“Facility?” Bo asked.
“I imagine a large, new, stylish, high-tech building in Beijing, brilliant hackers showing up every morning to engineer these sites, manipulate the social media feeds, track the metrics—”
“You’re making it out to be much more difficult than it is,” Bo protested. “We don’t need brilliant hackers in flashy buildings. Macedonian teenagers in their parents’ basements are more than sufficient. We use brilliant hackers for other things.”
“Such as . . . running climate models?”
“That would be one example.”
“What are those climate models telling you?”
Bo glanced at the station clock. “Ask Alastair. To judge from that man’s LinkedIn, his models will show very similar results.”
“Why are you fucking with me personally? Why ERDD, ZGL, and all that?”
“Leverage. You have some.”
“With a powerless constitutional monarch. Who had her one yearly moment on the political stage yesterday.”
Bo shrugged. “PMs and governments come and go. Your queen is young and healthy. If she stops crashing planes, she’ll be around for decades. She seems a more stable long-term investment.”
“You can’t invest in her. She is not for sale.”
“I chose my words poorly,” Bo said, with the faintest suggestion of a bow. “Please accept my apologies. I meant to say it was a supportive relationship that we are investing in.”
“How do you imagine that these activities are supportive?”
Bo put the paper down, folded it neatly while he collected his thoughts. “It is a very curious thing about the West. This inability, this unwillingness to talk about realities. Basic facts that are obvious to everyone not in your bubble. Your country is below sea level, for god’s sake!”
“Actually we talk about that all the time, Bo.”
“You have to do something about the fact that sea level is rising!”
“The last time we talked,” Willem said, “you were miffed.”
“Miffed?”
“Offended by the fact that T.R. had not invited you to his party.”
“Oh, I remember,” Bo said. “You said I needed to flirt with him more. To show interest.” He smiled.
Willem was struck by the momentary, horrid thought that Bo’s recent activities around ERDD, ZGL, and all that had been him taking Willem up on his suggestion. That Willem had started that ball rolling with a careless witticism in Louisiana.
But he was pretty sure China didn’t operate on that basis.
“That was right before I went to Pina2bo,” Willem said, “and saw that it was real. Now, you and I both know a lot more.”
“That’s for sure,” Bo said.
“Why are you here today?” Willem asked. “Why bother coming to the Netherlands?”
“Observation. Fact-finding,” Bo said. “Among other things it is an opportunity to see how your country responds to a once-in-a-lifetime storm.”
Willem didn’t catch the reference. “You mean what happened at Scheveningen?”
Bo seemed nonplussed. “No, I’m talking about the one in three weeks.”
“We can’t forecast three weeks out!”
“We can.” Bo’s gaze strayed down to Willem’s feet. “Nice cowboy boots.”
Alastair said exactly the same words a few minutes later when he stepped off the train from Amsterdam.
“I debated whether to wear them today.”
Alastair blinked. “Because it might be noticed and read as an implicit show of support for T.R.?”
Willem nodded, falling into step beside Alastair. “Then I saw it was forecast to rain later, and I said, to hell with it, I’m wearing the boots.”
The two men weaved around each other as they turned into the heavy flow of pedestrian traffic along the station’s central artery. “Listen,” Willem said, “can you—by which I mean, anyone—forecast a major storm three weeks in the future?”
A message buzzed in from his contact in Dutch intelligence: a response from an urgent query he’d fired off minutes earlier, just after parting ways with Bo. It stated that, according to immigration records, Bo had entered the country a week ago.
“Make that four weeks,” he added.
“You’re speaking of a hypothetical storm three weeks from today? Or four weeks?”
“Three weeks from today.”
“Well, there’s going to be an exceptionally high tide then, I can tell you that much.”