They could have just grabbed a local signal-the area was saturated with IT-but the local bandwidth might not be up to the task. Their own gear, however improvised, was to be preferred…
“Reception is brilliant!” Richard called. “If only the rest of the world is getting it…”
He was busy on the phone to Great Big Idea HQ in Simi Valley, where it was late Friday night. Tens of thousands of American gamers, it was hoped, were awake to watch the game’s conclusion on live feed.
At least they would, if Richard’s jury rig worked.
The live event had gone perfectly to this point. Buses had taken the gamers from their digs in Beyolu to the quay in Ortakoy, where they filed happily aboard their excursion boats in the shadow of the district’s elaborate Mediciye Mosque, a structure that looked-to Dagmar, on her hill-like a Mississippi steamboat, with two filigreed funnel/minarets, an arched dome with a silhouette like an amidships paddlebox, and gingerbread dripping from the Texas deck… she wondered if the mosque’s nineteenth-century architects had in mind the era’s steamboats, chugging up and down the Bosporus in plain sight of the structure.
“Five by five! Five by five!” Richard shouted. By which Dagmar concluded that Simi Valley was receiving the transmissions just fine and that soon the finale of the Stunrunner game would be played out to its worldwide audience.
Dagmar got out her handheld and was aware of Ismet by her side mirroring her gesture. She looked over her shoulder to see Richard making a third call from his own phone, so that the guides on the three boats would get the message at the same time, and all three feeds would soon offer the last set of instructions given to the players.
“Universal Exports thanks you for your assistance to our sales associate Mr. Bond. We are pleased to report that he has returned to England in complete safety. But we would appreciate your assistance in helping to clarify a few final details…”
And the players were off.
Alaydin says:
“Foundation laid by lo’s grandson, where Yeats invoked mechanical bird.” wtf? 9 ltrs.
LadyDayFan says:
Googling Yeats + mechanical + bird gives a poem called “Sailing to Byzantium.”
Classicist says:
BYZANTIUM. lo’s grandson was Prince Byzas, who founded the city.
ReVerb says:
“Abdulmecid filled the Sultan’s garden here.” 10 letters.
Burcak says:
EZ, if yr Turk. DOLMABAHCE Palice. Dolma + bahce = filled + garden
Hanseatic says:
“Motivated by gadfly’s tongue, heifer drives Henry’s car.” 8 ltrs.
Desi says:
Henry’s car would be a Ford.
Classicist says:
BOSPORUS. lo was turned into a cow and driven across the Bosporus by a stinging fly. Bosporus is Greek for “cow-ford.”
Corporal Carrot says:
Do you have to have a doctorate in classics to get this stuff?
Maui says:
“Where snakes, pink lions, and Mad Fuat got their yah-yahs out.” (7 ltrs)
Classicist says:
I suspect my degree isn’t going to help with this one.
Burcak says:
Yah is Turkish for “mansion on water.” But which one?
LadyDayFan says:
Googling like fury here…
Snakes, Pink Lion, Egyptian, and Mad Fuat are all yahs along the Bosporus.
(Crescent and Star, Stephen Kinzer, p. 197.)
Hippolyte says:
But where are they?
Corporal Carrot says:
Realty Web page says Egyptian yah is for sale. Address in ORTAKOY.
ReVerb says:
Brilliant! We’re on our way!
The players in their boats laid little white tracks on the blue. Standing on the hill of Ortakoy, Dagmar finished her call and cast a glance at Ismet. He was dressed in his tan blazer and tie, and the blustery wind had brought a little color to his cheeks. He looked down at the distant Bosporus traffic as he held his phone to his ear, then nodded, smiled, and returned the phone to his pocket.
He looked up and smiled. The wind tossed his hair.
“What are you doing after this?” she asked.
“Back to working for our regular clients. I think the next job has to do with advertising a new series of electronic switches, mainly in trade journals.”
“Sounds peaceful.”
“Oh yes.” Ismet threw out an arm, at the spectacular Bosporus scene, the electronic world, at Stunrunner sizzling invisibly through the ether, its video streams reaching to outer space and back.
“This is the most fun I’ve had in ages!” he said.
“Other than the riot and the anxiety.”
He made an equivocal gesture.
“That’s my country now,” he said. “That sort of thing can happen at any time.”
Dagmar hadn’t been able to continue her brief flirtation with Ismet during the group dinner of the previous night, with everyone talking at once and passing mezes and drinks back and forth-and afterward she’d been too tired, her system having crashed after too many early mornings, too many nights on the go, and always worried that she, her friends, her charges, could end up on the points of bayonets…
And besides, she’d been having second thoughts. She had a bad history with office romance.
Her last lover, an actor she’d hired for one of her projects, had (1) turned out to be married and (2) been savagely murdered and, furthermore, had been killed on her account. That was two reasons for feeling guilty and miserable-more if you considered the wife.
He hadn’t been the last to die, either.
In the aftermath Dagmar had decided that the only remaining morally defensible position was to forget the world of relationships and concentrate on work. Which she had, for three years.
But still, she was planning a week’s vacation after the live event, the first vacation since the one that had gone so disastrously wrong in Jakarta. And the week could be a lot more fun with someone else along.
“Where do you actually live?” she asked.
He nodded across the water. “The Asia side, in Uskudar. I share an apartment with a colleague.”
“So you take the ferry every day?”
He made an equivocal gesture. “The ferry, the train, aircraft… I travel all over the place. I rent a single room in Ankara because we lobby the government, but I may have to give it up. The generals have their own structures in place, and a very firm idea of which interests they have to placate. They don’t respond to our efforts.” He tossed his head back. “Call me another dissatisfied customer of the regime.”
Richard stuck his head out of the van.
“Look at this! It’s beautiful!”
She turned and stepped up into the van and duckwalked to a better view, leaving the world of reverie for the more immediate sphere of video. The multiple feeds were indeed beautiful, digital icons of the packed tour boats hissing through the water, flags snapping, old Ottoman mansions lining the shores, most of them beautifully restored and probably worth millions, gamers bent over their puzzles, the sharp wind ruffling their hair… astern loomed the towers of the Bosphorus Bridge, the roadway suspended by a web of sun-etched cable. Dagmar’s heart leaped.
“Are those dolphins?” she cried.
“Yes.” Ismet peered into the van, shading his eyes with a hand.