“Such things happen all the time in colonized countries that have resources, such as oil,” Idil said. “What makes Papua unusual is that it’s colonized by a country—Indonesia—that is itself a former colony. So your government—the former colonizer of Indonesia—has a special role that it could play.”
“Here’s where I issue the standard disclaimer that I work for the royal house—not the government,” Willem said.
“And yet one reason you were selected for that role was your family connection back to the colonial past,” Idil said. Calmly, without rancor.
“Fair enough,” Willem said. “Is there some way, Sister Catherine, that I might be of any assistance in the work that you and my cousin are pursuing?”
“We seek independence,” Sister Catherine said. “The Brazos RoDuSh mine has until now been a stumbling block. Like all mines, its fate is to become depleted over time. The less valuable it becomes, the lower the stumbling block. If what’s next is that the site becomes a geoengineering complex—why, that looks to us like an opportunity.”
Willem hadn’t seen that coming. “How so? I’d have thought the opposite would be true. As you said, if the mine peters out, Indonesia covets it less. Becomes more willing to let Papua out of its clutches. But I’d think that if the site gets a new lease on life, all the old problems stay with you.”
Sister Catherine was just looking at him. Not someone you’d want to play poker with. “It has to do with interests. Cui bono?”
“Who benefits?” Willem translated.
“Nation-states—some of which might be quite far removed from my homeland—that would benefit from injection of stratospheric aerosols from a high mountain near the equator will weigh in on our behalf. Even if, until now, they would not have been able to find Papua on a map.”
Viewed from space, the twin gates of the Maeslantkering—the largest movable objects ever built—looked a bit like the pie-wedge–shaped wings that children scraped out in fresh snow when they were making angels. The curved rim of each pie wedge was the actual barrier meant to stand fast against the full force of a North Sea storm surge. Each was made to block one half of the width of the waterway joining Rotterdam to the sea. They came together in the middle, each swinging inward from a pivot on the embankment. The rest of the pie wedge—the triangle that spanned the 240-meter radius from the curved barrier to the pivot—consisted
of massive steel tubes welded together to form a rigid trusswork. That structure transmitted the sea’s force from the barrier to the ball and socket that might be thought of as the shoulder joint of the angel’s wing. It went without saying that these were the largest ball-and-socket joints ever made. The balls were ten meters in diameter. They were cradled in sockets consisting mostly of reinforced concrete, set deeply into the ground and distributing the force into the surrounding earth through long concrete buttresses that splayed out like fingers and eventually ramped down below ground level to connect with massive subterranean footings.
Precisely curved trenches had been gouged into the banks to give the barrier arcs a place to abide during the long spans of time—on the order of decades—during which they were not actually needed. Like dry docks, these trenches lay below the level of the water, but most of the time they were kept empty, leaving the barrier arcs high and dry so that they could be inspected and maintained. The arcs themselves were hollow boxes, normally full of air. Once floated into position across the waterway, they could be flooded so that they would sink and form a seal against the floor of the channel.
The whole complex had been formally christened in 1997 by Saskia’s grandmother and never actually needed until ten years later. After that, it had sat high, dry, and motionless—aside from regularly scheduled annual closures just to make sure it all still worked—for another sixteen years, when another surge had come along. Today, for the third time in its history, they were going to close it to protect the Netherlands from what was predicted to be the largest surge in the North Sea since the disaster of 1953. It was the first such closure in Saskia’s reign.
Thanks to a program that had been set in motion by Willem in the days following her speech to the States General, Queen Frederika had spent much of the last three weeks touring the country in support of disaster preparedness. Now, trying to get Dutch people to prepare for disasters was a little like trying to get English people to watch football on the telly or Americans to buy guns. They were receptive to the message, to a degree that made the queen’s