“Okay, be that as it may, I wonder if you could tell me how concerned you are about the possible release of all the iron oxide?”
“It’s no big deal. So we’ll put on an extra sweater or two.”
Or three or four. Maybe skin a polar bear while we’re at it. But Jenna confined her comments to another question: “Has USEI considered the liability issues if the iron oxide gets released? The weather impacts alone are likely to—”
“You taking notes, girl?” the senator snapped. Her robust mood on the hotel phone had definitely soured.
“No, not at all.”
“Just so you know, we’re insured against ‘acts of God,’ and the last time I checked, these crazies,” she stabbed a stubby, heavily ringed finger at the TV, “were doing Allah’s bidding.”
Birk now appeared to be reading from a prepared statement, recounting the horrors of five hundred thousand tons of iron oxide spilling into the sea. Then he listed the nations most likely to be inundated in the next one hundred years because of climate change. He finished by mentioning the disappearance of an island in the Bay of Bengal that had been claimed by both India and Bangladesh. New More Island, as it was called by the mostly Hindu Indians—or South Talpatti Island, as it was known to the mostly Muslim Bangladeshis—had vanished into the sea, peacefully resolving a potential hotspot through the miracle of immersion.
Jenna felt her phone vibrate in her pocket, and discreetly checked to find that Dafoe had texted her: “cll. import. N. Korea.”
What’s that about? It was hard to imagine any subject less related to her present concerns than that starving, Stalinist boot camp.
Seconds later Rafan texted, asking if they could meet.
She glanced at Higgens and saw that the senator had fallen asleep. No, she passed out. Jenna was never comfortable in the presence of drunks, and now one lay collapsed on the couch, open-mouthed and snoring, while the other stared unseeing from the screen. To be fair to Birk, he did appear coldly sober.
As Jenna crept toward the door, phone in hand to text Dafoe, one of Higgens’s young aides came racing up. He took one look at his boss and smacked his forehead. “Not again!” He wheeled on Jenna. “You didn’t take any pictures of her, did you?”
“No, of course not.”
“What about that?” He pointed accusingly to her cell phone.
“No! What do I look like?”
“A reporter,” he sniped.
“I didn’t,” she insisted, and walked out, recovering quickly enough to text Dafoe that she missed him, “cows 2,” and would call later. Nothing felt as urgent right now as attending to the fragile emotional state of her old friend, Rafan.
Jenna met him at a tea shop several blocks from the hotel. He sat facing away from the door, hunched over a newspaper. If she hadn’t been looking for Rafan, she wouldn’t have recognized him. That was the idea, she discovered.
“I’m worried about Senada’s brothers. They buried her today. They couldn’t put her in the ground fast enough, like she was an embarrassment to them because she was murdered. Big funerals for men, but for her or for my sister?” Rafan shook his head. “I need to get away.” Rafan’s eyes shifted furtively, taking in the nearby empty tables.
“Can you do that?”
“No, not now. There’s too much work. We’re in the middle of a big pilot project.” He told her about trying to save an important island by building it up with borrowed dirt.
“Robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
“Yes,” he smiled for the first time, “you always used to say that.”
“About how we’re stealing from future generations. That sure hasn’t changed. Is your condo safe?” It wasn’t like he had building security, or even a doorman, as she did in the city.
“I can’t go back there.” He shook his head. “I can’t even go to the mosque to talk to people about Islamists because her brothers are looking for me.”
“Then stay with me at the hotel. I’ll have them bring up a portable bed.” She took his hand. “Come on, you’re staying with me.” She hurried him toward the door, but he pulled back, as if he’d seen someone. Jenna turned to look, but spotted only a passing pedicab, and a massive gathering of thunderheads. The cumulonimbus clouds she’d spotted earlier had turned especially nasty looking. She would have loved to have seen the temperature differentials for those clouds and the surface right above the sea. A powerful thunderstorm on the ocean could turn the water into