Flying Dutch полностью

Vanderdecker frowned irritably. “Look, miss,” he said, “if you think I’m getting any sort of thrill out of seeing two females in wetsuits and gasmasks chained to a railing, you’re working the wrong pitch. Try Amsterdam. And if you’re so damned nosy as to want to go poking about looking for seeping oil drums, then be my guest. If not, then please excuse me, I’ve got a ship to run.”

The two women stood firm and scowled at him. Just then, Sebastian drew his attention to the other four dinghies making their way across from the Erdkrieger.

Their arrival solved what could have developed into a very tedious situation. Once the raiding party had been over the Verdomde inch by inch, molesting the ship’s stores with Geiger counters and sticking litmus paper into the beer barrel, they had to admit that it was clean as a whistle. But smelly, nevertheless.

“Tact,” said Vanderdecker in German to his opposite number from the Erdkrieger, “is clearly not your strong suit. I admit we aren’t all lavender bags and rosewater, but we have been at sea for rather a long time.”

“But this ship,” said the German. “It’s so peculiar. Why are you sailing in a galleon?”

“Living archaeology,” Vanderdecker replied. “We’re reconstructing Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world.”

As he said this, Vanderdecker was conscious of a puzzled noise behind him. It was the first mate.

“So that’s what we’re doing, is it?” he said. “I was beginning to wonder.”

The smile reappeared on Vanderdecker’s face. Over the centuries it had worn little tracks for itself, and its passage was smooth and effortless.

“That’s right, Antonius,” he said. “I’ll explain later.”

“Who was Magellan, captain?”

“Later!” Just for a split second, the smile was disrupted; then it smoothed itself back. “We’re doing it in aid of the rain forests,” he said to the German, to whom this remark, astonishingly, made sense.

“Oh,” he said. “That’s very good. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“Not at all,” Vanderdecker replied. “I mean, we’re on the same side, aren’t we? All Greens together, so to speak.”

The captain nodded enthusiastically, so that the hose of his gasmask clunked on his muscular stomach. Vanderdecker winced, but imperceptibly.

“So,” he asked, as casually as he could, “where are you off to then?”

“Dounreay,” said the German cheerfully. “We’re going to sabotage the nuclear power plant.”

“Jolly good,” said Vanderdecker. “But isn’t that a bit counterproductive? Blowing up a nuclear plant?”

“Who said anything about blowing it up?” said the German. “We’re going to stuff tulips up the drainpipes.”

“What a perfectly splendid idea,” Vanderdecker said, through his Antonius smile. “Very best of luck to you. Got enough?”

“Enough what?”

“Tulips.”

“Ja, ja, we have Uberfiuss of tulips.” He waved proudly at the distant profile of the Erdkrieger. “Our whole ship,” he said, “is full of tulips.”

“Isn’t that nice,” Vanderdecker said, afraid for a moment that the corners of his Antonius smile would meet round the back of his neck and unzip his face. Then an idea occurred to him. “If you’re going to Dounreay,” he said, “you could do me a small favour.”

“Certainly,” said the German.

“Have you,” Vanderdecker said, “got any paint?”

“Ja, naturlich. Uberfiuss of paint.”

“Red aerosol paint?”

“Ja,” said the German. “Humbrol.”

“Then,” said Vanderdecker, “I don’t suppose you could see your way to painting a little message for me on the walls somewhere. I’ll write it down for you if you like.”

♦

Thus it was that when Martha, Jo and the German were finally bundled off in vans by the Sutherland and Caithness Constabulary, they left behind them a crudely-inscribed but extremely visible message on the perimeter wall of Dounreay power station.

ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD, it read. YOU

SMELL, MONTALBAN. YOURS, VANDERDECKER.

∨ Flying Dutch ∧

SEVEN

Gerald—you remember Gerald—was puzzled. He squashed the plastic cup in his hand into a spiky ball and dropped it in the waste-paper basket, where it bounced off a heap of shareholders’ circulars and rolled onto the floor under his swivel chair.

Actually, Gerald wasn’t the only person in the City of London that morning who was seriously puzzled, and we only single him out because we have already been introduced to him and know what a level-headed sort of fellow he usually is. If Gerald can’t understand it, it must be odd.

It was. Something extremely unpleasant was happening to the dollar, and Gerald didn’t like it. His relationship with the dollar was rather like Heathcliffe’s relationship with Cathy, although which of them was which at any given moment it was generally difficult to decide. But if something bothered the dollar, it bothered Gerald. It was like telepathy.