Flying Dutch

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.