Tom Holt - Flying Dutch

“No,” said Antonius happily. “But if that’s what you say happened, that’s good enough for me and the lads. Isn’t it, lads?”

The lads, of course, hadn’t been listening. They were too busy cheering and yelling and generally not smelling horrible to listen to anything. But Vanderdecker had thought of something; what if the reaction had indeed reversed the effects of the elixir? And they were now all mortal again?

“I wonder,” he said to himself.

“What’s that, skipper?” Antonius asked, and Vanderdecker pigeonholed the immortality question. He was just starting to realise what life without the “smell” could possibly mean. So maybe he wasn’t immortal any longer. Maybe. There was no need to put it to the test immediately, now was there?

“I was wondering,” Vanderdecker said, “where we can get a pint or so of beer in these parts.”

“And some clothes, skip,” Antonius said. “We haven’t got any. They got burnt,” he explained.

“So they did,” replied the Flying Dutchman. “We’d better get some more, hadn’t we?”

“Good idea, skip,” Antonius said. “Where?”

Vanderdecker smiled. “Tell you what, Antonius,” he said. “You think of something.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Oh.” Antonius considered. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Don’t you?” said the Flying Dutchman. “Sorry, I thought you were just going to volunteer to walk over to the nearest evacuated village, break a few windows, and come back with some clothes for us. Wasn’t that what you were just going to suggest?”

“No,” Antonius replied truthfully.

“Well,” Vanderdecker said, “what do you think of it, as a suggestion? You can be honest with me if you think it’s no good.”

“I’ll give it a shot, skipper,” Antonius said. “Which way to the village?”

Inside the helicopter, the party was still going on. It was a bit cramped, and it swayed about rather more (considered objectively) that the hotel in Dounreay, but it was the considered view of the crew of the Verdomde that while there was moonlight and laughter and Scotch and romance, they might as well face the music and get pathetically drunk. It wasn’t every day, after all, that you escape from a four-hundred-odd-year-old curse.

“Here,” Sebastian was saying to a bulkhead, “you remember that time in Nijmegen?”

“That wasn’t Nijmegen,” Pieter replied, “that was Antwerp.”

“No it wasn’t,” Sebastian retorted. “Antwerp was when you and me and Wilhelmus got completely ratted and went round smashing up all the watchmakers’ shops.”

“Exactly,” Pieter said, nodding vigorously, “that was Antwerp, not Nijmegen.”

“That’s what I just said.”

“You said Nijmegen.”

“Hold on,” Wilhelmus interrupted. “Nijmegen—— Nijmegen was when we nicked that old girl’s donkey and Jan Van Hoosemyr…”

“ I know ,” said Sebastian angrily. “That’s what I was trying to say. That was Nijmegen. Antwerp was when we smashed in all the watchmakers’…”

“But you just said…”

The camera crew looked at each other. “Reminds me of that time in Tripoli,” said the cameraman. In fact, the only sober Dutchman on board the helicopter was Vanderdecker, and he was beginning to wonder if sobriety and a clear head were a good idea after all. Danny was trying to interview him, and he was finding it rather wearing.

“So when did you first suspect,” Danny was saying, “that there had been a cover-up?”

Vanderdecker yanked his mind back to what Danny was saying. “Cover-up?” he said. “Oh, sorry, I was miles away. What cover-up?”

“ The cover-up,” Danny snapped. “When did you first become aware of it?”

“Just now,” Vanderdecker said, “when you mentioned it. Shows what a good cover-up it was, doesn’t it?”

Danny ground his teeth. “We’ll do that bit again,” he said, and would the tape back. “Look, will you please try and concentrate on what I’m saying?”

“Sorry,” Vanderdecker said, and realised that since Danny was being kind enough to give him a lift to Cirencester, he ought to say something at least. “You mean that cover-up.”

Danny’s hairs bristled. “You mean there was more than one?”

Vanderdecker laughed. “You bet,” he said.

“Such as?”

“Where do I start?” Vanderdecker said. “I mean, we are talking yesterday’s witness here.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “For example,” he whispered. “I bet you still think Columbus discovered America.”

Danny couldn’t believe his ears. “And didn’t he?”

Vanderdecker smiled cynically. “Don’t you believe it,” he said. “The Portuguese landed in what is now Florida seventy years before Columbus left Spain. But there was this…”

“Cover-up?”

“Exactly,” Vanderdecker said. “On the tip of my tongue it was, yes, cover-up.”

“Why?”

“Merchandising,” Vanderdecker said. “I mean, just think for a moment, will you? Think of all the spin-offs from discovering a new continent. America cart bumper stickers, America doublets, the official America cuddly bison; no, as soon as the Portuguese realised what they’d got hold of, they saw that unless they got the franchising side of it sorted out before the story broke, there was going to be absolute chaos, marketing-wise. So they sat on it while the lawyers sorted out the contractual basis. And you know what lawyers are like; by the time they’d got down to a preliminary draft joint venture agreement, Columbus had landed and the whole thing was up the spout.”

Danny’s brain reeled. “How do you know all that?” he said. “That was before your dine, wasn’t it?”

“Or take the Gunpowder Plot,” Vanderdecker said quickly. “I could tell you a thing about that, make no mistake.”

“Go on,” said Danny, changing tapes. “I always thought…”

“I mean,” Vanderdecker went on, “Guido Fawkes was set up. He was the biggest fall guy of all time. You won’t find anything about it down at the Public Records Office, but there was big money involved there all right. Oh yes.”

“So?”

“So it was only a conspiracy by Buckingham and Salisbury to get hold of the biggest monopoly of them all. I mean the big one. None of your fooling about with Rhenish wine this time; I’m talking…” He stopped, and searched for the right word. “…Megagroats.”

“What was it?”

Vanderdecker looked over his shoulder. “Milk,” he hissed. “They were after the milk monopoly. They were going to set up this holding corporation—like the East India Company or something like that—with themselves as the money-men behind it; and this company was going to have the exclusive right to buy all the milk in England and sell it to the ultimate consumer.”

“You mean,” Danny croaked, “like the Milk Marketing Board?”

“Keep your voice down, will you? Yes, just like the Milk Marketing Board. So now do you see why Guido had to take the fall?”

“I see,” Danny whispered. “My God, that explains…But why did they want to blow up King James?”

Vanderdecker sneered. “They didn’t want to blow up the King,” he said. “If they’d wanted rid of Big Jim, do you think they’d have gone about it like that? Gunpowder, treason and plot? Don’t be so naive. Look, just ask yourself this. Why was it that shortly after Guido did the November-the-Fifth bit, the price of clotted cream rose by a factor of seventy-four point six per cent in most of Southern England.”

Danny whistled. “That much?”

“That’s where they went wrong, of course,” Vanderdecker said. “Too much too soon, you see. And when Hampden and Pym found out…”