The Perfidious Parrot

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  “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, sai
led 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.

  29

  THINGS OFTEN WORK OUT DIFFERENT

  Skipper Peter spent the morning handling telephones, faxing handwritten notes and working his E-mail keyboard. He bought Fokker Aircraft shares with savings and on margin. He bought at going prices. The share price was dropping and his brokers urged caution but he shouted them down. “Buy buy buy, you hear me?”

  Buy, buy, buy, it was. Brokers like commissions.

  So he was losing some money, Fokker Aircraft would soon pick up again. “Right?”

  “Right,” the commissaris said, smoking his very last cigar on the poop deck. “Right you are, dear Peter.”

  Hot tip, Fokker Aircraft. The Koreans were just waiting to take the ailing company over. Shares were down to eight guilders, but about to double, and double again. How much had Skipper Peter invested? Two hundred mill? Double that once and he had already overshot his target.

  * * *

  Grijpstra shook his head when, one lazy morning at home in Amsterdam, in bed, not two weeks later, Nellie gave him the paper. There she was, front page, color, the Admiraal Rodney seized by creditors, being chained to a mooring in St. Maarten’s port.

  That evening de Gier and Sayukta were invited to dinner at the commissaris’s home. De Gier refused second servings of Javanese rice with shrimp crackers on the side. “Your favorite dish,” Katrien said indignantly. “Are you ill?”

  “Rinus groans all night,” Sayukta complained. “I can’t stand it. I thought I had found my true hero and he keeps breaking out in a sweat and trembling.” Her wide eyes became wider. “Sometimes he cries.”

  “He hasn’t heard the good news yet,” the commissaris whispered to his wife, winking. “He doesn’t know it’s all over. For Grijpstra too. Grijpstra doesn’t know either.”

  The commissaris, in his weathered cane chair, between the weeds in his rear garden, about to light up his very last afterdinner cigar, asked de Gier how he felt now that the Ambagts no longer carried their burden.

  “Nothing changed for me,” de Gier said sadly. “Those growing numbers in Luxembourg, they’re in my dreams.”

  “No more,” the commissaris said. “They’re back to zero, dear.”

  De Gier didn’t get that.

  “Your loot is gone,” the commissaris said helpfully. “And the account is closed. You recall that you and Grijpstra gave me a power of attorney?”

  De Gier laughed.

  “Are you all right?” Katrien asked indignantly.

  De Gier was about to leap about the garden when a thought struck. Had the commissaris invested his and Grijpstra’s money in Fokker Aircraft? That would have been stupid. But there was a flipside to that option. Stupidity in a teacher releases the smart pupil. Could de Gier now return to Key West and be bad there?

  There was no need. “I invested in Meshti,” the commissaris told him, “and in the good sister Johanna, who take care of the destitute terminally ill.”

  “That was a lot of money, Jan,” Katrien said. “Aren’t you overloading the dear sisters?”

  The commissaris was hopeful. “They’re kind of special. They’ll take care of the money.”

  “What money?” Sayukta asked.

  “It’s a long story,” the commissaris said.

  De Gier was sent to tell Grijpstra the good news.

  “Good,” Grijpstra said.

  “We still have that honestly earned Ambagt million,” de Gier said.

  Grijpstra shrugged. “That’ll go to taxes.”

  His prediction proved to be 63 percent true. There was still some left, to be invested in bonds by Nellie. The bonds’s guaranteed income wasn’t enough to support G&G’s lifestyle, not with Sayukta refusing to have de Gier live off her wages and de Gier having to pay rent for the loft. “To work,” Grijpstra said happily. G&G advertised. Clients came. By that time Grijpstra had news about Skipper Peter Ambagt. According to the boatswain who Grijpstra met in the jazz café Endless Blues, the old man dropped dead after the servant brought him the paper with the Fokker Failure headline. “He wasn’t too healthy anyway,” the boatswain said. “His nose. Incontinent. Cirrhosis. Mood shifts. Not a happy man at all.”

  “And the Admiraal Rodney?”

  The FEADship, sold by auction and renamed General Schwarzkopf, was now anchored in the Gulf of Bahrain, facing Qatar. A sheik was the lucky bidder. The sheik, easy to get along with now that oil prices are rising again, and not really a Fundamentalist although he prays on the poop deck a lot, likes to dally. The boatswain dallied along but had overdone it a little, so he was given one week off.

  And Carl?

  The boatswain hadn’t seen Carl since Fokker Aircraft’s sudden nosedive.

  A few weeks passed. De Gier, visiting Rotterdam to have dinner out with his sister, a once-a-year ritual, saw Carl at the next table in a medium-priced restaurant.

  “How’re you doing?”

  Carl said he was doing fine, thank you. Although the prediction by a certain Jonathan—Carl had once stayed at Jonathan’s Inn, more like a Bed & Breakfast, Jonathan was recommended once by Stewart-Wynne, remember Stewy, the guy in the jeep, right? Key West, right?—Well, Jonathan, a priest in his off time, voodoo, a seer, that sort of thing, on the Antillian island of Anguilla, had de Gier been to Anguilla? Well, Jonathan had “seen” Carl living in poorly furnished rooms, lino floors, bare minimum sort of thing, right? Okay, that had actually happened now, but Carl had found pleasing work.

  “In the automotive business?” de Gier asked.

&nb
sp; “Try again,” laughed Carl.

  “Crude oil perhaps?”

  “Once more,” laughed Carl.

  De Gier raised his hands.

  “Teaching Spanish,” Carl said.

  “Teaching who?”

  “Anyone who answers my ad in the Rotterdam Herald.”

  “You like that?”

  Carl said he loved that. He loved his lifestyle too. No nose-bleeding daddy-o, no endives or smashed beets, no nonpaying Cuban clients, no finance calculations that wouldn’t fit onto the screen of his pocket calculator, no tubes clogged by rats, or fuel lines by microbes, no helicopter that was allergic to sea-air, nobody to put up with but a baby crow he had found in the park the other day and who had the run of his rooms. Carl addressed de Gier’s sister, a quiet woman who knew what was what. “Whatever you do, ma’am, stay away from FEADships, and if you can’t do that, don’t equip them with choppers.” He turned to de Gier. “Right?”

  “That little fellow was rich once?” de Gier’s sister asked after Carl rushed off to make his appointment with his next Spanish language pupil.

  “He had enough,” de Gier said. “Enough is too much, you know that? Poor is better. No always outweighs Yes.” He patted his sister’s hand. “Not to be what we think we are, Catoh, is the key that unlocks the mystery.”

  Catoh hated that. She had hoped that, now that her brother was forced to work again at last, and courted a sensible woman, and talked about buying a four-door car, he would be done with all that negative thinking.