been briefed in advance. Therefore, just as surprised as Willem. And yet Willem had something of an unfair advantage. The series of weird encounters he’d had with Bo during the previous few weeks had inoculated him.
Simon said, “Yes. A similar attempt was, we think, made on the Thames Estuary, but it wasn’t as effective because that is a more sheltered waterway. You can’t come at it from as many angles.” As Willem and everyone else knew, Simon was engaging in a bit of understatement here. There had been a lot of flooding in the Thames Estuary.
“Is there evidence? Other than this?” asked the general, slapping the Dyson report.
Simon carefully avoided making eye contact, in a way that suggested, to Willem’s perhaps over-sensitive mind, that confidential sources and methods were involved. He would not speak of these. But he had not come unprepared for the question. “You would expect,” he said, “to see seismographic evidence of those detonations. And we have seen it. It’s quite clear. It tells us where we might go and search, were we so inclined, for debris—shattered containers or other residue left on the bottom of the sea. No doubt we shall. We’ll coordinate any such efforts with the Royal Dutch Navy, it goes without saying. But we don’t need to, really. The spikes on the seismograph tracings are as distinct as the sound of rifle shots in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace.”
“So they—whoever they are—know that we know.”
“I should say so, yes.”
“What’s the motive, though?” asked a woman from the Dutch counterintelligence service. “I mean, it’s not as if they—whoever they are—can then follow up with an invasion of our country. It has no military value to anyone. It seems like a pure act of vandalism.”
Her counterpart from Dutch foreign intelligence was sitting across the table from her. Janno. Willem had known him for decades. And it was clear that he’d been briefed on all this in advance. “We think it is a political gambit. An effort to sway the public conversation around climate change.”
“But everyone already knows about climate change! Even the right wingers have changed their tune since”—she glanced toward Willem—“since the queen’s speech. About geoengineering.”
Since everyone was now looking—awkwardly, guiltily—at Willem, he felt it made sense to speak up. “The great question of our time is no longer whether climate change is happening but what to do about it. The right wing has recently snapped around to a hardline pro-geoengineering stance. Since then we’re seeing hints that Shell and other oil companies are going to follow their lead. It has been made obvious to me personally during the last few weeks that China is providing covert support to those political actors in our country who advocate aggressive deployment of geoengineering schemes such as what is going on in West Texas. The disaster at the Maeslantkering can only strengthen their hand politically. I can’t imagine what it’s like right now to be Ruud Vlietstra.”
“Since you mention the prime minister,” said the defense minister, “I have some news, which none of you will have seen because we are in a SCIF and our phones don’t work. As of—” She glanced up at the twenty-four-hour clock on the wall. “Literally ten minutes ago I am the caretaker defense minister. Ruud’s out. The coalition has dissolved. He has notified the queen that a new government will need to be formed.”
“Has Ruud been briefed on all this?” asked the woman from counterintelligence, rattling her copy of the Dyson paper. “Does he know he was—we were—set up?”
“Yes,” said the now ex–defense minister. “But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t help to know.”
“So there will be a new government,” Willem said. “Forming it might take months. The parties such as the Greens who are on the record as anti-geoengineering are likely to be shut out. Because the electorate will now be calling for strong measures. That means that Martijn van Dyck and his lot will probably be in. It’s just arithmetic.”
Heads turned toward Simon, who studiously ignored them. It was up to the Dutch people to work out among themselves what it all meant for them.
“Getting back to the question of motive,” said Janno, “China—obviously this is all China—has spent a little bit of money and taken some modest risks and claimed the scalp of the Dutch government.”
“Probably the British government as well,” said Simon. “Things are headed in that direction.”