Termination Shock

The surrounding tables had marginally less elaborate settings for an additional three dozen or so. Saskia spied Alastair and Willem bending over to scan place cards, looking for their assigned seats. A long row of picnic tables against one wall served as an informal mess for support personnel. Of these there were too many for Saskia to readily pick out hers, but during the few minutes of social hubbub before everyone sat down, Fenna emerged from that crowd and came over to inspect Saskia’s face. This was Face Two, a minor variation on Face One, geared for serious business, somewhat higher maintenance. The timing was good in the sense that T.R. had become embroiled in conversation with Mark Furlong about some kind of abstruse financial derivative that she didn’t care about. The kind of thing Alastair thought about for a living. And indeed Mark threw Alastair a significant look that caused him to walk over and join the conversation.

“More than good enough for a truck stop” was the verdict of Fenna. “I was worried. That glass bubble—the sun—” She was hitting Saskia with some powder, knocking down the glare on the shiny bits. Men around them politely averted their gaze. “Lipstick or—”

“Pointless, I’m about to guzzle wine and eat something called brisket.”

Fenna crinkled her nose and nodded agreement. “Can you guess what the vegetarian option is?”

“Let me think . . . fake brisket?”

“Yeah, two kinds! Grown in a vat, or simulated from plants.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, if we could get started!” T.R. hollered as he dinged a wineglass.

“Later?” Fenna asked.

Saskia nodded. “When I go to the toilet—before dessert probably.”

Fenna nodded and turned to go. Then she turned back. “Can Jules come with me?”

“To West Texas?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s talk about it later.”

“Before we get to the main course I just wanted to get the papershoveling out of the way,” T.R. hollered. He was standing up, directly across the table from Saskia, who like all the other guests was seated. A team of energetic, well-groomed minions were pushing a cart piled with many copies of a bound document about an inch thick. These they passed out to people like Alastair and Willem, who tended to leaf through them curiously before slipping them into briefcases. “It’s the boring necessary shit, also available electronically of course. Due diligence and all that.”

Last night in the hotel bar, Rufus had made an observation that had left the other members of the party nonplussed. On the television an American football game had been playing. For this was September and apparently it was the season for that. Accustomed to the more fluid rhythm of what Americans called soccer, Saskia was struck by the amount of high-value, on-camera time claimed by the officials, who seemed to stop the game every ten seconds to litigate what had just happened and to mete out punishments with arcane gesticulations. Gazing at one especially stern official, Rufus glanced over at T.R.—who was holding forth at the bar with Sylvester Lin—and remarked, “If you put a zebra shirt and a black cap on him, gave him a whistle, man, he’d fit right in.” Whereupon he nodded back at the television. It was, like many of Rufus’s offhand comments, a very peculiar thing to say. And yet now sitting five feet away from T.R. and watching him address the room, Saskia could absolutely not get out of her head the image of this man in a black-and-white-striped shirt blandly but firmly twanging out judgment on a sweltering gridiron.

“I’m sure everyone wants to dig in, and no one’s asking him- or herself ‘I wonder when T.R.’s gonna stand up and give a great big long boring speech?’ and so I will just say welcome to our honored guests from the Netherlands”—he glanced at Saskia—“the Square Mile” (Robert Watts, its lord mayor); “Singapore” (Sylvester Lin, to Saskia’s left); “and Venice” (Michiel, next to T.R.). “You are not all, but you—along with me and my friends in Houston—are enough. I’ll explain later. Let’s eat.” And he sat down to light, uncertain applause.

“My Lord Mayor,” Saskia said to the man on her right. “You’ll have to forgive me, I didn’t recognize you without the huge ridiculous hat!”

“Not wearing it is a most effective form of disguise, Your Majesty. Please address me as Bob.”

“I have been going by Saskia lately.”

He made the closest approximation of a courtly bow that was possible while sitting on the bench of a picnic table.

“I, like you, am trying to do this discreetly, and so I left the huge ridiculous hat at home with the golden mace and the other bits.”

“Should have guessed it was you from all the SAS types hanging around.”

“Are they that obvious?”

“It’s the hair. Or lack thereof.” She looked across the room to see Fenna closely evaluating a very fit young Englishman, every one of whose hairs was exactly three millimeters long. Fenna quickly arrived at the conclusion that, while not lacking in potential, he was no Jules.

“Not like your chap with the dreadlock-Mohawk. Not conspicuous at all, that one.”