Walter Williams - Deep State

He was genuinely surprised. His brows lifted well up above the line of his spectacles.

“Spies?”

“There are players who stalk us-try to hack our computers, or steal scripts from the actors, or follow us around in hopes that we’ll drop a clue.”

Ismet seemed delighted.

“Do you get good at escape and evasion?”

“Escape and evasion?” It sounded like a course in commando school. “I don’t know about that,” she said, “but I’ve gotten good at hiding things.”

He smiled. “Tomorrow,” he said, “you’re going to hide seven hundred people.”

“Let’s hope,” said Dagmar, “that I do.”

He raised his Efes to his lips. “I think we’ll be fine,” he said.

She looked at Ismet with a sudden flare of interest. She’d met him only the day before, but since then he had so efficiently inserted himself into her process that she hadn’t noticed till now.

“You keep saving me,” she said. “Yesterday from social embarrassment, this morning from getting knocked into the hospital. Is this sort of thing normal for you?”

One of Ismet’s small hands made a circular motion in the air, a local gesture that Dagmar knew meant something like, “Oh yes, I’ve done that countless times.”

His actual words were a little more modest.

“Lincoln told me to be useful,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes. “How long,” she said, “do I get to keep you?”

Dagmar saw a little flare of light behind the spectacles, as if he’d only just now realized that there was flirtation going on.

“I work for Lincoln,” he said. “Or rather, my PR firm does. You could request that I be kept around to rescue you when necessary.”

“Maybe I shall,” Dagmar said.

Tuna came barging up, a drink in his hand and wrapped in a cloud of harsh tobacco fumes.

“Shall we eat?” he said. “I’m hungry.”

Dagmar turned her eyes from Ismet with a degree of reluctance.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s probably time we did.”

Hippolyte says:

Oh, goodie! A boat ride!

Burcak says:

I wish I had brought a coat. Going to be cold out on the water.

Corporal Carrot says:

Wish I had Dramamine. I get seasick.

The next morning Dagmar stood above the golden span of the Bosporus Bridge from the vantage point on the steep hill of Ortakoy. Excursion boats drew their wakes across the deep slate of the straits below, tiny little water bugs alongside the enormous tidal surge given off by a brilliant white cruise ship so enormous that it seemed like a piece of the continent broken off and adrift.

A blustery cold wind blew from the Black Sea, and Dagmar wore a jacket against the chill, with the brim of a baseball cap shading her eyes from the sun, still low in the eastern sky. Behind her was Richard’s new electronic marvel, his rented gear packed into a Ford van, with an antenna strung from the van to a nearby plane tree, and another directional antenna mounted on a long wood plank aimed at Lincoln’s bunkered router up above Seraglio Point. A generator rumbled from a yellow trailer, spitting diesel smoke into the brisk wind.

They could have just grabbed a local signal-the area was saturated with IT-but the local bandwidth might not be up to the task. Their own gear, however improvised, was to be preferred…

“Reception is brilliant!” Richard called. “If only the rest of the world is getting it…”

He was busy on the phone to Great Big Idea HQ in Simi Valley, where it was late Friday night. Tens of thousands of American gamers, it was hoped, were awake to watch the game’s conclusion on live feed.

At least they would, if Richard’s jury rig worked.

The live event had gone perfectly to this point. Buses had taken the gamers from their digs in Beyolu to the quay in Ortakoy, where they filed happily aboard their excursion boats in the shadow of the district’s elaborate Mediciye Mosque, a structure that looked-to Dagmar, on her hill-like a Mississippi steamboat, with two filigreed funnel/minarets, an arched dome with a silhouette like an amidships paddlebox, and gingerbread dripping from the Texas deck… she wondered if the mosque’s nineteenth-century architects had in mind the era’s steamboats, chugging up and down the Bosporus in plain sight of the structure.

“Five by five! Five by five!” Richard shouted. By which Dagmar concluded that Simi Valley was receiving the transmissions just fine and that soon the finale of the Stunrunner game would be played out to its worldwide audience.

Dagmar got out her handheld and was aware of Ismet by her side mirroring her gesture. She looked over her shoulder to see Richard making a third call from his own phone, so that the guides on the three boats would get the message at the same time, and all three feeds would soon offer the last set of instructions given to the players.

“Universal Exports thanks you for your assistance to our sales associate Mr. Bond. We are pleased to report that he has returned to England in complete safety. But we would appreciate your assistance in helping to clarify a few final details…”

And the players were off.

Alaydin says:

“Foundation laid by lo’s grandson, where Yeats invoked mechanical bird.” wtf? 9 ltrs.

LadyDayFan says:

Googling Yeats + mechanical + bird gives a poem called “Sailing to Byzantium.”

Classicist says:

BYZANTIUM. lo’s grandson was Prince Byzas, who founded the city.

ReVerb says:

“Abdulmecid filled the Sultan’s garden here.” 10 letters.

Burcak says:

EZ, if yr Turk. DOLMABAHCE Palice. Dolma + bahce = filled + garden

Hanseatic says:

“Motivated by gadfly’s tongue, heifer drives Henry’s car.” 8 ltrs.

Desi says:

Henry’s car would be a Ford.

Classicist says:

BOSPORUS. lo was turned into a cow and driven across the Bosporus by a stinging fly. Bosporus is Greek for “cow-ford.”

Corporal Carrot says:

Do you have to have a doctorate in classics to get this stuff?

Maui says:

“Where snakes, pink lions, and Mad Fuat got their yah-yahs out.” (7 ltrs)

Classicist says:

I suspect my degree isn’t going to help with this one.

Burcak says:

Yah is Turkish for “mansion on water.” But which one?

LadyDayFan says:

Googling like fury here…

Snakes, Pink Lion, Egyptian, and Mad Fuat are all yahs along the Bosporus.

(Crescent and Star, Stephen Kinzer, p. 197.)

Hippolyte says:

But where are they?

Corporal Carrot says:

Realty Web page says Egyptian yah is for sale. Address in ORTAKOY.

ReVerb says:

Brilliant! We’re on our way!

The players in their boats laid little white tracks on the blue. Standing on the hill of Ortakoy, Dagmar finished her call and cast a glance at Ismet. He was dressed in his tan blazer and tie, and the blustery wind had brought a little color to his cheeks. He looked down at the distant Bosporus traffic as he held his phone to his ear, then nodded, smiled, and returned the phone to his pocket.

He looked up and smiled. The wind tossed his hair.

“What are you doing after this?” she asked.

“Back to working for our regular clients. I think the next job has to do with advertising a new series of electronic switches, mainly in trade journals.”

“Sounds peaceful.”

“Oh yes.” Ismet threw out an arm, at the spectacular Bosporus scene, the electronic world, at Stunrunner sizzling invisibly through the ether, its video streams reaching to outer space and back.

“This is the most fun I’ve had in ages!” he said.

“Other than the riot and the anxiety.”

He made an equivocal gesture.

“That’s my country now,” he said. “That sort of thing can happen at any time.”