Then the vehicle dropped nose-first onto the narrow road leading to the Kyzyl Kum, and Ismet lost his footing and crashed to the floor on top of Uruisamoglu.
Ismet scrambled into one of the metal seats and then pulled Uruisamoglu into another. The vehicle swayed and crashed. The engine sound was deafening. The passenger compartment smelled of auto exhaust and cordite.
“This is Shemazar!” Ismet pointed to the driver. “He owns this APC.”
Shemazar-a man in late middle age, thin and lined-turned and waved a hand.
“Hi, lady!” he said.
Hi, lady, Dagmar thought. This guy must have apprenticed as a New York cabbie.
The APC jounced to the floor of the desert. Ismet shouted instructions. Shemazar waved, shifted into a lower gear, and deliberately drove the APC over the assassins’ sedan, leaving it a wreck at the foot of the bluff.
Dagmar looked through one of the slits and saw the man in the light-colored suit. He made no attempt to run away but stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the catastrophe with a disgusted look on his face. Though she doubted he could see her, Dagmar waved at him through the port.
Good-bye, Kronsteen, she thought. Just think of it as revolution creep. And then the armored car rolled on.
In a few minutes, they were in the oasis. The Niva waited at Shemazar’s house, much the same except for some bullet holes in the hatchback.
“I led them off as far as I could,” Ismet said. “Their car was faster, but I had four-wheel drive, so whenever they started to catch me I moved into the open desert, and they couldn’t move so fast there. But eventually they realized they weren’t going to get me, so they went back to the yurt. I went cross-country to the village, because I thought I might be able to rent this vehicle.” He patted the armored side. “We’re out another five hundred pounds. Sorry I didn’t return your call, but I was in the middle of negotiations.”
“You keep saving me,” Dagmar said.
He gave her a deadpan look.
“Well,” he said, “you keep running into trouble.”
In the village they transferred to the Niva. Shemazar cackled and insisted on hugging Dagmar multiple times and kissing her on both cheeks. His lips were excessively moist. Under the circumstances, Dagmar felt, she could scarcely object.
“What about the killers?” Dagmar asked as they pulled away. “What if they catch us again?”
“Not likely,” Ismet judged. “We just smashed their car. They’re on foot with a wounded man. Nobody in the village is going to give them a car, because the crazy old guy in the armored car isn’t going to let them. So I’d say they’re walking to Zarafshan.”
Unless, Dagmar thought, they could hook up with Ulugbek and his camels.
Lamprey’s Appendage Sucks on Ale
Ismet got behind the wheel of the Niva and they left the oasis behind. Dagmar called Helmuth and tried to catch up with events in Turkey.
“Turkey’s got Internet again,” Helmuth said. “Everything we’re hearing says that it’s true that the commander of the Second Army got deposed-by his own officers. They’ve declared for the revolution and they’re ready to march on Ankara.”
“The Second Army is in the Kurdish provinces,” Ismet said. “The general would have been one of Bozbeyli’s most loyal subordinates-he was the one who had to keep an eye on the heroin trade. So it’s significant that his own people put him under arrest.”
As they jounced toward Zarafshan on the highway, as the silver high-tension towers marched past like a long row of saluting soldiers, they heard of the cascade of events that spelled the collapse of Bozbeyli’s regime. Other generals-the ones Lincoln had complained were sitting on the fence-began to eye their own subordinates with distrust and to consider that perhaps their choices had been limited to declaring for the rebels or being deposed by their own men.
The First Army commander in Istanbul declared for the rebels, and the Third Army on the Iraq border seemed in chaos, with some units declaring one way and some the other. Only the forces on Cyprus stayed loyal, and they were unable to move to the mainland.
By the time Zarafshan was in sight, it was over. Bozbeyli and the others in his administration had abdicated and flown to Azerbaijan.
“And not only that,” Dagmar said. “It turns out I own the Internet. It all belongs to me.”
Ismet looked at her. Uruisamoglu pointedly did not.
“It’s true,” she said. “Though maybe I’ll give it back.” She cleared her throat. “Maybe. Wouldn’t want to leave it in the wrong hands.”
She reached for her handheld.
“I’m going to call Attila,” she said. “He should know that his triumphant entry into Istanbul is imminent.”
“He should be happy about that,” Ismet said.
“I don’t know. It means he can’t hog the headlines any longer.”
“Tell him to have the jet ready.”
“Yes,” Dagmar said. “Only this time, we don’t file a flight plan.”
Before she could call her phone gave a chirp, and she found that she had a pair of text messages. She called up the first.
Briana love you forever Chatsworth.
A pleasant warmth kindled in the vicinity of her heart. Manipulative old bastard, she thought with affection.
“Lv U2,” she replied.
Dagmar turned to the second message and saw it was much longer. Richard must have typed it on a keyboard, because it had none of the slang and abbreviations you’d expect in a message thumbed onto a phone pad.
“I have been having problems with my printer,” the employee told Dagmar. “Even though the printer was cabled properly to the computer and the driver was installed, and even though the printer responded when it was sent a file, the printer refused to print a document.
“I checked the cable again, and I then uninstalled the printer driver, then reinstalled it. The printer still would not print. Therefore I updated the driver, but the printer still would not function. I swapped out the cables, with no success. I cycled the power on the printer, but still the printer would not print.
“Finally, out of desperation, I uninstalled the operating system, and reinstalled the OS from scratch. And then the printer worked as if nothing had ever been wrong.
“Dagmar, my solution made no sense and was completely inelegant. What am I to understand from this adventure?”
“Persistence,” said Dagmar, “also has merit.”
She looked at the last line and gave a weary laugh. She read it aloud to Ismet and Uruisamoglu, and they both thought it was funny.
CONSTANTINOPLE1453, she thought. She was going to have to change that, and soon.
She opened a can of beluga, and they ate caviar and hard-boiled eggs all the way to the airport, where the Gulfstream waited, glowing in the sun as if it were made of precious metal, its engines already turning over.
The Niva drew up to the stair that waited in front of the Gulfstream’s door. The two cabin attendants were visible at the top of the stairs, waiting with identical white smiles on their faces. The man from customs was in his Honda, and Babur stood waiting for his hundred-pound notes.
Peace oot, Dagmar thought, and reached for her passport.
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-176215-c9a7-8141-4b9f-5d9a-f157-e9a766
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 26.03.2013
Created using: calibre 0.8.56, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Walter Jon Williams
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Deep State ds-2 Page 38