“The end,” Saskia said.
“Yee haw!” Willem called out. “When was this photo sent?”
“Yesterday.”
“Well, that explains a lot about my breakfast.”
There was this delicious sense of having barred the door and battened down the hatches. After seeing to it that the queen was safely back at Huis ten Bosch, Willem got a lift back to Leiden in a government car. He Bluetoothed his phone to its sound system and, after apologizing to the driver, pulled up “Riding the Storm Out,” a song by R.E.O. Speedwagon and a guilty pleasure from his
misspent youth. He played it loud, once, and confirmed that it still rocked. Then he enjoyed spicy Indonesian takeout at home with Remigio in front of a YouTube feed simulating a crackling fire and went to bed mildly but pleasantly buzzed from a crisp New Zealand sauvignon blanc.
He was awakened at four in the morning by a call from his father in Louisiana making him aware that one-half of the Maeslantkering had caved in and was allowing the sea to flood Rotterdam and points inland. Hundreds of people were already missing. Most of them were probably dead. The storm hadn’t even peaked.
Willem was dressed and on his way downstairs before it even occurred to him to wonder whether he and Remi were in danger. The natural and artificial waterways of this country were a maze. Could the floodwaters hook around through central Rotterdam, come north, and inundate Leiden?
Always an important question to ask oneself before surrendering altitude; and it came to him when he was halfway down the stairs. Remigio, who’d helped him pull his things together and get going, was standing at the top of the stairs in gym shorts and bathrobe, watching him quizzically.
“Could we get . . . flooded here?”
There turned out to be advantages in being espoused to a history professor. Remi shook his head. “Leiden predates the reclamation of the Haarlemmermeer.”
“Of course.”
“It was above sea level then. It’s above sea level now . . . probably.”
“Sea level,” Willem said, making air quotes. He glanced down at his cowboy boots. After Texas he would never be able to use the term again with a straight face.
Remi sighed, taking his point. “Well, there is that. But if I had to pick a spot to wait this out, it’d be here or where you’re going.” Meaning The Hague. “Now, go. I’ll stay above ‘sea level.’ Take care of yourself.”
“Don’t—”
“Get trapped in the attic. I know, I follow the queen’s Twitter feed too.”
Willem spent a few minutes comparing wait times on various ride share apps. All disastrous. Then he tried to sort out the train schedules, which had been thrown into disarray. Finally he just got on his bicycle and rode the few kilometers. He didn’t even have to pedal. The wind pushed him there. He went straight to Noordeinde Palace because it was clearly going to be that kind of day. He changed into dry clothes and turned on all the TVs. The predominant image was of the north gate of the Maeslantkering, the barrier arc stove in, the truss crumpled, the whole thing peeled back, the North Sea rushing through the gap with such power that the south gate was bucking and shuddering in the backwash. He’d had time on the ride down to plot out in his head the shape of the waterways around Rotterdam and to form the opinion that, from there, the water was going to generally head south and inundate parts of Zeeland. Not that the flooding of Rotterdam wasn’t a pretty big fucking disaster in and of itself.
In passing he saw a news flash from the BBC. The Thames Barrier had been circumvented by the storm surge and the water was rising in London. The drainage systems meant to handle storm runoff from north of the city had been overwhelmed and were backing up, flooding places inland. The Netherlands, he knew, would soon be facing a similar problem. They had no way to stop the great rivers that flowed in from fucking Germany. Those had to reach the sea eventually. One of their possible outlets was now flowing the wrong way. All the others had been temporarily dammed off to hold back the storm surge.
The question was—now that he’d reached his office, changed clothes, turned on the TVs, and got up to speed—what could Willem actually do? And the answer was nothing. During his former career he’d have had duties as a member of the States General on various committees. Now he was an aide to a theoretically powerless monarch. And she’d already done everything she could do by going about telling people to be ready for a disaster that was at this moment actually unfolding. There would be no repeat of her impromptu performance on the foam-drowned beach at Scheveningen. In a situation like this she had two jobs: to stay put, and to