When the ambulance picked up Ilya and Shane a quarter of an hour later, Shane seemed more nervous and Ilya more relaxed. For a moment, the VIP area was filled with hushed voices, medical instructions and courtly discretion, and the smell of disinfectant, painkillers and psychotropic drugs.
The doctor insisted that Ilya stay on the stretcher. Ilya insisted that even lying down, he looked better than most people standing up. Shane walked beside him, one hand on the stretcher, as if it were not a piece of medical equipment but the last tenuous link between him and reality. Caba and Bauer accompanied the doctor to the door, both with that courageous resolve people develop when they have carried out a momentous deed.
Princess Indulan wished Ilya a speedy recovery.
“Denmark owes you more than a bandage, Mr Rozanow.”
Ilya looked up at her, pale, tired and still sharp enough for a retort.
“I’ll take exemption from harbour dues as well.”
“Mr Stromberg has already taken that.”
“Then I’ll take Cartagena.”
Indulan smiled. “I had every expectation of that. And the ticket is for three people, so that there’s someone on your right and left to support you.”
Shane looked at her as if he wanted to say something, but the doctor pushed the stretcher on. Ilya raised his hand feebly once more. Then the doors closed behind them.
The cadets disappeared as well, officially to the buffet downstairs, unofficially because Indulan had made it very clear with a single glance that young witnesses would now be better off breathing elsewhere and consuming the drinks she had provided. Magnus was the last to go out and asked Köck whether ten thousand euros in pocket money should actually be booked as compensation for pain and suffering for marine art, in accordance with monarchical or tax regulations.
Then it fell silent.
Claudia remained behind in the box.
She stood next to the small buffet and looked not at the throne, not at the velvet, not at the windows onto the empty arena, but at a platter of iced pralines.
Indulan stepped up beside her.
“Eat, Dr Tiedemann.”
Claudia looked sceptically at the buffet.
“I don’t know if I should have an appetite after nuclear waste and neptunium.”
“Especially then.”
Indulan took a fig poached in butter and honey with a dessert fork and popped it into his mouth.
“Disasters are easier to assess when your blood sugar hasn’t plummeted.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Claudia took a praline, the outer layer of which was white chocolate, the centre flavoured with wild herbs and marzipan, and the core a glazed hazelnut.
They ate in silence until Claudia realised how tired she was. Her shoulder pads were still bravely holding their ground, but they now felt less like fashion and more like a burden on her shoulders.
Indulan looked at her from the side.
“I grew up in a monarchy. Meetings here are the peaceful form of siege warfare.”
Just then, the door opened.
De la Motte entered, a notebook in her hand, which no longer looked like an accessory but rather like a weapon with a very good binding.
“Your Highness,” she said. “Dr Tiedemann.”
Indulan turned to her.
“Mrs de la Motte. Good of you to come. I was just about to praise one clever woman in front of another clever woman.”
Claudia froze.
“That’s not necessary.”
“Yes, it is,” said Indulan. “Especially since you find it unpleasant.”
De la Motte raised her eyebrows with interest before taking a bowl of vanilla pudding and spooning it up.
Indulan continued: “Dr Tiedemann was the first to realise that the Arena’s efficiency figures were physically fantastic. She found the reactor, recognised the radiation hazard, secured the barrels and, in a situation where several armed adults were making worse decisions than Austrian cadets, kept a clear head.”
Claudia looked at another iced praline and wasn’t sure whether the marzipan really went well with the herbs.
“I also threatened people with nuclear waste and asked unprotected teenagers to lift two barrels of vitrified nuclear waste off a loading area.”
De la Motte smiled.
“That doesn’t matter to the WEO, as long as no one died immediately. If, in the long term, we get more and cheaper energy for everyone, then the goal is achieved.”
“Then your organisation has lower standards than I had hoped,” said Claudia.
“No,” said de la Motte. “Just more experience since 1946.”
Indulan took a small glass of iced water.
“Ms de la Motte, I would like you to give Dr Tiedemann’s report your full attention. She will provide you with everything you need to know from a technical perspective regarding the tidal power station, the efficiency architecture and the microsphere reactor.”
“And what is necessary from a political perspective?” asked de la Motte.
“That Hesse is not punished for having been wiser tonight than several larger states.”
Claudia looked up.
Indulan continued, now more calmly.
“I shall speak to the Occupation Council. Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom must understand that a controlled refurbishment of Hesse’s nuclear power stations makes more sense than a slow technical decline. Winden must not be kept in a state where demolition, refurbishment and closure are mutually blocking each other.”
Claudia said nothing.
That was strange enough for de la Motte to look at her.
Indulan addressed Claudia directly.
“You need permits. Political backing. International technical oversight, so that no one can claim Hesse is building something uncontrollable in the shadow of the Occupation Council. And you need money that doesn’t smell of charity.”
“Above all, I need people who don’t act as if a reactor is more dangerous simply because it’s Hessian.”
“Then I shall start with precisely that.”
Claudia exhaled slowly.
“Her Highness means that seriously.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Indulan took a second fig.
“Because a small monarchy by the water knows very well what it means to be dependent on large systems. And because you have proven today that technical responsibility does not always lie where the biggest flags fly.”
De la Motte nodded slowly.
“The WEO could oversee a modernisation. Discreetly,  provided the paperwork is in order.”
Claudia looked at her.
“My paperwork is always in order.”
“Your politics?”
“My politics are Hesse. That’s messy enough.”
Indulan smiled.
Then she walked over to a small desk beside the throne, opened a narrow drawer and took out a cream-coloured envelope. It was no grand royal gesture. Rather, the elegant nonchalance of a woman who knew that gifts were more dangerous when they were unannounced.
She handed the envelope to Claudia.
“Anything else?”
Claudia took it carefully.
“Should I be afraid?”
“A little.”
Inside the envelope was a VIP invitation.
Dark blue paper, silver lettering, a stylised ship against a cold moon. Beneath it read:
The Flying Dutchman
Riga, 13 August 2026, at the former Red Army torpedo test facility
Cultural repurposing — Private premiere
Claudia read it twice.
“An opera in a former test facility.”
“Yes.”
“In Riga?”
“Yes.”
“As a VIP guest?”
“Yes.”
Claudia looked at Indulan.
“Is that an invitation or a threat?”
“With Wagner, the distinction is traditionally blurred.”
De la Motte laughed softly.
Indulan explained: “The facility was abandoned by the Red Army, decontaminated, converted and is to be repurposed for cultural use from this year onwards. It’s perfect: military technology becomes art for peace.”
Claudia looked at the card.
“And why are you giving it to me?”
“Because, ideologically speaking, you don’t have to reconcile yourself with the USSR,” said Indulan. “But perhaps you should come to terms with it enough to make joint research possible. Energy, decontamination, reactor safety, reprocessing. You don’t have to sing the same tune to check the same readings.”
Claudia’s mouth tightened.
“I don’t trust Soviet authorities.”
“And Soviet authorities don’t trust Hesse.”
“Then you already have common ground.” De la Motte looked back and forth between them.
“Scientific cooperation born of mutual mistrust is more stable than many believe.”
“That’s sad,” said Claudia.
“No,” said de la Motte. “That’s international.”
Claudia didn’t put the invitation back in the envelope. She held it in her hand as if it were a reading she didn’t yet like, but couldn’t ignore.
“Riga,” she said.
“Riga,” confirmed Indulan. “An old facility that no longer wants to be merely a thing of the past. Perhaps that interests you.”
“I’m not interested in operas.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Wagner is very long.”
“That’s true.”
“And people die very slowly in his plays.”
“That’s true too.”
Claudia looked at the invitation again.
“But a former test facility being used as an opera house is, from a technical point of view…”
She paused.
Indulan waited.
So did De la Motte.
Claudia sighed.
“…interesting.”
Indulan took her glass of ice water. Muted applause drifted in from outside. Presumably the photo shoot with the cadets had finally taken place, or Magnus had inadvertently explained to a court official why Hesse needed more space for dancing in Iceland than Austria.
Claudia carefully slipped the invitation into her bag, right next to the notes she’d rescued from the reactor room.
“I’m going to take a look at the facility.”
“I knew that already,” said Indulan.
De la Motte closed her notebook.
“I’d say, Dr Tiedemann, you’ve shown a good work ethic today. The World Energy Organisation is always looking for interns or experts for international projects.”
Claudia took another chocolate from the buffet.
Indulan looked down through the glass front at the empty ice rink. The ice lay smooth beneath them, as if nothing had happened: no rings, no blood; no nuclear waste, no cadets. It was just a white expanse, pretending once more that one could play on it without falling into the abyss.
“Riga, then,” said Claudia quietly.
Indulan nodded.
“Riga’s too close to the sea for underground car parks, too.”
De la Motte raised an eyebrow.
“It doesn’t get any closer than Copenhagen, does it?”
Claudia looked at both women.
For the first time that evening, she smiled genuinely.
“Then I’ll take some waterproof shoulder pads with me.”