Walter Williams - Deep State

“Can I help in any way?” he asked.

“That depends. What can you do?”

“I can translate for you at the palace. And I can… help arrange your schedule.”

“Do you have a car?”

“I have a rental.”

“Do you know Ankara?”

“Pretty well. Not like a native, though.”

“Right. I need to get Tuna and Richard to the tailor for the final fitting. I need to buy some shoes, and get a haircut. And I need to pick up my dress, which should be ready by four o’clock.”

Ismet looked at his watch.

“We have very little time,” he said.

He and Dagmar managed everything except for the haircut-the stylist was backed up, with customers already filling the available chairs. Dagmar hoped that her prematurely gray hair would make up in novelty what it lacked in elegance.

Fortunately for these last-minute expeditions, Ankara was the capital of the country, a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city with up-to-the-instant shops. Ankara also featured over a dozen universities, the presence of which guaranteed a large number of boutiques overflowing with stylish, often eccentric, and reasonably priced styles.

Dagmar bought her shoes in one of the latter-chunky yet strangely endearing Bulgarian footwear that looked like something Rosa Klebb might have worn to a fatal meeting with 007. In a more upmarket place in Kizilay she found a glossy Donna Karan gown, slate blue that would set off her gray hair; in another a beaded handbag just big enough to carry a cell phone, a compact, and a tampon; and from a woman at a restored Ulus caravanserai she bought a flowery pashmina shawl to drape around her shoulders.

She figured she’d be all right as long as she didn’t use the shawl to cover her hair. The military junta were ultranationalists and ultrasecularists, who would rather shoot a pious young Muslim girl than allow her into a school building in a headscarf.

Dagmar herself had no sympathy for religious fundamentalists, but she had every sympathy for their children and thought it was more important to educate young women than to bar the school door with bayonets.

She managed to get her posse to the hotel lobby on time. Tuna, bulky and uncomfortable in his new suit, was sulking. Richard kept admiring his chronograph. Ismet was all quiet efficiency. And Lincoln was discovered in the hotel lobby, lounging by the fountain in his Guatemalan peasant shirt, duck trousers, and tobacco-colored moccasins.

Dagmar raged up to him.

“You’re not ready?” she demanded.

Lincoln gave her a mild blue-eyed look. “You’re the bright future of multiplatform entertainment,” he said. “I’m just the PR guy. I wasn’t even invited.”

“So what will you be doing while I’m kowtowing to the junta?”

“The hotel offers Turkish massage.” He smiled. “I think I owe myself a little relaxation after the rigors of our journey.”

“Rigors?” she demanded. “Relaxation?” Fury blazed through her. “When do I get to relax?”

Lincoln winked at her.

“Saturday night,” he said. “After the game’s over.”

Dagmar’s hands turned into claws, half-ready to gouge Lincoln’s flesh.

“Our ride is here,” said Ismet.

The generals had sent a sky blue limousine to pick up Dagmar’s posse from the hotel, an extended, customized, mirror-polished version of the Grosser Mercedes that movie villains were always driving in seventies action films. Dagmar herded her posse into a passenger compartment that smelled strongly of cigarettes, and slumped onto the backseat, her task done.

From now on, her fate was up to the gods.

The gods promptly wrapped the limousine in a traffic jam. Ismet looked out at the cars inching along Ataturk Boulevard, then looked at Dagmar and smiled.

“You’ve done your best,” he said, “but the rush hour will make us late.”

As long as it wasn’t her fault, Dagmar didn’t much care. Tuna seemed pleased by the delay. Richard looked again at his chronograph.

“Ankara is built on hills,” Ismet said. “All the traffic runs into the valleys and gets jammed up.”

“We worked that out when we were planning our live event,” Dagmar said. “That’s why we had our live event this morning in Anyt Kabir Park-lots of ways for Bond to make his escape from the black hats.”

“Very smart.” Ismet looked at her. “I watched the event online. It seemed to go well.”

“So far.” Crossing her fingers.

“The players were enthusiastic. Especially about the Aston Martin.”

Double-oh-seven’s escape vehicle had been shipped in from a dealer on Cyprus, riding in a truck the entire distance, and would be packed up and taken back the same way.

“Are you enjoying my country?” Ismet asked.

“Good beer,” Dagmar said, “and the best fast food in the world. I’m hoping to enjoy everything else once this is over.”

Ismet grinned. “You haven’t bought a carpet yet?”

“No.”

“My people are slipping.”

Dagmar laughed. “I suppose you have a brother or a cousin who’ll give me a good deal?”

“An uncle. But he’s in Istanbul.”

“We’ll be there tomorrow.”

“He’s in the Cavalry Bazaar,” Ismet said. “I can show you.” He was quite serious.

Dagmar smiled to herself and turned to watch Ankara roll past. The car lapsed into silence. Hemmed in by tall modern buildings and Ankara’s steep hills, Dagmar began to feel tendrils of claustrophobia sinking into her mind. As the Mercedes moved farther south, she saw the police and military presence deepen. As they passed the Confidence Monument, she saw a group of young men in pearl gray uniforms and baseball caps, machine pistols slung over their shoulders.

“Gray Wolves,” Ismet said.

Tuna muttered a few disgusted, inaudible syllables and turned away from the sight.

“What are they?” Dagmar said. “Some kind of secret police?”

“Not so secret anymore,” Tuna said in a leaden tone.

“Officially they’re the youth auxiliary of one of our political parties,” Ismet said. “But now they’re the pets of the new regime.”

“Like the SS,” Tuna said.

“More like the Brownshirts,” Ismet said in his precise way.

As the conversation made this alarming swerve, Dagmar cast a sharp glance at the driver, who of course might well be a fanatic supporter of the junta.

The driver was behind a glass window, impassive. He probably hadn’t heard anything.

But still.

“Maybe,” she said, “we should change the topic of conversation.”

Tuna made another disgusted noise. A faint smile touched Ismet’s lips. He adjusted his glasses.

“Many of the hills here,” he said, “are covered with illegal settlements. People move onto vacant land and build their homes-entire neighborhoods, small towns. When you came here from the airport you probably saw them.”

Richard looked up, calculation glittering in his eyes.

“You have earthquakes here. Do those off-the-grid buildings survive?”

Ismet shrugged. “Usually not,” he said. “Sometimes the government resettles entire communities because they’re so worried about earthquake. But they can’t afford to do that with everyone.” He made a gesture that took in the city, the surrounding country. “In Istanbul the problem is worse. They have eighteen million people, and maybe a third are illegal. They vote for the politicians who promise to give them infrastructure.”

“Who do they vote for now?” Richard asked.

Silence answered him.

Dagmar was trying to wrap her head around the idea that one-third of a city could be squatters. They’d be squatters with jobs, or a hope of a job, and families and at least some money, just without a place to live until they’d built it themselves. And they’d come for the same reason that all immigrants came, because even a fragile jerry-built home on an earthquake-prone hillside was better than the poverty and lack of opportunity in the place they came from.