Deep State ds-2

by Walter Jon Williams

  But Dagmar was very tired and a little drunk and felt unable to explain this to the others. So she punched the air and cried, “We are Bond!” and signaled Tuna to bring her another drink.

  It was early evening, and the scent of jet fuel mingled with the charcoal smoke from the backyard barbecues. “Do you know,” Judy said as they cycled home together, “that you don’t have to be a Muslim to be a dervish?”

  Dagmar looked at her. “Rafet’s kind of dervish, you mean?”

  “I… guess so.” Judy’s eyes narrowed in thought, and she clacked her tongue piercing against her upper teeth. “He said that anyone with a heart open to the Divine was welcome at his services.”

  Dagmar cast her mind back to the Web page of the Niagara lodge, the description of the services. She had to speak loudly over the sound of a landing Skylifter.

  “Don’t they sing verses from the Koran?” she shouted. “I mean, they may be open to all faiths, but those faiths are going to spend a lot of time listening to the Complete Works of Mohammed and singing songs in praise of Allah.”

  “Rafet only talked about the drumming,” Judy answered.

  “But you and he are getting on?”

  Judy seemed doubtful. Sunset colors glowed on her tattoo sleeves. She clacked her tongue piercing against her teeth in rhythm.

  “I suppose. He didn’t ask me out or anything.”

  “You could ask him.”

  “Mm.” Doubtfully. “What’s my opening? He’s talking about God and mystic oneness, and I pop up and say, ‘By the way, Terrorslash III is showing at the base cinema, want to go?’ ”

  Dagmar had no advice on this matter.

  “Ismet offered to take me out,” she said.

  Judy raised an eyebrow. “The quiet one? You like the quiet ones?”

  “I like the intelligent and undemanding ones.”

  “I see.” Nodding.

  “You know,” Dagmar said, “this is a military base loaded with guys. Does it have to be the monk?”

  Judy laughed. “He’s just so pretty!”

  Dagmar could only agree. “Maybe that’s why God picked him,” she said.

  Judy gave her an odd look. Then she shook her head.

  “By the way,” she said, “my dad knows Ian Attila Gordon.”

  Dagmar looked at her. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Ian’s a big fan of his. Sometimes they do benefits together.” She laughed. “Dad says he’s a complete tosser.”

  “I didn’t think he was that great a Bond.”

  Judy winked. “We’re better, yah?” Dagmar smiled wanly. Judy jumped off her bike and turned up the short walk to their apartment. Dagmar followed.

  “Dad said that he hoped Ian would make a success as an actor,” she said, “because his musical career wasn’t going anywhere.”

  “He’s got a big album coming up in a few weeks,” Dagmar said. “I saw posters at the airport.”

  Keys flashed in the light of the setting sun; the apartment door opened. Somewhere, a jet engine fired off its afterburner: the vast noise diminished to a muffled roar as soon as the door was closed.

  “Ian’s album is a huge mess,” Judy said. “That’s the word from the producer. It should have come out along with the movie, but it was delayed.” She looked up. “Can I use the shower first?”

  Dagmar gave a wave of her hand.

  It was time to call California and get the bad news about the Seagram’s game.

  “I’m sorry I was so evasive yesterday,” Lloyd said. It was early morning, and he had clearly been waiting for her outside the ops center door.

  “No problem,” Dagmar said as she racked her bike. “We’re really not supposed to give personal information. Especially in public places like bars.”

  “It’s just that my father is an Alevi Kurd and I have to be careful what I say around Sunni Turks.”

  Dagmar opened her mouth, then closed it and nodded.

  “I don’t know what their attitude is to Kurds,” Lloyd went on. “And I’m pretty sure Rafet would consider Alevis to be heretics-and he’s a Islamist and most Alevis tend to be secularists, and that on top of the Kurd thing… And of course he’s my roommate, so that makes it worse.”

  “Right,” Dagmar said. “Understood.” Not understanding this at all.

  Lloyd gave a nervous smile and touched her arm. “Thanks.”

  “Rafet says that his outfit is open to all,” Dagmar said.

  “By all,” Lloyd said, “he may not actually include Alevi.” He shrugged. “Or he may. I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” Dagmar said.

  “Look,” Lloyd said. “There are a lot of Alevis in Turkey-more than most Sunni Turks think. The head of the last commission that was supposed to arrive at an estimate ended up dead in a mysterious auto accident, and that was before the military took over.”

  Dagmar, pretending she understood, gave a careful nod. For a country of modest size, she thought, Turkey’s politics were beyond intricate.

  “Sometimes,” Lloyd said, “they just kill us.”

  “Ah.” This was the best response she could manage, given the depth of the sea of ignorance in which she swam.

  She was unable to decide if Lloyd was a complete paranoid or not, so when she had a moment to herself she wikied as much of this as she could, and then understood even less than she had before.

  Sometimes they just kill us, she thought.

  Sadly, it seemed, there was no branch of the human race to which this statement did not apply.

  Two-cycle engines spit oil-tinged exhaust into the air. Tires shrieked and scrambled for traction on the corners. Dagmar wasn’t used to driving this close to the ground: the surface of the track seemed threateningly close as it passed beneath her. Tuna made an effort to pass her on the left; she moved to cut him off.

  She had seized the lead early in the race-she was an early adapter of technology, even if the technology was mechanical and considerably older than she was.

  RAF Akrotiri was a full-service air base: it even had a go-kart track. And after five days’ hard work, Lincoln had decreed an afternoon of fun, a cookout followed by racing. The day had cooperated: morning showers had been followed by mellow afternoon sun.

  Dagmar glanced over her shoulder, saw Ismet pulling up on the right, and swerved to block him. He had to brake and fell back. She hugged the inside on a corner; then as she came out onto the straight she swung out into the middle of the track, ready to block any challenger. Tuna rolled up on the left again, and she swerved to stay in his way.

  She looked over her shoulder to see if Ismet was coming up on the right. He had pulled up even with Tuna, but his little two-cycle engine didn’t seem to have the power to overtake the leader. He looked at Dagmar, and as their eyes met, a silent signal passed between them.

  Tuna was boxed in, Dagmar ahead of him, Ismet on his left, the grass outfield on his right. Dagmar slowed, and Ismet turned the steering wheel and swerved to his right, right into Tuna.

  The two go-karts collided, then rebounded. Ismet swerved wildly to the far side of the track before he regained control, and Tuna went clear into the grass and hit a wide, shallow puddle left behind by the morning’s rain: a tall rainbow sheet of water sprayed high in the air as his kart stopped dead. Dagmar cackled and accelerated away. She could hear Tuna’s roars of frustration fade behind her.

  When she passed the start line, the race course manager was holding out a sign that said: NO BUMPING. Dagmar gave her a cheerful wave and raced past.

  She managed to keep ahead of Ismet until she came up behind Magnus and Byron. She was surprised they were so far behind that she was on the verge of lapping them, and then she saw that Angry Man and Kilt Boy were not so much racing as restaging the naval battle from Ben-Hur. The two karts were ramming each other, bounding apart, then ramming again. A considerable slipstream blew up Magnus’s kilt, flapping it in his face, but it didn’t seem to affect the ferocity of his driving. Neither driver spoke or gestured or gave
any other indication they were angry at each other: they let their vehicles do the talking.

  It seemed dangerous to go near them-and Dagmar didn’t want to see up the kilt anyway-so she slowed and followed the two lurching, ramming, grating go-karts around the track to the start line, where the manager black-flagged both Magnus and Byron and sent them off the course. Dagmar accelerated again and again found herself in the lead, but by this point no one was racing anymore.

  Dagmar seemed to have won. Or so she surmised.

  “What the hell was that about?” Dagmar asked Lincoln later, after she’d unstrapped herself from her kart.

  Lincoln wore a tropical shirt and a broad sun hat and carried a bottle of Fanta. In the tropical sun his Elvis shades had turned a deep black. He was amused.

  “Healthy competition, I guess. We’re going to need that kind of aggression two days from now.”

  She gave him a surprised look.

  “Two days?”

  “That’s when we hit the first target. The camera crews, the bus, and the air unit are already on their way to the mainland, and Tuna will fly out tomorrow.”

  Dagmar felt herself rearing like a startled horse.

  “Are you serious? Our exercises have been complete shambles.”

  Lincoln gave an amused smile. “Perhaps from the point of view of someone who produces professional videos. But in fact everyone’s gotten better, and in any case we’re not trying to make everything look like Hollywood-if all the video looks too professional, it’ll be obvious that professionals are involved. It seems to me that everyone’s doing well enough.”

  Dagmar was astounded. “Well enough?” she repeated, and shook her head. Lincoln was clearly out of his mind.

  “Lin-Chatsworth, it’s got to be better than that! This thing could be a catastrophe!”

  He raised a hand. “We do not have world enough and time,” he said. “We have to move forward.”

  She looked at him.

  “Is there some particular reason why it has to happen now?”

  Lincoln waved his Fanta.

  “It should have happened months ago, okay? And now I don’t want any delays, because that gives the people in D.C. time to get nervous, and then fly in to interfere-” His glasses slipped down his nose, and he looked at Dagmar over the metal rims with his soft blue eyes.

  “We’ll make mistakes,” he said. “We won’t be perfect. But Bozbeyli’s been in charge over there long enough.”

  “Another week and we could-”

  He put a hand on her shoulder.

  “You’re the best, Dagmar. You’re the best hope we have. And I have utter confidence in you.”

  Frustration and vanity danced an exasperating little tango in Dagmar’s skull.

  “I’m only one person,” she said, suddenly forlorn. “Turkey is a whole country.”

  “I saw you knock Tuna into the weeds just now,” Lincoln said. “I figure you’ll know what to do, when the time comes.”

  If I’m not huddled in the corner, Dagmar thought, hiding from phantom Indonesians.

  But sensibly enough, she kept that thought to herself.

  “There’s something not quite right here,” Dagmar said.

  “I know,” said Calvin.

  “But I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “Neither can I.”

  Calvin was the writer Dagmar had hired to script the game for Seagram’s. Like Dagmar, he was a science fiction writer whose career had collapsed-in his case, because his publisher had been so enthusiastic about his first novel that they had printed no fewer than thirty thousand hardback copies, of which they had sold six thousand. What would normally have been a very respectable sale for a first novel had become a horrific financial loss for the company, a loss for which the author-as always-had been blamed. The second and third books, already under contract when the first book appeared, had received no promotion, and their publication had been delayed for years when their places on the schedule had been taken by books about which the publisher was more enthusiastic.

  By the end of this purgatory Calvin’s writing career was as dead as a can of Potted Meat Product, and when Dagmar called he had been supporting himself by ghostwriting erotica for the online journals of porn stars out of the San Fernando Valley. He’d been very happy to accept Dagmar’s offer for work that didn’t involve rapturous close-up descriptions of the money shot.

  Long-distance from Cyprus, Dagmar had to walk Calvin through the process of writing an ARG. Copies of the work were emailed to Dagmar, and she made notes and changes and emailed them back. And at least once each day there was a phone call filled with desperation and last-minute improvisation.

  “So we’ve got Harry and Sandee trying to get to Lake Louise in Alberta,” Calvin said. “And all they have is a few dollars, a Swiss Army knife, and a bottle of whiskey-the latter being product placement. And Sandee is falling apart because she’s just seen her son murdered, so Harry has to take charge and turn hero.”

  “With the help of the players,” Dagmar said.

  “Of course.”

  Dagmar thought about this for a moment.

  “Why,” Dagmar asked, “am I not seeing this?”

  There was a long silence while Calvin considered his character outline.

  “Harry hasn’t been a leader up to that point,” Calvin said. “All he’s done is follow Sandee around, and when she’s not around he wanders in circles.”

  “That’s right,” Dagmar said.

  “The players are going to help him out, of course.”

  “It still has to be plausible,” Dagmar said.

  There was another long moment, and then Calvin spoke. The words came slowly, as he thought them out. Dagmar could almost hear the slow clank of gears turning in his head.

  “I can put in a flashback,” he said. “I can show him being heroic at some point in the past.”

  “No flashbacks,” Dagmar said. “Flashbacks are deadly. They confuse the hell out of everybody because the games take place in a kind of eternal present-flashbacks break continuity.”

  “Okay.” Calvin’s gears ground slowly on. “I can-I can foreshadow it somehow.”

  Dagmar thought about this.

  “You’d have to start back on week one, and week one is launching in two days. You’d have to rewrite scenes that are already completed.”

  “Well. I could.”

  “You’ve already written a lot of material that shows that Harry isn’t a hero,” Dagmar said.

  “Well.” Thoughtfully. “I could change all that in the rewrites.”

  “Maybe he’s not the hero,” Dagmar said. “Maybe Sandee is the hero.”

  “But Sandee’s going to fall apart. She’s going to have a breakdown in week three.”

  “What if it’s Harry’s job to keep Sandee together? Maybe that’s what he’s there for.”

  There was another moment of silence.

  “So what you’re suggesting,” Calvin said, “is that Harry isn’t Frodo, he’s Sam.”

  “Yes,” Dagmar said. “That’s what I was suggesting.” The Tolkien analogy hadn’t occurred to her, but it seemed appropriate.

  “I don’t know,” Calvin said. “I had such big plans for Harry.”

  Dagmar suspected that Calvin was very fond of Harry, identifying perhaps with the character’s haplessness. The fondness was blinding Calvin to the character’s true arc, which Dagmar was pretty sure meant that Harry wasn’t the Hero, he was the Hero’s Best Friend.

  “I think this will work,” Dagmar said. “And the players will like helping Sandee surmount her troubles.”

  “Maybe they can guide her to a good shrink,” Calvin muttered.

  “I think this is our solution,” Dagmar said. “I think this is how it goes.”

  Calvin conceded defeat. “Let me think,” he said, “how to present this.”

  I am Plot Queen, Dagmar thought in quiet triumph. I may sleep in a crooked bed, but I can make a story dance.

  If
only, she thought, she was as good at creating a happy ending in real life as in her fictions.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

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  Dagmar’s first action-the proof-of-concept-would take place in Istanbul. In Beyazit Square, before the tall gate that marked the entrance to Istanbul University.

  Even most of the Lincoln Brigade didn’t know the target. Of those remaining in Cyprus, only Dagmar and Lincoln were aware.

  Dagmar had the explosion dream the night before the Istanbul action, the Ford blowing up again and again, the fire blossoming in a great golden bubble, the incendiaries raining down, bouncing along the pavement like flaming bystanders fleeing the scene of a catastrophe. Dagmar woke in her cockeyed bed, the room wheeling around her, terror clutching at her throat.

  She nerved herself for the day with coffee and her lucky RIOT NRRD T-shirt, then went to the ops room early and buried herself in last-minute planning.

  There would be a lot of spam to send out today.

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  The students at the university were natural allies. Other groups would be called in as well.

  Dagmar frowned down at the message glowing in the flatscreen before her. Send the message and everyone was committed. The revolution-or its horrific suppression-was on its way.

  It had been Dagmar’s idea to use spam as a means of coordinating political action. Not the disgust or annoyance that was the usual response to a message offering penis enlargement, a fortune waiting in Nigeria, or investment advice, but a message hidden somewhere in the text that only an insurrectionist could read.