BigBug
Chapter IV

Dordrecht is a small Dutch city of approximately one hundred and twenty thousand citizens. The city was built on an island and it was once the most important city in Holland before Rotterdam and Amsterdam. The Observatory there has a large collection of meteorites. This information was gleaned from the web pages of the Dutch Meteorological Society and Seamus was now on his way to an appointment at the Observatory with Moon and the rock, sorry meteorite, (Murphy the cat is editing), to meet Meneer Henk De Vries, a foremost Dutch meteorite expert.

“Who is this De Vries?” asked Moon, “Is he an expert on meteorites?”

“Yeah. He is such an authority on meteorites that he got married in the big meteorite crater in Arizona,” replied Seamus, who with Moon and the meteorite was travelling down to Dordrecht in Seamus’s old and much beloved Mercedes 300 D.

“Must be very enthusiastic,” said Moon dragging on his spliff. “Where did he spend his marriage night, Honeymoon Suite on the International Space Station, eh?”

“The website didn’t say, but he must know his extra-terrestrial bits and pieces very well.”

“What else did you replace out on this web?”

“I remember quite a lot from my student days.”

“You were a student? Where was that?”

“In Belfast. At Queens. I studied geology and biology as a second subject. I always dreamed about prospecting for gold in South Africa or the Yukon. But that dream, like many other of my youthful notions, is dead. Welcome to the Dead Dream Society, the DDS. I refreshed geology, meteorites, on the net. I brought myself up to date. There are, basically, three types of meteorite. Iron meteorites, stony meteorites, and stony iron meteorites.”

“And what do we have?”

“It feels like a stony- iron to me,” said Seamus, “and one thing I noticed on your rock, are a few thumbprint-like indentations. They are called regmaglypts.”

“Regmaglypts? Sure that’s not a Turkish football team?”

“These regmaglypts, and they are only found in meteorites, are made during the meteorites decent through the atmosphere. I also scraped the rock with a file and it looks to me like there are flecks of iron in there. There are spots of green mineral in there too. That might be olivine.”

“Read my lips. Only found in meteorites! It’s looking good NASA,” replied Moon. “How long before we get there?”

“We will be there in thirty minutes or so.”

“And these scientists - they are expecting us?”

“Yes and we have a meeting with The Meteorite Men at two thirty. We are in good time.”

They travelled down from Amsterdam on the A2 towards Utrecht until they got near Lexmond where they took the A22 towards Gorinchem. At Gorinchem, they took the A15 towards Dordrecht. Seamus let his good friend Johnny Cash finish singing Burning Ring of Fire and then cut the sounds.

“Put that spliff out and open the window,” said Seamus, “we cannot go to a scientific meeting stinking like Bob Marley’s dreadlocks.”

“Everybody smokes in Holland,” replied Moon.

“They do not. I don’t.”

“That’s because you developed the allergy to the weed. Terrible thing that, not being able to toke, but you are not Dutch are you? All them scientist smoke. It’s part of their training to test every known drug on themselves. You cannot be giving ketamine to chimps or getting dogs to sniff coke. Can you imagine a kangaroo on crystal meth? Skippy zooming about the outback? As well as being disgusting the data would be all fucked up and the animals too. It’s immoral to fuck up animals so the scientists get to do all the dope testing themselves. The perverse perks of pseudo progress.”

“That’s utter bollox ology, Moon. You are a chemical dustbin and the EWABs say they want to save the planet from pollution?”

“You are welcome to join the cause. You are a natural born anarchist, Seamus. An NBA.”

“I am a naturally creaking sixty five. Let me rot away in peace. You will all end up dead and they will bury you in a nuclear waste storage facility. Where do you EWABs get this irrational information? Ah, never mind. I don’t want to know. It is bollox ology and brain sludge, in your case, paddy porridge. Your mind is melting just as surely as the polar icecaps.” Seamus was talking with Moon but he was watching the traffic behind him observing in his rear view and side mirrors. Something was afoot from afar.

“Cool.” Moon accepted the complement that his brain was melting. “I cannot tell you where we get our intelligence.”

“That’s a difficult one alright. If you ever replace out keep it under your kepi.”

“It’s not that we don’t trust you. We know you are a good citizen but our sources of information are confidential for reasons of, local, national, international, and planetary insecurity and therefore must remain secret forever.” Moon was straight faced.

”Put out the spliff. It stinks.”

“Yeah. Great weed.”

“You have reached you destination,” stated Ms Mary O’Tomtom. Seamus parked up the Mercedes D in a parking space provided by the Sterrenwacht Mercurius Observatory. It was an impressive building situated in the beautiful nature reserve of Hollandse Biesbosch.

“Let’s get a bit of air,” said Seamus getting out of the car, “we are twenty minutes early for our appointment. Let’s take a stroll.”

Moon and Seamus walked in the wonderful landscaped gardens. In spring the gardens were ablaze with colour from the daffodils and tulip beds but now the ground was sleeping resting under its white winter blanket of frost and snow. It was cold.

“I forgot my parka,” said Seamus, “I’ll go and get it.”

Moon sat down on the bench below the oak tree. Seamus noticed the car as he walked to the 300D. He ignored the VW, opened up the 300D, got out his parka and put it on. The VW golf had not been there when they arrived. The grey VW was parked up in such a position that the occupants of the car, a man and a woman, could observe the 300D and the observatory. Seamus ignored the couple. He was sure they were not ignoring him. His instinct told him they were being watched. Seamus did not walk directly back to Moon but walked in a loop passing behind the observatory. Yeah there it was another grey VW golf, with two faceless people in it and they were perfectly situated to watch the back of the observatory. Seamus walked back to Moon. There were two people in the park pretending to be tourists photographing each other and the frozen blades of grass. Seamus had no doubt. The observatory was staked out. He said nothing to Moon.

“Let’s go, Moon, it is time.” Moon nipped his spliff and put it behind his ear. Seamus did not object. There was no point. At the entrance to the observatory, sitting at a cast iron ornate garden table were three people, two women and a man. They were drinking coffee from plastic cups and smoking, roll your own, cigarettes. “Hello,” said Seamus walking up to them and smiling, “I have an appointment with Meneer de Vries.”

“About the meteorite,” added Moon.

The people said nothing. They just stared at Seamus and Moon. A person could be forgiven for believing they were taking part in an old KGB tribunal and the accused had just said, ‘Stalin is a shithead and he has to go. Let’s kill him’ as a way of opening the pre-firing squad interrogation proceedings.

“I have an appointment at 14.30 with Meneer De Vries.”

The trio sat there unmoving and stared straight ahead. Deaf. Hostile. Indifferent. The entrance door to the Observatory opened and a tall man, sporting grey, streaky hair stepped out. He sported a big shaggy Santa beard and was wearing glasses with lenses as thick as jam jar bottoms. The hair was long and left designer straggly, an ageing rock star cut, clinging to youthful days of yore and glory. It reminded Seamus of smoked streaky bacon strips. The man had a very big sharp nose. In Belfast as a child, Seamus and his childhood friends would have shouted after this man – ‘hey, Mister, lend us your nose to chop sticks’ - and hope he would give the kids a chase. Seamus blocked out the mind theatre rehearsals and focused in on the task at hand. No digression. No Mind Theatre. He had to attend to the daily grind, the remorseless reality, of the here and now.

“Unfortunately, Meneer De Vries is unable to see you today.” The man had a very deep, almost theatrical voice. He paused. “He was delayed at a meeting. A very important meeting. I am going to deal with this matter.” The way he said, ‘matter,’ it could well have been the shit Murphy the super cat once dumped down on Seamus’s key board because Seamus had been arrested for drunken driving and could not get back in time to feed him. “Come with me.” That was an order.

The observatory was very interesting inside, with a big Meteorite display. Cabinets full of space rocks. The man who was going to deal with the matter, he never gave them his name, was standing behind a foyer. He was staring past their shoulders.

“And how may we help you?” The man was not looking at them. He was staring at whatever behind them. Seamus looked around him in case there was someone hiding under the table. He could not see anyone. What was Meneer Groot van der Nose looking at?

“We think we have found a meteorite,” said Moon, “and we would like you to take a look at it.”

One would think he would be somewhat interested, even if not a trifle excited, but the nose just looked at them, and behind and above glared out the dead, disinterested, fishlike eyes, of an academic expert. He sighed as if dealing with stupid vexatious pupils.

“Very, very, very, very, very unlikely. Everything found in Holland turns out not to be a meteorite. It is always something manmade. Where is this artefact?”

Moon fished the meteorite out and sat it down in front of the sceptical beak. The man was shaking his head, in denial, and formulating refutation, even before the rock came out from the haversack. The expert fashioned a distasteful face. His head was moving back and forth – no, no, no, no, no, not now, never! Seamus thought maybe he was one of the Wild Rovers and he was going to break into song, ‘No, nay, never, no more’. The expert finally stopped wobbling and spoke.

“That is not a meteorite. It is the wrong shape. It is the wrong colour. If we were not now closed to the public, I could show you some real meteorites. No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. That is a piece of slag. A manmade industrial waste product from steel manufacture. This slag came from the steel works at Ijmuiden. Undoubtedly.”

“Undoubtedly?” asked Seamus.

“Absolutely, undoubtedly.” His ass hole relaxed a bit and you could hear the hiss in Heaven. The man managed to bend forward a millimetre or two to communicate. He grudgingly elaborated. “There is no doubt whatsoever this artefact is a lump of iron slag from the steel works at Ijmuiden. It is worthless and useless. You have wasted your time, and mine, bringing it here.” He was such a happy asshole.

“But there are regmaglypts on it and it is magnetic.” Seamus pointed out the thumbprint indentations caused as the meteorite entered Earth’s atmosphere at very high temperature and ablated. The expert ignored Seamus, as is the wont of wafflers. Did he know what regmaglypts were?

“Read my lips,” contributed Moon, “only found on meteorites.” He winked at the beaky man.

“And if you look at it carefully,” continued Seamus to the sceptic, “you can see what appear to be little flecks of iron there where I have scraped it.” Seamus offered him his marijuana inspection loupe to make a close inspection of the meteorite. The expert did not look at the rock. He looked offended. The expert drew in a great gulp of gods good air and puffed up.

“This is not a meteorite. It cannot possibly be a meteorite. We have an outstanding collection of meteorites. More than any other observatory. Believe me this is not a meteorite. You have made a wasted trip.”

“There you are,” said Seamus to Moon, “it’s not a meteorite. We are being slagged off and you heard it straight from the assterturd’s mouth.” Seamus saw something in Moon’s eyes and turned back to see the expert pick up some dust he had scraped of the rock with a piece of transparent tape. He also pulled off a small magnet he had secretly attached to the rock. He was carrying out tests on the rock when he thought Seamus was not looking.

“Magnetic?” asked Seamus.

“Lots of rocks and artefacts are magnetic,” he grudgingly conceded, having been caught at sleight of hand, “but they are not meteorites. Some meteorites are only slightly magnetic and some are not magnetic at all, but slag is very magnetic. Just like this. I was checking to verify it is slag. Slag from Ijmuiden.” He drew himself up and passed verdict. “It is a lump of common iron slag.”

“Will Meneer De Vries be here today?”

“No. He has to go on a field trip.” He was a good bluffer but a bad liar.

Moon was pissed off with the pompous prattle. “What’s he collecting,” asked Moon, “magic mushrooms from the moon? Assterturds from Uranus?” Moon picked up his rock and put it back into his haversack. “Let’s go.”

“If you want, you can leave the slag here and maybe we will put it in our meteorite wrong display cabinet. It will save you carrying it back to Amsterdam.” He tried to force a smile. Absolute Undoubted Failure. AUF. Moon cursed the nasty man in even more nasty French. The tall, grey haired man with the big pointed nose, elevated now to avoid distasteful conversational continuance, ushered Seamus and Moon to the door. This man was practicing pomposity with his pecker! He was steering them out with his nose! Who on Earth was peering down those nostrils? When they stepped outside he quickly locked the place up and turned on the alarms and peered out the window at them with an alarming face coated with great suspicion. The welcoming Tribunal were still sitting at the table, sipping cold coffee and muttering in Dutch to each other under their breath. The woman was wearing a wire, with a flesh coloured earpiece, and a glum, rigid, lifeless head of stone up on her. The other two people appeared to be afraid of her. Not so Moon the bold, our fickle fearless, eco warrior chief. He fixed the spook with a paddy piss-taking eye.

“Seamus,” explained Moon pointing at the spook, “it’s one of the moving statues that’s emigrated from Ballinaspiddel!” Moon eyeballed the unmoving woman. “Did you come across to Holland to marry that white pillar of Dutch society, Meener van der Limestone?” Moon thought his wit was so incredibly funny he broke out in a fit of the giggles. Between laughing and coughing, he picked up a lighter from the table and lit his spliff. He blew weed smoke over the stony spook. “You are only missing a fusion crust,” yelled Moon in a desperate state of the high giggles, “otherwise we could put you inside in a display case as a meteorite wrong. Try sticking your head in the oven for ten thousand light years at gas mark 10 and don’t forget to light the fucking gas!” He threw her lighter back onto the table and started to roar with laughter. Huge howls of merriment and devilment. Seamus pulled him away. Moon calmed down a bit. They walked back to the 300D.

“That’s over the top, Moon.”

“Completely,” agreed Moon, “but sure I could not just go along with what’s going on, or what’s not going on. Something stinks,” said Moon, “and it’s not just my weed. That bollox was not interested in this being a meteorite. How could he tell which steel works it came from? He behaved like one of those pissed-up, phony wine experts from the BBC who claim they can tell which particular vine a bottle of wine came from, on what day the grapes were pressed, and if any of the barefoot tramping peasants had athletes’ foot. It’s weird.”

“I’ll tell you how weird it is,” said Seamus when they had driven off down the road a bit, “the guy we came to meet? Henk de Vries? The Meteorite Man? He was sitting outside with his wife drinking coffee. I never mentioned Amsterdam in my phone call to them. I said the rock was found in Kadolen village.”

“What’s going on?” asked the Moon.

“I don’t know,” replied Seamus, pulling away and looking in the rear view and side mirrors of the 300D. Another VW Golf was tailing them. Seamus decided not to tell Moon what was going on until he had some idea of what was going on. He slowed down, forcing the VW to overtake. He paid it no attention. A golden rule for the naive innocents. Never let the paranoids know you are watching them. That will drive them nuts. They were definitely being tailed. By professional paranoids too. There was a big Kawasaki motorcycle now following them from a discreet distance. It was a powerful machine that could easily overtake them but it kept the same speed as Seamus, which was ten kilometres below the speed limit. Very few Dutch motorists drive ten kilometres under the speed limit on the Snellweg apart from old folk on the dither. And what now? Are Dutch bikers a bunch of moderate, loveable, law-abiding Hell’s Angels?

“It’s weird the way that guy behaved,” mused Moon, “it must have something to do with the meteorite. Maybe it is stolen. From a museum or something. Seamus you must have some idea of what is going on. Hello Seamus. Hello brain box.” Moon paused then added, “When it’s working.” He sang, “Ground control to Major Seamus. Let me know when we are famous…Are you switched on?”

Seamus did not reply. He was preoccupied. The Kawasaki turned off at the next exit and that was replaced by a grey Hyundai driven by an equally grey nondescript granny. Grey, faceless, very nosey people who lived in the shadows of other people’s lives.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Seamus replied, “but we sure as hell better replace out. In the meantime, we had better replace somewhere safe to hide the rock. Maybe we can put it in the bank vault.”

Moon was delighted. “In a safety deposit box? I told you it was worth a fortune.”

Seamus sighed. They were now being tailed from in front, as well as behind. This rock may turn out to be worthless, Seamus did not know, but he did know it cost resources, and an awful lot of money, to mount this level of surveillance. Moon was right of course. It had to be something to do with this rock. Seamus pulled into a rest stop. He got out stretching his legs. Yes, that confirmed it. There was a spotter plane a small, grey Cessna, up in the sky behind them. Economical to run and impossible to spot if you were driving. There would be a tracker on the 300D being monitored by the plane, which then controlled and directed the surveillance vehicles. They were deceptive little planes. Grey, average looking private plane with a two-man crew but they could function at all times and in any weather. They could remain airborne for up to ten hours. They were very quiet as well. Great piece of kit and the police usually did not get to use them. They used helicopters. Seamus did not look up at the plane. Common, amateurish mistake, to look up at a plane or helicopter. Smile and make a mug shot. He turned his back on the plane and ignored it. He pissed behind a tree. He did not want the paranoids to have a photograph of him staring up at them in curious wonder. It was much better they photographed his fat ass while he was pissing. Out of your sight and out of your paranoid fucking mind. The people following them were dangerous. Spooks were a law unto themselves. What was going on? He sat back into the 300D. Moon rolled down the window, oblivious to it all, lit up another joint, and nursed the meteorite on his lap like a baby. Seamus started up the diesel. He looked at the meteorite lying on Moon’s lap.

“What the hell have you dug up Moon?”

Seamus drove onto the Snellweg heading for Amsterdam. Moon did not reply. He had his headphones on and was listening to the Wolf Tones churning out IRA songs. Well done, Moon. Excellent musical choice and the paranoids will be well pleased to have uncovered and exposed two authentic, Guaranteed Irish, gunmen, terrorists, sleeping in the soft underbelly of Dutch society, pretending to be a pair of washed up old hippies.

“What the hell have you dug up, Moon?”