“You just happen to know that!?”
“Consider what I do for a living—when I’m not doing weird projects for the Queen of the Netherlands, that is,” Alastair said. “An exceptionally high tide makes it more likely that the Thames Barrier will be raised to protect London. This impedes shipping.”
“It makes sense,” Willem allowed. “Still, I’m impressed you just know the tide tables three weeks out.”
“I’m just fucking with you,” Alastair admitted. “My family have a cottage on Skye. I’m going there in three weeks, for a last visit before winter closes in. Was checking the ferry timetables yesterday. It’s got high tide warnings posted for those dates.”
“Well played,” Willem said. “Coffee?” For they were near the café where the strange conversation with Bo had happened just a few minutes ago. Bo was gone. An older woman had seized his newspaper and opened it to a lavish photo spread showing the hats and frocks that had been on display yesterday at the Ridderzaal.
“No, thank you,” Alastair said. “Anyway, storms are obviously more difficult to predict than tides. Oh, we know what such a storm would look like. It would look like 1953. A low pressure system of unusual intensity forming up near Iceland and coming down the chute between Scotland and Norway, pushing a surge ahead of it. Lots of rain just adds gasoline to the fire, if I can mix my metaphors.”
“How far in advance could you predict the formation of that low pressure system?”
“Ten days? A couple of weeks?”
“Not three weeks? Four?”
“There might be some really cutting-edge models that would run that far out. With big error bars though.”
Willem nodded. They exited the station and came out into a continuation of yesterday’s hot weather. Scattered clouds hinted at a change later. Willem led Alastair around some construction barricades and got them pointed toward Noordeinde.
“I thought I was here to predict climate, though. Not weather. For weather you want a different sort of chap.” He was just being playful.
“I got a hot tip that there would be a once-in-a-lifetime storm in three weeks,” Willem explained, “and I’m trying to figure out whether it should be taken seriously.”
“Does the tipster have connections to well-funded boffins with very advanced computational modeling capabilities?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’re fucked. Keep an eye on the North Atlantic!” Alastair said. “I’ll do likewise, now that you’ve aroused my curiosity. Perhaps my trip to Skye shall have to be postponed.”
“Oh, I’ve got another question,” Willem said. “What did you mean by snaparound?”
“Sorry to be enigmatic. It’s a thing Greens have been fretting about for years. They have always harbored a suspicion that one day their opponents—oil companies, basically—would suddenly reverse their position on climate change.”
“As Martijn Van Dyck did yesterday.”
“Yes. But then, instead of falling in line with what the Greens want, those people would say, ‘Och, too late, the damage has been done, water under the bridge, the only answer is geoengineering.’”
“So from the Green point of view,” Willem said, “they—the Greens—are steadfastly holding to the position they’ve held all along. But their opponents have snapped way around from one extreme to another.”
Alastair nodded. “I got excited and sent you that text because, as I mentioned, Greens have been worrying about this forever. A lot of their political strategy in the climate debate is predicated
on fear of snaparound. But this was the first time in all these years I’d ever watched it happen in real time!”
“Do you expect there’ll be more of it?”
“I expect,” Alastair said, “that T.R. has many observant friends in boardrooms up and down the length of Houston’s Energy Corridor.” He slowed for a moment and took an appraising look at Noordeinde Palace. “Including . . .”
“Royal Dutch Shell,” Willem said.
The queen brought her daughter to the meeting. By the letter of the law, Princess Charlotte ought to be in school. But she’d reached an age when classes were less regimented, and independent study was encouraged. As long as the princess wasn’t falling behind in her schoolwork, she was allowed a certain number of absences. It wouldn’t have been appropriate to invite her to the weekly one-on-one with the prime minister, for example. But on occasions when there was legitimate educational value, and especially when it might help prepare Charlotte for her future duties as sovereign, she was allowed to skip school and sit in. Quietly.