The jet stream as well looks and feels different at this latitude. It’s gray-brown. You can see it. West-to-east tailwinds that used to add 50–150 knots to a liner’s airspeed now jack it up by 350. Planes don’t even try to buck headwinds. Permitted altitude maxes out at twenty-four thousand feet. Rides are rough, and the abuse passengers take from eco-demonstrators for contributing to upper-atmosphere destabilization is worse. Protests are permanent outside every airport. Passengers are assaulted with stones and bottles, even bags of excrement.

FLYING IS EARTH DYING

PLEASE . . . CRASH

Narsarsuaq Airport had been until eighteen months ago, we are told, nothing more than a pit stop for private jets and an emergency landing field for commercial liners, with no passenger facilities beyond restrooms and a snack bar. Now it’s the third-largest airfield in the world. Bulldozers and earthmovers are everywhere. Diesel stink saturates the air. While we lay over, I grab my laptop and camp directly under the Wi-Fi hub.

Finally we get through on WhatsApp to Ben-David.

MANNING

Where are you, Amos? Are you safe?

BEN-DAVID

I’ve got a battalion of paratroopers around me. Does that ease your mind?

To Manning’s concern about Rachel, Ben-David replies, “She’s here. She’s fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Finally with a web connection, I continue my search for Instancer. I spend the full delay running passenger queries for every Mideast-bound commercial, private, charter, and fractional flight out of East Coast fields including New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland.

MANNING

You’re wasting your time, Dewey. Instancer probably passed us half an hour ago. Without an airplane.

Airborne again, I settle in and scan channels for the latest. The top two stories on Israel KAN 11 are migrant wars on the Egyptian border—armed clashes at the Gaza towns of Rafah and Khan Younis—and water riots in Jerusalem.

Coach on El Al is not bad. Because it’s international and overwater, the seats have legroom. You get a pillow and a blanket. When you order a drink, it comes in a real glass.

My seatmate (the best I could get for Manning is across the aisle) is a female ER physician from Medicine Hat, Alberta. She’s part of a travel contingent of twenty-four, seated in a block between rows fourteen and seventeen. Their society is called the Sovereign Light Brethren. The party is bound for Jerusalem, she tells me in a voice fizzing with good cheer, anticipating Christ’s return and the initiation of the Rapture.

SEATMATE

Did you hear? Our plane is the last into Tel Aviv. No more after us. Ben Gurion Airport has become unusable. Ground-level winds are too strong.