“Are you working up to tell us that we got nuked the other day?” asked one of the Dutch intelligence analysts, half serious.
“No. As you know, a nuclear explosion would have left isotopic evidence. It also would have done a lot more damage than just wrecking one half of the Maeslantkering.”
“Then how is this old document relevant?”
“If you scan down to the bottom half of page 7 you’ll see that Dyson says that the techniques for carrying out such an attack could be developed and rehearsed using H.E.—high explosive—charges in place of nukes.” Simon adjusted his glasses and found the relevant quote: “‘This part of the enterprise would not be expensive and would not require a high level of technological sophistication. Moreover, the installation and testing program could rather easily be camouflaged and kept secret.’”
Simon flipped the document over facedown, as if to emphasize that he was now going off Dyson’s script. “So. Let’s take nukes off the table altogether and talk about that ‘part of the enterprise’ to use his wording. He’s envisioning a relatively small, cheap pilot program that consists, for example, of packing ANFO or TNT into a shipping container and shoving it off a ship at sea.”
Since this meeting was being held in a shipping container, everyone looked around and tried to imagine every cubic centimeter of the space packed full of high explosive.
“Later,” Simon continued, “you set it off and measure the result. What is the result? Well, the water above the explosion is going to bulge up. From there, waves are then going to spread outward. To give you a feel for magnitude, a standard shipping container full of TNT gives you rather more than a tenth of a kiloton of explosive yield. In round numbers, it would require a hundred of those to give you a Hiroshima-sized explosion. But even a single one, if the water isn’t too deep, will produce a bulge and a system of waves.”
“Spreading outward in all directions,” Willem said, “if I’m following you correctly.”
“You are, Dr. Castelein,” Simon confirmed.
“Then it seems to me that the waves would spread out and dissipate.”
“From a single such detonation, yes,” said the visitor. “Now, Mr. Dyson, or any other physicist who made it out of his sophomore year, would have known about constructive interference—the phenomenon where two wave crests, meeting at a given place and time, will sum to produce a much higher crest. That much
is old hat in the world of mathematical physics. But what is different now, as compared to 1962, is that we have computers. Precision guidance systems. Split-second timing and communication technology. So. Our whole mentality around weapon design has changed. In Dyson’s day, a Cold War military planner might have used a nuclear weapon to take out a whole city, just to destroy a single factory. Overkill, to be sure, but the best they could manage with unguided ballistic warheads. Today we would use a cruise missile that would strike a key component of that factory—say, a power transformer or a meeting of senior management—with a precision measured not in meters but centimeters. Much cleaner, much less collateral damage, much cheaper. Likewise, a modern approach to Dyson’s 1962 scenario would be to get rid of the nukes straightaway and stick with those containers full of H.E. Drop those in precisely known locations not far from the target. Detonate them in a precisely timed sequence. The individual waves from any one detonation don’t amount to much. By the way, that’s a feature, not a bug. During a storm they aren’t even detectable. They don’t rise above the noise floor. But if you’ve set it all up right, there is one and only one location where all those waves sum together and create what seems to be a rogue wave, enormously bigger than all the others. If it just happens to cave in the Maeslantkering, why, the North Sea then rushes in and does your work for you.”
Simon paused for a little while. Willem looked around the table. He could tell that some of his Dutch colleagues had known in advance what was going to be said, and others were surprised. Willem was one of the latter. It would take him a few minutes to absorb all this. But it did seem to answer the question of why he’d been invited. It must all have something to do with Bo, and his sudden departure from the Maasvlakte on the morning of the storm. Willem, in other words, hadn’t been brought here to be briefed. He had been called as a witness.
“Are you suggesting that the flooding of Rotterdam and Zeeland was the result of a military attack by a foreign power!?” asked an incredulous army general. Clearly not one of those who had