"If I may," Willem said. "Oh, I’m nobody," he added, when Cornelia’s eyes briefly flicked his way. He was bemused, not offended, by Cornelia’s utter lack of interest in niceties. "Just putting this all together: the whole city of Venice will certainly be underwater very soon. Perhaps no city in the world is as vulnerable. MOSE failed because of cumbersome European Union regulation and Italian corruption. Worse, it failed extremely slowly ."