PART III:
STRANGERS
41
It’s over. The greatest seven hours and eight minutes of travel in my thirty-one years on Planet Earth.
Over.
Jillian’s voice comes on the speaker, announcing the conclusion of this glorious flight (tear). Her tone’s brisk, slightly cheery, completely professional. She welcomes each and every passenger (especially Reward Miles members) to London Heathrow Airport, and hopes we had a pleasant flight (understatement) and that she will see us again soon, wherever our travel plans may take us (I would go anywhere in this chair).
I’ll never understand the race to get off the plane. It’s like a flash strain of flesh-eating bacteria just broke out in the tail section, and it’s a live-or-die mad dash to make it to the exits. Can this many people have tight connecting flights?
People swarm the aisles, jerking their carry-ons out of the overheads, hastily shoving tablets, e-readers, and snacks they squirreled away during the flight into their bags, barely bothering to zip them.
There’s a cacophony of voices. Excuse me— Sorry— Is that your bag? Do you mind?
I’ll be the last off. I dread going home. That’s where I’ll have to make The Decision.
God, just thinking about it puts me in a bad mood.
“You all right?”
The guy from 2A. Short dark hair, chiseled face, American accent. Like.
“Yeah,” I manage, barely audible over the game of Twister playing out in the aisles.
“Need some help?”
That’s an understatement.
He squints. “With your bag?”
“I—”
“Hey, some people have places to be, Casanova.” Grayson Shaw. Drunk. Very drunk.
Two A doesn’t budge. “Exactly. Why don’t you stand aside?”
Grayson mutters a cornucopia of curse words as he turns back, disembarking via the business section exit.
Two A pops the overhead open and fishes out my bag, its heft seeming inconsequential in his hands.
I cringe as he lowers my battered black bag to the aisle. It tilts slightly when he releases it—it’s missing one of its four wheels. I received the bag for Christmas one year at uni, and as I travel so seldom, I’ve never seen the need to fork out the cash to replace it. It teeters there like Her Majesty’s government’s Exhibit 1 of my impostorhood, my complete unworthiness to be here in the first-class section of Flight 305. The barrister would no doubt direct the jury’s attention to the fuzzy white remnants of a sticker that I unsuccessfully tried to peel off, the glue seeming to have melded with the bag’s canvas at the molecular level. The sticker was placed there by a drunken friend of mine almost a decade ago, in Spain. It read either “I heart guacamole” or “Viva la revolución”—I can’t recall which.
“Thanks,” I squeak.
Heathrow Express to Paddington Station, then the tube, all the while staring at my phone, still off, dreading what awaits.
At home, I hold the power button down.
Two voice mails. One from my agent, the other from Mum.
My agent’s voice barks in my ear. “Hi, Harp, hope you had a good flight. Ring me when you’re home. They’re pressing me to get your decision. If you’re out, they’re moving to their second choice. They don’t want to do that. I don’t want them to do that. Huge opportunity, Harp. Let’s sort it out, yeah?”
Mum, just making sure her only child hasn’t crashed into the Atlantic or the English countryside somewhere. It’s late, but I know she’s up, worrying, waiting for me to call.
The conversation is decidedly one-sided: hers. I sit on my sunken sofa with its cream slipcover, listening to updates about relatives young and old. I know what she’s working up to, and I mentally prepare myself. Ethan, my cousin, is headed off to Harrow, but how will my aunt and uncle ever afford it, and speaking of uncles, Clive has bought a horse, which Mum figures is his mid-life crisis, which is better than an affair, she supposes, and . . . speaking of dating—
I ring off after that, pace the flat for a while, ruminating on The Decision. I get the Alice Carter notebook out from under my mattress and lay it on the coffee table, eyeing it sympathetically, as you might a child before you break her heart. Summer vacation will have to wait another year, honey. Mummy has to work. And that’s what I think it will come down to. But then I’ll be free to finish Alice, give her the time she deserves.
That sounds like a rational, responsible adult decision.
Who am I kidding? I’m still teetering, like my shabby three-wheeled bag. Maybe I’ll use some of the money to replace it.
Only one thing to do, one thing that can help me decide.
I put my coat back on and ponder on my way down the stairs: vodka or wine?
Since I’m now making only practical, rational, adult decisions, I’ll choose vodka. More bang for the buck. More pure revelation-inducing, decision-solidifying power per pence. And less calories. Less calories is good. As Mum just reminded me, I don’t want to wind up a spinster with a beer gut, like Cousin Dolly.
42
“I knew your father, Nick.”
I hate when meetings start this way. I’m never sure what to say. Some folks get sappy (my father passed away two years ago); some recall episodes I was too young to remember (which, to be fair, I often enjoy hearing about a great deal); and some, like the man before me, Alastair Hughes, just let the statement hang in the air, awaiting my response.
I stare at the London skyline behind him for a moment, what I can see through the dreary fog. The day is as gray as I feel. Maybe I should move to London. There’s a change. Probably a good investment too. But I hear they’re considering taxing homes owned by foreigners. Surprised they haven’t yet.
“Were you a diplomat as well?” I finally ask.
He was, as it turns out. He runs through a few of his postings, offers a story about my father, one that took place in 1985, in Nicaragua, one I hadn’t heard. It’s a good story, well told. I like Alastair Hughes. And I think that may have been the point of the story. I bet he was a pretty good diplomat.
When the last laughs settle into chuckles, then reflective silence, he gets to the matter at hand.
When he’s finished, I simply say, “You want to build a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar?”
Alastair leans forward slightly. “We will build a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar.”
I glance at the three men, wondering what in the world this has to do with me. Before the meeting, I told them that I typically fund Internet-related companies, mostly seed-stage. The initial investments are low, relatively speaking; assuming things work out, I usually participate in subsequent funding rounds, doubling down on winners. I’m rarely more than twenty million into any one company by the time it either folds or reaches liquidity (IPO or acquisition). They’re talking billions to build something like this. And even if they had the money in hand, I doubt they’d get the political buy-in.
“This project will take decades, Nick. It will be the largest construction project in history, a multinational collaboration that will change the face of the earth. The marvels of the ancient world, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the statue of Zeus at Olympia—most were monuments, ceremonial shrines. This dam will do something. It will carve a new destiny for humanity, a future about global cooperation, dreaming big. It will show the world that we can solve big problems. It won’t be built with dollars, pounds, or euros, or even man-hours. It will be built with consensus.”
He slides a series of artists’ renderings over to me. In the center of the dam, a waterfall spills into a blue basin set in a rocky brown valley that turns to green farther out. A few simple low-rise buildings stand at the top.
“Building something this large requires a strong foundation. We’re not talking about a foundation of concrete or steel or money. People. Every successful venture starts with the right people. I’m sure that’s how it is in start-ups, right? Two companies developing the same technology; the best group of people wins the day.”
I nod.
“You chose start-ups because you like to be on the ground floor of something big, something that could have a huge impact.”
“I suppose.”
“Doesn’t get bigger than this, Nick. And this is the ground floor.”
“Yeah, but the thing is, I don’t see how I fit in. Don’t get me wrong, it’s impressive, the vision, the potential impact. But . . .”
“You’re uniquely qualified, Nick. The people you grew up with, went to school with around the world—over the next few decades, they will become the senators, prime ministers, and CEOs who will decide whether this dam gets built. They’re the levers of the future.”
“Perhaps, but look—I mean, I was rarely picked last at gym time, but my childhood friends don’t like me enough to let me drain their coastlines.”
“These people will listen to you, Nick. That’s all we need. You didn’t become a diplomat like your father. You wanted to do something different. No comparisons. Your own path.”
“Something like that.”
“But you’re looking for a change, something big. That’s why you flew to London, even knowing this wasn’t about an IT start-up. We’re just asking you to think it over. That’s all. We’re offering you the opportunity to be the point person on an international initiative that would change the course of history. Your father relished that role. It was the only time he was ever really happy. It’s inside you too.”
We spend the last minutes of the meeting talking about small details, ancillary benefits from the project. There’s talk of refreezing polar ice using solar shades, technology that’s still conceptual. Issues related to sea currents and salinity. The fate of the Black Sea. It’s an attempt to convince me that this isn’t the half-baked dream of a few aging diplomats. They’re trying to close me, convince me that I won’t spend the next three decades flying around Europe having the same meeting about a dam that will never get built.
That was my first instinct early in the meeting, but as I look at the artists’ renderings a feeling settles over me, a sensation I haven’t had in a long time: excitement. It’s faint, the desperate flare of a match flickering in the wind, but to me, at this point, it’s like a campfire on a cold November night.
I’m confident that this dam will be built.
I keep the drawings and promise them they’ll have my answer shortly.