Walter Williams - Deep State

Dagmar’s message went to the network heads in the Istanbul area-union bosses, academics, political organizers, religious authorities, student leaders. Once they decoded its simple meaning, they contacted those in their cell by whatever electronic means they had agreed on. These contacted those below, and so on, in the model of a phone tree.

All of this happened outside Dagmar’s purview. There was very little to do for the next couple hours but keep in touch with the camera teams, with Lloyd’s remote-control airmen, and with Tuna. And since communications protocols forbade anything but the most necessary messages, the messages were few and far between.

Dagmar went to the break room for more coffee and ran into Lincoln seated on a plastic chair peeling an apple, the spiral uncoiling beautifully into a serviette unfolded on his lap.

“That’s nicely done,” she said, impressed.

“It’s about the only real skill I have,” Lincoln said.

“I don’t know about that. You talked all these people into joining you here.”

He looked up, amused. “I offered the chance to intelligently use computers in a beautiful foreign location,” he said. “To a certain kind of person, that kind of offer sells itself.”

“And how did you come up with Lloyd?” Dagmar said. “Turkish-speaking Kurdish-Azeri American citizens with a background in model rocketry can’t be exactly thick on the ground in D.C.”

Lincoln frowned. “Azeri?” he asked. “Do you by any chance mean Alevi?”

Dagmar felt heat rise to her cheeks. “Yeah,” she said. “That’s what I meant.”

“I didn’t know he was Alevi,” Lincoln said. “But I damn well know he wasn’t from Azerbaijan.”

Dagmar nodded. “Lloyd is Alevi, whatever that actually means. And he’s a little nervous around Rafet, I guess for reasons of history.”

Lincoln seemed annoyed at himself. “He’s Turkish, I knew he was Muslim, and I assumed Sunni even thought I should have known better.” He decided to be amused. “But his dad wasn’t exactly a barefoot persecuted little Kurdish refugee from eastern Turkey; he was a military attache in Washington for many years, and he retired a colonel.”

Dagmar blinked. “Really. Lloyd hadn’t given me that impression.”

“Oh yeah.” Lincoln’s penknife neatly quartered the apple as he spoke, then began to cut out the core. “Lloyd’s dad returned to D.C. after he retired, joined a company that provides security to businessmen, and started a second family with a much younger American wife. He’s still going strong, so far as I know. Lloyd would be their eldest.”

Dagmar considered this. “If Lloyd’s dad is a high-ranking military officer, does that mean his sympathies might lie with Bozbeyli?”

Lincoln sliced off a chunk of apple, chewed, swallowed.

“His file says not.”

“Oh,” Dagmar said. “That settles it, then.”

The amused sparkle in Lincoln’s eye was muted by the shadowy lenses of his glasses.

“Do you think we should send him home?”

“I-” Dagmar was too surprised to formulate an immediate response. “I don’t see why we should,” she said. “If you believe the file.”

“The file’s probably crap,” Lincoln said. “But I’m less concerned with the father than the fact that the son gave you personal information that he was supposed to keep to himself.”

Dagmar felt a sudden flutter of panic that she might have compromised one of her employees.

“He told it to me privately,” she said, “by way of explaining why he didn’t speak more openly the day before, when Rafet and the other Turks were pressing him for details about his background.”

“Ah.” Lincoln ate another chunk of apple. “That’s probably all right, then.”

Relief flew through Dagmar at the thought that she might have shoved Lloyd out of the way of a bullet.

“Besides,” she said. “We can’t do without the air force.”

“No,” said Lincoln, and looked at a chunk of apple poised on the tip of his penknife. “I suppose we can’t.”

“I have another Hot Koan,” Richard said.

Dagmar watched on the flatscreen as Tuna walked along Ordu Road toward Beyazit Square. He wore a dark jacket, tie, shades, and polished shoes. Though he had a wide-brimmed hat pulled down to hide his face, his big body and loping gait were unmistakable. Eye-catching as well was the enormous bouquet of lilies he carried in one big hand. He carried a shopping bag with the corner of a manila envelope, an envelope that presumably contained a photograph. A beautiful bouquet of seasonal flowers, or a special photograph session for you and your family…

Tuna’s image was eclipsed by a line of red tram cars. Dagmar shifted her gaze to another monitor, one with a wider angle, and waited for Tuna to reappear.

“Tell me,” she said.

“The novice came to Dagmar,” Richard said, “and he said, ‘I have tried to hot-swap my PS/2 connector, and now my motherboard has been slagged.’

“ ‘In that case,’ said Dagmar, “make coffee.’

“Hearing this”-Richard smiled-“the novice was enlightened.”

Dagmar laughed. “I wish I was really as wise as you make out,” she said.

Richard only offered her a Buddha smile. Dagmar found Tuna again on the video, the flowers flopping over one shoulder.

Tuna and a small group of technicians had spent the morning making certain that the demo would receive full electronic coverage. Cameras and their operators were ready in windows of three of the many hotels that lined the road opposite Beyazit Square. Hot Koans had been scattered like birdseed all around the target, plastic hot pink rectangles sitting under furniture, on rooftops, lying in flower beds, their ad hoc mesh network pumping the signal to the antenna in a rented room several streets away, which then relayed them to the server on Seraglio Point that Lincoln had installed during the Stunrunner game.

The two nearby police stations, west on Mustafa Kemal Street and east on Kadirga Limani, were also under video surveillance, both from small battery-operated cameras fixed to buildings and streetlights and from airborne cameras belonging to the Anatolian Skunk Works. Dagmar had worried about the Beyazit Square location simply because it was so close to the police, but hadn’t found anywhere else more suitable-there were police everywhere in the modern city, but at least in this area there were no military…

Without looking left or right, Tuna strolled into the square, flowers bobbing. Other people seemed to be carrying flowers here and there.

“Hello, Chatsworth.” Tuna’s headset carried his words into the ops room. “I’m feeling a little lonely here.”

“We see more flowers than you do,” Dagmar answered hopefully.

Tuna stood in the middle of the square, conspicuously large, conspicuously colorful. Pushcart vendors sold roasted ears of maize and simit. A group of girls in headscarves and long coats entered the frame from the direction of the university, all clustered around a pot of flowers. A man in a neat fedora, carrying long-stemmed roses, walked in from across Ordu Road.

How many people in a given area could carry bouquets, Dagmar wondered, before they all began to look suspicious?

“Here we go!” called Lincoln. He was looking at another monitor, its view provided by a camera with a different angle on the proceedings.

This was focused on the main gate of the university, a Roman triumphal arch as viewed through some kind of strange nineteenth-century cross-cultural Oriental-baroque lens. A line of students was pouring out of the central Moroccon horseshoe arch, each waving a bouquet of flowers on high. Gold sunlight glittered on photographs held above their heads.

Dagmar’s heart gave a leap as she realized that this might actually work.