Termination Shock

“Texans!” The man threw up his hands. “Like some other ethnic groups I could mention, they seem to place great stock in personal relationships. He respects you. That’s all I’m saying.”

Saskia nodded. “What’s in this for you guys?”

“You ever wonder why people in the Bible are always fighting over our tiny scrap of land? Why the Romans even bothered with it? Israel used to be sweet real estate. The land of milk and honey. Now it’s kind of a shithole, climate-wise.”

“So it’s all about bringing back the milk and honey.”

“Sure.”

“Nothing more than that.”

“You thought otherwise?”

“Maybe I’m just of an overly cynical nature,” Saskia said, “but it occurs to me that you and the Saudis might be working together to completely fuck Iran.”

The man shrugged. “Personally, nothing would give me greater pleasure. But the models are complicated.”

“The Arabian Peninsula, all by itself, is vast. If you add Israel and Jordan to the north, it spans a huge range of latitude. If you fly those planes south . . . well, I don’t think Somalia has the technology to shoot planes out of the stratosphere. You could fly to the equator and beyond. You could dispatch those planes anywhere you like across that range. Put the SO₂ exactly where you want it. Do acupuncture on the region’s climate.”

The Israeli took another sip and stood up, sighing as if he regretted leaving this fascinating conversation and abandoning his nearly full cup of coffee. “I like the acupuncture analogy. I might steal that.”

“It wasn’t mine.”

“Thanks for your time, Your Royal Highness.”

Saskia waited for him to clear out, then scanned the area until she caught a glimpse of Fahd bin Talal. He was still talking, or pretending to, on his phone, keeping a sidelong eye on her.

She texted Willem.

> The day has arrived. A year or two sooner than I thought.

Meaning, as he’d understand, the day when her “retirement” would end, and she’d need him for something.

> Ha! Even sooner than I predicted. What do you want?

TUABA

Willem could have afforded a suite at any of the modern hotels that had been thrown up within striking distance of Tuaba’s one-runway airport during the last few decades. Instead he would be sleeping on a futon in a back room of Uncle Ed’s compound.

On an aerial view—even one so far zoomed out that it took in the entirety of Australia, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia—you could easily pick this place out by looking for the gray scar on New Guinea’s southern flank. This was the alluvial spew of the river that flowed down to the Arafura Sea from glaciers along the island’s spine: the highest mountain between the Himalayas and the Andes. Unlike all the other rivers draining that slope—and there were a lot of them, given that the glaciers were melting, and rainfall could exceed ten meters per year—the one that ran through Tuaba was gray because the sediments coming down from the copper mine hadn’t weathered naturally and hadn’t had time to oxidize.