Turkish nationalists thought that Riza Tek was a fanatical God-inspired reactionary. Fanatical God-inspired reactionaries, the sort who belonged to or spoke for organizations that practiced suicide bombing, had a contrary view: they thought Riza Tek was a creation of the CIA.
Any relationship between the Tek Organization and the dervish lodge in Niagara Falls remained purely speculative.
Dagmar looked up from her laptop as Judy came into the room from the bathroom, where she’d been taking a shower. She wore a tank top that showed off her tattoo sleeves, color reaching from her wrists up her arms, over the yoke of her shoulders, and down her back. The tattoos didn’t seem to represent anything concrete but seemed inspired by physiology: they suggested, rather than depicted, muscles, bone, and a circulatory system. This gave Judy’s body an unearthly aspect, as if there were some whole other form, or other creature, hidden just beneath her skin. Dagmar would have found it repellent if she hadn’t so admired the art of it.
As Judy walked she clicked her tongue piercing against her teeth, giving her movement a rhythm track. A scent of honeysuckle soap trailed her to an armchair, where she sat, picked up her netbook, and booted it. While she waited for the first screen to appear, she looked up at Dagmar.
“Is there some reason,” she asked, “why you moved your bed so it’s on a diagonal?”
Dagmar’s nerves hummed a warning. She didn’t know Judy well enough to trust her with the answer.
For that matter, she didn’t know anyone well enough.
“It’s a luck thing,” she said vaguely.
Judy nodded, as if that made sense.
“I notice that you drink,” she said.
Dagmar glanced at her Bass Ale, then looked back at Judy.
“I do,” she said.
“Aren’t you worried you might have inherited your father’s alcoholism gene?”
Dagmar looked at her drink again and considered telling Judy to piss up a rope.
“I’m not going to worry,” she said, “until I find myself drinking the same cheap crap my dad did.”
“With my dad’s history,” Judy said, “I’m not getting high, ever.”
Dagmar looked at the tattoos, the rows of piercings lining Judy’s ears.
No, she thought, you don’t use; you just got addicted to pain instead. Getting jabbed thousands of times with a needle-now that wasn’t extreme, was it?
In any case, Dagmar was not in the mood to be dictated to by some kind of tattooed Goth puritan. She picked up her ale and waved it vaguely.
“Whatever works,” she said.
“What do you think of Rafet?” Judy asked.
Dagmar offered her laptop. “I can show you my research.”
“I think he’s totally hot,” Judy said with sudden enthusiasm. “D’you think he’s free?”
“I think God’s got him,” Dagmar said. “He’s supposed to be some kind of monk.”
Judy’s eyes widened. “They have monks?”
Dagmar offered the laptop again. “Check it out.”
Judy set aside her netbook and took Dagmar’s computer. Her brows drew together as she read about the Niagara lodge.
“It says they’re committed to poverty and austerity,” she said. “There’s nothing about chastity.”
“Well,” said Dagmar. “Good luck with all that.”
Judy handed the laptop back.
“Whatever you do,” Dagmar said, “don’t try to seduce him with alcohol.”
Lincoln-in his hotel room in Istanbul, the tickets and itinerary for Dagmar’s Bulgaria trip scattered on the table-watched Dagmar’s turmoil with perfect calm.
“Are you serious?” Dagmar asked, staring into Lincoln’s blue eyes. “You want me to astroturf an entire country?”
“A little guidance is all they need,” Lincoln said. “They’ll do all the hard lifting, not us.”
“They’re going to get killed,” Dagmar said. “Look what happened in Iran. In China. They were trying to do exactly this kind of thing and the government answered with bullets.”
Lincoln affected to consider this.
“If we do this right,” he said, “maybe not so many. Maybe none at all.”
“Tens of thousands died in China!”
Lincoln’s lips firmed.
“They didn’t have us to guide them. But if people choose to take that risk-if they think their political freedom is worth risking their lives-then they also deserve our help.”
Dagmar resisted this logic.
“If people got killed,” she said, “it would be my fault.”
“No.” Lincoln was firm. “It would be the fault of the bastards who killed them.”
Dagmar was beginning to suspect that there were a few too many bastards in this picture.
The 0800 briefing began with a buffet of local breads, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs, and the best watermelon Dagmar had ever tasted in her life. She looked sadly at the buffet and regretted the Weetabix she’d just had for breakfast. Nobody had told her there would be food.
A pack of strangers filled the room, and Dagmar wondered if they’d just come for the buffet before she realized they were all Lincoln’s people from the States. Magnus was tall, well over six feet, and thin-what Dagmar thought of as a Geek, Type One-and was a programmer. He wore a Daffy Duck T-shirt, and his scrawny, hairy legs were revealed by a Utilikilt, a signal garment of the geek.
This was, Dagmar reflected, a British air base, the personnel of which were certain to have a fair number of Scots. She wondered what the Scots would think of Magnus and his Utilikilt and what Magnus would think of the Scots.
Scots, she thought, looked very well in kilts. Or at least those who didn’t knew better than to wear one.
Why was it so different for the Americans?
Lola and Lloyd-whose names, echoing each other, demonstrated the hazards of letting people coordinate their own code names-were well-dressed white people in their early twenties whom Lincoln introduced as interns. Efficient, wavy-haired Lola, businesslike in a gray summer suit, was in charge of the buffet and also of the ID badges that she handed out. The interns were Company, here to learn what Dagmar did, so that they could do it without her later.
Dagmar hoped to hell that they wouldn’t take their skills into the private sector and become her competition. They seemed fearsomely intelligent.
She was just getting acquainted with these when a dignified, well-dressed man entered and was introduced as Alparslan Topal, the observer from the Turkish government-in-exile currently residing in Rome. Dagmar figured he wasn’t using a code name. Topal had a white mustache and exquisite manners and bowed over Dagmar’s hand as he was introduced.
“Pleased to meet you,” Dagmar said.
Topal’s soft eyes looked into hers.
“I hope you will be able to relieve my distressed country,” he said.
Dagmar was a bit startled by this direct appeal.
“I hope I won’t disappoint,” she said.
The last man to arrive used the code name Byron. He was a short, pinch-faced man who wore a tropical shirt and sandals made of auto tires and in no way resembled the poet. Unless, of course, the poet had shaggy hair on the backs of his hands.
“Sorry I’m late,” he told Lincoln. “I was off trying to help out Camera Team C.”
“They were having a problem?”
“Unfortunately, your tech guy didn’t quite understand the fine points of the uplink.”
Lincoln raised his eyebrows. “I hope you straightened him out.”
“I did,” Byron said. He looked over the ops room, at the blank displays, the evil-eye amulets, the oversized portrait of Ataturk.
“Quite a group, is it?” he said.