‘With respect, nothing you have ever brought here has been new. People have been staying in hotels here since the Montesol opened in the thirties. People have come here to heal and do yoga for even longer than that…You can’t build an environmentally friendly future by building over protected areas.’
Art clenched his jaw. ‘You need to unprotect the area, Sofía. Es Vedrà and its sister rock and the ocean between it and Cala d’Hort. I know it can be done. This will be good for the people, for the economy…You see, this is just the beginning. This will be the template. The success story that can be replicated elsewhere.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The protection of precious land.’
‘Protection?’ she laughed. ‘My English is not as good as yours, but did you say “protection”?’
‘Es Vedrà is a symbol of a sacred and natural place. And once I have it, I will make it even more special. And then I will be able to present it everywhere, to governments, and I will say, “Your land will be safe with me. I will look after it.” ’
‘What is your obsession with buying up nature?’
‘Are you, a politician, seriously going to lecture me on how to look after the environment? You had your chance. And the future will be for those with real vision. Resorts amid nature, with tourists helping to pay to protect that nature. Once I have Es Vedrà, I will do this everywhere, on every continent. I will take the most precious of the precious and make it accessible to people while also protecting the land. This is the future. Capitalism and ecology, side by side. I already have permission to develop in the deepest area of the Amazon…And do you know how I got it? I told them that this was happening, here in Spain. And that you had agreed. You had agreed?’
‘Yes. It is true. I had verbally agreed. But I hadn’t predicted all the issues. Why can’t you go to developed areas like other hoteliers do? Why do you have to take something pure and destroy it?’
‘Destroy is a strong word.’
Sofía sighed as she leaned forward on a large, well-cushioned chair that switched between wicker and plastic, depending on the moment inside the memory. ‘Mr Butler…There is a species of flower – the Nolletia chrysocomoides – that was last seen on Earth here in Ibiza, but it was made extinct when you opened your first hotel at Cala Bassa and poured cement over the wildflower meadow there. And that is not the only story like that. You go to delicate places and disfigure them.’
‘My father was a botanist,’ he said, wistfully and so softly Sofía almost didn’t hear him. Sadness passed over his features like a shadow.
‘You have done nothing but be an environmental hazard. Es Vedrà is a very special place. People are very attached to it. And you can’t simply ferry tourists from Cala d’Hort to there all day long. Think of the pollution. That is the most special patch of water. The seagrass there is—’
He rolled his eyes. ‘One hundred thousand years old. Yes. I know. The oldest plant on Earth. The most important habitat in the Mediterranean. Blah blah blah. And we will run water taxis above it all day long from Cala d’Hort to Es Vedranell and have a bridge connecting that smaller island to Es Vedrà and humans – actual humans, not your precious fish and seaweed – will get to enjoy it.’
‘You don’t understand, Mr Butler. The water there is very special. The Posidonia seagrass is already hurt by tourism. To mess about with that area any more you will be asking for trouble.’
Art put down his coffee next to a statue of Tanit. ‘You would be surprised. I am aware of the stories. I know them better than most.’
That was the moment, for Sofía, when the conversation changed completely. There was something fierce and commanding now about his expression.
He stared at her like a dog eyeing a rabbit. ‘Look what I did to Cala Llonga. That was a tired old place before we came in. And now look at it. Ibiza is a place where people come and spend money. And we are getting better people, spending better money. The protests faded. Everyone forgot them as soon as we opened.’
‘You don’t understand the Ibizan people. For what you are suggesting, the protests won’t ever end…This new tourism. The super-rich. They are not helping. We have big yachts blocking sunsets and yet we have people unable to afford to pay their rent. And look at the shape of Es Vedrà. How are you going to build a hotel there? You don’t need us. You have hotels everywhere. You can leave us now.’
‘Rock blasting. We’ll make a nice flat shelf in the rock. We did it before, in Mallorca.’
‘But there are birds that nest there. Cormorants.’
‘Do you seriously care more about cormorants than the local economy?’
‘I thought you cared,’ she said, in a testing kind of tone. ‘Wasn’t that the idea? Ecology and capitalism working together? And you talk about the economy! Tell that to the people living in tents in car parks. It was a mistake ever to grant this. I underestimated public opinion. You will face a revolution. Christina van der Berg, for one, has a lot of influence.’
The name bothered him. It was like a wasp passing his face. But then he made a dismissive gesture. ‘The sheep won’t follow without the shepherds.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You take them away and everything fizzles out. The people with the power to stop this will themselves be stopped…’
Sofía studied his cold expression. ‘Take them away? How do you take people away?’
She thought of her colleague, Ricardo Martínez. The one who had died two days after blocking the application of an Eighth Wonder resort beside the wetlands at Ses Feixes. The inquest concluded his death was accidental. His heart had given up. An undetected issue with his aortic valve.
‘Yes,’ he said, as if reading her mind. ‘Don’t block progress, Sofía. It won’t do you or your family any good.’
‘There are laws. There is the police. This is Spain. You can’t just plough in here and threaten people.’
He raised a finger, held it in the air, pointing towards Sofía but still two metres away from her. And yet she felt something – she was sure of it – she felt that finger touch her neck without actually touching it. Just a small sense of it pressing in, towards her larynx, and she reached at it, at this invisible thing pressing into her. But there was nothing to hold on to, and then his finger – still that same distance away – stopped pointing, and she felt nothing at all.
She tried to steady her breathing. ‘What are you?’
The smile was suppressed but still there. ‘The last thought in Ricardo Martínez’s head.’
‘You…’ Sofía couldn’t find the word.
‘Just think of me as the future,’ said Art, with an expression that seemed more sad than intimidating. A gaze of deep, if distant, pain. ‘Inevitable as the setting sun.’
And then I lost the memory. And the mind. It was gone. I was suddenly back, fully inside my own self again, wondering what I had just witnessed.
Uncertain Quantities
‘He threatened Sofía,’ I said, out of my trance, after having a sip of beer to acclimatise me back in my own mind. In the present, Sofía had gone to the bathroom, I discovered, hence the broken memory.
And my report came out of me in a stream of whispers. ‘He killed someone. A politician. Maybe more than one person. And he was going to kill Christina. He has the Guardia Civil in his pocket. And the politicians. That is how the Es Vedrà plan is happening. And the plan is just the start of his new phase. He wants to develop in the most protected areas of the world. So he is starting with the most protected area here. He wants to stain every last place of beauty on Earth, I think.’
‘Why?’ wondered Alberto.
