Termination Shock [calibre 4.99.4]

VADAN

Though he was not a licensed pilot, Michiel belonged to that class of people who spent a lot of time messing about in boats and planes and had some knowledge of how they worked. Saskia was old enough to remember when a man of that description might have been called a playboy. Among European royalty there was no lack of such. But no self-respecting man wanted to be called that anymore. Anyway, the Venetian didn’t have a job per se, or any fixed slate of obligations relating to work or family. When it came time for Saskia to head for Vadan, Michiel asked if he might join her in the co-pilot’s seat, and she said yes without hesitation. He was good company to be sure. And though she wouldn’t have trusted him to take the Beaver off or land it, he could manage it in level flight when she needed the occasional break.

The journey lent itself to an easygoing, short-hop style of travel. They were essentially flying down the whole length of the Adriatic. They chose to follow its Italian, as opposed to its Balkan, coast. They could put the plane down almost anywhere, and it would usually turn out to be someplace charming. Michiel, who had roamed up and down this coast in pleasure craft his whole life, knew of good places to get coffee or a delicious meal while the Beaver was being refueled. They stopped once about halfway along in a little old Roman town, unspoiled by tourism and yet still well supplied with cafés and restaurants because of a local art scene. Then they flew a leg to near Brindisi, on the heel of Italy, at the narrowest part of the Adriatic. Here there was more modern hustle and bustle because of its maritime connections to Albania and Greece, but Michiel knew of a fantastic little waterfront bar, just colorful enough to feel like a real place, patronized by a hilarious mix of locals and old salts passing through. It was tucked in beside a fishermen’s wharf across a cove from the fuel dock. The crew looking after the plane there, mostly Albanian immigrants, were in love with it and asked Michiel all sorts of questions. They were assuming that he, and not the woman by his side, was the owner and pilot. In other circumstances Saskia might have taken offense at that, but she was luxuriating in this brief spell of anonymity. None of these men had had a clue that she was Her Royal Highness Frederika Mathilde Louisa Saskia of the Netherlands. She was just the wife or girlfriend of this cool-looking Italian guy—who addressed her as Saskia. She didn’t have to do anything. Didn’t have to think twelve steps ahead or worry about how her every word and gesture would play on social media.

Once they were established in that waterfront bar with glasses of white wine and a plate of snails, Michiel squinted across the sun-sparkled water of the cove toward the fuel dock, then pulled his sunglasses down on his nose, looked over them at Saskia, and said, “Those men are fascinated by your Beaver. As am I.”

Lotte had already made Saskia well aware of a fact that never would have occurred to her otherwise, namely that in English slang the word “beaver” meant a woman’s genitals. The pun had since cropped up in conversation a few times. So Saskia was ready for the double meaning. Or at least she had to assume that Michiel was simultaneously making a perfectly aboveboard remark about aviation and hitting on her.

As with any double entendre, there was a need to proceed with caution, in case he actually was only talking of airplanes. But she doubted it. The plane was loud when it was in the air. Normal conversation was difficult. So they had spent much of the flight just looking and smiling at each other, and Michiel gave every indication of liking what he saw.

“You need to be aware,” she said, “that it’s old and complicated and takes a while to get up to speed. Not like the new models you’re probably used to.”

“Newer models have complicated features that are tiresome and high-maintenance in their own way,” he pointed out.

“As long as you understand,” she said, biting into a snail, “that the Beaver is mine, and it has other places to go.”

After a short flight across the Adriatic, Vadan came into view. It lay fifteen kilometers off the mountainous coast of Albania’s mainland and would have been a mountain in its own right if sea level was lower. There was still a good hour of daylight remaining and so Saskia made a low orbit around the island’s summit so that she and Michiel could get a look at how the work was progressing. A lot had happened since the last photos Cornelia had sent her, back in the autumn. The road that zigzagged to the summit had been paved. Additional construction trailers had been hauled up and arranged around the head frame. A considerable heap of spoil gave a sense of the depth of the shaft. From having been to Pina2bo, Saskia knew what else to look for: a pile of sulfur, plumbing for natural gas, and a separate complex of new buildings, a couple of kilometers down the road, where people could live and work with at least some separation from the sonic booms.

The island only had one decent anchorage, in a rocky cove on its northern end. Even if they’d lacked a chart, they’d have been able to find it just by flying along the road—the road, for there were no others on this island—until it met the water. Running parallel to it was new-looking infrastructure, most notably a gas pipeline. All of it terminated at the dock where Venetian merchants had called a thousand years ago, sailing to and from Constantinople, and which more recently the Soviets had beefed up into a military compound. Those days, of course, were long past, and so what was left of that infrastructure was as shabby and forlorn as might be expected. But within the last year the pier had been upgraded to modern standards, and other improvements were shouldering the rubble of the Warsaw Pact off to the margins. One day soon, the ships calling here would be bulk carriers bringing sulfur and natural gas to feed the gun.