Veil Read online

  “I’m holding off disaster. Can you imagine where we’d be without the program?”

  “Oh, I agree,” said Zia. “It’s a tremendous short-term plan.”

  “Hold on—”

  She juiced an orange, ignoring his scowl. The scope and consequences of Santiago’s endeavor meant she couldn’t run back to Chhattisgarh and pretend this had never happened, no matter how badly she wanted to. And if there was one thing she’d learned from subverting her parents’ wills as a teenager, it was that running away played right into her father’s hands. No. The way to beat Santiago at his own game was to start with first principles and build up a vision of your own with enough momentum to displace his. And despite his many faults, Zia admired his intellectual honesty. No matter how much he hated it, Santiago wasn’t afraid to be proven wrong.

  “You know what I really don’t want to imagine?” asked Zia. “What might happen when the world finds out what you’re up to.” She shook her head. “I mean, maybe you’ll get lucky and everyone will come together and sing Kumbaya and reform their wicked ways and stop emitting carbon and shower you with roses. But you yourself pointed out how the international community has failed to take meaningful action to address climate change despite decades of evidence. I’d hate to see your cynicism applied to this scenario.”

  “Look,” he said. “Obviously, we’ll have to announce it eventually. We just—”

  Zia juiced another orange and Santiago looked like he wanted to smash the whining machine onto the floor.

  “Oof, and what do you think India will do when they find out you’ve crippled them by killing the monsoon?” she asked, wincing.

  “The way attribution works with the models, it’s impossible to know—”

  Zia leveled the knife at him. “You’re not going to win anyone over with that kind of nuanced logic. They’ll turn you into a scapegoat, shoot your drones out of the sky, and score points with impassioned manifestos.”

  “That would be idiotic! The termination—”

  “Weren’t you just accusing politicians of being idiots? But you’re probably right, some countries would see the light and intervene. Given the heterogenous regional effects of your meddling, I bet Russia and Canada and Fiji and loads of other nations will be thrilled at the results of your program. So they’ll step in and deploy their own militaries to protect the program, or even better, build domestic programs of their own. But of course they’ll disagree with each other about how it should be done, which will escalate everything further.” She tilted her head to the side. “Come to think of it, you might just start a war. Now, wouldn’t that be exciting?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he growled.

  “You can’t keep this secret forever, Papi,” said Zia. “When I was campaigning for President Kim, she called the team together and told us she’d had an abortion while she was in college at UCR.” Zia remembered the packed conference room, the nervous interns, the smell of stale coffee and sweat. “We all knew how that would play with the fundamentalist demo, and our coms guy jumped in with a plan for how we could keep it on the DL. But Kim said flat out that she was going to give a speech about it at a clinic in San Jose and turn the whole thing into a campaign issue. The other side’s oppo research would dig it up eventually. She knew that it was better to get out in front and control the narrative. If she didn’t, someone else would. And the way these things go, the someone else most likely to do it is usually the worst possible person, the one with the biggest bets staked against you.”

  Zia slid the glass of orange juice across the table to her father.

  “Kim won because of that speech,” she said. “All the analysts shit their pants.”

  Santiago’s fingers weren’t tapping out the clave any longer. His hands were pressed down on the countertop so hard that tendons stood out on his forearms. Accompanied by a trumpet riff, the vocalist sang about the murder of escaped slaves in an incongruously upbeat tenor.

  Zia wiped the knife on the edge of the cutting board. Picking up one of the juiced orange halves, she squeezed the pebbled skin to extract one last drop from its pithy flesh. They both watched the scarlet jewel soak into the wood grain of the cutting board. Then she looked up and met his eye with the remembered force of his stern pep talks.

  “You’re a León,” she said.

  +

  19

  +

  “So, I’ve met with Aafreen’s second cousin twice,” said Galang, Zia’s phone rendering his voice slightly tinny. “The first time was at this dive bar that smelled like the morning after a hyena sex party. The second time was on a docked fishing trawler that made me seasick. Both times he gives me this look and says no phones and it took everything I had not to scream really? Oh, I never would have imagined we need to be careful about surveillance. I’m just a silly little investigative reporter, after all. Oh, and by the way, well done scheduling both our conversations for midnight. Not on-the-nose at all.” Galang rolled his eyes. “I mean, I might not be Lynn Chevalier, but I’m not fucking clueless. Aafreen warned me that the guy’s a total dick. Oh, his intel is good. There absolutely is a ring of government officials auctioning resettlement visas on the black market. It’s just that it’s obvious that he’s part of the damn ring and hopes that by being the first to blow the whistle, he’ll keep his name out of the headlines and then swoop in to give outraged speeches, oust his former co-conspirators, and catapult up the political hierarchy. So I help one asshole by taking down a bunch of other assholes and the world just keeps turning.”

  “Reminds me of Selai with her physics-cum-philosophy about quantum entanglement and there being no such thing as an independent observer,” said Zia, leaning back in the hammock. More than anything, she wanted to call Selai and explain that the discrepancies Selai had identified in the climate models weren’t a product of faulty algorithms but of Santiago meddling with the raw data. So, BTW, my dad is flying drones into the stratosphere to spray dust that makes the Earth shinier, reflecting more incoming sunlight back into space, thus reducing the amount of energy entering the Earth system and cooling the planet. Oh, and he’s lying to everyone about it. But Zia couldn’t just tell Selai everything. Project Svalinn was a secret sensitive enough to start a war over, and Selai was working on behalf of her uncles in the Fijian cabinet. If she found out what Santiago was doing, she’d have no choice but to inform them immediately, even if it might lead to disaster. They in turn would be honor bound to act in Fiji’s national interest, whatever they interpreted it to be. Zia couldn’t put her in such an impossible situation. Galang was different. His entire job was to reveal sensitive secrets for public benefit. “By telling people’s stories, you become a participant.”

  “In practice, it definitely feels like my sources and I are both using each other. Makes me almost miss those heady days of ‘objective journalism’ that old-timers yammer on about, but I’m convinced they’re just mythologizing a past that never really existed in the first place. Playing word games to disguise your point of view isn’t objectivity. Better to explain your perspective to the audience and let them draw their own conclusions. Unfortunately, my source is a total fuckwad who’s leveraging his own misdeeds for personal gain which this story enables is not the kind of delectable morsel that’ll make it past Bonnie.”

  A butterfly drew Zia’s eyes away from the phone, fluttering across her father’s wide deck on an inscrutable mission all its own. She thought of fragile chrysalises hanging vacant, their papery walls hinting at life forever becoming life.

  “What does it mean if friends use each other?” asked Zia.

  “Umm, been to therapy lately?” asked Galang. “You’re going to have to unpack that one for me.”

  “I was the target of an attempted kidnapping,” said Zia.

  “Uh huh, right,” said Galang, then his face froze when Zia didn’t respond. “Wait, what?” His expression crumbled into shock so dramatically that Zia couldn’t help but laugh. “Get the fuck out! You were kid
napped? Are you okay? Where are you right now? What can I do? Oh my god, I can’t believe I’ve just been blabbing on about my work when— How did you not tell me this already? What have I taught you about burying the lede, girl?”

  Her view shook as he moved his phone closer to his face, the better to see her.

  “I’m safe now,” she said. “It’s okay. It happened right after we met for chai in Chhattisgarh. Armed professionals, a team of them. The Zachary’s delivery came in handy though. Turns out frozen pizza is quite a formidable weapon.” She recounted the abduction, waking up on the island, and her aborted escape attempt. Galang was an appreciative audience, ohh-ing and ahh-ing in all the right places, demanding additional details, and uttering unrepeatable profanities in disbelief. Though she wanted more than anything to share it with someone, to get a second opinion, Zia demurred when she got to the part about the geoengineering project. That wasn’t intel she could trust to even the most secure digital network.

  “See?” said Galang. “I told you they need to turn your life into a movie. This is blockbuster material.”

  “Is it embarrassing to admit that I was thinking about that as I fell out of the window in the least photogenic way possible? It was as far from graceful as it’s possible to get.”

  “So embarrassing,” said Galang. “And so exquisite.”

  Zia laughed. “You’re too much.”

  “You know what’s too much? This story.” Galang narrowed his eyes. “I do this for a living, love, and the little puzzle you just laid out is missing some big pieces. Who sent those men after you? Why? For that matter, why did Daddio have a secret team of bodyguards watching over you in the first place? WTF are you going to do now? I know you pretty darn well, Zia-san, and I don’t believe for a minute that you didn’t immediately start asking the same questions yourself. So, what aren’t you telling me?”

  Zia looked up at the blue sky arching over her. Thousands of feet up, sprinkled throughout the thin haze of the stratosphere, was the biggest story of Galang’s career. An Interstice drone soared out from behind the volcano and lined up for landing. Maybe it was providing the signal boost that connected her call to Galang right now, their voices slurped up by microphones, digested into packets, and ferried through convoluted digital intestines before being reconstituted at the other end. Industrialists often dabbled in philanthropy, but usually they worked hard to publicize their efforts. What her father saw as clandestine charity was unlikely to draw charitable attention from others. Galang would tell the whole story, and tell it well. He wouldn’t take shortcuts. He wouldn’t give Santiago special treatment. He wouldn’t stop until he had shone a comprehensive light on the skein of threats and promises that converged on those damn drones. And once he did, she could finally go home and get back to work, if she was even allowed back into India once the world found out about her father.

  She looked back down to find Galang’s eyes steady on her, his forehead furrowed. Zia was kidding herself, wasn’t she? The secret had to come out, and it would make her already delicate position in Chhattisgarh totally untenable.

  “How much longer do you need to stay in the Maldives?” she asked.

  “Well, I have meetings scheduled with a couple more sources, there are a few places I want to visit just to get the context right, and I promised Aafreen I’d go drinking with her,” said Galang. “But my tenure here depends primarily on the urgency of business I might have elsewhere.”

  “What if we could have a plane pick you up tomorrow?”

  “Then I’d tell Aafreen I love her, tell her cousin to go fuck himself, and jump ship. Assuming, of course, that this enigmatic invitation might lead somewhere juicy.”

  “Aren’t the juiciest leads always enigmatic?”

  “It’s taken almost twenty years, but you’re finally starting to grok this whole journalism thing,” said Galang. “Let me know if you’re ever in the market for an unpaid internship.”

  “And work for you? God forbid.”

  “Always the slacker, this one.”

  A lump rose in Zia’s throat. She was a dust mote carried on an unseasonable breeze through a shaft of afternoon light. “Hey, Galang?”

  “Yes, Zia?”

  “Thank you. I promise this’ll be worth it.”

  “Oh hush, darling. I’m already packing.”

  +

  20

  +

  Zia swallowed to equalize the pressure in her ears and peered out the window. Turquoise sea stretched from horizon to horizon, encroaching on a string of atolls that barely kept their palm-tufted heads above the surf. Speedboats, fishing trawlers, yachts, and cargo ships plied the waves. The plane descended toward the Maldivian capital.

  New Malé was a miracle of marine engineering, a floating city built atop the flooded ruins of its namesake. Unable to avoid the pitiless irony of history, it had been designed and constructed by SaudExxon contractors. They were, after all, the premier experts on offshore platforms. New Malé was made up of thousands of adjacent platforms linked together in an urban chessboard anchored to the seamount below. The shoreline shape and platform heights varied to imply natural topography. Seagulls wheeled through the skyscrapers and cranes played Tetris with shipping containers at the port. Zia remembered visiting Aafreen during summer break in high school. Back then, high tides sloshed over Malé’s seawalls and the city’s technological reincarnation as New Malé had seemed little more than a pipe dream. That dream had been realized, and remained insufficient. A life raft too small for a nation.

  The plane touched down and braked hard, the safety belt cutting into Zia’s waist. Long runways were a mainland luxury. They taxied to the private terminal and memories of her stint here as a relief director flashed through Zia’s head. Blinking ocean spray out of her face. Mopping up the savory remains of a plate of mas riha with fresh-made roshi. The devastation left in the wake of the last storm surge. Without Santiago’s meddling, would Maldivians be even worse off than they were now? Had Project Svalinn spared them crucial centimeters of sea level rise? Or was it just yet another way for the outside world to encroach on the Dhivehi way of life?

  Zia shook her head. Distance magnified the instinctual implausibility of Santiago’s scheme. Everything about it sounded so unlikely, almost ridiculous. But wouldn’t electrical lights have sounded unlikely to a medieval peasant? How would a nineteenth century scientific establishment that still believed in aether have reacted to the idea of splitting an atom? Reality was implausible. Santiago’s project was positively banal compared to those heady frontiers.

  “Ms. León?”

  Her newly assigned bodyguard, Dembe, was a compact special forces veteran with braided kinky hair and striking amber eyes who spoke like a soldier and moved like a dancer. She wore a dapper suit with an orange pocket square over her fitted ballistic vest. Was this who Zia was now? One of those people who couldn’t go anywhere without impeccably dressed, consummately professional, heavily armed minders? It was profoundly embarrassing in a way that resonated with Zia’s irrepressible shame at being born into privilege.

  “Please, call me Zia.”

  “Of course, ma’am—Zia.” Was that a smile tugging at the corners of her lips? “We’ve cleared the perimeter and are ready when you are.”

  Zia unbuckled her seatbelt and followed Dembe.

  A cool onshore wind buffeted Zia as they disembarked, welcome in the tropical heat. Sunlight glared off the tarmac and the smell of jet fuel cut through the ocean tang. Head tracking back and forth, Dembe murmured through the radio to her two colleagues as she led Zia across to the small private terminal. Inside, the building was a posh lounge. High ceilings arched overhead, indirect skylights funneling in mirrored sunlight. A long mahogany bar covered one side of the big room, glass containers of myriad tea varietals shelved behind it where a traditional bar might feature liquor. The walls were covered in luminescent abstract shapes that shifted like tectonic plates, drifting so slowly that their movement was almost imperc
eptible. Dembe stayed with Zia as the two other officers covered the doors to the tarmac and the air-train stop respectively.

  Zia checked the time. Galang would meet them here in thirty minutes, just enough time for the plane to refuel for the return trip. Zia simultaneously couldn’t wait and couldn’t bear to see him. She desperately wanted to share everything she’d experienced in the last couple days but knew that sharing it would somehow make it more real, like a spotlight throwing a shadowy stage into sharp relief. As long as she kept it to herself, she could almost pretend nothing had happened. But pretending that nothing was really happening was exactly the attitude she’d had to grapple with day in and day out as a relief worker liaising with local and international elites who preferred to stifle problems with the silk blindfold of comforting ideology.

  No. Inaction was action. Zia had lit the fuse. Santiago had reluctantly capitulated. Galang was on the way. There was no turning back. For better or worse, the secret would come out. She ordered a pot of top-shelf Ceylon tea at the bar and carried it back to one of the nooks tucked into every corner of the lounge—all the while trying to remember the joke Vachan’s cousin had taught her during a visit to the family estate for memorizing the industry acronym denoting the highest grade of tea. Far Too Good For Ordinary People. That was it: FTGFOP. What Zia would give to be an ordinary person who didn’t need a bodyguard. She sat down and looked up. Large broadleaf tropical plants formed screens between the sparsely populated seating areas and Dembe stood a few meters distant, eyes strafing the room in a practiced staccato pattern.