Termination Shock

Vadan

Though he was not a licensed pilot, Michiel belonged to that class of people who spent a lot of time messing about in boats and planes and had some knowledge of how they worked. Saskia was old enough to remember when a man of that description might have been called a playboy. Among European royalty there was no lack of such. But no self-respecting man wanted to be called that anymore. Anyway, the Venetian didn’t have a job per se, or any fixed slate of obligations relating to work or family. When it came time for Saskia to head for Vadan, Michiel asked if he might join her in the co-pilot’s seat, and she said yes without hesitation. He was good company to be sure. And though she wouldn’t have trusted him to take the Beaver off or land it, he could manage it in level flight when she needed the occasional break.

The journey lent itself to an easygoing, short-hop style of travel. They were essentially flying down the whole length of the Adriatic. They chose to follow its Italian, as opposed to its Balkan, coast. They could put the plane down almost anywhere, and it would usually turn out to be someplace charming. Michiel, who had roamed up and down this coast in pleasure craft his whole life, knew of good places to get coffee or a delicious meal while the Beaver was being refueled. They stopped once about halfway along in a little old Roman town, unspoiled by tourism and yet still well supplied with cafés and restaurants because of a local art scene. Then they flew a leg to near Brindisi, on the heel of Italy, at the narrowest part of the Adriatic. Here there was more modern hustle and bustle because of its maritime connections to Albania and Greece, but Michiel knew of a fantastic little waterfront bar, just colorful enough to feel like a real place, patronized by a hilarious mix of locals and old salts passing through. It was tucked in beside a fishermen’s wharf across a cove from the fuel dock. The crew looking after the plane there, mostly Albanian immigrants, were in love with it and asked Michiel all sorts of questions. They were assuming that he, and not the woman by his side, was the owner and pilot. In other circumstances Saskia might have taken offense at that, but she was luxuriating in this brief spell of anonymity. None of these men had had a clue that she was Her Royal Highness Frederika Mathilde Louisa Saskia of the Netherlands. She was just the wife or girlfriend of this cool-looking Italian guy—who addressed her as Saskia. She didn’t have to do anything. Didn’t have to think twelve steps ahead or worry about how her every word and gesture would play on social media.

Once they were established in that waterfront bar with glasses of white wine and a plate of snails, Michiel squinted across the sun-sparkled water of the cove toward the fuel dock, then pulled his sunglasses down on his nose, looked over them at Saskia, and said, “Those men are fascinated by your Beaver. As am I.”

Lotte had already made Saskia well aware of a fact that never would have occurred to her otherwise, namely that in English slang the word “beaver” meant a woman’s genitals. The pun had since cropped up in conversation a few times. So Saskia was ready for the double meaning. Or at least she had to assume that Michiel was simultaneously making a perfectly aboveboard remark about aviation and hitting on her.

As with any double entendre, there was a need to proceed with caution, in case he actually was only talking of airplanes. But she doubted it. The plane was loud when it was in the air. Normal conversation was difficult. So they had spent much of the flight just looking and smiling at each other, and Michiel gave every indication of liking what he saw.

“You need to be aware,” she said, “that it’s old and complicated and takes a while to get up to speed. Not like the new models you’re probably used to.”

“Newer models have complicated features that are tiresome and high-maintenance in their own way,” he pointed out.

“As long as you understand,” she said, biting into a snail, “that the Beaver is mine, and it has other places to go.”

After a short flight across the Adriatic, Vadan came into view. It lay fifteen kilometers off the mountainous coast of Albania’s mainland and would have been a mountain in its own right if sea level was lower. There was still a good hour of daylight remaining and so Saskia made a low orbit around the island’s summit so that she and Michiel could get a look at how the work was progressing. A lot had happened since the last photos Cornelia had sent her, back in the autumn. The road that zigzagged to the summit had been paved. Additional construction trailers had been hauled up and arranged around the head frame. A considerable heap of spoil gave a sense of the depth of the shaft. From having been to Pina2bo, Saskia knew what else to look for: a pile of sulfur, plumbing for natural gas, and a separate complex of new buildings, a couple of kilometers down the road, where people could live and work with at least some separation from the sonic booms.

The island only had one decent anchorage, in a rocky cove on its northern end. Even if they’d lacked a chart, they’d have been able to find it just by flying along the road—the road, for there were no others on this island—until it met the water. Running parallel to it was new-looking infrastructure, most notably a gas pipeline. All of it terminated at the dock where Venetian merchants had called a thousand years ago, sailing to and from Constantinople, and which more recently the Soviets had beefed up into a military compound. Those days, of course, were long past, and so what was left of that infrastructure was as shabby and forlorn as might be expected. But within the last year the pier had been upgraded to modern standards, and other improvements were shouldering the rubble of the Warsaw Pact off to the margins. One day soon, the ships calling here would be bulk carriers bringing sulfur and natural gas to feed the gun.

Today, though, the only vessels of any consequence were pleasure craft. Two of them. Tied up on opposite sides of the pier. They couldn’t have been much more different. The larger—much larger—of the two was one of those yachts so huge it might be mistaken for a cruise liner if not for its rakish and cool-looking design. It had two helipads, both occupied at the moment, and a berth out of which a smaller, more nimble superyacht could be deployed.

The yacht on the opposite side of the pier might have looked big in some anchorages, but not here. It was perhaps half the length of the other. Nearly as tall, though, because of two sails projecting from amidships. Really not so much sails as wings that were pointed straight up.

Saskia swung the plane round past the mouth of the cove, shedding altitude, then banked back and brought it in for a landing. It came nearly to a stop several hundred meters abaft of the larger yacht. The name Crescent was emblazoned across her stern in both Roman and Arabic script. As Saskia piloted the Beaver toward the end of the pier, the stern of the sail-powered vessel came into view; she was christened Bøkesuden. Staff were on hand to help make the plane fast and handle luggage and so on, but some crew from the yachts had also come down to greet them. The ones from Crescent were Arabs and Turks. Those from Bøkesuden were Norwegians. Two ethnic groups that had little in common, save that they got all their money from oil.

And the similarities ended there. The differences were conspicuous in the way each group felt about the protocol around welcoming a royal visitor. Both ships’ captains had come down to greet her. The Norwegian captain, a woman in her forties, treated her in a respectful but basically matter-of-fact way a Dutch person would. Saskia got a clue as to why as they walked down the pier and she saw the coat of arms of the Norwegian royal house blazoned on the stern of Bøkesuden. This thing was actually a royal yacht. She’d heard about it. It was completely green, wind- and solar-powered from stem to stern, a floating showcase both for the latest climate-conscious technology and for traditional Norwegian shipbuilding know-how. But the royal ensign was not flying from it today, so apparently the king was not aboard.

The captain of Crescent was English and treated Princess Frederika with the deference he might have shown to the reigning monarch of his native land. Below him, in the yacht’s considerable org chart, tended to be Turks near the top giving way to Filipinos and Bangladeshis filling out the ranks of deckhands, housekeeping staff, and food service.

Saskia wasn’t a yacht person. But she knew people who were, and had got the picture, through them, that when boats like this exceeded a certain size, the expectation was that they would basically be staffed and operated as resorts. If you were going to provide toys—parasails, Jet Skis, scuba gear, fishing tackle, and all the rest—you had to provide staff who knew how to keep all that stuff running and who could show the guests a good time while making sure no one got killed. Those staff all needed places to sleep and to eat, separate from guest cabins of course. Throw in a full-time security detail and the yacht had to be that enormous just to carry out its basic functions.

Crescent was one of those. The owner was a Saudi prince. Which wasn’t saying much; there were many. As far as she could tell, this guy—Fahd bin Talal—wasn’t the type who cut journalists up with bone saws. Dressed in a long white dishdasha and red-and-white headscarf, accessorized with gilt-edged sunglasses, he greeted Saskia at the gangway, flanked by at least a dozen uniformed crew members, and handed her a bouquet before escorting her aboard—where a woman was waiting just so that Saskia could hand the bouquet off to her and not have to lug it around. After a brief walkaround she was escorted to the royal suite, or at least a royal suite, and introduced to a phalanx of butlers, stewards, housekeepers, and so on who would see to her every need.

None of which was exactly unheard of, when you were a queen; but Dutch royals steered clear of it. She knew she’d have felt much more at home on the Norwegian eco-yacht.

She’d lost track of Michiel during all this. No formal activities were slated for this evening. She spent a few minutes freshening up and changing clothes, then ventured out, bracing herself for more aggressive hospitality. Michiel had sent her a selfie as a clue as to where he might be tracked down. The sun was dropping below the horizon when she found him sitting in one of the yacht’s bars, an open-air, tiki-themed establishment beside the swimming pool. Why you’d have a swimming pool on a boat that floated in the water wasn’t clear to her. Maybe so that you could have a poolside bar. Anyway, Michiel—who’d been assigned to a slightly less palatial stateroom—was sitting there in a Hawaiian shirt and white slacks enjoying a cocktail with a shirtless and even more good-looking man who bore an uncanny resemblance to—

He stood up when he saw her coming. “Ma’am,” he said. Then, worried—hilariously—that she wouldn’t recognize him, he added, “I’m—”

“Jules. The Family Jules. Such a pleasure to see you again.”

He seemed chuffed to be recognized. Michiel was just grinning, enjoying the moment.

“In case you’re wondering,” Jules offered, “I was looking for work on this side of the ol’ pond, so I could—”

“So you could be within striking distance of Fenna!”

He nodded and grinned. “Oil rig work and such is hard to break into because of unions and certs, but—”

“There was an opening on a yacht, for a personable young man who could teach guests how to scuba dive.”

“Exactly, ma’am.”

“Well! That explains—”

“Why Fenna’s coming to help you get ready for the big party tomorrow evenin’!” Jules said, now smiling broadly.

“She seemed incredibly eager to do so. I fancied she was doing me a favor.”

“I’m real glad it worked out!”

“Not as glad as you’re going to be, I’m quite sure.”

If it was possible for a man as deeply and perfectly tanned as Jules to blush, he did so.

Something about the knowledge that Fenna and Jules were tomorrow going to be fucking each other’s brains out in the manner that had been so conspicuous in Texas made it seem not merely okay but almost a matter of some urgency that Saskia and Michiel get to it first. After Jules politely excused himself and left them alone together, they had dinner brought out and they dined poolside, al fresco, in a setting as romantic as it was possible for a decommissioned Cold War Soviet nerve gas depot to be. Then they went back to Saskia’s suite and got the Beaver up to cruising altitude. The next morning they had another go. After a little doze, Michiel got out of bed and began taking a shower. Saskia put on one of the provided bathrobes, ordered coffee, and was sitting there in a condition of pleasant post-coital disarray when a knock came at the door.

“Come in!” she called, and it opened to reveal a waiter carrying a silver tray. And, right behind him, a young man. Blond, bearded, oddly familiar-looking, clearly not a servant. The look on both men’s faces suggested it was an awkward coincidence. The blond man politely held the door open for the waiter, but then averted his gaze from Saskia, backed out into the corridor, and allowed it to swing closed.

Saskia only had to turn her head and look out the window across the pier. Bøkesuden was still tied up there. But this morning it was flying a new flag, bearing a royal coat of arms. Not the purple-mantled one used exclusively by the king but the red-mantled version used by the crown prince.

She strode past the bewildered waiter and peered through the peephole in the door. Prince Bjorn of Norway was still standing there, looking indecisive. When she hauled the door open, though, he looked astonished and unnerved. It didn’t help that her robe almost fell open when the door snagged it. She caught it with her free hand just in the nick of time and retied it while the prince gamely tried to keep his eyes on her face. He was wearing a navy blue blazer and a well-tailored dress shirt over khakis. Looked as though he’d have been more comfortable, though, skiing through the mountains.

“Prince Bjorn!” she exclaimed.

“Your Royal Highness. When we last met—”

“My husband’s funeral. You were just a boy. How you’ve grown! Are you here to talk to me about my daughter?”

“Well, yes.”

“Come in.”

They sat down across the coffee table from each other. The waiter poured coffee for both of them. Saskia took advantage of the delay by pulling up a certain selfie on her phone. She showed it to Bjorn: Lotte in the gown she’d worn to the ball on the day she’d become Queen of the Netherlands, making a comically exaggerated wink as she posed next to Bjorn, who here was looking even more uncomfortable in black tie. Bjorn blushed as deeply as Jules had yesterday, but he was a lot more careful about using sunscreen—something of a professional obligation when you were the crown prince of a country full of outdoorsy melanin-deprived people—and so it really showed.

“Well then, I’ll get right to the point,” he said, as soon as the door had closed behind the waiter.

“Oh my god, is she pregnant?”

Bjorn barked out a nervous laugh. “Certainly not! My god. We haven’t even done anything.”

“I’m just joking. If she were pregnant, you couldn’t possibly know yet.”

“The point is, she’s seventeen.”

“I was aware of it.”

“I’m twenty-two.” He shrugged. “It might seem a small difference to—to—”

“To someone as old as me? Go ahead, it’s okay.”

“But I just wanted to say—because there have already been false reports on the Internet—”

“Someone on the Internet is wrong? I don’t believe it!”

“Nothing has happened. And nothing will, until she is of a proper age. But—” Here Bjorn got stuck again.

“But you would like it to happen.”

“I believe there is potential there. Yes.”

“Potential. A dry and somewhat technical-sounding way to say it. You’re an engineering student?”

“Not anymore. Got my degree.”

“Congratulations!”

“I’m going to work on carbon capture.”

“Well, you seem like a wonderful young man. Serious and self-disciplined. Respectful in the way you treat women. I wouldn’t want anyone in my family to end up with some playboy.”

From the look on Bjorn’s face it seemed that this term was unfamiliar to him. Once again, she had dated herself. “I think now they are called fuckboys or something.”

The bathroom door opened and Michiel strode out, staring down at the screen of his phone. His bathrobe was wide open, sash dragging on the floor, flat stomach glistening, his erect penis sticking out like the bowsprit of the royal yacht. “Something came up while I was in the shower!” he announced, snapping a photograph. Then he looked up.

“His Royal Highness Prince Bjorn of Norway,” Saskia announced, but before Bjorn could scramble to his feet Michiel had retreated into the bedroom.

“Like that,” Saskia said coolly. “Don’t be like him and we’ll get along fine, you and I.”

It occurred to Saskia that if she moved fast she might be able to reach Michiel before it was too late. “See you at the opening session, Bjorn, in—what—an hour and a half?”

“Thirty minutes, in fact,” Bjorn said apologetically, getting to his feet. His eyes darted to the bedroom door. “But, you’re a queen, you know.”

“More of a Dowager at this point.”

“Anyway, you can show up whenever you like, of course.”

“I’ll be there in forty-five,” Saskia said. “Tell them I’m powdering my nose.”

Crescent had many fine qualities, but at the end of the day it was a pleasure barge and its largest single room was a disco. That was the backup location for the conference, if the weather turned bad. But it was fine and so they met under a canopy that the event planners had pitched a short walk up the road from the pier, amid the ruins of the old fortified town that the Venetians had built there a thousand years ago. The remains of a church could be seen, with a pitted and broken frieze of the winged lion that was the emblem of that city and its long-forgotten empire. Across the way from that was a loudspeaker thrust into the air on a pole from which the Muslim call to prayer was broadcast five times a day. The construction of the big gun had drawn a couple of hundred Albanian workers to the island, and this was a largely Muslim country, so they were making do with this simple workaround while a proper mosque was being constructed nearby.

An Audi was waiting for Princess Frederika on the pier, but it hardly seemed worth the trouble of climbing into it, so she walked up to the site in time for the tail end of the pre-meeting coffee-and-pastries mixer. Michiel would follow later; he had some things to catch up on with Cornelia, who was inbound from Brindisi. The day was sunny and looked as though it might turn warm, but a cool breeze was coming up from the Adriatic and the event planners had stockpiled electric fans that they could deploy if they noticed guests fanning themselves with their programs. But with the exception of the Norwegians and a City of London contingent—which included Alastair—most of the people here came from hot places. A lot of Arabs. Some Turks. Texans and Louisianans. Contingents from Bangladesh, West Bengal, Maldives, Laccadives, the Marshall Islands. Indonesians displaced by the flooding of Jakarta, Australians from a part of their country that a few months ago had been the hottest place in the world for two straight weeks. If any audience could put up with a balmy afternoon, it was this one.

The name of the conference was Netherworld. It had a logo, inevitably, and swag with the logo on it. The image was a stylized map of the world showing only what T.R. would have described as stochastic land: everything within a couple of meters of sea level. Deep water, and the interiors of continents, were blank. So it was a lacy archipelago strung about the globe, fat in places like the Netherlands, razor thin in places like Norway or America’s West Coast where the land erupted steeply from the water.

It was always a pleasure working with a fellow professional. Prince Bjorn had the royal thing down pat. He understood as well as Saskia that his job at an event like this one was to say a few words—just enough to sprinkle the royal fairy dust over the proceedings—and then sit down and shut up, smiling and nodding and applauding on cue. So he said his words, and Princess Frederika, newly abdicated but always a royal, said hers, and they sat down next to each other in the front row and did their jobs. Prince Fahd bin Talal, on the other hand, was from a place where royals still had some real authority, and so he took a more active role.

A series of panel discussions and solo talks had been artfully programmed to give equal time to the likes of the Marshall Islands. But the money was Norwegian and Saudi. Bjorn was here as figurehead, but the real power was a trio representing three-eighths of the executive board of the Oil Fund. That wasn’t its official name, but it was what people called it, because that’s what it was: a sovereign wealth fund into which Norway had dumped the profits of its North Sea oil production over the last fifty or so years. Last Saskia had bothered to check, it was well over a trillion dollars—the largest such fund in the world. And she should know; the oil from those rigs came ashore at Rotterdam.

So the Oil Fund contingent was two men and a woman, all in their fifties or sixties, dressed in business casual as per the invitation, in no way famous or recognizable. They could have been lecturers at a Scandinavian university or docents at a museum. But they controlled a trillion dollars that had been earned by injecting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. No accident that Prince Bjorn’s engineering talents were going to be dedicated to carbon capture technology; this was very much a case of a royal leading by example.

The Saudis had made a lot more from petroleum than the Norwegians, but spread the money out among funds and companies and individuals in a way that was more difficult for Westerners to keep track of. But it wasn’t unreasonable to guess that their host could tap into an amount comparable to what the Norwegians were looking after. And he probably had greater freedom to spend it.

Prince Fahd did have some skill at public speaking. Not for nothing had he earned degrees at Oxford and at Yale. “Some of us live in places that are too low,” he said, with a gesture of respect to Saskia, and a nod to the Marshall Islanders, “but I live in a place that is too hot. Perhaps we can work together. Those of us who have reaped great rewards making the situation worse”—this with a glance at the Norwegians—“are sensible that we might have a role to play in setting things right. One who could not be here today has amazed the world by taking aggressive action to shield our world from an angry sun. Later we’ll go up to the top of the mountain to see another such facility launch its first projectile into the Albanian stratosphere. As the veil spreads downwind it will, I hope, provide a measure of relief to our brothers and sisters in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Other such projects are being contemplated in places farther to the south, where we hope they will benefit my home country as well as helping to combat rising sea levels all over Netherworld.” This the first, albeit oblique, public acknowledgment of something Saskia had got wind of from the Venetians, namely that the Saudis had been busy with a little project of their own.

“Many are the voices who will say—who have already said, quite vocally—that this is at best nothing more than a stopgap solution. I’m sure our friends from the Maldives, the Laccadives, and the Marshall Islands would take a different view! But of course the detractors have a point. It is absolutely the case that we cannot long survive on a program that consists exclusively of bouncing back the sun’s radiation using a thin veil of gas. We must take advantage of the brief respite that such interventions give us to remove carbon from our atmosphere.” This the big lectern-thumping applause line. “And we must do it,” he continued, raising his voice over the clapping, “on a scale that matches—no, even exceeds—the scope of the coal and petroleum industries’ global operations during the last hundred and fifty years. They had a century and a half to put carbon into the atmosphere; we have only decades to take it back out. It will be expensive. But we have money. Abraham Lincoln, in his second inaugural address, said, ‘Yet, if God wills that the Civil War continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword . . . so still it must be said that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’ If, at the end of all this, the pensioners of oil-rich countries are once again only being supported by the proceeds of modern clean industries, then we will truly know that the money has been well looked after.”

Strong words. Saskia smiled, nodded, and applauded at all the right moments. She really couldn’t tell whether Fahd bin Talal was full of shit. He might sincerely believe every word he said, and he might not. If he was sincere, he might be completely delusional. It could be that tomorrow he’d fly back to Riyadh and never be seen or heard from again. But a big part of her job had always been signaling agreement with people who were some combination of delusional or disingenuous, so, for the moment, it didn’t matter to her. He was proposing to spend a lot of money to fix the atmosphere. How could she find fault with that?

It was a sufficiently effective keynote speech to make the remainder of the conference seem almost superfluous. Prince Bjorn moderated a panel of experts discussing the pros and cons of various carbon capture schemes. A questioner from the City of London poured cold water over it by pointing out there was no way to pay for any of this. They watched an expensively produced presentation about a proposal to carpet a large part of the Sahara with photovoltaic panels. Another speaker talked about the notion that everything T.R. was doing could one day be replaced by a cloud of giant mirrors between the earth and the sun.

The afternoon was going to be breakout sessions on a range of topics. But first there was a long lunch break. Everyone piled aboard buses that took them to the top of the mountain. There they sat beneath another canopy and ate box lunches and sipped bottled water as the Albanian minister of infrastructure and energy said a few words and then slammed the palm of her hand down on a big red button mounted in a mocked-up control panel. The muzzle flashed, the shell flew, and the sonic boom—despite the fact that they had been warned and had all put in their free earplugs—scared the hell out of everyone. Everyone, that is, except for those who’d heard it before in West Texas: Saskia, Alastair, Michiel, and Cornelia—who’d made an uncharacteristically low-key entrance at some point during the morning session. Naturally this made Saskia think of those who couldn’t be here today. Fenna was apparently on her way in from the airport in Tirana and might have heard the boom. But Willem was enjoying a prolonged vacation in the South of France, and Amelia was pursuing a new career with a private security firm based out of London. Saskia took out her phone and texted Willem.

> They just fired it. Wish you were here!

> Glad I’m not :)

Willem followed up with a picture of Remi lounging next to a pool raising a drink.

A socially awkward situation came up later in the day, when the prince—the Saudi, not the Norwegian—attempted to give Princess Frederika a jet airplane.

He had the good sense to be somewhat discreet in how he went about it. After the conclusion of the afternoon program, but before the cocktail hour that would precede the big dinner party, he asked Saskia if she wouldn’t mind accompanying him down to the island’s airstrip to have a look at something she might find interesting. “Airstrip” maybe was the wrong word for a four-thousand-meter runway that the Soviets had dynamited out of the island’s southern plateau to accommodate heavy military transports. But there was no point quibbling over it. She had to send a message to Fenna, who was poised in the royal suite on the yacht, just waiting to get her hands on Saskia’s hair and face, letting her know that there would be this slight delay. Then it was off to the “airstrip” in a short motorcade consisting of three Bentleys: one for the gents, one for the lady, and one for the short-haired men with guns and earpieces. A few business jets were parked at the end of the runway, as well as a couple of 737s that had been chartered to bring various contingents in to the conference. Only one airplane, however, was adorned with a giant bow. Just like the ones that appeared on new SUVs in Super Bowl television ads. This bow happened to be bright green, which could have been taken as a symbol of Islam or of the global environmental movement. The plane was of an unusual configuration and it had weird-looking engines. Its stair had been deployed to the tarmac. At its base a uniformed pilot and a man in a business suit were waiting for them. They were trying to act all casual about it.

Saskia was glad to be alone in the ladies’ Bentley so that she could react with some amount of privacy. When you were a queen, people gave you things. Sometimes weird—very weird—things. Sometimes things that were inappropriate, in the sense of raising questions about conflict of interest and undue influence. She’d thought she’d put all that behind her by abdicating the throne. Apparently not, though. Apparently it only got worse from here, since she was no longer subject to the same level of scrutiny. So she laughed, groaned, put her face in her hands, and writhed in almost physical discomfort for a few moments before pulling herself together and putting on her fake, queenly smile just in time for the chauffeur to circumnavigate the Bentley and open the door.

One thing she absolutely couldn’t do was beg off. Frederika Mathilde Louisa Saskia had to play the role. Had to take the tour. Had to sit in the pilot’s seat and look fascinated as it was all explained to her by Ervin—the pilot—and Clyde, the guy in the suit. Both Americans. Clyde had founded the company that made this thing: a bizjet that was fueled by hydrogen, running it through fuel cells to power electric motors. The prince had invested in it. And now they wanted to give her the plane.

“Because of Waco,” she said to Alastair, a few hours later, “part of me just wants to say ‘fuck yes, I’ll take that plane.’”

Alastair, in black tie—for this was that kind of party—just gazed into his after-dinner whiskey and tried not to look any more amused than he already did. He’d already made the obligatory point that no one ever tried to give him jet airplanes. It would have been simply boring and stupid of him to have kept pounding away at that topic.

“Like karma. Good karma, I mean to say,” he said.

“Absolutely. I crashed that plane to be sure.”

Alastair raised an eyebrow. “Some would blame the pigs.”

“Or the alligator that chased the pigs. Or the refugees who chased the alligator. Or the fire ants that burned out the relays in their air conditioners. You can go on spreading the blame as far as you like. But I was flying the plane. The buck stops at the pilot’s chair.”

“Formally, it was your responsibility,” Alastair agreed. “And yet at some level you feel that the universe owes you a free jet airplane.”

“I’d never come out and say it like that. But yes.”

“Do you know how to fly it?”

“Absolutely not! Since the crash the only thing I’ve flown is the Beaver. Clyde would have to loan me Ervin until I could get certified.”

“So they’re throwing in a pilot. Probably just a round-off error at this point.” A thought occurred to Alastair. “Where does one gas it up? Can you buy hydrogen at airports?”

“I have no idea. Maybe the crown prince of Norway would know!”

Prince Bjorn had been edging closer, waiting for an opening. “Your Royal Highness,” he began, “I have been admiring you from the other end of the table all evening. You are magnificent.”

So Bjorn—unlike Alastair, who hadn’t said a word about her hair and gown—knew how it was done. Saskia accepted the compliment with a wink. “It’s amazing, I just sit there checking my Twitter and it’s all handled for me by people who actually know what they’re doing.”

She went on to introduce Alastair as a close adviser. Which was no longer technically the case; but whatever. The point was to signal to Bjorn that he could speak as though among friends, should he so choose. “I heard,” he said, “about your new plane.”

“It’s not mine until I accept the gift,” she cautioned him.

“Well, should you decide you are in an accepting mood,” he said, “on behalf of my father, I am offering you the unlimited use of the royal yacht Bøkesuden.”

“Really?”

“Really. The hydrogen-fueled jet can, of course, take you to many places much more quickly . . .”

Saskia held out one hand, palm down, and bobbled it from side to side. “I can’t leave, though, until a truck full of hydrogen shows up. Could take a while!”

“My point exactly. For some missions, a boat is really what you need.”

Saskia raised her eyebrows. “So it’s missions I’m to be going on now, is it?”

“Perhaps the wrong choice of words. We talked about this before. I am too much the engineer sometimes.”

“You’re forgiven, Bjorn, since you’re trying to give me a yacht.”

“The use of a yacht,” he corrected her.

“What if His Majesty the King of Norway has a mind to go boating? While I’m on his yacht, on a mission?”

“It’s Norway. We’ll make another.”

She went to bed thinking that it was all perfectly ridiculous—just a case of some well-meaning friends with too much money, taking this “Queen of Netherworld” gag too seriously, and acting on impulse. Tomorrow, the second and last day of the conference, she would find a way to take these guys aside one at a time and let them down easy.

Saskia woke up in the opposite frame of mind. Looking down at the snoring Michiel, she realized it was him she was going to have to let down easy. The other guys she had to begin taking seriously.

What had changed was a series of messages and news reports that had come in while she was sleeping. It seemed that a lot was going on in both New Guinea and West Texas. India was making noises about “climate peacekeeping” and denouncing the firing of the gun in Albania yesterday—in a way hinting that it justified their taking unilateral action. China was talking in an equally menacing way about the instability in Papua. Indonesia, they were saying, might claim the western half of New Guinea for their own, but that was really just a holdover from the days of Dutch colonialism—a discredited way of thinking. The United States—which used to intervene in such situations—was a basket case and global laughingstock; the United Nations couldn’t act fast enough; something had to be done to protect the defenseless Papuans and incidentally safeguard the world’s copper supply. Jumping out from all these news feeds were words like “Sneeuwberg” and “RoDuSh”—constant jabbing reminders of the connections back to the Netherlands.

Yesterday, during all the talk about carbon in the atmosphere, Norway had been taking a bullet that might otherwise have been aimed at the Netherlands. Royal Dutch Shell had been one of the world’s great petro-powers and had amassed great wealth during the twentieth century. It was only in the last five decades that Norway had turned into a petro-state and eclipsed the Dutch—who at the same time had been retreating from their colonial empire. The workings of the stock market had spread the ownership of Shell and its profits and its liabilities among shareholders all over the world. Saskia’s country had been happy to quietly park Norwegian crude in vast tank farms at Rotterdam, to refine it, and to pipe it up the Rhine.

It was all what Alastair described as “cruft,” meaning complicated and messy holdovers from obsolete code and discontinued operating systems. This was cruft of a geopolitical sort. But cruft was a real thing, it had consequences, and it had to be managed. It seemed that the world was asking Saskia to play some part in its management.