Chapter 12: CROSSING THE ATLANTIC
The RMS Berengaria cut through the North Atlantic like a floating city.
Six hundred feet of steel and ambition, carrying two thousand passengers toward England at the brisk pace of twenty-two knots. First-class accommodations occupied the upper decks—wood-paneled staterooms, dining rooms that rivaled Manhattan's finest restaurants, promenades where the wealthy could pretend the ocean was merely an inconvenient distance between their money and their destinations.
I played the part. Dinner jacket, carefully styled hair, the effortless arrogance of inherited wealth. David Webb would have hated the performance. But David Webb was dead, and the man wearing Jameson Caldwell's body understood that survival sometimes meant becoming what you weren't.
"Mr. Caldwell." A woman in pearls and silk approached my table on the second evening. "I don't believe we've been introduced. Lady Ashworth. My husband owns shipping interests in Southampton."
"A pleasure, Lady Ashworth." I rose, offering the slight bow that old money expected. "Caldwell. American steel, though I'm afraid my interests have shifted toward antiquities in recent years."
"How fascinating." She didn't mean it—her eyes had already calculated my net worth and found it sufficiently interesting. "And you travel with quite an entourage, I notice."
"Research assistants and security. The antiquities market can be rather competitive."
Her gaze drifted toward the door, where Sam had entered with Steinberg. They were dressed appropriately—good suits, professional bearing—but something in their carriage marked them as staff rather than peers. The invisible boundaries of class, visible only to those who enforced them.
"Indeed." Lady Ashworth's smile tightened almost imperceptibly. "Well, do enjoy the voyage, Mr. Caldwell. Perhaps we'll have occasion to speak again."
She glided away toward another table, where more appropriate company waited. I watched her go, then returned my attention to my meal.
The first class dining room was a performance space. Every conversation carried subtext—alliances forming, information exchanged, status negotiated through careful words and careful silences. I ate mechanically, responding to approaches with the appropriate mixture of charm and evasion, playing a role I'd never learned but somehow understood.
Later, in my stateroom, the masks came off.
"She was testing you." Sam stood by the window, watching the black ocean slide past. "Lady Ashworth. Her husband's shipping company handles customs brokerage. She wanted to know if you were competition."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I asked the steward. Her family name appears in Tommy's research—Ashworth Shipping handles cargo for several German firms. Including one that matches the buyer profile for our artifact."
The connection sent ice through my veins. Lady Ashworth's husband might be the buyer we were racing to intercept. And I'd just introduced myself as someone interested in antiquities.
"Did she seem suspicious?"
"Curious. Not alarmed." Sam turned from the window. "But we should assume she'll mention the encounter to her husband. If they're connected to the German acquisition, they'll be watching for complications."
Steinberg looked up from the documents spread across the small desk. "This changes our timeline. If the buyers have advance warning—"
"They don't know what we're planning." I forced calm into my voice. "They know a wealthy American is interested in antiquities. That describes half the passengers in first class."
"Still. We should accelerate our reconnaissance when we arrive." Tommy was pacing the limited floor space, energy barely contained. "I can be at the warehouse within hours of docking. Initial survey, guard patterns, entry points."
"Too risky if they're already alert. We stick to the plan—arrive November 29th, reconnaissance the 30th, operation that night." I pulled out the warehouse blueprints, spreading them beside Steinberg's research. "What matters now is making sure everyone knows their role."
The planning sessions became our nightly ritual. After the evening performances—dinner, drinks, casual conversation with passengers who might remember a suspicious absence—we gathered in my stateroom and worked through every detail of the operation.
Sam mapped the security layout. Two guards, four-hour shifts, with a gap between 2:15 and 2:45 when the night shift guard made rounds outside the main building. Entry through a side window—Tommy had identified a latch that could be defeated with minimal noise. Exit through the same window, or through a loading door if circumstances required speed over stealth.
Steinberg documented the artifact itself. The Carnarvon Dagger, recovered from Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, quietly retained by Lord Carnarvon before his death the following year. Bronze blade, gold inlay, hieroglyphs identifying it as a ritual implement dedicated to Anubis. German research suggested it possessed the ability to "cut barriers between states of being"—whatever that meant in practical terms.
"The wounds it creates don't heal normally." Steinberg's voice was clinical, detached—the tone of a scholar discussing abstract concepts rather than lethal dangers. "German sources describe experiments with similar artifacts. Subjects injured by metaphysically active blades experienced continued deterioration even after treatment."
"How do we contain it?"
"Lead-lined case. Salt barrier. No direct skin contact." The same protocol as the scarab, more or less. "I've prepared materials—Henderson arranged shipping before we departed. The case will be waiting at our London accommodation."
Tommy had arranged the accommodation through contacts I didn't ask about. A flat in Bethnal Green, close enough to Whitechapel for quick access, far enough from the docks to avoid casual observation. The landlord was paid in advance, no questions asked.
"Transport is confirmed." Tommy consulted his notebook. "Vehicle arrives at 1:30 AM, parks two blocks from the warehouse. Driver is reliable—I've worked with him before."
"Before what?"
Tommy's expression closed slightly. "Before this. Different work. Same principle—moving things that needed moving without official attention."
I didn't press. Everyone at this table had a past they weren't sharing completely. What mattered was whether they could do the job.
The third night brought conflict.
We were reviewing final positions when Tommy challenged a decision Sam had made about entry sequence.
"You're putting Steinberg on first watch. He's the slowest of us—if something goes wrong at the perimeter, he can't respond quickly enough."
"The Doctor stays outside because he understands the artifact." Sam's voice was level, patient—the tone of someone accustomed to explaining tactical decisions to people who questioned them. "If we need rapid identification inside the warehouse, having him at entry point doesn't help."
"I can make identifications." Tommy's jaw tightened. "I've memorized the description. Bronze blade, gold inlay, Anubis hieroglyphs. It's not complicated."
"The artifact has metaphysical properties. Properties that might not be visible to—"
"To what? Someone without a doctorate?" Tommy's voice rose. "I went to MIT. I speak four languages. I arranged half the logistics for this operation in two days. But because I didn't study archaeology, I can't be trusted to recognize a decorated knife?"
The stateroom went quiet. The ship's engines hummed beneath us, a constant vibration that suddenly seemed very loud.
Sam didn't respond immediately. His expression remained neutral, but something shifted in his posture—a subtle relaxation that might have been acknowledgment.
"That's not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean?"
"I meant that in a tactical situation, roles should be assigned based on capability, not pride." Sam's voice didn't rise to match Tommy's volume. "You're better at rapid assessment and improvisation. Steinberg is better at artifact identification under pressure. I'm better at threat response. These aren't judgments—they're observations."
"Then why does your observation sound like you're telling me to stay in my place?"
The question hung in the air. I recognized what was happening—years of being dismissed, overlooked, assigned to lesser roles because of assumptions about capability. Tommy was fighting ghosts that had nothing to do with Sam's actual intentions.
"Because that's what you're hearing." Sam met Tommy's eyes directly. "I can't control what your experience taught you to expect from people who look like me or talk like me. But I can tell you that I don't operate that way. Never have. When I commanded men in France, I assigned roles based on what they could do—not what they looked like or where they came from."
Tommy's anger didn't disappear, but it shifted into something more complicated. Recognition, maybe. The slow realization that he'd been fighting the wrong battle.
"France." His voice was quieter now. "You served?"
"Three years. Sergeant, 4th Battalion. Mostly we fought Germans. Sometimes we fought our own command's stupidity." Sam's mouth quirked slightly. "The enemy didn't care about color when they were shooting at us. I learned not to care about it when I was shooting back."
The tension in the room eased. Not resolved—that would take longer—but transformed into something workable.
"Fine." Tommy picked up his notebook. "Steinberg on first watch. I take entry with you and Caldwell. But if something goes wrong with artifact identification, I'm not taking the blame."
"If something goes wrong with artifact identification, we'll have bigger problems than blame." I stood, moving toward the door. "We dock in eighteen hours. Everyone should rest while they can."
The others filed out. Tommy paused at the threshold.
"I'm sorry. For the—" He gestured vaguely. "That wasn't about Sam. Not really."
"I know."
"It's just—" He stopped, struggled for words. "Nobody's ever given me a team before. A real one, I mean. Where my input matters. It's... taking some adjustment."
"Adjustment takes time. We have time." I pulled open the door. "After London, assuming we survive, there'll be plenty of opportunity to figure out how we work together."
Tommy nodded and disappeared down the corridor toward his cabin.
I stood alone in the stateroom, listening to the ship's engines and the distant murmur of the sea. Through the porthole, stars scattered across black sky—the same stars that had guided sailors for millennia, the same constellations that had meant something to the Egyptians who'd crafted the dagger we were about to steal.
The System pulsed in my peripheral vision.
[TEAM COHESION: IMPROVING]
[OPERATION PROBABILITY: 58% → 61%]
[TIME TO ARRIVAL: 17 HOURS 23 MINUTES]
Sixty-one percent. Better odds than yesterday. Still plenty of room for everything to go wrong.
I thought about Lady Ashworth and her husband's shipping company. About German buyers who'd paid for an artifact they didn't understand. About the dagger sitting in a London warehouse, waiting to be claimed by whoever reached it first.
Fourteen days ago, I'd woken up in a hospital bed with another man's memories and no understanding of what came next. Now I was crossing the Atlantic with three people who'd committed to an organization that barely existed, preparing to execute an operation that could easily get us all killed or imprisoned.
David Webb had been a curator. He'd spent his career behind glass cases, cataloguing objects that other people had risked their lives to find. He'd never imagined standing on a ship's deck at midnight, watching the stars, preparing for violence.
But David Webb was gone. What remained was something new—someone who saw the danger coming and couldn't look away. Someone who'd found people willing to face it with him.
The Antiquity Defense Guild. Four people and a mission and odds that improved slightly every day.
Tomorrow, Southampton. Then London. Then the warehouse and the guards and the artifact that could cut barriers between states of being.
I stayed on deck until dawn broke over the horizon, painting the Atlantic in shades of gray and gold. When the first passengers began emerging for breakfast, I went back to my stateroom to prepare for arrival.
The mission was waiting.
Author's Note / Support the Story
Your Reviews and Power Stones help the story grow! They are the best way to support the series and help new readers find us.
Want to read ahead? Get instant access to more chapters by supporting me on Patreon. Choose your tier to skip the wait:
⚔️ Noble ($7): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public.
👑 Royal ($11): Read 17 chapters ahead of the public.
🏛️ Emperor ($17): Read 24 chapters ahead of the public.
Weekly Updates: New chapters are added every week. See the pinned "Schedule" post on Patreon for the full update calendar.
👉 Join here: patreon.com/Kingdom1Building