atlantic, keeping to the deep
waters around the Iberian Peninsula, and passed through the Strait of Gibraltar
into the calm, blue Mediterranean on their way to Italy.

Not bad for little more than a day's sailing.

When a low whistle signal sounded from the galley, Nemo looked at the ticking
enclosed clock in its alcove on the bridge. He rose from his labors, stretched,
and turned to the apparently unoccupied room. "Dinner is imminent, Mr. Skinner.
Put some clothes on, there's a good fellow."

He walked off the bridge, leaving it empty, save for the silent invisible
man. Skinner coughed, as if disappointed that the captain had remembered his
presence there…

Hearing Nemo approach, Quatermain stepped quickly out of his cabin, nearly
bumping into the
Nautilus
captain as he passed by. "Dinner is served,
Quatermain. I can offer you a jacket, if you require one."

"Thank you, no. I've lived in Africa too long to stand on stuffy old ceremony
like that." The adventurer paused, wrestling with words that weighed heavily on
his mind, while Nemo looked at him, waiting. "I wanted to thank you for your
contribution so far, Captain. I may have been overly rude earlier when I called
you a… pirate."

Nemo responded with the merest hint of a smile. "And I may have been overly
charitable when I said I wasn't one." He stroked his thick black beard. "In my
philosophy I try to live in the 'now'—where the ghosts of old wrongs do not
abide. I have plenty of scars, and memories, but I would accomplish little if I
allowed myself to be shackled by them. What of you?"

"I don't believe in ghosts. Although I've seen my share of them."

"Your past haunts you," Nemo observed.

"Vanity. Pride. Mistakes that cost me someone dear. It's an old story."

"So now you throw yourself in harm's way?"

Quatermain tried to think of an analogy the submarine captain might
understand. "Old tigers, sensing the end, are at their most fierce. They go down
fighting."

Bounding out of his cabin, Agent Tom Sawyer appeared, oblivious to the
conversation. "Say, where's your dining room, Nemo?" He rubbed his stomach. "I
could eat a mule."

When they reached the submarine's richly appointed room, however, they saw a
server removing plates from the table, under the somber watchful eye of First
Mate Ishmael.

The table had been laid extravagantly, with gold-trimmed china, finely woven
napkins, and a startling centerpiece made from a shark's head ringed with frilly
kelp and colorful shells. From a side serving table, a savory, fishy aroma
wafted up from a tureen of chowder. Plates of iced shellfish were waiting to be
served.

In spite of these elaborate preparations, a server took away many of the
place settings that had been set out for the members of the League.

"Where are the others?" Nemo frowned, affronted. "Did they not receive the
summons to dine?"

"I checked with them personally, Captain," Ishmael said, scratching his
cheek. He did not look pleased. "They all asked to eat in their cabins."

"We may be a League, but we're sure not a team." Sawyer, at least, seemed
extremely interested in the mouth-watering smells of the food. "My Aunt Polly
always said the best efforts of gluing a family together were usually done at
the dinner table."

"Team or not, there's work to be done," Quatermain said angrily. "Maybe the
others are being particularly dedicated to their preparations."

"Or just not very sociable," Sawyer said.

Nemo regarded them. "If you two gentlemen would care to join me in my cabin,
we can look at certain plans in my possession. It will help us formulate our
next move."

"As long as we can eat while we do it." Sawyer's stomach rumbled audibly.
"Say, are those oysters?"

Nemo nodded silent instructions to Ishmael, then led the other two men to his
cabin.

While Nemo and Quatermain paid little attention to their meals, intent on the
plans and discussions for their arrival in Venice, Tom Sawyer finished off two
bowls of chowder, a dozen oysters—"Just like the ones I used to eat back home in
Missouri!"—and a grilled shark steak. He munched on salted fried sardines fresh
from the sea, then licked his fingers. He was careful not to get grease on the
fragile papers the turbaned captain was displaying for them.

In the bright light of his cabin, Nemo gently leafed through a large book of
aged drawings until he came to the particular page he had wanted to show them.
"The plans the Fantom stole from the Bank of England. These are copies… to my
knowledge, possibly the only ones in existence."

"What are they?" Sawyer asked. "Looks like a maze— sewers, maybe? Looks as
bad as Injun Joe's cave." He brightened. "Say, didn't the Fantom have some sort
of hideout in the sewers of Paris, under the Opera House?"

"If it is the same man." Nemo glanced at the young American. "These, Agent
Sawyer, are Leonardo da Vinci's blueprints of Venice, notably its foundations
and waterways."

Quatermain studied the drawings. "It's a key, a complete and secret route for
the Fantom to reach the secure place where the conference of world leaders is
being held. He'll slip inside, and nobody can stop him. Except us."

"So you reckon he'll attack by sea?" Sawyer said.

Quatermain turned to Nemo. "What do you think, Captain?"

As usual, Nemo did not give a straightforward answer. "I think there is still
much we do not know about this Fantom."

Since the others had not bothered to gather for dinner, Quatermain sought
them out in their cabins. There was little time to decide upon a course of
action, or to decipher the Fantoms' true scheme. No one suggested that the
masked man had been defeated by the shoot-out at Dorian Gray's house. His plans
would not have been so easily thwarted.

Quatermain went first to Grays cabin, where he found the elegant, youthful
man's insouciance irritating.

"I have a question for you, Mr. Gray. An appeal to all the 'experience' you
bring to our group."

Ever urbane, Gray raised his eyebrows. "Indeed? Ask away."

"According to M, the Fantoms' been abducting scientists from various nations.
All of them are versed in creating weapons of war—all except one."

He held up a cardboard photographic print of Karl Draper taken from the files
provided by M. The bald, bespectacled man looked mousy, somewhat startled by the
flare of the photographer's flash powder.

"So? Why bring him to me?" Grays bored, disinterested attitude had
returned.

"Surely time has taught you to see beyond the obvious," Quatermain said.
"Consider the question. What is so special about this man? Why is he important
to the Fantom? Do you even know who he is?"

Gray grudgingly took the picture and noted the man's name on the back of it.
"Karl Draper."

"He's a structural engineer. An architect, not a weapons designer. Why would
the Fantom want him?"

"To build a new summer home, perhaps? Someplace without mirrors, so that he
can take off his mask and relax on the weekends?"

"That's about as funny as a toothache," Quatermain growled, walking out in
disgust. Why had M insisted on including the self-centered sophisticate in their
number? For the life of him, Quatermain couldn't imagine that Gray would ever be
of any practical use to the League.

It was a busy, restless night, as they all bided their time, faced their
fears, and prepared for what was likely to be an unpleasant encounter in Venice.
Deep under the sea, it was difficult to tell the hour, day or night; Quatermain
followed his own rhythms. He paced the narrow corridors of the
Nautilus
, deep in thought, a sheaf of files and books under his
arm.

A wide-eyed and fidgety Henry Jekyll peered out from his cabin door. "Mr.
Quatermain? I'd like to help, if I could. Is there… um, something you would like
me to do?"

"Nothing for now, Jekyll," he said, passing by. Then, to reassure the nervous
little man, he added, "Don't worry, though. Mr. Hyde will have ample opportunity
to get his hands dirty."

The distaste on Jekyll's face showed that this wasn't necessarily what he'd
wanted to hear. He looked as if he had swallowed something particularly
unpleasant… such as one of the oysters Tom Sawyer had enjoyed so much.

"But try to make sure we don't see Hyde until we actually need him."
Quatermain turned a corner and passed Nemo's cabin again. Sawyer had already
gone to bed, stuffed from his large meal, but the captain's door was ajar. Nemo
knelt before a large, many-armed statue of Kali, muttering in prayerful
devotion. He bowed low and touched his turbaned head to the feet of the idol,
unaware of the other mans curiosity.