So in a lot of ways Willem’s tasks were clearly plotted out for the next week and a half.
But. There was this looming question of how and when to come clean about the trip to Texas. T.R.’s staff had done a shockingly effective job of preventing word from getting out, so far. And the fact that he had fired the gun eighteen times in a day without anyone noticing was simply mind-blowing. But tomorrow—now that the White Label geeks had finished crunching the numbers on that first salvo—the big gun at Pina2bo would go into action again, firing shells into the stratosphere around the clock. Even if no one connected Queen Frederika to the Pina2bo trip, she’d eventually be asked her opinion of solar geoengineering. Willem already had press releases cued up that he would fire off if word started to leak. But for now, the official story seemed to be holding up: She had taken a bit of time off for a personal visit to a friend in the Houston area (most people would make the obvious assumption that it was someone connected with Royal Dutch Shell) and had been detained for a few extra days because of disruptions related to the hurricane. While there, she had visited some locations related to climate change and sea level rise.
Which was all true.
Back to the here and now. A moment was going to come when it was time to extract the royals and get them back to Huis ten Bosch. A little of this kind of thing went a long way. All the good pictures had already been taken. He knew what the front pages of the newspapers were going to show tomorrow and it would be fantastic. Staying here for hours wouldn’t make it any better. They might draw crowds that would impede rescue operations.
He saw a gray-haired man pull up on a bicycle, go halfway up the dune, and turn around with a pair of binoculars. No interest in the tragedy just on the other side of the dune. He’d come here just to get a look at the queen. There would be others like him; they just hadn’t gotten here yet.
Willem noted with approval that the security team had relocated the cars to within a few meters of where the queen was at work spraying disinfectant on plastic tables. They could extract her on a few moments’ notice at any point.
It was up to her, of course. She could leave whenever she wanted. But Willem’s job was to keep an eye on the overall scene, notice things that she wouldn’t, and make discreet suggestions. The time was not now. She’d only just got to work. Leaving too soon would make this seem too much like a cynical photo op. She ducked into one of the cars with Fenna for a routine upgrade, then spelled the princess while she got the same. Willem checked his watch. Maybe another half hour of this would make sense. By then the rescue workers would have found as many bodies as they were going to find, the scale of the disaster would be known. The queen could make a statement on camera and then go back to Huis ten Bosch for a hot lunch and an afternoon nap.
An expensive car was admitted through the security cordon and rolled up to the base of the dune. Out stepped Ruud Vlietstra, the prime minister. He drew attention for a few minutes as he went up to the top of the dune for a look-see and a briefing. The interior minister showed up minutes later on an electric bicycle. All these people had flats practically within walking distance, and most such people were likely to be in The Hague now during the run-up to Budget Day.
Bodies kept coming over the top of the dune. The relentless gradualness of it was a special kind of horror. He kept waiting for the moment when some kind of all clear would be sounded. But it just never stopped. He found a bird’s-eye video feed on the Internet and watched it in his glasses. The fucking beach was still covered in foam! The sea was vomiting it up as fast as it could be removed. Its overall level seemed to be subsiding, though.
Photos of mostly young, healthy-looking surfers began to cover a portable whiteboard that had been set up under a canopy. The friends and family members collected in a waiting area where they milled about hugging each other or sat on folding chairs staring into the distance and sipping hot tea. From time to time a rescue worker would descend from the triage area up on the dune and call out a name. The name of a dead person. One or two or five people would converge on them and hear a few low solemn words and then break out in sobbing and wailing.
It was just utterly, fantastically awful and it went on and on and on.
Queen Frederika had finished doing setup work and was now just roaming through the waiting area clasping people’s hands, admiring the photos they’d brought of their missing sons and daughters, muttering words of comfort. Most people had the decency not to take pictures.
Willem stationed himself in the queen’s eye line and just stood there. Gradually in a two steps forward, one step back cadence she drew closer. There was a wordless understanding that as soon as she reached him they would leave. Willem communicated that fact to the security team. Finally the moment arrived. The queen wound up her last, sad, hand-clasping conversation with a ruined surfer mom, accepted a curtsy (Mom was all in for old-school royalist etiquette), and turned around into a horseshoe of aides and security, centered on Willem. This became a loose flying wedge that got her out into a light drizzling rain and into the car. The bicycles had presumably been seen to.
In the moments before the cars pulled away, Willem had an opportunity to survey the crowd that had gathered on the outside of the cordon. The inevitable flower mound had begun to accumulate. Candles, tricky in this weather, were also being attempted. People were waving Dutch flags and holding up rain-streaked hard copies of surfers’ selfies. And there were just a few complete assholes—there were always these people, the feral swine of the political ecosystem—who could not see this tragedy as anything other than an opportunity to show up in public and wave their fucking idiotic signs around. Since the royal house was, in theory, above politics, such persons were usually more of an annoyance or curiosity than a central concern. However, some were insanely pro- or anti-royal and so it behooved Willem to pay attention. Not wanting to be obvious, he activated a feature in his glasses that turned them into a camera, then quickly scanned the crowd, silently snapping a picture whenever he saw a sign being thrust into the air. Then he got into the back seat of the car that was waiting for him.
The drive back to Huis ten Bosch took all of about three minutes. Willem spent most of it holding Fenna’s hand and trying to get her settled down. She was more freaked out than at any time since the plane crash. She didn’t know any of the surfers but the whole scene had really upset her, perhaps because the victims reminded her of her darling Jules in Louisiana.
When they were back at the royal residence, though, and Willem had a moment to himself in his little office there, he reviewed the photos he had captured just before getting into the car. One detail was bothering him, to the point where he was questioning his own memory.
It was a woman of perhaps forty holding up a hastily hand-lettered sign reading
erdd a false idol
and adorned in the corners with crosses and Stars of David.