Deep State

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Mr. Strange,” Dagmar said. “I need your help.”

  The statement seemed to surprise him.

  “My help?” he said. “What the hell can I do?”

  “There’s a false rumor going around,” Dagmar said. “People are saying that I—that Judy and I were hired by Ian Attila Gordon to overthrow the Turkish junta.”

  “What in God’s name—” Rap-rap-rap and then a brief pause. “Attila was doing this? Attila was trying to overthrow the dictators?”

  “Well,” Dagmar said, “no, he wasn’t.”

  “It’s the CIA that put those guys in power,” Strange said. “Those Turkish generals are CIA way back. That’s how they got to be Turkish generals in the first place!”

  Dagmar tried to stay relentlessly on topic.

  “I need to coordinate with Attila,” Dagmar said. “I need to talk to him, so we can agree on what to say to the press.”

  “If you’ve been fucking with the generals,” Strange said, “you’re damn right you need to coordinate.”

  “I didn’t say we were doing that.” Dagmar couldn’t help herself.

  “I still can’t figure out,” Strange said, “how Attila got into this.”

  “Do you have contact information for him?” Dagmar persisted. “Judy said you knew him.” A verbal memory flashed into her mind. “She said you thought he was a tosser.”

  Strange laughed. “Yeah, he fucking well is,” he said. “I’ve got it on my phone.”

  “Good, because—” And then the line went dead.

  Dagmar looked at her phone in annoyance. Lincoln’s window rattled to the sound of Eurofighters crashing the sound barrier somewhere above the Med.

  “What happened?” Lincoln asked.

  “I think he cut me off accidentally when he was trying to access Attila’s number.”

  Lincoln sighed. “Is he crazy out of his mind?”

  Dagmar considered this.

  “Who am I to judge?” She shrugged. She hit Redial.

  “What the fuck?” She jumped as Strange shouted in her ear before she even heard a ring signal.

  “That’s what I want to know!” Strange said. “What the fuck? Double-you Tee Eff. Know what I’m saying?”

  Persist, she told herself.

  “Did you manage to get me Attila’s contact information?”

  “Yeah. I got it right here.”

  As he gave the number, she pressed the Write button on her handheld and scribed the number in the air and into her phone’s memory.

  “Thank you, Mr. Strange,” Dagmar said. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, when I hear anything about Judy.”

  “Yeah,” Strange said. “Thanks.”

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” Dagmar said. “We all loved Judy here.”

  She pressed the End button and felt herself sag in relief.

  “That seemed to go well,” Lincoln said dryly.

  “I’m the envy of my friends,” Dagmar said as she connected. “Now I have two rock stars on my speed dial.”

  “Let’s hope only one of them is crazy.”

  The number answered after the first ring.

  “Hello?” a Scots voice said. “Who is this? If this is aboot that pish on the telly…”

  “Is this Mr. Gordon?” Dagmar asked. She wasn’t completely certain: when Ian Attila Gordon sang, it sounded as if he were from Memphis.

  “Aye.” The voice was cautious.

  “Mr. Gordon,” Dagmar said, “this is Dagmar Shaw. I’m the person you’re supposed to have hired to overthrow General Bozbeyli.”

  “Thank fuck fir that!” Attila Gordon seemed relieved to have a fellow victim to talk to. “Ah jumped a fuckin mile when Ah heard the phone.”

  “It’s pretty crazy,” Dagmar said.

  “The arseholes even hacked the Web page! Aw that ‘revolution in music’ mince wasnae meant tae be there. We couldnae change it back, ’cause thid altered the passwords!”

  “They’re very good,” Dagmar said, “whoever they are.”

  “Look,” Attila said. “The guys are trying tae put thegither a statement denying the story. Maybe we should coordinate—”

  “A denial isn’t going to work,” Dagmar said. “The story’s already huge; a denial will never catch up with it.”

  “What the hell else can we dae!” Attila said. “Mah balls are on the rails here. I mean, I’ve niver even talked tae yi before, ken? Let alone hired yi—”

  “I have an idea,” Dagmar said. “It’ll get you in front of the story, and it’ll put you on the right side of public opinion, but it all depends how much you really want the return of Turkish democracy.”

  “Cannae hiv they Nazi cunts ruling the roost.”

  “That’s good,” Dagmar said, “but when I said how much, I actually meant how much in pounds sterling.”

  There was a long silence at the other end. Dagmar held her breath.

  She was counting on the idea that rock musicians, when all was said and done, would much rather be God than just be the entertainment.

  Please, she thought, please be a megalomaniac, and not a Scot who’s tight with his money.

  “How much?” Attila said.

  Dagmar let her breath out in a sigh.

  She reckoned she had him.

  I am Plot Queen, she thought.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  There he was on BBC One, Ian Attila Gordon, dressed in blue jeans and a vintage military jacket worn over a white ruffled shirt, with the ruffles dashingly unpinned and hanging over one lapel, a picturesque little piece of asymmetry. He hadn’t shaved recently, and heavy whiskers blued his cheeks and chin.

  “I wonder who dresses him?” Dagmar said. “That outfit looks good.”

  “But can he act?” Helmuth said. “The Bond movie sort of left the question open.”

  “I guess we find out now,” Dagmar said.

  The Brigade had left the ops room for Lincoln’s suite, which had a high-definition television and more comfortable furniture. During the course of the afternoon they’d discovered that four of their scavenged modems would actually function under MS-DOS and they set up their own DOS-based LAN. Instructions had been sent to Rafet and others to put together DOS machines.

  But in the meantime, since the Internet was working again, they sent messages to prepare for a demo in Ankara the following day, place and time to be determined later. Rafet and the Skunk Works drones had been sent out to find a suitable place.

  Lincoln’s rooms, intended for visiting VIPs, resembled those of an upscale hotel, with fabric flowers in vases, gold-and-white-striped wallpaper, and competent but soulless oil paintings on the walls. Lincoln had thrown a packet of Orville Redenbacher in the microwave, and the scent of buttered popcorn floated through the suite. Dagmar sat crosslegged on the floor in front of the television, leaning against the warmth of Ismet’s legs. Ismet had joined them in late afternoon, saying that he was bored in his apartment, and now sat on Lincoln’s mustard-colored sofa next to Helmuth.

  Dagmar ate a handful of popcorn, passed the bowl on to Helmuth, and hoped that Attila would remember his lines.

  Attila stepped up to a battery of microphones. He was on the lawn of his East Sussex home, with the last glimmer of the setting sun lighting the ivy-walled house behind him. TV spotlights glowed in his eyes.

  Photo flashes lit his cheekbones. He offered a half-shy smile.

  I bet he’d look good in a kilt, Dagmar thought.

  “I’d like tae address the claims that Ah’ve somehow masterminded the revolution in Turkey,” he said. There was a light in his eye that seemed to suggest he found the notion absurd, that he was just amused by the situation and going through what celebrity and the situation demanded.

  “First off,” he said, “I’d like tae express mah true love and admiration fae the folk of Turkey. I traveled through the country when Ah filmed Stunrunner last year, and I niver failed tae meet with anything but friendship and hospitality. I made some good friends who A
h’d hope tae see again one day.”

  The amusement went from his eyes.

  “I wasnae happy when Ah realized mah new friends would have tae endure a military dictatorship. The coup was an unexpected blow that knocked Turkey’s hopes of modernization aw tae hell.”

  Laughter returned to Attila’s eyes. A cocky grin flashed across his face.

  “And so Ah decided tae do somethin aboot it, ken? Ah’m here tae tell yis that the claims made this mornin werenae bullshit.”

  Dagmar clapped in delight as a roar of interest rose from the ranks of the reporters. More flashes lit Attila’s face.

  “The only bit o story they got wrang was that Ah’m doin all this fae money,” he said. “Ah’ve enough poppy nae tae sell oot mah principles fir a bribe. And tae prove it—” He raised a finger in the air and then brought the finger decisively down on the podium. “Tonight Ahm lettin’ yi aw ken that aw mah profits fae the new album Ararat will be put into the cause of freedom fae the Turkish people. Ahm committed tae this, and willnae rest until they generals are behind bars.”

  “Yes!” Dagmar pounded fists on the floor, torn between joy and laughter.

  Reporters were screeching questions. Attila pretended not to hear, laughed, then cupped a hand behind an ear, the gesture revealing the tattoo on his neck. He answered the question he wanted to.

  “What exactly am Ah doin’ tae aid the Turks?” he said. He offered an apologetic grin. “Please, Ah cannae exactly go spoutin mah plans over the air, ken? These guys are haudin’ enough cairds as it is.”

  One tenor voice lofted above the others crying questions. It was a nasal, braying cry that carried all the assumed cultural superiority of Thameside, a voice calculated to raise the hackles of anyone born north of the Humber.

  In other words, the perfect foil for someone like Attila.

  “Are you aware,” the voice said, “that it’s illegal for a citizen of the United Kingdom to attempt to overthrow a foreign government?”

  Attila laughed. “Surely that depends on the government’s legitimacy, no?” He shrugged. “Besides, if it aw goes tits up Ah’ll only get banged up. Nae great shakes.”

  Reporters continued to shout questions. Attila affected to be baffled by the volume, then grinned and waved.

  “Nae more answers, then,” he said, and raised two fingers in a V. “Peace oot,” he said.

  Brilliant, Dagmar thought.

  “What the hell,” Helmuth said from the couch, “did that man just say?” English was his second language, and its remote dialects were clearly not his forte.

  “He pretty much stuck to the script I wrote for him,” Dagmar said. “He just translated it into his own, ah, idiom.”

  “Does he talk like that all the time?” Richard asked.

  Dagmar reviewed their conversations that the afternoon, in which Attila had seemed perfectly competent in Received Standard English, at least when he wasn’t upset and in what Dagmar had come to think of as “balls on the rail” mode.

  “I think he’s exactly as Robbie Burns as he wants to be,” she said. “I also think he’s underrated as an actor.”

  Lloyd laughed.

  “Imagine some poor bastard trying to translate that into Turkish for Bozbeyli. My god!”

  “Are our people going to get it, though?” Helmuth said. “I certainly didn’t.”

  Dagmar considered it.

  “Attila was doing that deliberately,” she said, “and he was winking at the audience the whole time. He’s setting up a division between those that get it and those that don’t.”

  “Just as we’ve been trying to do,” Richard said.

  “Right,” Dagmar said. “You’re hip to the Scottish jive or not, just as you’re hip to Ozone or not. Our folks will get it, I’m sure.”

  “Hip,” Helmuth said, “isn’t going to do much against guns.”

  “No,” Dagmar said. “Events have demonstrated that well enough.”

  The day’s news, generally speaking, hadn’t been good. At dawn that morning, under cover of the High Zap, the Turkish military had moved against Ankara’s former mayor forted up in the Ministry of Labor. The building had been stormed, apparently with massive loss of life. Now that the Internet had been restored, photos and video was being uploaded by those survivors who had managed to escape. There was little narrative to be discovered in these artifacts, only a lot of confusion, running, screaming, and the sound of automatic weapons fire.

  The Turkish media claimed that Mayor Erez had been killed trying to escape custody, but had not as yet shown pictures of his body. That was promised for later.

  If Erez had recorded any last message, any declaration of defiance or principle, it had not yet surfaced. Muzzled by the High Zap, he had died as anonymously and silently as so many of his followers.

  Otherwise, as video uploads and Rafet’s drones showed, the day in Ankara had been mixed. There hadn’t been any big demos, but there had been constant skirmishing between protestors and the security forces. There were videos of a cop being knocked off his motorcycle by a well-thrown brick, an armored car smashing a storefront, ambulances screaming down Atatürk Boulevard, a screaming woman being manhandled into a police car by a party of sweating men in suits and ties. Piles of tires and debris had been set afire to block roads or rally resisters, and the names and addresses of Gray Wolves and police—and their families—had been posted in order to invite popular vengeance.

  These scenes were duplicated elsewhere, though with less intensity. There was general unrest in many of the cities, but nothing as well-defined as the demonstrations and occupations of the previous day. It was as if, with the Lincoln Brigade sealed away by the High Zap, the opposition throughout the country was taking a breather and trying to work out a new approach.

  The mayor of Bodrum, off in the southeast, still held out on his peninsula. The junta had so far ignored him, perhaps on the theory that his pitiful blockade did more to isolate him than to threaten the generals.

  The BBC talking heads were discussing Attila’s address. One wondered if Attila weren’t taking the role of James Bond far too seriously. Another said that his claims that he was responsible for the disorder in Turkey were absurd.

  “It’s not Attila Gordon who’s making the claim, however,” said another. “It’s the official Turkish media that’s claiming he’s responsible for the anti-government actions. All Gordon did was confirm their accusations. What are we to make of this extraordinary series of claims?”

  Nothing much, as it turned out. They did agree that if any of this was true, Attila Gordon would shortly be in jail.

  Dagmar had no worries on that score. The British government knew perfectly well who was stirring up trouble in Turkey and knew it was being done with Whitehall’s cooperation, from the Sovereign Base Area of Akrotiri. If they made the ridiculous mistake of arresting Attila, he’d walk.

  The talking heads shifted to other news. Lincoln raised the TV remote and turned off the set.

  He walked in front of the television and turned to the others.

  “Helmuth’s right that we’re not much good against guns,” he said. “But please bear in mind that behind each of those guns is a person.” He looked at the TV remote in his hand, then placed it on the stand next to the set.

  “The average Turkish conscript—in the country he’s known affectionately as ‘Mehmet’—has more in common with the demonstrators than with the generals,” he said. “When Mehmet realizes this and acts on it, the junta is finished. The officer class has a good deal more esprit and ideological solidarity, but they know full well how corrupt their leaders are, and they know how the junta is corrupting the military itself. The best members of the officer class are not natural allies of the generals but obey out of habit, or because they see no other path. When presented with alternatives, they may come over to our side.

  “Mehmet is our target,” Lincoln said, “but we’re not firing bullets. If our people start killing soldiers, they’ll close ranks i
n solidarity. Our strategy has to be to split them, not force them to unite.”

  “What are the officers going to make of Attila Gordon?” Richard asked.

  Lincoln spread his hands. “Lord only knows,” he said.

  “Well,” Helmuth said. “On that note…” He rose to his feet. “I’ll see you all in the morning. Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.”

  Dagmar rose and helped Ismet escape from the spongy clutches of the mustard-colored sofa. She felt Lincoln’s hand on her arm and turned.

  “Good save,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  Guards took the Brigade to their quarters. Dagmar paused outside Ismet’s door and carefully put her arms around his strained ribs. He carried the scent of soap and antiseptic, as if he carried a part of the hospital around with him.

  He kissed her carefully, pressing his bruised lips to hers.

  “Were you all right last night?” he asked.

  “Slept like a baby,” she said.

  “Good.” His voice took on a precise cast. “You need to see a doctor.”

  “Lincoln’s arranging it.”

  Resentment crackled in her skull as she realized she didn’t want to be the subject of the conversation.

  “And you?” she asked. “How are you doing?”

  “Still enjoying the pain pills.”

  She kissed his cheek, the point of his jaw under the ear. Bristles sang against her cheek. He rested his hands lightly on her hips, then kissed her mouth again, a peck that had the air of finality.

  “I’m going to bed,” he said finally. She dropped her arms and stood back.

  “Sleep well,” she said.

  “You, too.”

  His door closed behind him, and she heard the lock click. She turned in silence and walked to her own door, feeling all the way the eyes of the RAF Regiment guard posted on the landing. At least it wasn’t Corporal Poole who witnessed her rejection.

  Serves me right, she thought, for being crazy.

  It was lucky that she was alone that night, she reflected later, because she had barely gotten into her own room before another flashback struck and suddenly heavily armed intruders were swarming through the door and the windows. They were soldiers, with black scarves wrapped around their faces so only the glittering eyes showed, and they wore the Keystone Kops helmets of the Turkish army. Dagmar lay curled on the couch, whimpering, as they approached.