The whole complex had been formally christened in 1997 by Saskia’s grandmother and never actually needed until ten years later. After that, it had sat high, dry, and motionless—aside from regularly scheduled annual closures just to make sure it all still worked—for another sixteen years, when another surge had come along. Today, for the third time in its history, they were going to close it to protect the Netherlands from what was predicted to be the largest surge in the North Sea since the disaster of 1953. It was the first such closure in Saskia’s reign.