Flying Dutch

NINE

There you go,” said Mrs Clarke, “I’ve brought you a nice cup of coffee. Don’t let it get cold.”

She put the cup down on the table, next to the other two cups. They were all full of cold coffee, with that pale off-white scum on the top that right-thinking people find so off-putting.

“Thank you,” said the man at the table without looking up. He reached out, located a cup by touch, lifted it to his mouth and drank half of its contents. It was one of the cold ones, but he didn’t seem to notice. Mrs Clarke shuddered and went away. Although she was not a religious woman, she knew where people who let hot drinks go cold went when they died. Back in front of her typewriter she shook her head sadly and wished, not for the first time, that she’d taken the job at the plastics factory instead.

Had Professor Montalban, who had recently returned from Geneva, realised how much pain he was inflicting on his secretary, he would have taken care to drink the hot coffee. He was by no means a callous person. Just now, however, his powers of concentration were directed elsewhere. His mind was centred on a small area of the table, which contained a foolscap pad, three pencils (sharpened at both ends), a calculator and ten or fifteen books, all open. He had a headache, but that was not a problem. He had had the same headache for three hundred and forty-two years, and he knew it was caused by eyestrain. Because of the elixir, it was impossible for his eyesight to deteriorate, however much he abused it, but it didn’t stop him getting headaches. He also knew that the optician in Cornmarket Street could fix him up in ten minutes with something that would cure his headache for ever. It was just a question of finding the time. Tomorrow, perhaps, or the next day.

Ironic, really, time was one thing that Professor Montalban had plenty of. Genius he most certainly lacked; he didn’t even have that little spark of intuition that the scientist so desperately needs if he is ever going to get anywhere. He was nothing more than a competent and careful follower of the proper scientific procedures. But, because he had plenty of time, this didn’t matter. He could do everything by a process of elimination. This may sound haphazard, but the true test of any scientific method is results, and Montalban’s results were quite astoundingly spectacular, if you chose to look at them that way. Every major scientific discovery from gravity to the electric toothbrush was based on the work of Professor Montalban. Every breakthrough, every quantum leap, ever new departure he had either initiated or, more usually, carried through himself to the verge of publication. In every case, someone had come in at the last moment and stolen all the credit, but that was what the professor wanted. He had reasons of his own for not wanting to make himself conspicuous.

Suppose a Neolithic cave-dweller had wanted to put some shelves up in his cave. All he has is a tree. What he must do is invent the refinement of metals, the saw, the plane, the chisel, the drill, the screwdriver, the screw, the rawlplug, sandpaper, polyurethane varnish, the spirit level, the carpenter’s pencil and, finally, the marble-look Formica veneer, and then he can set to work. Nothing intellectually taxing about it all, but it takes a lot of time.

Professor Montalban had not set out to discover electricity, nuclear fission, or the circulation of the blood, just as the caveman has no great urge to pioneer the Stanley knife: they were just tiresome and necessary stages in the quest for the final overriding objective, in the same way as modern mathematics is a by-product of Richard the Lion-Heart’s desire to recapture Jerusalem. Professor Montalban’s objective was, in his eyes at least, infinitely more important than the little side-shows on the way, such as splitting the atom: Professor Montalban was searching for the Ultimate Deodorant.

That had not always been the objective. When he was young, he had been more interested in the secret of eternal life and the transmigration of elements, which was how he had got into this mess in the first place. He now regarded his earlier ambitions in the way the managing director of a major multinational might review his childish intention to be an engine-driver. If he had any philosophy of life, it was that everything happens by accident, and that at any given time, ninety-nine-point-nine-five per cent of the human race are a confounded nuisance.

He worked on, as he had been doing for so many years, until his headache became so insistent that he could concentrate no longer; and by that time, of course, the optician had shut up shop and gone home. So the professor put on his jacket and took a stroll round the college yard to clear his head. It was a cool evening, and if Montalban hadn’t been so engrossed in a fallacy he had detected in the theory of Brownian motion he would probably have enjoyed the sunset. As it was, he wandered into the college bar without thinking and sat down at one of the badly-scarred chipboard tables in front of the television. He didn’t take any notice of what was on the screen—a sports programme of some sort—and let his thoughts wander back to the interplay of random particles. Then he became aware of somebody yelling something loudly in the very furthest part of his mind.

“Look!” it was yelling. Professor Montalban looked. On the screen, in the far corner of the picture but unmistakable, he saw something he recognised. It was a ship.

“And?” Jane asked.

“And,” Vanderdecker said, “that’s about it, really. I have had other experiences, but none of them germane to the point at issue. Which reminds me.”

“Yes?”

Vanderdecker smiled, and lifted his glass to his lips. “What is the point at issue? Why were you looking for me?”

Despite the recent reform in British licensing laws, the only place you can get a drink at half-past three in the afternoon in West Bay is the Rockcliffe Inn. It is hard to imagine a thirst powerful enough to drive a person into the Rockcliffe Inn. It can therefore be taken as read that Vanderdecker was not smiling at his beer, which was thick, cloudy and infested with little white specks that reminded him of the stuff you find in the corners of your eyes after a long sleep.

“Because of the insurance policy,” Jane said.

Vanderdecker looked up. “What insurance policy?” he asked.

“The Vanderdecker policy,” Jane said.

“Don’t let’s be all cryptic,” Vanderdecker replied, “not when the beer’s so foul. If you want to be cryptic, I demand Stella Artois at the very least.”

“Who’s Stella Artois?”

“Barbarian.”

“Sorry.”

“Stella Artois,” said Vanderdecker, “is a brand of beer. I’m sorry, that was very rude of me. I shouldn’t have called you a barbarian just because you’ve never heard of it. Are you sure you’ve never heard of it?”

“Yes,” Jane replied. “I don’t like beer very much, I’m afraid.”

“Then you are a barbarian. What’s the Vanderdecker policy? Go on, it’s your turn.”

“Your life insurance policy,” said Jane. “With the House of Fugger.”

Vanderdecker was just about to object when two tiny leads connected in his memory. “My life insurance policy?” he repeated.

“That’s right.”

“Oh.” He frowned. “That’s all?”

“Yes.”

Vanderdecker put down his glass. “After four hundred and fifty years,” he said, “you want to sell me life insurance. Don’t you people ever give up?”

But Jane was shaking her head. “We don’t want to sell you any life insurance,” she said, “we want to buy it.”

As she stared at him, a tiny germen of a thought thrust a green blade through its shell in the back paddock of her mind. It was an extraordinary thought, but it was there.

“Why?” Vanderdecker said.

Jane said, “Surely that’s obvious,” but her heart wasn’t in it. She could feel an enormous, colossal wave of laughter welling up inside her. Her entire body wasn’t big enough to contain it. Meanwhile, Vanderdecker was talking.

“Are we talking about the same thing?” he was saying. “I remember taking out a policy with the Fuggers, sure, but that was years ago. Hundreds of years ago, come to that. I haven’t paid a premium for centuries; I mean, what was the point?”

“But you’ve still got the policy?” Jane could feel the laughter crashing against her teeth like the Severn Bore, but she kept it back.

“I don’t know,” Vanderdecker said. “I’m hopeless with things like that. Hang on, though.” He paused, and felt in the pocket of his overcoat. “I usually put important documents in here,” he said, and he pulled out a big sealskin envelope. “Not that I have all that many important documents, after all this time. Let’s see.” He lifted the flap and started to rummage about. “What’s this? Alchemical notes, that’s not it. Birth certificate, passport, the receipt for my electric razor, book of matches from Maxim’s, what’s this?” He peered at a curled yellow scrap of paper. “No, that’s not it. Ah, we’re in luck. Is this it?” He fished out a folded sheet of vellum with the remains of a crumbled seal attached to it.

“I don’t know,” Jane said. “I can’t read it.”

“Can’t you?” Vanderdecker glanced at the tiny, illegible sixteenth-century script. “I suppose you can’t,” he said, “it’s in Latin. Yes, this is it. Is it important?”

“Have you ever read it?” Jane said. Of course, she realised, she shouldn’t be doing this. She should have got hold of it and destroyed it, and so saved the world. But the pressure of the laughter against the sides of her skull was too much for her; she had to let him in on the joke.

“To be honest with you,” Vanderdecker said, “no, I haven’t. I can’t be doing with all that legal-financial mumbo-jumbo.”

“You should,” Jane said.

Vanderdecker looked at her. His face had a tired, harassed look, as if this was starting to turn into a problem. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’re after me for four hundred and fifty years unpaid premiums. Well, you can forget that, because I just don’t have that sort of money.”

That was too much for Jane; she started to laugh. She laughed so much that the afternoon barmaid of the Rockcliffe Inn withdrew her attention from the Australian soap opera she was watching on the bar top portable and stared at her for at least three seconds. She laughed so much that her body ached with the strain, and her lungs nearly collapsed. Vanderdecker raised an eyebrow.

“What’s so funny?” he said.

With a Herculean effort Jane stopped laughing, just for a moment. “Read it,” she said. “Read it now.”

“If it’ll stop you making that extraordinary noise,” said the Flying Dutchman, and started to read. When he had finished, he looked up and said, “I still don’t get it.” Fortunately, Jane was incapable of further laughter.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“So you should be,” Vanderdecker said, “it’s very embarrassing. You’ve no idea how conspicuous it makes me feel. Do please try and keep a hold of yourself.” He folded the policy up and put it away again, along with the birth certificate and the receipt for his electric razor.

“Are you from the insurance company?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jane said. “It’s a bank now, of course, as well as an insurance company. And I’m not actually with them; I’m an accountant.”

“So you said.”

“So I did.” Jane wiped the tears from her eyes with a corner of her handkerchief.

“Do you know,” Vanderdecker said, “you remind me of someone.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.” Vanderdecker looked faintly embarrassed, as if he didn’t want to say what he was saying. “Someone I used to know, years back. In fact,” he mumbled, “that was her address on the piece of paper you saw just now. She must have been dead for three hundred years now.”

“Go on,” Jane said.

“Greta,” said the Flying Dutchman, “from Schiedam. There’s nothing to tell, actually. We met at a dance and just seemed to hit it off. I told her a joke, I remember—actually, it wasn’t a joke as such, just something that had happened to me that she thought was funny—and she laughed so much she spilt wine all down my trouser leg. Anyway, it turned out that she was leaving for Bruges the next day, and it was the last day of my shore leave. She gave me her address. I wrote to her, seven years later, and seven years after that I picked up her reply from the poste restante in Nijmegen. Apparently she’d met this man, and perhaps he wasn’t the most wonderfully exciting human being there had ever been but by all accounts he was going to be very big in worsteds one day, and of course she would always think of me as a very dear friend. Undoubtedly for the best,” he went on, “things being as they are. Still.”

“And I remind you of her?” Jane asked.

“Only because you laugh so damned much,” replied Vanderdecker austerely.

“I see,” Jane replied. “Can I get you another drink?”

Vanderdecker swirled the white specks round in the bottom of his glass. “Yes,” he said. “Only this time I’ll try the mild.”

“Is that good?”

“No,” he said.

Shortly afterwards, Jane came back with the drinks. “If it’s nasty,” she said, “why do you drink it?”

“Because it’s there,” Vanderdecker replied. “What’s so special about my life policy, then? Do try not to laugh when you tell me.”

Jane took a deep breath. She was, she realised, gambling with the financial stability of the entire free world. On the other hand, it didn’t seem like that, and the strange man had turned out not to be all that strange after all. “Before I tell you,” she said, “do you mind if I ask you something?”

“Be my guest,” Vanderdecker replied.

“Mr Vanderdecker,” she asked, “what exactly do you want out of life?”

Vanderdecker smiled; that is, there was an initial movement at the corners of his mouth that developed into a ripple just under his nose and ended up with a full display of straight, white teeth. “What a peculiar question!” he said.

“Yes,” Jane admitted, “and as a rule I’m not into this soul-searching stuff. But you see, it is quite important.”

Vanderdecker was surprised. “Is it?”

“Yes, actually,” Jane said, “it is.”

“Well then,” Vanderdecker said, composing himself and looking grave, “The way I see it is this. After all this time, and bearing in mind the things I’ve told you about, I would have thought it was more a question of what the hell it is life wants out of me. Blood?”

“I see,” Jane said. If she’d had a notebook, she would probably have written it down. “So you’ve never had any urge to rule the world, or anything like that?”

“What, me?” Vanderdecker said. “No, I can’t say I have. It would be nice to change some things naturally.”

Jane leaned forward and looked serious. “Such as?”

Vanderdecker considered. “I don’t know,” he said, “now you come to mention it. I can’t actually think of anything that even remotely matters. You get such a wonderful sense of perspective at my age.”

“You look about thirty-three.”

“Thirty-five,” Vanderdecker replied. “And you flatter me. Aren’t we getting a bit sidetracked, or is this all relevant?”

“It’s sort of relevant,” Jane said. “So you would say that you’re a relatively balanced, well-adjusted person?”

“Perhaps,” said the Flying Dutchman. “When you consider that I’ve lived for over four hundred and fifty years, and seven-eighths of those years have been mind-numbingly boring, I think I’ve coped reasonably well. What do you think?”

“I think,” said Jane with conviction, “that I’d have gone stark staring mad in the early fifteen-sixties.”

“I tried that,” Vanderdecker reminisced. “It lasted about eight hours. You can’t go mad running a ship, which is what I do most of the time. You simply don’t get an opportunity. Just when you’re starting to work up a good thick fuzz of melancholia, someone puts his head round the door to tell you that the cook and the bosun are fighting again, or that some idiot’s lost the sextant, or we appear to be sixty leagues off the Cape of Good Hope and weren’t we meant to be going to Florida? There’s all sorts of things I was always meaning to get around to—learning to play the flute, calculating the square root of nought, going mad—but I just didn’t have the time. After a while you give up and get on with things.”

“But don’t you ever feel…” Jane searched for the right words, only to find that she’d forgotten to bring them. “Don’t you feel sort of different? Important? Marked out by Destiny?”

“Me?” Vanderdecker said, surprised. “No. Why should I?”

“I’d have thought you might,” Jane said. “What with being immortal.”

“That’s not what it feels like,” Vanderdecker said. “May I put it bluntly?”

“Please do.”

“It’s hard to feel special or important,” he said, staring at the table in front of him, “let alone marked out by Destiny, when you smell quite as bad as I usually do. I trust I make myself clear.”

“Perfectly,” Jane said.

“Good.” Vanderdecker lifted his head and grinned. “Do I get to hear your story now? About this life policy of mine.”

“If you like,” Jane said. “Fire away.”

So she told him.

“Look,” Danny said to the telephone, “what you obviously fail to grasp is…”

The pips went, and Danny fumbled desperately in his trouser pocket for more small change. What he found was five pennies, a washer and a French coin with the head of Charles de Gaulle on it which he had somehow acquired at Gatwick Airport. He made a quick decision and shoved the French coin into the slot. Remarkably enough, it worked.

“What you obviously…” he said. The voice interrupted him.

“No, Danny,” it said. “What you fail to grasp is that you’re supposed to be filming a boat race. Anything not germane to high-speed navigation is therefore off limits. Keep that principle firmly before your eyes and you won’t go far wrong.” Danny dragged air into his lungs, which were tight with anger. He forced the same air out through his larynx, but he sublimated the anger into determination.

“All right,” he said. “You leave me with no alternative.”

“You’re going to film the race?”

“I am not going to film the race,” Danny said. “I am going to telephone Fay Parker at the Guardian.”

Coming from a man with five pennies and a washer in his pocket, this was clearly an idle threat. But of course the voice didn’t know that, and just for once it said nothing.

“And you know what I’m going to tell her?” Danny went on. “I’m going to tell her the truth about the Amethyst case.”

The voice wasn’t a voice at all any more. It was just a silence.

“I’m going to tell her,” said Danny to the silence, “that the person who recommended to the Cabinet Office that the Amethyst documentary should be banned wasn’t the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary or even the Minister of Defence. It was the head of BBC Current Affairs, who wanted it banned so that he could get himself hailed as a martyr to the cause of press freedom and then nobody would dare sack him on the grounds of gross incompetence. Do you think she could use a story like that?”

The silence carried on being a silence, and Danny was terribly afraid that Charles de Gaulle would run out before it became a voice again. “Well?” he said.

“Bastard,” said the voice.

Danny glowed with pleasure. “Thanks,” he said, just as the pips went.

“Really?” said Vanderdecker.

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Jane replied, rather tactlessly. “That’s why I was looking for you.”

“Oh,” Vanderdecker said. “Do you know, that’s rather a disappointment.”

“Is it?” Jane queried. “Why?”

Vanderdecker scratched his ear. “Hard to say, really,” he replied. “I suppose it’s just that I’ve been half expecting people to be looking for me for a long time now, and for other reasons.”

“That’s a bit paranoid, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” said Vanderdecker, shrugging his shoulders. “I just had this notion that what I was doing—being alive after so long and all that—was—well, wrong, somehow, and that sooner or later somebody was going to find out and tell me to stop doing it. Act your age, Vanderdecker, that sort of thing. And since I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to, I wasn’t keen to be found. I have this feeling that somehow or other I’m breaking the rules, and that’s not my style at all.”

“What sort of rules?”

“The rules,” Vanderdecker said. “Maybe you don’t understand; let me try and explain. Do you remember the first time you went abroad?”

Jane shuddered. “Vividly.”

“Do you remember that awful feeling of guilt,” Vanderdecker said, “that you felt—I assume you felt—as if you were breaking all sorts of local laws and violating all sorts of local customs without knowing it, and sooner or later one of those policemen in hats like cheeseboxes was going to arrest you?”

“Yes,” Jane replied. “That’s a natural feeling, I guess, from being a stranger in someone else’s country.”

“Well then,” Vanderdecker said, “that’s how I feel all the time. I’m a stranger everywhere except on a ship in the middle of the sea. I don’t think I’ve broken any laws—I don’t think just being alive is actually illegal anywhere, except maybe in some parts of South–East Asia—but the thought of all the embarrassment if anyone ever asked who I was or what I was doing…Do you see what I’m driving at? It means that I can’t give a truthful answer to virtually any question I’m likely to be asked, for fear of being thought crazy or rude. It gets to you after a while, let me assure you. And of course there’s the smell.”

“Yes,” Jane said. “I could see that would be a problem.”

“It is,” Vanderdecker assured her. “Decidedly.”

“If we could just get back to what I was saying,” Jane suggested tentatively. “About your life policy.”

“You want me…”

“No.” Jane couldn’t understand why she was so definite about this. “They want you to sign it away. Assign it back to them, actually, but it amounts to the same thing.”

“I see,” said the Flying Dutchman. “Why should I?”

Jane couldn’t think of a single reason. Not good.

“Excuse me for muddled thinking here,” Vanderdecker went on, “because I haven’t even started to consider all the ramifications of this yet, but why the hell should I?”

“Well,” Jane said feebly, “it’s not going to do you any good, is it?”

“That,” said Vanderdecker, “if you’ll pardon me saying so, goes for all life policies. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the prerequisite for collecting on the blasted things is being dead, and I remember hearing something somewhere about not being able to take it with you.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what?” said Vanderdecker, confused.

“You can’t take it with you,” Jane said. “So it’s no good to you. On the other hand, it’s putting the financial stability of Europe in jeopardy.”

“So what’s so wonderful about the financial stability of Europe?” Vanderdecker said.

Jane felt that she could explain this, being an accountant: but while she was deciding where to start, Vanderdecker continued with what he was saying.

“Let me put it this way,” he said. “If what you say is true, I’m in a position to tell all the money men in the world what to do. I have the power, the actual and useable power, to introduce a little bit of common sense into the economic system of the developed nations. In other words, I could save the world.”

“Do you want to?” Jane asked.

Vanderdecker considered for a moment. “No,” he said.

“Why not?” Jane asked. “Sounds like a good idea to me.”

“No it doesn’t,” replied the Flying Dutchman. “That’s why you were asking me about whether I’d ever suffered from megalomania or a desire to rule things. To which the answer is still no. I mean, it’s all very fine and splendid to think that I could sort out interest rates and conquer inflation and send the rich empty away and all that, but that’s not me at all. Damn it, I couldn’t even understand the jute market back in the fifteen-eighties. I’d just make things even worse than they are now.”

“So why not do what they want?” Jane said. “It would make things easier for you as well.”

“Would it?”

“It could,” Jane said. “All you’d have to do is think of the right price.”

“Go on.”

“Something like,” Jane said, “an index-linked annuity starting at two million pounds a year, plus all the co-operation and protection you need. Passports, nationality papers, a new ship, bits of paper signed by presidents and prime ministers to shove under the noses of customs men and coastguards. Everything necessary to make life easy for you. No more of this skulking about, hiding, getting your ship fixed up by Jeanes of Bridport because there’s nowhere else you dare go to. You could demand anything at all. A new identity. No questions asked. You could even start enjoying life. You wouldn’t have to spend all your time in the middle of the sea, come to that.”

“What about the smell?”

“Demand that they build you a special massively air-conditioned bunker in the heights of the Pyrenees. A hundred special bunkers, one in every country. Real Howard Hughes stuff. That really wouldn’t be a problem.”

Vanderdecker thought for a moment, then grinned. “That’s very kind of you, and I appreciate the offer, but no thanks. I think we’ll just leave matters as they are.”

Jane felt as though someone had just pumped sand in her ears. “Why?” she said.

“I don’t know,” Vanderdecker confessed. “Instinct, mainly. Look,” he said, putting his chin between his hands, “I remember reading somewhere about these tramps, people who’d been living rough for years and years, who finally were persuaded to come in out of the wind and the rain into a nice clean hostel. Clean clothes, beds, hot food. After a week or so, they all started sleeping on the floor, wearing the same clothes all the time and eating the scraps out of the dustbins. The staff couldn’t understand it at all, but the tramps just couldn’t trust the beds and the clothes and the food; they reckoned they must be some sort of trap and they wanted nothing to do with it. You get that way after a while.”

“I see,” Jane said. “So I’ve failed, have I?”

“Looks like it,” Vanderdecker said. “Sorry.”

Jane considered for a moment. “How about as a personal favour to me?” she asked. Vanderdecker stared at her.

“Come again?” he said.

“As a personal favour,” she said, “to help me out of a jam.”

“But…” Vanderdecker’s voice trailed away, and he looked at her. Perhaps he saw something he hadn’t seen for a long time. “You mean, just because I like you or something?”

“Just,” Jane said, “because you’re a nice person. Like letting someone through in a stream of traffic, or giving up your seat in the Underground.”

“I hadn’t looked at it from that angle,” Vanderdecker admitted.

“Try it.”

Vanderdecker drew in a deep breath. “Did I mention,” he said, “about my adventures in the real estate business?”

“No,” Jane said. “Are they relevant?”

“Fairly relevant, yes.”

“Oh,” Jane said. “Fire away, then.”

“Right.” Vanderdecker leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Many years ago,” he said, “many years ago even by my standards, I bought some land in America. Don’t know why; it was cheap, I had some capital for once, I thought I’d invest it. My idea was to build a little place out in the middle of nowhere but next to the sea, where I and my crew could be sure of some privacy and a glass or two of beer when we came in to land. That sort of thing. Anyway, before I could start building, I met this man in a pub who was down on his luck. He was Dutch, too, and I felt sorry for him. He had a dreadful story to tell, about how he’d been chased out of Holland because of his religious beliefs, forced to sell his farm and his stock and come out to the New World and start all over again, and how he hadn’t got anywhere like the right price for his property back home and the fare out here had taken up a large slice of that because all the carriers were profiteers, and on top of all that the weevils had got into the seed-corn and three of his cows had got the murrain and how he was going to afford enough land in America to support a wife and three children he really didn’t know. So I asked him how much he had and he told me and I offered to sell him my land for exactly that much. It was very cheap indeed, and he accepted like a shot. And I did it because I’m a nice chap, and of course it didn’t matter a hell of a lot to me, considering how I was fixed.”

“And?”

“And what I sold him was the island of Manhattan,” said Vanderdecker, sadly. “Error of judgement, wouldn’t you say?”

Jane didn’t say anything.

“Of course,” Vanderdecker went on, “I wasn’t to know that then. You never do. But that’s the thing about eternal life; you have to live with your mistakes, don’t you? Like when I met the Spanish Armada.”

“You met the Spanish Armada?”

“Pure fluke,” Vanderdecker said. “It was just after the coming of the Great Smell, and we were lying off Gravelines, becalmed Suddenly the sea is covered with Spanish ships. Marvellous. Then all the Spaniards become aware of the Great Smell, and before their commanders can stop them they’re all casting off and making for the open sea with their hands over their noses. Result; they lose the weather-gauge and get shot to bits by my old jute-trading contact Francis Drake. Or what about Charles the Second?”

“Charles the Second,” Jane said.

“Exactly,” said Vanderdecker. “There I was in this pub, having a quiet drink, when this tall man with a moustache asks me if he can hitch a lift as far as France. No problem. Cromwell didn’t think so, but I didn’t know that, of course. Dunkirk, there’s another instance of exactly the same thing. If those German cruisers hadn’t come downwind of me at exactly that moment, just as all those little boats were zooming across the Channel with no escort whatsoever…You see the point I’m trying to make. I keep having these drastic effects on history. I don’t try to. I don’t even want to. I hate myself for it afterwards, but it keeps happening. You asked me if I thought I had a special destiny. I know I don’t, it’s just coincidence. Not coincidence, even; pure, calculable probability. If one man stays around long enough, just by his being there, important things are bound to happen to him or because of him sooner or later. Now there’s nothing I can do to stop it, but I’m damned if I’m going to do it on purpose. It was bad enough that time with Napoleon…”

“Napoleon?” Jane asked.

Vanderdecker scowled at her. “Who do you think was the idiot who picked up a passenger on Elba in 1815?” he said. “I met this man in a pub. “Where are you headed for?” he asks. “France,” I tell him. “What a coincidence,” he says, “so am I.” Why is it, by the way, that they always want to go to bloody France? I tell a lie, though; Garibaldi wanted to go to Italy. Anyway, I’ve got to face the fact that history to me is little more than a horrible reminder of my own interference. Even now, I can’t listen to the Skye Boat Song without cringing.”

Jane’s eyebrows may have twitched up an extra quarter inch, but she said nothing. It was a good throwaway line, and she didn’t want to know the details.

“You should write your autobiography,” she suggested.

“I did, once,” Vanderdecker said. “It was very boring, very boring indeed. Lots of descriptions of sea-travel, with comments on licensed victualling through the ages. The hell with it. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can help you.”

“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 Vanderdecker “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…”