Walter Williams - Deep State

“Aphrodite actually goes back that far?”

“She had many names over the years,” he said. “The Cypriots just called her Wanassa-the Queen.”

Dagmar turned to look at him. He stood farther up the shingle and was therefore a little taller than she; the Mediterranean gleamed in his sunglasses, stone and sea and white foam. He was dressed with care in a striped seersucker summer jacket. A little spot of sunburn glowed high on each cheek.

“How do you know all this?” she said.

He gave an embarrassed smile. “I looked it up in the guidebook on the shelf in the break room,” he said.

“Ah,” she said. “So you don’t have hidden depths.”

“Apparently not.” Politely.

She turned back to the sea and imagined the goddess rising, sea sluicing off naked shoulders. A wave spattered Dagmar’s toes with chill water.

“Tell me more,” she said.

“The goddess was worshiped till nearly modern times, centuries after the Christians officially suppressed the cult. Girls would come here, or to the ruins of the temple, and make offerings or anoint the goddess with olive oil, hoping for…” He hesitated. “Fertility, I suppose. There was a fourteenth-century Christian writer who complained that if you slept on the ground here, you arose… very lustful.”

She smiled to herself. She rather liked Ismet’s shyness in sexual matters.

“The statue survived all those centuries?” she asked.

“The goddess was older than any statue. The Aphrodite worshiped here took the form of a cone-shaped rock. It’s in the museum in Lefkos?a.” Giving the Turkish pronunciation of the capital city the Greeks called Lefkosia, a word that Franks like Dagmar mispronounced as “Nicosia.”

Sea boomed on the great stone. A Royal Navy patrol boat ghosted on the edge of the horizon. She turned again to Ismet.

“So Aphrodite was really a stone phallus?”

He turned slightly away, still a little shy.

“Apparently,” he said.

“Wouldn’t you just know it?” she said, not exactly sure exactly what she meant.

“Ancient coins show the cone beneath a crescent and star,” Ismet said. “Just like the ones on the Turkish flag.”

The sea heaved, shifting tons of grating stone.

The day after the demo in Istanbul was a day off for Dagmar’s crew. Tuna was flying in for a debriefing, and Rafet the dervish was en route to Antalya to set up the next action, which would take place the day after tomorrow.

Most of the Lincoln Brigade had gone to the beach-not the beach here at Kouklia but the British beach on the aerodrome, as much a part of Merrie England as Brighton itself and kept free of waterborne terrorists by gray Royal Navy patrol craft, cutting back and forth on the horizon like metal sharks… Richard and Judy had expressed interest in Banana Boating, an entertainment in which they would straddle a giant yellow banana-shaped craft that would be pulled at a rollicking pace behind a speedboat.

Dagmar had begged off riding the giant banana in favor of history and archaeology, and Ismet had offered to drive.

Dagmar looked up and down the beach.

“Only couples come here,” she said.

“It seems so.”

She stepped close to him. Ismet accepted her kiss with his usual courtly gravity. Dagmar couldn’t quite tell if he was enthusiastic or not, so she kissed him some more. Presently he grew more animated. His skin had a spicy scent of some exotic mixture of aromatic Eastern oils… They put their arms around each other and kissed for a long time.

Dagmar plucked the handkerchief from his jacket pocket and dabbed her lips.

“That was nice,” she said.

“It was. Very.”

“I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while now.”

“So have I. But”-a ghost of a smile-“I’m just the employee. I couldn’t make the first move.”

“No,” Dagmar said. “Sexual harassment is supposed to come from the boss.”

She kissed him some more. Then there was a bang, and she jumped in his arms. She looked up wildly, saw and heard a battered blue Ford truck backfiring another cloud of blue smoke.

“Christ,” she said, shuddering.

Ismet stroked her back. “Just a truck,” he said. His lips sought hers.

“This may not be a good idea,” she said, and slipped from his embrace.

His face showed sudden concern and surprise.

“You’re not suddenly worried about being my boss?”

Surf boomed. Dagmar shook her head. His handkerchief was twisted between her fingers.

“I have a bad history with men,” she said.

“So it’s not that I’m Turkish? Or a Muslim?”

“My last lover was murdered,” she said.

His mouth opened, closed.

“And an ex-lover was killed around the same time. And my two best friends. And-” Dagmar gestured at him with his own handkerchief.

“You’re a spy, aren’t you?” she said. She gave a laugh, a little bubble of hysteria bursting from her lips. “You’re crossing the border into enemy territory in a couple days, and you could be caught or killed or beaten or put in prison…”

Ismet reached her. She shuddered at the touch of his fingers on her arms.

“I’m not a spy,” he said.

“Right. You’re special ops.”

“I’m a journalist. I’ll have reasons for being where I am, for asking questions, for being at a demonstration. Even if I’m arrested, there’ll be no reason to hold me.”

“Try that line of argument with a bullet or a bomb,” she said savagely. “Bullets don’t much care about your reasons.”

She had firsthand experience with bullets and bombs. And bludgeons. And other forms of death that lurked in humanity’s collective dark unconscious.

Dagmar took off her shades and rubbed a hand across both eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just so completely not over it. What happened in LA.”

“You said you wouldn’t talk about it.”

“I am not talking about it,” Dagmar said.

Ismet scrutinized her. “May I touch you?” he asked.

She lifted her chin, stared defiantly out to sea as if she could see, just above the horizon, some hopeful star that she could follow. Instead she saw only the patrol boat, flashing a signal lamp at some shadowy craft over the horizon.

“Yes,” she said. “Please.”

His arms went around her. She wrapped herself in his embrace as if it were a blanket.

“You’re not some kind of curse.” His voice came quiet to her ear. Warm breath moistened her neck. His myrrh scent flooded her senses.

“You don’t kill men with your spell,” he said. “You’ve just been in some dark places, that’s all. Along with some of your friends.”

“How do you know that?”

“I asked Lincoln.”

Dagmar was so surprised that she found a laugh bubbling up from her throat. “You asked Lincoln?”

“I thought he must have a file on you. I thought he would know.”

“What did he say?”

She could hear his smile as he spoke.

“He said, ‘Dagmar is definitely not scary, but you should still be careful not to piss her off.’ ”

She laughed again, leaning against his warm weight. “Right,” she said. “Get me mad at you, I’ll send the Group Mind to turn your hard drive into porridge.”

“No. You’ll send someone like me to organize a flash mob and paintball my car.”

Dagmar smiled. She looked at one of the other couples walking along the shore, a pair of Brits judging by their sunburns, their trousers rolled up as they waded ankle deep in Aphrodite’s foam. The two of them happy, free of the knowledge that a presentiment of death had floated past, just beyond the limit of their perception…

Dagmar’s forebodings were usually insignificant-she had the kind of imagination that threw a million obstacles into her path. She could either work to avoid the barriers or-more usually-watch them turn to vapor in the sunlight of reality. But this magical place, this seascape torn from the womb of the goddess herself, seemed to give to Dagmar’s fears the chill force of prophecy… She wondered if dread generated in this landscape was more significant than dread generated elsewhere.