Flying Dutch

by Tom Holt

  “Oh well,” said Jane. “It was nice meeting you, anyway.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Vanderdecker said.

  “Do?” Jane frowned. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “To me,” said Vanderdecker, “yes. I mean, you aren’t the sort of person who bears grudges, are you? I mean, you know a lot about me now; what I do, where I get my boat fixed, all that.”

  “I see what you mean,” Jane said. “No, you needn’t worry on that score.”

  “I believe you,” Vanderdecker said. “And what are you going to do?”

  “Good question,” Jane said. “You see, I don’t exactly relish the prospect of telling my boss that I didn’t manage it after all.”

  Vanderdecker thought for a minute. “Am I right in thinking,” he said slowly, “that you said you have no sense of smell?”

  “Rotten sense of smell, at any rate,” Jane said.

  “Well, then,” said the Flying Dutchman, “would you like a lift anywhere?”

  “Anywhere, where?”

  “Anywhere,” Vanderdecker replied. “I can assure you that my ship is entirely free of etchings.”

  “Etchings?” Jane asked and then said, “Oh I see,” quickly and reflected that it was one way of putting it. “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, you said yourself, it’s quite boring being at sea for seven years at a time.”

  Vanderdecker smiled. “Ah yes,” he said, “but is it as boring as being an accountant?”

  Jane thought hard. “Nothing,” she said, “could possibly be as boring as being an accountant. What was he like?”

  “Who?”

  “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” Jane said.

  “Oh, him,” Vanderdecker replied. “Just like all the others, really.”

  He stood up and went to the bar for another drink, just as the barman put the towels over the pump handles.

  ♦

  Not for the first time, Danny was stuck for the right word. As a result, he was feeling frustrated, and he gripped the telephone receiver so tightly that it creaked slightly.

  “You’ve got to look at it,” he repeated, “globally.” “You what?”

  “Take the global view,” Danny urged. “Perspective-wise.”

  “You do realise I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about?”

  The slender umbilical cord connecting Danny to his self-control snapped. “What I’m talking about,” he said, “is the biggest story since Westlands. And you’re prepared to jeopardise it for the sake of the cost of hiring a boat.”

  “What was Westlands?”

  Danny made a noise at the back of his throat not unlike an Irish linen sheet being torn into thin strips. “Don’t play silly buggers with me,” he said. “God, what a way to run a television network! Don’t you understand, all I want to do is hire a bloody boat and go and shoot some pictures.”

  “I understand that, yes. What I don’t understand is why. That’s where our communications interface appears to have broken down.”

  “But don’t you…” Danny paused for a moment, and an idea sprouted in his mind like the first pure, simple snow-drop of spring. “Stuff you, then,” he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “You will be,” Danny retorted, slammed the received down and retrieved his phonecard from the jaws of the machine. It was pathetically simple, he said to himself. I’ll hire a boat myself. With my own money. Or, to be precise, put it on expenses. Alexander the Great, unable to untie the Gordian Knot, sliced through it with his sword. Similarly, Danny had reached the point where nothing was going to get between him and the story. When the time came for a documentary to be made about the making of this documentary, the actor portraying him would have plenty to work with in this scene. He strode out of the telephone booth and went in search of a boat.

  It wasn’t much of a boat, when he found it, but then again, by modern standards neither was the Golden Hinde. It would do the job. He herded his camera crew onto it, indicated to the mariner in charge that it was time to go, and sat back to prepare himself.

  About half an hour later, the mariner leaned across and said, “You sure it was here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” said the mariner, with the authority of a pope, “it isn’t here now.”

  “Then it must have moved,” Danny said. “I suggest you look for it.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know,” Danny snapped, “use your bloody imagination.” The mariner shrugged and fiddled with his engine. The camera crew exchanged glances of a variety unique to members of a powerful trade union who are on overtime and are getting wet. Among such specialised social units, language ceases to be necessary after a while.

  Three quarters of an hour later, the mariner suggested that that just left West Bay. He said it in such a way as to suggest that West Bay was so unlikely a place to expect to find a ship that only a complete imbecile would bother looking, but Danny was too wrapped up in his own destiny to notice.

  By sheer coincidence, Danny’s boat entered West Bay just as the Verdomde was leaving it. The Verdomde wasn’t the only one, at that; on shore, there was a sudden and unprecedented scrambling for cars and dropping of car keys. People were getting out in a hurry, because of the smell.

  Jane, for reasons which will not need to be explained, couldn’t smell the smell; but everyone else could, including Vanderdecker. The effects of the enchanted seawater of Dounreay had worn off, about five minutes after the Verdomde had been declared seaworthy and money had changed hands, and thankfully the wind was in the right direction, at least for the purposes of navigation. Although Vanderdecker was extremely unhappy about setting off in broad daylight, he knew that he had no alternative except to take the chance. He might be conspicuous if he went, but he was going to be a great deal more so if he stayed. Once, in Puerto Rico, they had called out the fire brigade and turned the hoses on him, and that sort of experience leaves its mark on a man’s psyche.

  In later years, Jane often asked herself why she stayed on the ship. Occasionally she tried to tell herself that she hadn’t yet given up hope of accomplishing her mission, but that was pure self-deception. Insofar as there was any rational explanation, it could only be that she couldn’t stand the thought of the adventure ending. In her own defence, she could argue that she only had a five-hundredth of a second to decide, and even the clearest brains are likely to be pushed to make momentous decisions in the time it takes for the shutter of a camera to fall. Anyway, she said, “Can I come with you?” and Vanderdecker had agreed. At least, she assumed he agreed. Perhaps he hadn’t heard her, being too busy giving orders to the crew. At any rate, she stayed.

  Danny saw the ship about one second before he smelt the smell, but it must be borne in mind that he had a cold. Everyone else smelt the smell first. Then they told Danny about it, just in case he hadn’t noticed it for himself. They suggested that the smell was extremely unpleasant and that it might be prudent to go away. They expanded on this point. They threatened to put Danny in the sea. Finally they ignored him He shrieked at them for a while, but quite soon the sound of the ship’s engine being revved to death was so loud that he was quite inaudible.

  ♦

  “That boat,” Jane said.

  “What boat?” Vanderdecker said. “Not now, Sebastian. Take it off.”

  Sebastian van Dooming untied the anchor chain from his leg and went back to his post, muttering.

  “You were saying,” said Vanderdecker, “about a boat.” The Flying Dutchman had that harassed look again. It suited him by now, rather as a Savile Row three–piece with Jermyn Street socks suits its wearer. It looked right on him, somehow.

  “I thought I recognised the man,” said Jane.

  “Which man?” asked Vanderdecker.

  “The man on the boat,” said Jane.

  “Which boat?”

  “Oh,” said Jane, “never mind. Where are we going?”

  “The long-term itinerary,” said Vander
decker “we can discuss later. Right now, would the statement “Out to sea” satisfy you?”

  “No.”

  “Tough,” said Vanderdecker. “You see, the drill is to get as far out of the usual sea-lanes as possible before anyone sees us. Getting out of the usual sea-lanes in the English Channel isn’t easy, what with all the ships. Therefore we tend to postpone the thinking part of it indefinitely.”

  “Right.”

  Vanderdecker deliberately slowed his brain down and thought for a moment. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Well…” said Jane, lucidly.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he went on, “it’s not that you’re not welcome, far from it. It’s just that we aren’t scheduled to land again until the mid 1990s. If you have anything urgent lined up for the first part of the decade, now is the time to say.”

  Jane hadn’t thought of it like that. “You mean you’re just sort of going on?”

  Vanderdecker nodded. “It’s what we do best,” he said.

  “But what you were telling me,” she said. “Montalban, the nuclear power station, all that. Aren’t you going to follow it up?”

  “Maybe it’s not so important after all,” said Vanderdecker. “I expect Montalban can wait another five years; he’s waited long enough, God knows. That’s something you learn when you’re a sea captain, not to rush into things.”

  “I think you should follow it up,” Jane said.

  “Yes,” said Vanderdecker, “perhaps I should. You sound just like my mother.”

  Jane was startled. “Do I?” she said.

  “As far as I can remember,” replied the Flying Dutchman, “yes. Why don’t you take that job with the wool merchant? Don’t you think it’s about time you settled down and started making something of your life? You really ought to write to your uncle, Cornelius. I think that’s what made me go to sea in the first place.”

  “Oh.” Jane felt deflated. “I’m sorry.”

  Vanderdecker smiled sheepishly. “So am I; I didn’t mean to be nasty. It’s just that I’m a trifle flustered, just like usual when I have to sail this blasted ship. You’d think that after all this time it would be second nature, but it isn’t, quite. I reckon that if I had my time over again, I’d be a civil servant, something like that. Quiet. No need to be assertive or display qualities of leadership.”

  Jane giggled. “You’d hate it,” she said.

  “Would I?” Vanderdecker shrugged. “You seem to know an awful lot about me all of a sudden.”

  Jane let that one go, and said, “If you don’t mind, I’ll come along for the ride.”

  “It’ll be very boring for you if we don’t go chasing Montalban.”

  “Not half so boring,” said Jane firmly, “as being an accountant.”

  “That’s a job,” said Vanderdecker, “that I’ve always fancied. It was different in my day, of course. No computers, just little brass counters and exchequer boards. If you got bored with doing the quarterly returns, you could rope in another accountant and play draughts. Should I really follow up the Montalban angle?”

  Jane considered. To her surprise, she was not influenced by personal motives in her choice of advice.

  “I think you should, really,” she said. “After all, that sea…”

  “You’re right,” said Vanderdecker, “of course, there’s just one problem.”

  Jane looked at him. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “The problem is,” said Vanderdecker, “that I can’t go on land for another five years. Because of the smell. Doesn’t that rather hinder my freedom of movement?”

  Jane smiled. “Doesn’t hinder mine, though, does it?”

  “True,” said Vanderdecker, “but of questionable relevance. What’s it got to do with you?”

  Jane felt exasperated. “Let me spell it out for you,” she said. “Watch my lips.”

  “With pleasure.”

  Jane ignored that. “I will find Montalban, and pass on a message from you. If you want me to, that is.”

  “Would you really?” Vanderdecker said. “That would be a very great help to us. We’d appreciate that.”

  “Right,” Jane said.

  “And then,” Vanderdecker went on, “we could meet up somewhere later, and you could tell me what he said.”

  “Right,” Jane said.

  “If you’re absolutely sure.”

  “Sure I’m sure,” Jane said. “What’s the message?”

  Vanderdecker didn’t reply. Instead he knelt down and picked up a short length of rusty chain.

  ♦

  “This ship is getting very untidy,” he said. “Look at this, junk everywhere. I’m not a naturally finicky person, but after a while it does get to you a bit. The Flying Dutchman I can just about handle. The Flying Dustman, no.”

  “What’s the message?” Jane repeated.

  “Are you really sure?”

  “Really really sure. What’s the message?”

  Vanderdecker hesitated, then smiled broadly. “Right,” he said. “Listen carefully…”

  TEN

  What I need,” Danny said, “is a helicopter.”

  The voice at the other end of the telephone wire told him what, in its opinion, Danny really needed. It was not a helicopter.

  “If I had a helicopter,” said Danny, mentally pigeonholing the recommendation, “I could fly over the ship and the lads wouldn’t be exposed to the waste fumes. That way, there’d be no problems from the health and safety at work angle. I take it that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “To a certain extent, yes,” said the voice. “Mostly, though, I’m worried about having a producer who’s as crazy as a jay-bird loose in Dorset. I think it’s probably about time you came home and did “Playschool” for a bit, just till you’re feeling better.”

  “Look,” Danny hissed, “you remember our deal, right? About a certain cover-up? I don’t want to have to remind you…”

  “Funny you should mention that,” said the voice. “I’ve been chatting to a couple of other people over lunch, and I think you’ll find they remember it rather differently. In fact, they seem to think you had quite a lot to do with that…What did you call it?”

  Danny felt his knees weaken. “You bastard,” he whispered. “You wouldn’t dare stitch me up like that. I’ve got memos…”

  “So have I,” said the voice, casually. “Very good ones, too. I wrote them myself, just now. I think it’s time you came home.”

  Suddenly Danny noticed that the hair on the back of his neck was beginning to rise. “Just a moment,” he said. Then his phonecard ran out.

  The phonecard revolution, like the French, American and Russian revolutions, is a phased phenomenon. In Phase One, they scrapped all the corn-boxes and replaced them with cardboxes. In Phase Two, whenever that comes about, they will start providing outlets where you can buy phonecards. We may not see it, nor our children, nor yet our children’s children, but that is really beside the point. Every revolution causes some passing inconvenience to the individual. Ask Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

  As he wandered through the streets (or rather street) of West Bay in search of an open Post Office, Danny was thinking hard. So there was going to be a cover-up, was there? A cover-up of the original cover-up. But what was this cover-up really covering up for? Not the original cover-up, surely; that was already well and truly covered, and nobody in his right mind would risk blowing the cover for anything so trivial as the cost of a few hours’ helicopter hire. The only possible explanation was that this rather obvious warning to lay off was designed to get him off the story he was on; in other words, it was a sublimated or double-bluff cover-up. Despite his natural feelings of anxiety, Danny couldn’t help licking his lips. It was the sort of situation he had been born to revel in, and revel in it he would, just as soon as he could get somewhere where he could sit down and get all the complications straight in his mind with the aid of a few charts and Venn diagrams. Then he would see about helicopters.<
br />
  He found the camera crew in the Rockcliffe Inn, which had opened again shortly after Jane and Vanderdecker had left. Soon it would close again.

  “Right,” said Danny briskly, “drink up, we’d better get on with it while there’s still some light left.”

  They ignored him, but he was used to that. He changed a five-pound note, found the telephone in the corner of the pool room, and called a number in Shepherd’s Bush.

  “Dear God,” said the voice at the other end, “not you again. Do you ever do anything besides call people up on the phone?”

  “Yes,” Danny replied. “From time to time I make television programmes. That’s when establishment lackeys aren’t trying to muzzle me, that is. Lately, that’s tended to happen rather a lot, which means I have to spend more time telephoning. Cause and effect, really.”

  “Are you calling me an establishment lackey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Another one who gets his vocabulary from the Argos catalogue. Look, I couldn’t care less what you think of me. I get called ruder things on “Points of View”. But if you think I’m going to put up with you wandering round seaside resorts spending the Corporation’s money on your idiotic persecution fantasies, then you’re a bigger fool than I took you for. And that, believe me, would be difficult.”

  “Cirencester,” said Danny.

  There was a pause. “What did you say?”

  “I said Cirencester,” Danny said.

  “I thought you said Cirencester,” replied the voice, “I was just giving you a chance to pretend you’d said something else.”

  “And what’s wrong with me saying Cirencester?” Danny asked politely.

  “Nothing, given the right context,” said the voice smoothly. “In a conversation about Cotswold towns, nothing could be more natural. In the present case, though, a less charitable man than myself might take it as proof that you’ve finally gone completely doolally.”

  The pips went, but Danny was ready for them. He shoved in another pound coin. “I said Cirencester because I know you know what it means,” he said.