Walter Williams - Deep State

Dagmar looked up and received the poster’s full impact. The picture was based on an old photograph, but somewhere down the line the photograph had been hand-colored in eerie pastels, and the result was nothing short of terrifying. Larger than life-sized, the Father of the Nation wore a fur Cossack hat and a civilian tailcoat with a standing collar and tie. He scowled down from the wall, his unnaturally pink cheeks a startling contrast to his uncanny blue eyes.

The look in the eyes sent a shudder up Dagmar’s spine.

In her time in Turkey, Dagmar had seen a great many pictures of Ataturk. Most businesses had a photo displayed somewhere, and Ataturk busts and statues were common in Turkish towns and public buildings.

What had surprised her was the variety of Ataturks on display. There was no standard representation. There were benign Ataturks, dignified Ataturks, and amused Ataturks that emphasized the impish upward tilt of his eyebrows. There were Ataturks with mustaches and Ataturks without mustaches. There were dapper Ataturks wearing tails and carrying a top hat, statesmanlike Ataturks standing amid a group of ministers and comrades, commanding Ataturks in military uniform.

And then there were the scary Ataturks, a surprising number of them. This one, with his glaring eyes and upswept eyebrows, looked absolutely diabolical. He looked like the villain in a bad fantasy film. Below the image, in a blue typeface that matched the Gazi’s eyes, were the words Biz bize benzeriz.

Something in Dagmar shrank from having this frightening icon gazing down at her for the length of the operation.

“The picture looks straight enough,” Dagmar said. She pointed at the letters. “What does it say?”

Ismet answered. “It says: ‘We are like ourselves.’ ”

Dagmar looked around the room, at the piles of cardboard boxes, at Helmuth and Richard and Judy all laboring under Ataturk’s iron gaze.

“Well,” she said. “That’s true enough.”

What she actually wanted to say was, Are you sure you want this Ataturk? But she couldn’t quite bring herself to speak the words aloud.

The cult of Ataturk was something Dagmar understood only in part. The United States of America had many founders: Franklin, Washington, the Adams cousins, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Tom Paine, and even people such as Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr had done their bit to define the new republic… but Turkey had only Ataturk. He was the arrow-straight dividing line between the shambling old Asiatic Ottoman Empire and modern, Western-leaning Turkey. Like any decent Founding Father he had thrashed the British, and after that he’d remade the country in his own stern image: he’d adopted the Roman alphabet and Gregorian calendar; given civil rights to women; made Turks adopt surnames; driven religion and its symbols out of public life; built a public education system from scratch; defeated enemies foreign and domestic; created a parliamentary system; promoted Western ideas of art, music, and culture. He’d also done away with the Muslim prohibition of alcohol-a mistake in his case, as he died young of cirrhosis.

Turks revered Ataturk the way hardline Marxists revered Lenin, the way gays revered Judy Garland, the way Americans revered their pop stars up till the very second before they pissed all over them. Dagmar got that.

What she didn’t understand was this fiendish image on the wall of the ops room. She didn’t want it there, but she didn’t know how to say it without setting off some kind of atavistic Ataturk-inspired defense mechanism and getting her Turkish comrades mad at her.

“We brought presents!” Tuna said. He reached his big hand into a pink plastic bag and pulled out a fistful of blue and white amulets, the kind that Turks deployed against the evil eye. He, Ismet, and Rafet immediately began fixing the amulets to every vertical surface.

Judy watched them with interest. She turned to Dagmar.

“Do they really believe in the evil eye?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But we need all the mojo we can get.”

“And here’s one for your office.” Ismet, handing Dagmar an amulet.

“Thank you.”

It was a nice one, shaped like a military medal, with the dangling eye made of heavy glass, better quality than the cheap plastic amulets available everywhere in Turkey.

After the amulets were hung, everyone pitched in with putting the ops room together. By early evening flat-screen monitors glowed from the walls and from each of the desks, towers hummed, printers were set up in corners, and Mr. Coffee sat atop a table in the break room.

“The rest of the team will be here tomorrow,” Lincoln said. “First briefing at oh eight hundred.”

Dagmar raised a hand. “Will we always be using military time?” she asked.

He smiled. “You should be thankful we’re not using Zulu Time,” he said.

Dagmar had never heard of Zulu Time in her life.

“I guess I should be,” she said.

Before the flight to Cyprus, Dagmar had a series of meetings with Lincoln in California. They met at a sushi place in Studio City, where they talked about gaming and other harmless topics-the actual purpose of their meeting couldn’t be discussed in public places like restaurants.

Chopsticks in his hand, Lincoln lightly dipped his Crunchy Crab Roll in soy sauce. Dagmar observed the hand.

“You don’t wear a wedding ring,” she said.

The crab roll paused halfway to Lincoln’s lips.

“I was married twice. Divorced both times. The job is hard on marriage.” His mouth quirked in a little smile. “Though I have to admit that, sometimes, what I do is insanely fun.”

“Any children?”

Lincoln, chewing, nodded. He swallowed, then took a taste of iced tea.

“Two daughters,” he said. “Both grown, both doing well.” He looked wistful. “One of them lives in New Zealand. I see her every two or three years. The other blamed me for the divorce, and I haven’t heard from her in more than a decade.”

Sadness brushed Dagmar’s nerves. She shook her head.

“Sorry,” she said.

“I keep tabs on her,” Lincoln said. “Because, you know, I can- so I know that she’s all right.” His mouth took on a rueful slant. “But part of me wishes she’d run into the kind of trouble that only her dad can get her out of.”

Dagmar’s sadness swelled. She had similar foolish fantasies herself, that Charlie or Austin or Siyed would walk through the door, surprisingly alive, and with an elaborate story that explained how it had been someone else who had died, somebody else’s corpses that Dagmar had seen, and that the whole affair had been an elaborate but necessary deception in order to thwart some unimaginable villainy…

But of course that wouldn’t happen. Austin and Charlie wouldn’t be coming back from the falls at Reichenbach, and sometimes families came apart that shouldn’t, and sometimes families stayed together that should have come apart. And sometimes two lonely people consoled themselves with sushi and avoided talking about what had brought them together in the first place.

After lunch Lincoln took Dagmar to the Bear Cat offices to discuss their plans for the Cyprus excursion. Lincoln had an office with an Aeron chair, a view of the Santa Monica Mountains, and framed photos of media campaigns in which he’d been involved, with Stunrunner given the pride of place, Ian Attila Gordon in his tux gazing out of the frame, his elegant little Walther automatic in his hand.

“You get to pick your code name,” Lincoln told her.

“Wow,” Dagmar said. “We really are living in Spy Land.”

“Special ops.” Patiently. “We’re not after intelligence; we do things.”

“Sorry.” Dagmar was amused. “I’ll try to remember.”

“The computer has to approve the name,” Lincoln said. “You can’t take a name that’s already in use, and you can’t do anything obscene, but other than that, you’re reasonably free. It should be something you can remember and easily answer to.” He looked at her over his Elvis glasses. “I’m using Chatsworth.” From the handle he’d used in online games, Chatsworth Osborne Jr.