Deep State ds-2

by Walter Jon Williams

  “They’re going to get away with-”

  Lincoln shrugged. Defeat had dug deep trenches in his cheeks, at the corners of his eyes.

  “Oh, they’ll lose their security clearance. They’ll lose their jobs. But they’ll be at liberty, and they’re talented, so I expect they’ll find work somewhere, and never have to see us or each other ever again.”

  Dagmar clenched her teeth. “Does Byron and Magnus’s Turkish control know they’ve been arrested?”

  Lincoln shook his head and dropped another piece of paper in the shredder. “Probably not,” he said. “Not unless he has some other source of information beyond those two.”

  “How did they communicate with him?”

  The shredder hummed. “Letter drop via Gmail. The same way you send a message to Rafet.”

  “Can we send them a message pretending to be Byron and Magnus?”

  He frowned, looked up at her.

  “To what end?”

  “To burn them so the Turks will never trust them again.”

  Lincoln’s blue eyes turned inward. He frowned down at the pages in his hand. “What’s your idea?” he asked.

  “Send a message to confirm that we’re shutting down here and everyone is going home-except for me and Ismet, maybe. We’re flying somewhere in Europe to meet an important contact to gain information about the Zap.”

  Lincoln frowned. “Where?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Dagmar said. “The point is that when the Turks send a team to observe us or take us out, they get arrested by someone you’ve warned in advance.”

  Lincoln reached down and turned off the shredder. He squared his remaining papers and leaned back in his chair.

  “Let me think.” Frown lines appeared between his eyebrows. “I think I can manage it,” he decided. “We’ll send them to Berlin and say the meet is in the Hotel Pariser Platz-that’s practically next door to the BfV office in Berlin.” His eyes sparkled. “And I know just who to call.”

  Dagmar tried not to show herself as eager as she felt. “So you’ll do it?”

  “Yes. Why not?” He shrugged. “A last little prank, before we fly off to wretchedness and defeat.”

  What she hoped was that Bozbeyli’s first team-the people he most relied upon to travel to foreign countries and to carry out covert actions-would be busy in Germany, and preferably under arrest, when Dagmar was off in Uzbekistan.

  She and Lincoln composed the message, and it was placed in Byron’s Gmail account. It placed the meet in the bar of the Pariser Platz at 1700 the next day. Either Byron’s control would pick it up or not. Either Bozbeyli’s A Team would be diverted to Berlin or not. Either Dagmar would have a little revenge or she wouldn’t.

  At least she’d have the satisfaction of a little Parthian shot, firing over the rump of her pony as the Lincoln Brigade fled in disorganized retreat.

  She stepped out of Lincoln’s office and looked over the wreckage of the office. Kemal Ataturk looked back at her with his stern sapphire gaze. Beneath him were the Lincoln Brigade’s trophies: the DVD, the wilted flowers, the sad, sagging stuffed bear. The photos of Judy and Tuna, looking out from a world in which they had not been murdered, from a place where they still lived, laughed, and looked forward to the triumphs their lives would bring.

  Dagmar took a step toward the wall, to take the memorial down, and then hesitated.

  No, she thought. Let it remain. Let it stay on Cyprus like the ancient memorials of the island, like the stone wanassa in its ancient temple, a mystery to those who came after, a phantom touch to their nerves, their hearts. Let it tell them, she thought, that something had happened here, something at once sad and profound, something that had started as an insanely fun activity by well-meaning people but had turned into death and betrayal and failure.

  Let it stay, she thought. Let it remain, a memorial of our own delusion and foundered innocence.

  Disorder in a U.S. Benz Kit

  When Lola offered to make travel arrangements, Dagmar said she’d make her own. The next morning, Monday, she hugged Lincoln good-bye at the Nicosia airport. He felt like a sack half-filled with straw. She had told him that she would be flying out later.

  She kissed his cheek.

  “Stay in touch,” she said.

  He looked at her, watery blue eyes over the metal rims of his glasses.

  “Forgive me?” he asked.

  He had lied to her and marched the both of them straight into catastrophe, but he had been as blind and betrayed as she and was now returning home to his own professional purgatory. She couldn’t bring herself to hate him.

  “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

  She watched Lincoln and the others walk through the gate to their waiting aircraft, and then Dagmar turned away and used her phone’s satellite function to call Rafet. She explained the situation to him.

  “You can wait for Chatsworth’s instructions for exfiltration,” she said, “or you could carry on, with the understanding that you’re working for a purely private concern.”

  Otherwise known, she thought, as a demented rock star.

  She told him to consult with the Skunk Works operators and the camera techs, come to a decision concerning what they wanted to do, and then call her back on her private number.

  Dagmar’s next journey took her to the honey-colored Gulfstream 550 waiting in the section of the airport reserved for private planes. Stairs were already pushed up to the open door. She climbed the stairs and stepped aboard, and a smiling, shaggy-haired man greeted her.

  “Name’s Martin,” he said, shaking hands. He spoke with a West Country accent. “Attila would be here himself, but he had a press conference in Glasgow to announce his new justice initiative.”

  “And what would that be?” Dagmar asked.

  “He’s setting up a legal fund to aid the defense of those arrested during the demonstrations.”

  “That’s assuming there will actually be trials,” Dagmar said.

  Martin looked surprised. “Won’t there be?” he said.

  Dagmar shrugged, then introduced Ismet. Martin showed them to some seats in the rear of the aircraft, for takeoff.

  The Gulfstream featured mahogany paneling, gold-plated fixtures, a large oval table of what seemed to be polished black marble, and softly glowing leather couches. Postimpressionist watercolors hung from the bulkheads. Martin showed them to some more conventional seats for takeoff.

  “Does Attila actually own this jet?” Dagmar asked.

  “No, he rented it from a company in Rome. Can I get you any drinks?”

  Ismet asked for orange juice. Dagmar, more interested perhaps in relaxation, ordered a gin and tonic.

  One of the two smiling cabin attendants came with their drinks a few minutes later. The attendants were both tall and well-groomed, attractive, and female. They spoke with Italian and French accents, respectively. As there was no eye candy for the heterosexual female, Dagmar gathered that the plane’s usual customers were rich men.

  The attendants made sure Dagmar and Ismet were strapped in, and the Gulfsteam taxied to the runway, joined the queue behind a Boeing 737, and in its turn launched itself into the air.

  The plane refueled in Bucharest, then crossed the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Caspian Sea. They kept well clear of Turkish airspace. The cabin attendants served champagne, caviar, blinis, beef stroganoff, and a hearty red burgundy, all appropriate enough for flying over the former Soviet Union. Dessert was bananas caramelized in butter, spices, and brown sugar, then expertly flamed with cognac by the Italian attendant. A movie was offered but declined. The Gulfstream flew over a triangle of Kazakhstan and then entered Uzbek airspace.

  “The nearest airport-the nearest we can set this down, I mean-the nearest to your destination is in a town called Zarafshan,” Martin said. “We’ve got a car lined up for you. Attila also explained that you might be wanting these.”

  He produced a series of cases and produced a pair of Beretta 9mm pistols in holste
rs and a lightweight semiautomatic shotgun in a nylon scabbard. Dagmar was surprised.

  “How did you get these on such short notice?” she asked.

  “We were in Italy,” Martin said. “It’s the second-largest arms exporter in the world. They have strict regulations if you live there, but if you’re taking the goods out of the country, they practically have a take-away window.”

  Ismet looked at Dagmar.

  “Do you know how to shoot?”

  “I’ve fired pistols,” she said. “Not recently, though.”

  Not, in fact, since she was a teenager and briefly had a boyfriend who was a firearms enthusiast.

  “Maybe we’d better give you a refresher.”

  He very competently field-stripped one of the Berettas, reassembled it, and dry-fired it.

  “You’ve had practice,” Dagmar said.

  “I was in the army.”

  “You were?” She was surprised.

  “All Turkish men are required to serve. I got to be an officer because I’d been to university, so it wasn’t bad.”

  “What did you do in the army?” Dagmar asked.

  “Public relations for the Fifth Corps in Thrace.” He smiled. “My service was pretty dull, which was fine with me.”

  He gave Dagmar a brief course in use of the pistol. She expressed surprise at the pistol’s light weight, but Ismet pointed out that adding a magazine stuffed with bullets would increase its mass by a considerable amount.

  Dagmar put the pistol down on the marble tabletop. Her hands had a light coating of gun oil, and she reached for a napkin.

  “Do you think I might actually need to use this gun?” she said.

  “If Slash is not amenable to money,” he said. “We’ve got to make a credible threat.”

  “You know,” she said, “I think we have not worked out all the contingencies of this plan.”

  “Speaking of money,” Martin said. He took another package down from an overhead compartment and opened it in front of them. Packages of Bank of England notes fell out on the table.

  “Pounds sterling,” he said. “Ten thousand.”

  Dagmar looked in amazement at Ismet. “We’ve been working for the U.S. government,” he said. “And you know what? They’re pikers.”

  One of the cabin attendants appeared. She looked at the guns and money on the table as if they were no more unusual on the plane than copies of Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, then turned to Dagmar.

  “I’m afraid our landing may be delayed,” she said. “The pilot is having trouble raising ground control.”

  A cold warning shimmered up Dagmar’s spine.

  “I wonder,” she said, “how much of the gear on this plane runs on TCP/IP.”

  “Tell the pilot,” Ismet said, “to go ahead and land at Zarafshan whether he can raise them or not.”

  The attendant looked dubious. “Well,” she said, “I-”

  “We have to land somewhere.” Ismet was practical. “It may as well be where we want to go.”

  Dagmar unholstered her phone and tried to get a cell phone signal.

  “Cell networks still okay,” she said. “But VoIP is definitely down.” She pressed virtual buttons. “I can still get GPS, so the problem is local.”

  “Local to Zarafshan,” Ismet asked, “or to all of Uzbekistan?”

  Dagmar didn’t have an answer for that. Instead she looked at Martin.

  “Attila rented this aircraft, right?” she said. “Did he make any effort to disguise the fact? Working through a shell corporation or anything?”

  Bemusement crossed Martin’s face.

  “He sent me down with his credit card,” Martin said. “IAG Productions.”

  “And I presume the pilot filed a flight plan? Saying he was going to Cyprus, then to Uzbekistan?”

  “I imagine so, yeah.”

  The generals could be expected to keep a watch on the man who had declared himself an enemy of their regime. Attila might as well have drawn a flaming arrow in the sky pointing to their destination.

  Dagmar turned to Ismet.

  “The plane and the guns and money are nice,” she said. “But the advantages of working for a covert branch of the U.S. government are now a lot more apparent.”

  One of the cabin attendants approached.

  “Excuse me, miss, but is that a cell phone you’re using?”

  “I’ve got EDET; I can use it on a plane.”

  “Oh. Very well, then.”

  Dagmar gave a jump as the phone rang in her hand. She saw it was Helmuth.

  “Turkey’s down,” he said. “The whole country, plus a chunk of Greece and Bulgaria.”

  “So is Uzbekistan. How’s the DOS network doing?”

  “Working so far. The landlines are holding up, at least for now.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “A bunch of politicans have taken over the old parliament building. The one right near the Ataturk statue in Ulus, where Tuna had his action.”

  “Don’t send Rafet in there. The last time people tried to seize a building, it just made targets out of them.”

  “I’ll tell Rafet.”

  “Anything else?”

  She could almost hear the smile in Helmuth’s voice. “The German news is full of it. The cops arrested some terrorists in a Berlin hotel-all heavily armed.”

  Dagmar gave a triumphant laugh. The first team was out of the picture, and Byron was burned.

  Helmuth rang off. The guns were packed away, then stowed in overhead compartments. The money went into pockets and luggage. Dagmar went to look out the window. They were circling a town set in a sandy desert, the Kyzyl Kum, which covered at least half the country. The dunes stood out a brilliant red against deep shadows cast by the westering sun. The town was very, very green-it was amazing in its greenness, especially as contrasted with the brown and rust and alkali that surrounded it. On one side of the town were some kind of mining works, tailing ponds, paved roads. On the other side was the airport, a single strip.

  The Gulfstream passed slowly over the airport. Dagmar could see commercial aircraft sitting on concrete aprons near the terminal. There didn’t seem to be any planes preparing to take off.

  The voice of the pilot-a pleasant Aussie accent-issued from the PA.

  “Please prepare for landing.”

  Ismet and Dagmar shifted to seats with belts. The Gulfstream went into a steep dive, pulled out, touched the end of the runway, bounced, landed again.

  Dagmar concluded that the pilot wanted to get out of the way of any other aircraft that might be trying to land, and quickly.

  She approved. The faster this was dealt with, the better.

  Deranged Scot Sum Amounts to Local Habits

  The Gulfstream pulled into an area reserved for foreign aircraft. A polished Honda sedan drew up as the attendants were opening the door, and a man in a uniform got out.

  He came aboard the plane and took care of the customs details, stamped Dagmar’s and Ismet’s passports, and welcomed them to Uzbekistan. Dagmar considered how many long lines she’d stood in at passport control throughout the world, and she turned to Ismet.

  “The rich are different from you and me,” she said.

  “So I understand.”

  As the customs officer returned to his Honda, a bright yellow vehicle drew up. It resembled a smallish Jeep and was accessorized with running boards, bullbars, and spotlights. A teardrop-shaped luggage compartment was attached to the roof. It looked rather sporty.

  “What is that?” Dagmar asked.

  “That’s a Lada Niva four-wheel drive,” Ismet said. “You haven’t seen one before?”

  “If I have, I probably figured it was a Kawasaki or something.”

  “I think it’s ours.”

  A man in a suit and tie got out of the Niva. He spoke a sort of English, and he showed Ismet and Dagmar the vehicle. The vehicle seemed rugged enough and ran well for all that the odometer showed 165,000 kilometers. Red plastic jerricans of g
asoline had been loaded into the rear compartment for crossing the Kyzyl Kum. Ismet and Dagmar signed papers, and Martin presented a credit card. The gentleman, who had introduced himself as Babur, copied down the number carefully.

  “Do you have Internet?” Dagmar asked.

  “No,” the man said. “No Internet today.” He didn’t sound as if it was that unusual an occurrence.

  Jet noise sounded in the air. Dagmar looked up, held up a hand against the sun that squatted near the western horizon, and saw a jet come into view, a smaller craft than the Gulfsteam. It cruised slowly over the airfield, much as the Gulfstream had done.

  Turkish air force markings were clear on the fuselage. Dagmar’s heart leaped into her throat.

  “Look!” She pointed wildly. Ismet looked up.

  “Orospu cocug u!” he snarled. It must have been impolite, because Babur looked a little shocked-Uzbek was a Turkic language, and obscenity probably carried across language barriers easier than anything else.

  Dagmar looked across the pavement at the customs officer in his Honda. He probably knew the other plane was coming, that’s why he was still waiting here.

  Dagmar stepped closer to Babur and lightly touched his arm, then pointed toward the Turkish jet.

  “Are you renting them a car?” she said.

  “Yes. If you can drive me back to my office, I can bring it.”

  “I wonder,” Dagmar said, “if you can offer me some help?”

  Babur smiled pleasantly. “Of course, miss.”

  “That plane is bringing some people we don’t want to meet. Could you possibly delay bringing their car?”

  Babur spread his hands. “Miss, I can’t possibly-”

  Dagmar reached into her pocket and withdrew a bundle of English currency. Babur’s eyes locked onto the monarch’s portrait, and his words came to a halt.

  Dagmar peeled off five hundred-pound notes and handed them to Babur. He looked both pleased and confused.

  “Share this with the people you work with,” Dagmar said. “Tell them to go to dinner. Tell them to have dinner for a long time.”

  The notes vanished into a pocket of Babur’s neat suit.