“This is Ulugbek,” Ismet said from atop the camel on the right. “I found him at his sheep camp. His brother is away with the truck, so we rented these instead.”
From out of the darkness she saw Ulugbek’s smile under a dark mustache. “Assalomu alaykum!” he called.
“Günaydin,” she ventured, not knowing if the Turkish greeting would translate or not.
Ulugbek kicked one leg over the front hump of his camel and dropped to the sand. He wore boots and a parka with a MontBell label. He approached Ismet’s camel, gave it a series of clucks and commands, and compelled it to kneel. Ismet dismounted awkwardly, staggered on the sand, and recovered.
Ulugbek approached Dagmar and gave her a warm, extended hug. “Hayirli tong!” he said cheerfully. He smelled pleasantly enough of strong tobacco. At a loss for what to do, she patted him on the back.
Ulugbek hugged her twice more, then set to work. The camels were already wearing leather harnesses—that’s what Dagmar had heard jingling—and Ulugbek hooked them to nylon towing straps, which he then attached to the Niva’s rear bumper. The camels farted and belched. Dagmar and Ismet watched, both shivering in the cold.
“We and the black hats are in a low-speed chase,” Dagmar said. “We’re moving at camel speed.”
“Camels can go pretty fast,” Ismet said. “I just found out.”
Ulugbek gestured for someone to get into the Niva. Dagmar did so and put the four-by-four into reverse. Ulugbek gave a yell and began hitting the camels with a stick. The animals lurched forward into the harnesses, Dagmar gunned the engine, and the Niva rocked back. Red sand flew from the wheels.
It didn’t work; the Niva was still hung on the sand. But Ulugbek had thought ahead and strapped a shovel to his saddle. More sand flew as he dug sand from beneath the Niva, and then the camels were driven forward again.
Still the Niva didn’t move. Ulugbek was indomitable: he shifted more sand, then geed up the camels a third time. The Niva lurched backward, then hung. Ulugbek applied himself to the shovel, and more sand flew.
The eastern horizon was turning pale before the Niva finally came free. Ulugbek unhooked the tow straps, then came to Dagmar’s door. Dagmar opened the door, and Ulugbek stepped forward and embraced her.
More hugs were in order, apparently. Dagmar submitted with a good grace despite the fact that Ulugbek’s efforts at digging had left him covered in sand and sweat. Ismet tipped Ulugbek a can of caviar and then waved farewell as Dagmar gunned the engine and sped in the direction of Chechak.
Ismet sagged in his seat. “My god,” he said. “I never want to ride a camel again.”
“Was it painful?”
“It was too far above the ground,” Ismet said. “I was afraid I’d fall off and break an arm.”
When the rising sun at last blazed above the horizon, it showed a dark blotch on the watermelon red sands, a black oasis lying under chalky sandstone mesa. A cluster of receiver dishes and a cell phone tower stood atop the bluff.
“We’re there,” Dagmar said.
Ismet looked at the new world and yawned.
“Should I open a can of caviar?”
“That might be a little premature. Have a pear.”
The oasis grew closer. Houses of mud brick lined roads of sand. There was a general store with gas pumps out front, a coffeehouse, a tiny mosque with a metal dome that looked prefabricated, and several obese dogs lying in the early morning sunshine.
Dagmar slowed as she came into the town. Her GPS said that they had arrived. Wind blew the Niva’s rooster tail of dust over the car, and she peered through the ruddy dust. The town’s two commercial businesses both seemed closed. No one was yet on the streets.
In the sudden silence, she heard a tinkling waterfall sound. She wondered if it was wind chimes or perhaps a fountain.
She tried to phone Üruisamoglu for directions, but the cell network was down.
“God damn it!” she said.
“Go to the mosque,” Ismet said.
As she drove to the mosque she discovered the source of the tinkling sound: goats’ bells, each tuned to a different note. The herd passed in front of her, urged on by an elderly man in felt boots and an olive green Russian army anorak trimmed with rabbit fur.
More elderly men were found at the mosque, where the dawn service had just ended. They stood in their white skullcaps, carrying their beads and talking with one another. Ismet got out of the Niva, approached, and had a lengthy conversation. He got back in the Niva and gestured toward the bluffs.
“Slash is only in the most obvious place for an IT guy,” he said.
Dagmar looked up at the antenna that reared above the town.
“Right,” she said, and put the Niva in gear.
“How is your Uzbek, by the way?” she asked.
“Nonexistent,” Ismet said. “Uzbek is about as close to modern Turkish as German is to English.”
“You managed to talk to them, though. And Ulugbek.”
“We found a few words in common.”
“Whoah!” They had come to the edge of town, and Dagmar braked at the prow of a strange duck-billed vehicle looming around the corner of a mud wall. The other machine didn’t move, and Dagmar realized it was just parked there.
She slowly pulled ahead and saw that she had been startled by a battered old armored vehicle with eight huge tires, its steel flanks studded with little portholes. The original olive drab paint had flaked off it, and it was now spattered with rust, like an old boulder that had been scabbed with fungus.
“Lots of old Soviet military gear lying around the provinces,” Ismet said.
“There are license plates on it,” she said. “Someone must drive the thing.”
The armored vehicle was set up to pull what looked like a long homemade trailer, with a lot of old pipe stacked on it.
“Maybe the owner digs wells,” Ismet said.
The Niva descended into a gulch behind the town, then climbed up the other side. Ahead Dagmar saw a two-rut road running past the face of the bluffs, weaving between boulders that had been eroded from above and tumbled down the slope. They came around one craggy rock and saw that a new road had been blazed up the face of the bluffs. She shifted the vehicle into four-wheel drive, cranked the wheel over, and the Niva began to lurch upward.
As they came around a curve they had a view of the oasis and the desert below.
“Look there,” Ismet said.
Dagmar braked and saw a red rooster tail crossing the desert, moving fast in their direction.
“That would be our friends from the airport,” Ismet said. “I don’t think Babür was able to hold them for very long.”
“They’ve got a lot faster car than we do,” Dagmar said. She looked at him. “What do we do now? We’re stuck on this hill.”
“Go up to the top,” Ismet said. “We can’t turn around here.”
The Niva jounced to the top of the road. The tower and the receiver dishes were surrounded by chain link and razor wire. But beyond the tower, to Dagmar’s surprise, she saw a yurt, the round felt-walled dwelling that had been a home to the steppe peoples for millennia. Ismet’s nomad relatives still lived in similar tents, at least part of the year.
Next to the yurt sat a Volkswagen Rabbit that seemed about the same vintage as the armored vehicle she’d seen in the oasis.
“I’ll drive,” Ismet said. He jumped out of the passenger door, then paused to look down as the strange car entered the village. “Take your gun.”
Heart pounding, Dagmar reached for the gun and its holster and jammed the holster into the back of her jeans.
“What are you doing?”
He turned to look at her. Bruises bled down his face.
“I’m going to lead them off into the desert,” he said. “Once we’re away, you get Slash into his car”—jerking his head toward the Rabbit—“and then you get him to Zarafshan.”
Ismet jumped into the Niva, and there was a shriek of gears as he put it in reverse. A
s he backed, then turned and began rocking down the bluff, Dagmar was aware that a young man had come out of the yurt and was watching her.
He was small boned and pale skinned, and he huddled in a sheepskin overcoat. He had a unibrow over large brown eyes, and he watched them with a little frown on his face.
She was surprised to see that he was propped up on metal forearm crutches. None of the online material she’d seen about him indicated that he had trouble walking.
Dagmar approached him.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Briana. I talked to you on the phone.”
Comprehension dawned on the young man’s face, though he still seemed wary.
“I’m Nimet Üruisamoglu,” he said.
“Otherwise known as Slash Berzerker.”
He flushed slightly. “I started using that name,” he said, “when I was fourteen.”
Dagmar stepped close.
“You used that name a few months ago,” she said. “When you did some work for the Turkish government.”
His unibrow darkened, and he looked suspicious.
“What does that matter?” he said.
“Because the government figured out that you put in a back door when you compiled that program and now they’ve sent people to kill you.” She pointed over the edge of the bluff, toward the village.
“They’re in Chechak now. As soon as they work out where you are, they’re coming up here. Of course maybe they already know that you’re here.”
Slash scowled, deep lines forming in his forehead. The scowl was too old an expression for his young face. His hands clenched on the handgrips of his crutches.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
Dagmar was very aware of the pistol pressing against her spine. She took another step toward Üruisamoglu, hands rubbing her sore forearms.
“They let you compile the program yourself, using your own algorithms. That wasn’t a smart thing to do, but then they’re not very bright about computers, are they?”
His dark eyes studied her. His upper lip gave a twitch.
“They said it was a weapon,” he said. “They said it was something they’d found in a government router, probably planted by a Chinese botnet.”
“It is a weapon,” Briana said. “And the generals are using it now. They shut down New York the other day, and now they’ve shut down all of Turkey and all of Uzbekistan.”
Üruisamoglu’s lips parted in surprise.
“That’s what’s happening here?” he said.
“Oh yes.”
“I thought our stupid subcontractors in Tashkent had accidentally switched us off. I tried to text them about it, but wireless was down, too.”
“They shut down Uzbekistan because they didn’t want you to get a warning that you were about to be killed.”
His unibrow knit again. “And who are you, exactly?”
“I work for Ian Attila Gordon.” She couldn’t help but laugh as she said it.
“The rock star?” Üruisamoglu was deeply surprised. “The man who’s trying to overthrow the government?”
“The man who’s trying to overthrow the government that’s trying to kill you. Yes, that man.”
Dagmar could hear the sounds of a car grinding at the base of the bluff. She gave Üruisamoglu a warning look, then crouched down to creep carefully to the edge of the bluff.
A dark sedan was winding along the road. It looked not so much as if it had driven across the desert as physically attacked it: the car was covered in red dust, and there were several fresh dings on the paintwork.
“What—?” Üruisamoglu’s voice.
She realized that he had followed her and he was now silhouetted on the skyline.
“Get down!”
She grabbed his sheepskin coat and pulled him off his crutches. He gave a cry and fell heavily onto the ground. She was afraid he’d cry out and she put a hand over his mouth. His eyes were very large.
The sedan ground on, kicking up alkaline dust. She could see Ismet and the Niva pulled off the road, behind a large block of stone that had at some point in the past tumbled down the bluffs. Ismet was standing by the car, his right arm by his side.
The sedan came closer. Then Ismet stepped out from cover, his right arm pointing at the car.
The sound of rapid fire echoed up the bluffs. The sedan slammed to a halt, then went into reverse. Ismet kept firing. The sedan slewed off the road, and its doors opened. Four men in suits tumbled out of the car and sought cover.
Ismet jumped into the Niva and gunned the vehicle onto the road.
Now it was the others who fired—three of them, Dagmar saw, had pistols. Dagmar felt her nerves leap with every shot. She heard a few bangs as rounds struck the Niva, but the Russian jeep pulled away in a swirl of dust.
The Turkish gunmen ran back to their car. The engine raced. The fourth man—the gunmen had dark suits; he wore something sand colored—was late in getting to the car, and she heard impatient commands. Then doors slammed, and the sedan was racing away.
“Okay,” Dagmar said. “Now we get in your car and we run like hell.”
Üruisamoglu looked at her.
“We can’t,” he said. “The car’s broken down. They were going to bring me a new one in a day or two.”
Dagmar watched the Niva and its pursuer racing away along the bluffs.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ve got to get down to the village and get a ride.”
He spread his hands, indicating his crumpled body, the metal crutches.
“How?” he said.
Dagmar was having a hard time believing how quickly it had all gone wrong.
“Let me help you up.” She tugged on the sheepskin and helped him rise. He hobbled toward the yurt, and she followed.
She could go down to the village, she thought. Get a car, bring it back up the bluffs. But that would leave Üruisamoglu unguarded. The assassins could return and kill him.
“All right,” she said. “You’ve got a back door into the program. So use it.”
Spear Point Flies to Hooters
The yurt was cozy, build on a wooden stage above the ground, with Oriental rugs on the floor and a pellet wood stove. It had a wooden door, a bed on a platform, a large desktop computer, equipment for making tea and warming food. A wood-lattice framework supported the felt walls. There were maps and photos of the Kyzyl Kum, with marks where Üruisamoglu was weaving together his IT infrastructure. He lowered himself carefully onto a large pillow and pulled out his laptop.
“The program will be in your router here,” Dagmar said. “You need to configure it so that it will obey you—obey my— orders.”
“That’s going to take a while.”
Dagmar was surprised.
“Why?” she said. “All you have to do is use your back door to get into the program, change the government’s password to your own—to my own—and then tell the program to go dormant again.”
Üruisamoglu’s unibrow grew darker as he frowned.
“It’s not that simple,” he said. “The program’s… different now.”
Dagmar felt a sudden, raging certainty that the kid was lying. She could feel a mad itch where the gun dug into her spine.
“Tell me quick!” she snapped.
The unibrow lifted. He seemed impressed by the force of her anger. Not in a frightened way, exactly, but in a way that absorbed his attention. As if he found strong emotions somehow alien but still the subject of intense interest.
“Okay,” he said. “The government was afraid of someone doing… exactly what you want me to do. So when I try to change the program, it queries a central server in Ankara for permission.”
Dagmar felt a snarl tug at her lips. She wasn’t believing this. “It can contact the central server even when the Net’s down?”
“Yes. It will have the correct codes to pass the message through any affected routers.” He looked down at his keyboard. “I can get into the central server, I think, because I comp
iled that program, too, but I’ll have to work out how to structure my attack. And I’ll have to make certain that Korkut or the other system administrators don’t see me working.”
“Korkut? Who’s Korkut?”
“He’s head of computer security for the Intelligence Section. He’s smart. I worked for him.”
Korkut, she thought. She wondered if he was the man she had called Kronsteen, the man who had been behind the attempts to discredit her.
“He was down there,” Üruisamoglu said. He gestured toward where the sedan was roaring off in pursuit. “Korkut was the man in the light-colored suit.”
He was the one who wasn’t shooting, Dagmar thought. The one the others were yelling at.
Korkut was the geek the assassins had brought along, to make sure Üruisamoglu didn’t try to put one over on them.
Dagmar had a lot of questions about Korkut, but she didn’t have the time to ask them. Anger jittered in her nerves. But the more she thought about what he’d told her, the more plausible it seemed.
“Better get busy, then,” she said.
He didn’t answer. Instead he put earbuds into his ears, then began to type. After a few minutes he began to sway back and forth to his music. Dagmar watched him, then ran up to him and pulled one of the buds out of his ears.
“Are you listening to music?” she demanded.
He looked up in surprise. She could hear tinny Europop sounds coming from the bud dangling from her hand.
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
“You can’t listen to music!” she said. “You’ll deplete your battery power!”
“I always listen to music when I work.”
“Not this time.”
She pulled the cord from his laptop and confiscated the earbuds. He looked at her in fury.
“Do you have a miniturbine array for recharging?” she demanded.
Üruisamoglu looked disgusted. “No. I normally have electricity here, but it went out along with everything else.”
Dagmar clenched her teeth. She had a recharging unit in her luggage, but her luggage was still in the Niva.
“How much power do you have in your laptop, anyway?”
Deep State Page 36