Walter Williams - Deep State

It was, Dagmar thought, one of the last times she’d hear this.

“You’re planning on going to Antalya tomorrow?” Lincoln asked.

“Yes,” Dagmar said. “Shouldn’t I?”

“I wouldn’t advise it. I’m not going to be happy until you’re on the far side of the border.”

She shrugged, another dream gone. She turned to face him.

“So much for my vacation,” she said.

“I’ve taken care of that.” Lincoln went the rococo desk and shuffled through folders: he took out an envelope and handed it to her.

“Compliments of Bear Cat,” he said. “First-class train tickets, and a week’s vacation in the beach resort of Aheloy.”

Dagmar blinked. “Where’s that?”

“The Moesian Riviera. Bulgaria.”

“Bulgaria?” Dagmar could only repeat the word.

“Fifty-six thousand square meters of beach in Aheloy,” Lincoln said. “Someone counted. Better beach than the French Riviera, too. Organic farms and vineyards just up the river-you’ll eat and drink extremely well in the local cafes.”

“Okay.” Cautiously. Bulgaria was not exactly what she’d planned.

Lincoln smiled. “I was there a few years after the Wall fell,” he said. “It was very quaint and olde-world, but I imagine it’s more twenty-first century now. And you’ll be just five kilometers from Sunny Beach, which is a hugely overdeveloped beach resort with boutiques and discos and bars, if that sort of thing is your preference.” He peered at her over the metal rims of his Elvis glasses. “I wasn’t sure.”

She looked back at him, into the startling blue eyes.

“Discos, huh?” she said. “Did you spend a lot of time in discos, back in the day?”

“Naturally.” He shrugged. “Disco was quite the cultural revolution, before overpopularity and Saturday Night Fever wrecked everything. The movie left out the gays and the drugs, and that was half the scene.”

Dagmar tried to picture Lincoln young, dancing in the patterned light of a spinning mirror ball, but failed.

Disco. To Dagmar it was just another style of music that had risen and then crashed, back before she was born. Like calypso, or ragtime.

“I don’t think discos are high on my list,” Dagmar said. “I just want to relax.” Her mind spun, trying to come up with objections to Lincoln’s scheme. She knew next to nothing about Bulgaria, nothing whatever about its Riviera. She didn’t even know enough to raise a valid protest.

“Aheloy is the place to relax, all right.” Lincoln was confident. “I put you in a bed-and-breakfast-you have a very nice bedsit, and you’ve got your own entrance to the garden, so you’ll have privacy.”

“Ah. Thanks.” She fumbled with the envelope, saw schedules, tickets, printouts. No pictures of the garden or the bedsit.

“People from all over Europe go to Bulgaria’s beaches for vacation,” Lincoln said. “Lots from Russia and Ukraine. And a great many Brits, because Bulgaria’s still a place they can afford.”

“Okay.” She was still not entirely pleased, though she couldn’t have said why.

“I’ve arranged for a car and driver to pick you up at the station, take you straight to the B-and-B; you can walk to the beach and be in the water by one thirty in the afternoon.”

“Thanks.” She peered again at the documents, then looked up at Lincoln. “Is anyone else coming?” she asked.

He seemed surprised. “Everyone else is going home tomorrow. Or so I thought.”

“And you?” Because a sliver of ice-cold paranoia had slipped into her brain and for a moment she wondered if she would arrive in Aheloy only to find Lincoln there, with roses and chocolates and a box of condoms, ready to launch himself on top of her once he’d gotten her in his secluded little love trap…

She’d never gotten anything like a sexual vibe from Lincoln, but then she’d been wrong before.

“I’m flying to New York tomorrow morning,” Lincoln said. He peered at her. “Don’t you like Bulgaria?”

“I don’t know enough to know whether I like Bulgaria or not. All I know is that I like their shoes.”

“I considered sending you to Rhodes,” Lincoln said. “But there are no air connections between Greece and Turkey right now, you’d have to fly through Bulgaria anyway, so I figured once there you might as well…” He flapped his hands.

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Dagmar said. “Thank you.”

“If you hate it, you can make other plans. But you’ll have to pay for them yourself.”

She patted his arm. “That’s fine. I appreciate your… kindness.”

He smiled, then swept out an arm.

“Why don’t you have a seat? Because I have another business proposition for you.”

Dagmar glanced around and decided on the window seat. Lincoln took the creaking wooden chair that went with the rococo desk.

“Does Great Big Idea have any commitments after this?” he asked.

“Nothing signed,” Dagmar said. “I’ve got three pitches coming up, one to Seagram’s, one to a Korean software firm, and another to a cable company that wants original content.”

“Television company?” His eyebrows lifted. “You’ll be doing television?”

“Television and game both,” Dagmar said. “The two will be linked.”

Lincoln was impressed. “Must pay well.”

“Television pays well because the content provider has to wade through endless network hassle in order to do her job,” Dagmar said. “Frankly, if it weren’t for a whole season’s worth of checks, I’d rather sell the whiskey.”

Lincoln smiled. “Not the software?”

“The Koreans want us to tell them how to sell their product,” Dagmar said. “I don’t think they have much of a future in the North American market.”

“So you might,” Lincoln said, “have room for another project.”

Dagmar waved an arm.

“Bear Cat wants another ARG?”

“Not Bear Cat.”

She settled into the window seat and gave him a level look.

“I suppose you’re going to explain to me why you’ve been emplacing servers all over Turkey.”

Gracefully he shifted course.

“You did a brilliant thing in the last twenty-four hours,” Lincoln said. “You faked out the generals and made them look a bit silly and satisfied your customer base.”

“I made myself a nervous wreck.”

“I gather that’s… normal in your line of work.”

“Anxiety’s normal. Physical danger isn’t.”

Except for me, she thought. My friends get to die for me.

Lincoln placed his elbows on the chair arms and steepled his fingers before him.

“I have… friends,” he said. “Contacts. And when The Long Night of Briana Hall came online a few years ago, and your friends were killed…”

Dagmar flashed him a warning look. “I don’t talk about that,” she said.

“I don’t want you to.” He spoke quickly. “I don’t actually want to know anything.” He relaxed a little, leaned back against the chair’s pink satin cushion. “I just want to say that I looked into some things-where your friend Charlie’s money came from, for one thing-and I read some reports from the FBI and the LAPD, and I drew my own conclusions.”

Dagmar tensed. Lincoln looked at her.

“You handled yourself well,” he said. “That’s all I’m saying. I’m not making judgments; I’m not making accusations. But from where I’m standing, you did well.”

“You don’t know what I did.”

“I don’t,” Lincoln said. “Not really. I only have my guesses.” He raised a hand as she prepared again to object. “And as I said, I don’t want to know-so if you ever have the urge to confess anything, don’t do it to me.”

What makes you think I have anything to confess? she thought-and then decided she didn’t actually want the answer to that question.