Walter Williams - Deep State

Two-cycle engines spit oil-tinged exhaust into the air. Tires shrieked and scrambled for traction on the corners. Dagmar wasn’t used to driving this close to the ground: the surface of the track seemed threateningly close as it passed beneath her. Tuna made an effort to pass her on the left; she moved to cut him off.

She had seized the lead early in the race-she was an early adapter of technology, even if the technology was mechanical and considerably older than she was.

RAF Akrotiri was a full-service air base: it even had a go-kart track. And after five days’ hard work, Lincoln had decreed an afternoon of fun, a cookout followed by racing. The day had cooperated: morning showers had been followed by mellow afternoon sun.

Dagmar glanced over her shoulder, saw Ismet pulling up on the right, and swerved to block him. He had to brake and fell back. She hugged the inside on a corner; then as she came out onto the straight she swung out into the middle of the track, ready to block any challenger. Tuna rolled up on the left again, and she swerved to stay in his way.

She looked over her shoulder to see if Ismet was coming up on the right. He had pulled up even with Tuna, but his little two-cycle engine didn’t seem to have the power to overtake the leader. He looked at Dagmar, and as their eyes met, a silent signal passed between them.

Tuna was boxed in, Dagmar ahead of him, Ismet on his left, the grass outfield on his right. Dagmar slowed, and Ismet turned the steering wheel and swerved to his right, right into Tuna.

The two go-karts collided, then rebounded. Ismet swerved wildly to the far side of the track before he regained control, and Tuna went clear into the grass and hit a wide, shallow puddle left behind by the morning’s rain: a tall rainbow sheet of water sprayed high in the air as his kart stopped dead. Dagmar cackled and accelerated away. She could hear Tuna’s roars of frustration fade behind her.

When she passed the start line, the race course manager was holding out a sign that said: NO BUMPING. Dagmar gave her a cheerful wave and raced past.

She managed to keep ahead of Ismet until she came up behind Magnus and Byron. She was surprised they were so far behind that she was on the verge of lapping them, and then she saw that Angry Man and Kilt Boy were not so much racing as restaging the naval battle from Ben-Hur. The two karts were ramming each other, bounding apart, then ramming again. A considerable slipstream blew up Magnus’s kilt, flapping it in his face, but it didn’t seem to affect the ferocity of his driving. Neither driver spoke or gestured or gave any other indication they were angry at each other: they let their vehicles do the talking.

It seemed dangerous to go near them-and Dagmar didn’t want to see up the kilt anyway-so she slowed and followed the two lurching, ramming, grating go-karts around the track to the start line, where the manager black-flagged both Magnus and Byron and sent them off the course. Dagmar accelerated again and again found herself in the lead, but by this point no one was racing anymore.

Dagmar seemed to have won. Or so she surmised.

“What the hell was that about?” Dagmar asked Lincoln later, after she’d unstrapped herself from her kart.

Lincoln wore a tropical shirt and a broad sun hat and carried a bottle of Fanta. In the tropical sun his Elvis shades had turned a deep black. He was amused.

“Healthy competition, I guess. We’re going to need that kind of aggression two days from now.”

She gave him a surprised look.

“Two days?”

“That’s when we hit the first target. The camera crews, the bus, and the air unit are already on their way to the mainland, and Tuna will fly out tomorrow.”

Dagmar felt herself rearing like a startled horse.

“Are you serious? Our exercises have been complete shambles.”

Lincoln gave an amused smile. “Perhaps from the point of view of someone who produces professional videos. But in fact everyone’s gotten better, and in any case we’re not trying to make everything look like Hollywood-if all the video looks too professional, it’ll be obvious that professionals are involved. It seems to me that everyone’s doing well enough.”

Dagmar was astounded. “Well enough?” she repeated, and shook her head. Lincoln was clearly out of his mind.

“Lin-Chatsworth, it’s got to be better than that! This thing could be a catastrophe!”

He raised a hand. “We do not have world enough and time,” he said. “We have to move forward.”

She looked at him.

“Is there some particular reason why it has to happen now?”

Lincoln waved his Fanta.

“It should have happened months ago, okay? And now I don’t want any delays, because that gives the people in D.C. time to get nervous, and then fly in to interfere-” His glasses slipped down his nose, and he looked at Dagmar over the metal rims with his soft blue eyes.

“We’ll make mistakes,” he said. “We won’t be perfect. But Bozbeyli’s been in charge over there long enough.”

“Another week and we could-”

He put a hand on her shoulder.

“You’re the best, Dagmar. You’re the best hope we have. And I have utter confidence in you.”

Frustration and vanity danced an exasperating little tango in Dagmar’s skull.

“I’m only one person,” she said, suddenly forlorn. “Turkey is a whole country.”

“I saw you knock Tuna into the weeds just now,” Lincoln said. “I figure you’ll know what to do, when the time comes.”

If I’m not huddled in the corner, Dagmar thought, hiding from phantom Indonesians.

But sensibly enough, she kept that thought to herself.

“There’s something not quite right here,” Dagmar said.

“I know,” said Calvin.

“But I can’t put my finger on it.”

“Neither can I.”

Calvin was the writer Dagmar had hired to script the game for Seagram’s. Like Dagmar, he was a science fiction writer whose career had collapsed-in his case, because his publisher had been so enthusiastic about his first novel that they had printed no fewer than thirty thousand hardback copies, of which they had sold six thousand. What would normally have been a very respectable sale for a first novel had become a horrific financial loss for the company, a loss for which the author-as always-had been blamed. The second and third books, already under contract when the first book appeared, had received no promotion, and their publication had been delayed for years when their places on the schedule had been taken by books about which the publisher was more enthusiastic.

By the end of this purgatory Calvin’s writing career was as dead as a can of Potted Meat Product, and when Dagmar called he had been supporting himself by ghostwriting erotica for the online journals of porn stars out of the San Fernando Valley. He’d been very happy to accept Dagmar’s offer for work that didn’t involve rapturous close-up descriptions of the money shot.

Long-distance from Cyprus, Dagmar had to walk Calvin through the process of writing an ARG. Copies of the work were emailed to Dagmar, and she made notes and changes and emailed them back. And at least once each day there was a phone call filled with desperation and last-minute improvisation.

“So we’ve got Harry and Sandee trying to get to Lake Louise in Alberta,” Calvin said. “And all they have is a few dollars, a Swiss Army knife, and a bottle of whiskey-the latter being product placement. And Sandee is falling apart because she’s just seen her son murdered, so Harry has to take charge and turn hero.”

“With the help of the players,” Dagmar said.

“Of course.”

Dagmar thought about this for a moment.

“Why,” Dagmar asked, “am I not seeing this?”