Walter Williams - Deep State

“How did they communicate with him?”

The shredder hummed. “Letter drop via Gmail. The same way you send a message to Rafet.”

“Can we send them a message pretending to be Byron and Magnus?”

He frowned, looked up at her.

“To what end?”

“To burn them so the Turks will never trust them again.”

Lincoln’s blue eyes turned inward. He frowned down at the pages in his hand. “What’s your idea?” he asked.

“Send a message to confirm that we’re shutting down here and everyone is going home-except for me and Ismet, maybe. We’re flying somewhere in Europe to meet an important contact to gain information about the Zap.”

Lincoln frowned. “Where?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dagmar said. “The point is that when the Turks send a team to observe us or take us out, they get arrested by someone you’ve warned in advance.”

Lincoln reached down and turned off the shredder. He squared his remaining papers and leaned back in his chair.

“Let me think.” Frown lines appeared between his eyebrows. “I think I can manage it,” he decided. “We’ll send them to Berlin and say the meet is in the Hotel Pariser Platz-that’s practically next door to the BfV office in Berlin.” His eyes sparkled. “And I know just who to call.”

Dagmar tried not to show herself as eager as she felt. “So you’ll do it?”

“Yes. Why not?” He shrugged. “A last little prank, before we fly off to wretchedness and defeat.”

What she hoped was that Bozbeyli’s first team-the people he most relied upon to travel to foreign countries and to carry out covert actions-would be busy in Germany, and preferably under arrest, when Dagmar was off in Uzbekistan.

She and Lincoln composed the message, and it was placed in Byron’s Gmail account. It placed the meet in the bar of the Pariser Platz at 1700 the next day. Either Byron’s control would pick it up or not. Either Bozbeyli’s A Team would be diverted to Berlin or not. Either Dagmar would have a little revenge or she wouldn’t.

At least she’d have the satisfaction of a little Parthian shot, firing over the rump of her pony as the Lincoln Brigade fled in disorganized retreat.

She stepped out of Lincoln’s office and looked over the wreckage of the office. Kemal Ataturk looked back at her with his stern sapphire gaze. Beneath him were the Lincoln Brigade’s trophies: the DVD, the wilted flowers, the sad, sagging stuffed bear. The photos of Judy and Tuna, looking out from a world in which they had not been murdered, from a place where they still lived, laughed, and looked forward to the triumphs their lives would bring.

Dagmar took a step toward the wall, to take the memorial down, and then hesitated.

No, she thought. Let it remain. Let it stay on Cyprus like the ancient memorials of the island, like the stone wanassa in its ancient temple, a mystery to those who came after, a phantom touch to their nerves, their hearts. Let it tell them, she thought, that something had happened here, something at once sad and profound, something that had started as an insanely fun activity by well-meaning people but had turned into death and betrayal and failure.

Let it stay, she thought. Let it remain, a memorial of our own delusion and foundered innocence.

Disorder in a U.S. Benz Kit

When Lola offered to make travel arrangements, Dagmar said she’d make her own. The next morning, Monday, she hugged Lincoln good-bye at the Nicosia airport. He felt like a sack half-filled with straw. She had told him that she would be flying out later.

She kissed his cheek.

“Stay in touch,” she said.

He looked at her, watery blue eyes over the metal rims of his glasses.

“Forgive me?” he asked.

He had lied to her and marched the both of them straight into catastrophe, but he had been as blind and betrayed as she and was now returning home to his own professional purgatory. She couldn’t bring herself to hate him.

“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

She watched Lincoln and the others walk through the gate to their waiting aircraft, and then Dagmar turned away and used her phone’s satellite function to call Rafet. She explained the situation to him.

“You can wait for Chatsworth’s instructions for exfiltration,” she said, “or you could carry on, with the understanding that you’re working for a purely private concern.”

Otherwise known, she thought, as a demented rock star.

She told him to consult with the Skunk Works operators and the camera techs, come to a decision concerning what they wanted to do, and then call her back on her private number.

Dagmar’s next journey took her to the honey-colored Gulfstream 550 waiting in the section of the airport reserved for private planes. Stairs were already pushed up to the open door. She climbed the stairs and stepped aboard, and a smiling, shaggy-haired man greeted her.

“Name’s Martin,” he said, shaking hands. He spoke with a West Country accent. “Attila would be here himself, but he had a press conference in Glasgow to announce his new justice initiative.”

“And what would that be?” Dagmar asked.

“He’s setting up a legal fund to aid the defense of those arrested during the demonstrations.”

“That’s assuming there will actually be trials,” Dagmar said.

Martin looked surprised. “Won’t there be?” he said.

Dagmar shrugged, then introduced Ismet. Martin showed them to some seats in the rear of the aircraft, for takeoff.

The Gulfstream featured mahogany paneling, gold-plated fixtures, a large oval table of what seemed to be polished black marble, and softly glowing leather couches. Postimpressionist watercolors hung from the bulkheads. Martin showed them to some more conventional seats for takeoff.

“Does Attila actually own this jet?” Dagmar asked.

“No, he rented it from a company in Rome. Can I get you any drinks?”

Ismet asked for orange juice. Dagmar, more interested perhaps in relaxation, ordered a gin and tonic.

One of the two smiling cabin attendants came with their drinks a few minutes later. The attendants were both tall and well-groomed, attractive, and female. They spoke with Italian and French accents, respectively. As there was no eye candy for the heterosexual female, Dagmar gathered that the plane’s usual customers were rich men.

The attendants made sure Dagmar and Ismet were strapped in, and the Gulfsteam taxied to the runway, joined the queue behind a Boeing 737, and in its turn launched itself into the air.

The plane refueled in Bucharest, then crossed the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Caspian Sea. They kept well clear of Turkish airspace. The cabin attendants served champagne, caviar, blinis, beef stroganoff, and a hearty red burgundy, all appropriate enough for flying over the former Soviet Union. Dessert was bananas caramelized in butter, spices, and brown sugar, then expertly flamed with cognac by the Italian attendant. A movie was offered but declined. The Gulfstream flew over a triangle of Kazakhstan and then entered Uzbek airspace.

“The nearest airport-the nearest we can set this down, I mean-the nearest to your destination is in a town called Zarafshan,” Martin said. “We’ve got a car lined up for you. Attila also explained that you might be wanting these.”

He produced a series of cases and produced a pair of Beretta 9mm pistols in holsters and a lightweight semiautomatic shotgun in a nylon scabbard. Dagmar was surprised.

“How did you get these on such short notice?” she asked.

“We were in Italy,” Martin said. “It’s the second-largest arms exporter in the world. They have strict regulations if you live there, but if you’re taking the goods out of the country, they practically have a take-away window.”