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
