The Perfidious Parrot (29 page)

“Share the
Rodney
with me,” Skipper Peter said. “Maybe I’ll move ashore altogether. Maybe here. Do the things you said. If I don’t establish an official residence I may still be tax-free.”

The commissaris beamed. “We will be friends.”

It was party time on board. To please Skipper Peter, Rotterdam cuisine, early fifties style, was served, prepared from foodstuffs the cook had helicoptered out of the St. Maarten Dutch deli.

The servant displayed an alabaster dish filled with glassy overboiled potatoes. He fetched its twin holding slimy endives. There were also mashed beets. Dessert was custard, crumbly at the edges. Coffee was weak, with milk skin floating in it. The alcohol was a brandless chemical Dutch gin, “young jenever,” poured from a label-free glass jar.

The skipper raised his shot glass. “Rotterdam backstreet moonshine. Teehee.” He winked. The commissaris winked back. The time had come. Both men left the room.

Once on deck, shielded from immature hostile ears by the raucous calls of gulls, friend Jan told friend Peter that he was buying Fokker Aircraft shares, a company about to be taken over by Koreans. Skipper Peter rushed to his cabin to E-mail
his brokers. He came back exhausted, drank too much too quickly, passed out and was put to bed by boatswain and servant.

That he was getting so drunk now, Carl meanwhile told de Gier, was caused by surprise. The boarding and subsequent conquest of the supertanker
Rebecca
had been so easy. To think that Grijpstra’s crew had used fake weapons, imitation pistols and carbines made out of stained balsa wood. To think that constables Ketchup and Karate, both in pain, and tired, nevertheless acted convincingly as fierce buccaneers. That the Pirate Air Force was no more than the
Rodney
’s mini-chopper, that Fatso Grijpstra had swaggered about as the Pirate Captain, that he, little Carl, and de Gier, hardly in the prime of life, or even in first-class condition, had shouted and snarled and jumped about and managed to be so
bad
.

“Not to forget Admiral Sir Francis Drake on our flagship,” de Gier said grimly, thinking of how the commissaris had insisted on wearing a black eye patch and had been seen by the servant strutting about the
Rodney
’s decks, while being kept informed by cell-phone by his crew of the boarding of the
Rebecca
.

Yes, Carl said, to think that all members of the expedition had been made unrecognizable by Calvin and Hobbes made-in-China masks, on sale in St. Maarten. How willing the
Rebecca
’s captain had been to take his ship to the Statia pier. To think how easily the Calvins and Hobbeses had disposed of the
Rebecca
’s crew on the island of St. Kitts afterward, presenting the crew members with reasonable amounts of money. How the abused crew showed genuine smiles when the rubber boat took off. “Have a nice day Calvin, thank you Hobbes.” How
easy negotiations had been between Carl Ambagt and the fence, alias “Little Abner,” Statia’s oil buyer, escorted by burly guards dressed in army fatigues, who each carried a suitcase filled with crispy greenbacks, soon to be deposited into an Ambagt account with a Statia bank.

“Any more supertankers on the way?” Little Abner asked. “Won’t your insurers refuse to meet a second claim?”

Carl Ambagt didn’t think so.

To think that the only mishap was a serious rupture of Skipper Peter’s delicate nasal skin.

“It all went so smoothly,” Carl sighed. “You guys proved there was no need for those damned Special Forces to waste that poor young
Sibylle
sailor.”

Grijpstra, who didn’t care for Rotterdam food, called Carl names.

Carl was unhappily surprised. “Beg pardon?”

“No need for you to use violence back in Amsterdam on us either,” Grijpstra growled. “On us. Remember the skeletons, the mucky water, the pheasant feather? Amsterdam is supposed to be a pleasant town.”

Carl, spilling young jenever, admitted to a burden of guilt. He knew now that the set-up could have been carried out by gentler means. “Respect For The Other.” Carl thumped the table. “Love your neighbor. Don’t do onto your fellow suckers … you are right, you are
right
.” But he had learned. He stood corrected. He thanked his teachers. If only he could have come out of denial earlier. If only he had known G&G before. He would have hired them to hijack the
Sibylle
as well.
Without
bloodshed. Happy folks all around. One tanker a week. Think of the money they could have made. He slapped his forehead.

“You had your father hire Captain Souza because he was incapable and that young fellow because he was an innocent, to make things easier for the Special Forces,” de Gier said. “Go on. Admit it. We’re friends now. Remember?”

Carl looked unhappy. Did they really think he was that bad? Even after all they had lived through together? Couldn’t they understand that Carl’s only mistake had been that he hired human dogs who went out of control once he and his father let them off their leashes?

“The young sailor died,” de Gier said grimly.

And Carl
was
sorry. Really. Things will go wrong sometimes. But he was basically a good guy. Not a drug dealer like Detection G&G had been thinking all along. Cars and crude oil are legitimate products. He was a Rotterdam gentleman/privateer, belonging to a time-honored honorable profession. Carl kept saying that, long after Skipper Peter had been carried to bed by the staff and long after Ketchup and Karate had demonstrated new attack-grips that went wrong somehow and put them both out so that the staff had to carry and row them ashore and bed them down in their back room in Old Rum House.

“And don’t call me names, Fats,” Carl told Grijpstra. “You have your million. We kept our word. Dad had it wired into your account. Your chief checked that by phone. It’s all there now.”

“Just a moment,” de Gier said. “What about the death of Thomas Stewart-Wynne, friend?”

Carl swore neither he nor his father were involved. He read the news in the Key West papers:
Tourist in rental jeep enters
restaurant and breaks neck
. Carl couldn’t believe de Gier’s attitude. “Jeezus H. Kur-rist. Stewy got killed by the Special Forces.”

De Gier asked the servant for another soda.

Carl, about to reach a zebra-skin covered couch, was disturbed by the can popping open. He tripped on the corner of a Tibetan rug. Boatswain and servant carried off his limp body.

All this kept the commissaris from reporting on the life of George Brydges Rodney (1718–1792) but once he stood over them, holding his cane, Grijpstra and de Gier agreed to listen. The infamous admiral managed, the commissaris told his students, to loot St. Eustatius itself, or rather, its complete wealth, for the Golden Rock itself was left by the scoundrel.

“Admiral (First Baron) Sir George Brydges Rodney, reached the age of seventy-four. He was brilliant. I know now why the Ambagts used his name for this vessel.

“February 3, 1781, a mere two centuries ago. Rodney, British mariner and warrior, took St. Eustatius by complete surprise. King George III’s personal friend, First Baron Admiral Rodney, was delighted to receive orders to devastatingly punish the isle of St. Eustatius.

“Why?”

Because, the commissaris explained, as he strutted about the
Rodney
’s spacious bar room, because of jealousy. The merchants of St. Eustatius made fortunes while supplying Washington’s armies, and assisted the rebel general to win his war against his British overlords. But that wasn’t all that enraged George III. What really got the royal ruler upset was that, once the Americans had won their fight for freedom, the Dutch governor of Statia was the first international dignitary to acknowledge the
Stars and Stripes, with an eleven gun salute fired from Fort Orange. Greeting the U.S. flag that was carried by a mere sloop of war, that happened to cruise by the island.

“Can you imagine?” the commissaris asked, pointing at the sea ahead? Albion had lost. America was free. Little Holland cheered. The commissaris raised his ginger ale. “To America, gentlemen, land of Mulligan and Monk.” Grijpstra and de Gier raised their Cokes. “To W.S. Fields,” Grijpstra said. De Gier hesitated. “To George Carlin?”

The report on the admiral continued. How did Rodney punish the Dutch merchants for saluting America? He landed at the port of Oranjestad. “Right here.” The commissaris pointed at lights flickering ashore. “After dinner, at dusk, and because the Dutch soldiers were carousing and the Dutch merchants were counting coins, British marines could escort Rodney straight to the governor’s mansion. Without a shot fired everything of value was confiscated. Jewish merchants were shipped to the neighboring British island of St. Kitts, the remaining businessmen had to help figure out what was worth what. The British admiral kept the Dutch flag flying. Incoming vessels were promptly boarded and confiscated. The small British naval force was kept busy and amused. “The loot …”

“Right, right, right,” Grijpstra said. There had to be a happy ending or the commissaris wouldn’t be smiling and strutting so. The Ambagt vessel was called
Admiraal Rodney
. Bad Rodney, like the bad Ambagts, was a winner. As they should not be. And as, in the end, they wouldn’t.

De Gier, arguing along the same lines, tried not to anticipate a happy ending. Neither Nietzsche nor any good contemporary guru would approve of de Gier’s need to make things come out
right. There was no right. Right and wrong are egotistic and therefore momentary interpretations. And as things keep going, there is no end anyway. So what was he doing here? Just watching, de Gier told de Gier. He did hope the admiral would fall on his face though.

The commissaris intuited Grijpstra’s and de Gier’s reflections. “Are you with me?”

Grijpstra heh-heh-heh-ed in anticipation. “This is going to be good, sir.”

De Gier heh-heh-heh-ed along.

“The loot,” the commissaris continued, “was enormous.” If his audience took into account that England was deeply in debt, and that Rodney organized an auction and collected five million British pounds sterling, in gold, in return for the confiscated stores, cargoes and vessels, they should be able to share King George’s joy.

“I’m against sharing,” Grijpstra said.

De Gier, his brief insight long forgotten, didn’t like the idea of sharing joy with British royalty either. A scoundrel and bluffer like this pompous admiral, an anti-Semite, plucking a fortune from a defenseless group of hard working merchants?

“You know,” the commissaris said confidentionally, standing between de Gier and Grijpstra, speaking in a low voice, “What we got ourselves caught up in here is a direct continuation of what happened then?”

“Rodney’s loot?” Grijpstra asked.

“Ambagts’s loot?” de Gier asked.

Five million solid gold coins were loaded into the bad admiral’s flagship. And a beautiful ship she was, a glorious three-decker, over one hundred guns, several of the guns
capable of shooting seventy pound projectiles, so-called “caronnades.” Carrion-cannon. Able to cause havoc, especially at short range. “Golden age hi-tech,” the commissaris said.

“Yes yes yes?” asked Grijpstra and de Gier.

Rodney’s ship
Victory
, the commissaris said, accompanied by two slender but heavily armed frigates, sailed proudly for England but the flotilla happened, near Ireland, to be struck by a sudden windstorm. The frigates got lost and the tattered
Victory
sailed alone.

“Yoho,” Grijpstra and de Gier shouted.

The lonely flagship heeled over dismally. Half the crew was swept overboard. The remaining sick and wounded sailors tried to push heavy guns back to their stations. Gold coins from broken chests hurt their bare feet. The gunpowder was wet through. Sails were torn and useless. The ship, about to flounder on Irish shoals, was to be saved by a Dutch privateer.

“There we go,” de Gier said.

The privateer’s captain, leading a boarding party that swung across on cables connected to grappling hooks, was happily surprised when he inspected the
Victory
’s holds. Five million golden pounds were brought to Holland and surrendered to the Dutch authorities who had signed the captain’s Permit to Plunder.

“Authorities,” Grijpstra said. “We know what they do with found treasure.”

“Take it to Fiji,” de Gier said. “St. Maarten. The Florida Keys. Party it all away in Las Vegas. That captain was just paid his wages.”

The commissaris begged to differ. His research at the St. Eustatius Public Library proved that, although some of Statia’s
recaptured money was spent on elegant gable houses on the Gentleman’s Canal, the bulk of the money was invested in sea-dikes, creating more farmland by draining lakes, and building faster frigates that would bring in more loot. A few coins had even been paid to the Statia merchants as recompense for their losses. The commissaris nodded. “Yes, and the privateer’s captain was pensioned off handsomely and lived on a small farm North of Amsterdam for some twenty more years.”

“With a buxom blonde wife?” Grijpstra asked.

The commissaris smiled affirmatively.

“With a lithe golden-skinned oriental lady?” de Gier asked.

The commissaris smiled affirmatively.

“And Admiral Rodney?” Grijpstra asked.

“Admiral First Baron Sir Brydges Rodney was jailed, by his former friend King George III, in the Tower of London.”

Grijpstra cheered. De Gier applauded. “Hurrah,” the boatswain, who had been listening in, said respectfully. “Great work,” the servant said kindly. An older Chinese, a quiet man, who normally working as assistant-cook but that evening helped out with serving, kept on polishing glasses.

“Hurrah?” Grijpstra suggested.

“Things often work out different,” the assistant cook said.