The plane touched down at LAX. As Link stepped out of the terminal, a blast of hot air hit him—mixed with the smell of palm trees and car exhaust, pure Southern California.
He instinctively tightened his grip on his briefcase.
Inside it, that diary weighed more than all the blueprints he'd brought combined.
It wasn't a historical reference.
It was the final nail in the coffin lid of White Star Line chairman J. Bruce Ismay.
---
Inside Pangu Pictures' conference room, the air was thick with smoke.
It burned the throat. The table was littered with coffee cups and paperwork.
Robert Shaye's cigar had burned down to half its length. James Cameron paced back and forth, the veins on his face bulging like they were about to pop.
"Link —well?" Cameron's eyes lit up the instant he saw him walk in. "Did you get the blueprints?"
"Got them," Link said.
He set down a rolled bundle of copied structural drawings.
Shaye let out a breath, a grin immediately spreading across his face. "Fantastic. That means we can finally start building."
"Not so fast."
Link pulled out the thick leather-bound diary and placed it on the table.
Cameron frowned. "What's that?"
"Ransom," Link replied.
He slid the diary to the center of the table.
"Sir Spencer gave us everything—blueprints, manuscripts, notes. No money. No strings."
Shaye practically beamed. "Seriously? The old guy was that generous?"
"But he had one condition…"
Link opened the diary to a bookmarked page. His voice wasn't loud, but it rang in the room like a bell tolling.
"'…The rivet samples from Dry Dock No. 3 failed inspection again. Slag content too high. This is the twelfth time I've raised the issue in committee…'"
He finished reading and looked up.
The room went dead silent.
Shaye's smile froze. His cigar slipped from his fingers and dropped into the ashtray.
Cameron stared for a second, then suddenly grabbed the diary and skimmed a few lines. It was like he'd been struck by lightning.
"My God!" he shouted, his blue eyes blazing with near-maniacal fire.
"This wasn't an act of nature…"
"This was murder!"
He slammed the table. "This is the story! This is the real story! A ship that was doomed from the moment it left the yard! A myth of progress strangled by capital! This isn't a disaster movie—it's a Greek tragedy!"
Shaye's face drained of color. "Have you lost your mind? Do you realize what this means? White Star Line was backed by the Morgan banking empire! Their descendants still run Wall Street! You want Hollywood to go to war with Wall Street?"
He snapped his head toward Link, bloodshot eyes burning.
"Are you insane? We'd get sued into oblivion! No—we'd get torn apart by the entire industry!"
"So what?!" Cameron roared back. "Is money the only thing in your head? This is an Oscar-level story! This is the kind of film that gets written into cinema history! Do you get that or not?!"
"I get it? I get jack shit!" Shaye finally exploded, crushing his cigar into the ashtray.
"All I get is our stock price turning into toilet paper overnight! All I get is New Line becoming public enemy number one in the UK!"
Watching the scene unfold, Link sighed quietly.
He stepped between the two men and gently closed the diary.
"Everyone calm down."
He looked at Shaye first.
"Robert, your concerns are valid."
Shaye froze. He hadn't expected Link to side with him—at least not first.
"But," Link continued, smoothly shifting gears, "who said we were going to accuse anyone?"
"What do you mean?"
Link smiled—a smile with a hint of foxlike cunning.
"We don't say it. We show it."
He looked at a confused Shaye and an eager Cameron, and began painting a picture.
"There'll be a scene in the film. Short. Quiet."
"A conference room at the Belfast shipyard. A group of well-dressed British gentlemen sit around a long table. Outside the window, the massive skeleton of the Titanic rises as it's being built."
"Chief designer Thomas Andrews places two rivets on the table. One steel. One iron."
"Then the camera cuts to the chairman of White Star Line. He says nothing. He simply picks up the iron rivet, weighs it in his hand, and glances at the financial report beside him—where a red number shows a cost overrun."
"He doesn't say a word. He just gently pushes the iron rivet back to the center of the table."
"The meeting ends. Everyone stands—except Andrews, who remains seated, staring out the window at the ship he designed with his own hands… a ship destined to become a floating grave."
When Link finished, the room was utterly silent.
Shaye didn't speak. He was a smart man. He understood.
There was no spoken accusation. No narration spelling it out.
Yet the chill of capital-driven greed would already be nailed into the audience's bones through pure imagery.
And most importantly—
Legally, it was airtight.
You can't sue a look.
You can't sue a silent meeting.
"This…" Shaye swallowed hard. "This could actually work?"
"That's called art," Cameron answered for him. He looked at Link with genuine admiration for the first time.
"And it'll spark debate worldwide. That kind of controversy? It's the best free marketing in film history."
Slowly, Shaye's eyes began to light up.
"So," Link said, spreading his hands, "are we in agreement?"
"I'm in!" Cameron shouted without hesitation.
Shaye hesitated for a long moment. Finally, like a deflated balloon, he collapsed back into his chair and nodded.
"Alright… I'm gambling on this."
Link was just about to relax when Cameron's madness flared up again.
"No!" Cameron slapped the table. "It's still not enough!"
Link and Shaye both turned to him.
"One meeting scene is letting them off too easy!" Cameron's eyes gleamed.
"I want the audience to see those rivets—one by one—being blown out of the hull!"
He grabbed a pen and started sketching furiously on a blank sheet of paper.
"I want Pangu Digital Magic to form a dedicated R&D team immediately. I want a 'digital ocean' that's identical to the real thing. I want to simulate every rivet failing under cold temperatures and impact—frame by frame!"
He slammed the paper down in front of Link.
"And to make sure this is absolutely accurate, we can't rely on just this diary."
"Link ," Cameron said, locking eyes with him, enunciating every word,
"find the time to go back to the UK."
"Dig up the engineers who tested those rivets—or their descendants—"
"Even if you have to pull them straight out of their graves."