Lincoln had spent the morning in his office, talking on the phone or sending encrypted messages to his superiors. He came out at midafternoon, just as Dagmar figured that Rafet and Tuna were landing at the Ankara airport. She was working the Gmail accounts she shared with them, to tell them that Judy had been targeted by assassins.
“Traitor may have given names, dates, and descriptions to the authorities,” she wrote. “Make certain you’re not under observation and proceed with caution.”
She’d argued for canceling the action entirely. Lincoln had overruled her.
“Excuse me, everybody,” Lincoln called. The tapping of keyboards ceased; faces turned to Lincoln. Even Ataturk seemed to be paying attention.
“We’ve got new rules,” Lincoln said. “For the rest of our time here, you will be escorted and guarded by RAF Police or other military personnel. You will not travel without a guard-if for some reason a guard isn’t available to take you somewhere, you are to stay where you are, and call for assistance at a number I’ll give you.
“You will no longer have access to your own cars. We don’t want anyone putting a bomb under one of them. If you need a ride somewhere, one of your guards will drive you.
“No one will be leaving RAF Akrotiri for any purposes whatever, save as our mission requires.” He looked at Helmuth. “No more barhopping in Limassol, I’m afraid.”
Helmuth looked as if he was going to comment, then shrugged.
Maybe he figured he could amuse himself by corrupting his bodyguards.
“You are all being moved to a single apartment block,” Lincoln said, “where you will be under guard twenty-four hours per day. You will be free to move around the aerodrome, provided you have proper escort.”
Byron raised a hand.
“When I took on this job,” he said, “I didn’t agree to be shot at.”
“You haven’t been.”
Byron reddened. His pinched face turned resentful.
“I’ve got a family waiting for me in the States,” he said. “I’m not going to risk coming home in a box.”
“Follow instructions,” Lincoln said, “and that won’t happen.”
Angry Man banged a fist on his desk.
“This isn’t in my contract!” he said.
“I think that you’ll find that it is,” Lincoln said. “If you like, we can go into my office and look at it together.”
Byron had turned a brilliant scarlet. His eyes seemed ready to pop from his head. Dagmar wondered if he was going to have a stroke.
“Fuck that!” Byron said. “You can’t stop me from leaving!”
Lincoln considered this for half a second.
“I think that perhaps I can. And in any case I have legal options-there’s a substantial financial penalty if you walk off the job, as I’m sure you know.”
Byron glared but had no answer. Lincoln turned to Dagmar.
“Briana,” he said, “can I see you in my office?”
Dagmar gave Byron what was meant to be a sympathetic look, then followed Lincoln into his office. The room smelled of stale coffee.
“Close the door, please.”
Lincoln sank into his Aeron chair as Dagmar shut the door. She took her own seat and watched as Lincoln took off his metal-rimmed shades, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I’m in charge of quartering you all,” he said, “and I thought I’d ask what kind of arrangements you want. I could put you in an apartment by yourself, but I don’t know if you’d be comfortable living alone.”
“Put me in with Ismet,” Dagmar said.
Lincoln lowered his hand and opened his eyes. The blue irises seemed washed out, and his lower lids sagged down his cheeks, revealing crescents of red flesh.
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” he said.
Dagmar sighed. “Oh, Lincoln,” she said. “Is it that I’ll be living openly with a guy, or-”
“No,” Lincoln said. “Nothing like that.” He reached for his glasses and adjusted them over his temples.
“It has occurred to you,” he said, “that it was one of our own group who set you up to be killed?”
She looked at him levelly. “Yes,” she said. “That thought had crossed my mind.”
He nodded.
“I take it,” she said, “that no one rushed to confess.”
“It’s possible the fault might lie somewhere else,” Lincoln said. “Someone on the British side. The people who quartered you in the first place, for instance. Someone in the base commander’s office. None of them should have known who you actually were, but there might have been some talk, or a document left out of the safe at the wrong time.”
“Good luck proving that,” Dagmar said.
“It turns out there’s a polygraph on the base,” Lincoln said. “To deal with security issues, and to vet the civilian workers.” His mouth quirked. “I’m kind of surprised. The Brits-and Europeans generally-tend to think of polygraph evidence as voodoo.”
“Do you?” she asked.
He gave a silent snarl. “Sometimes voodoo works.”
“I thought polygraph evidence wasn’t admissible in court.”
“We’re not going to take the person to court,” Lincoln said savagely. “Or if we do, it’ll be a very private court, which will reach a very private judgment.”
“Well,” Dagmar said. “Tomorrow the polygraph guy will likely find out something. But tonight I’d like to sleep with Ismet.”
“Dagmar,” Lincoln said. “Ismet is a suspect.”
She was exasperated. “I don’t think he-”
“His mission cratered,” Lincoln said. “He went missing for hours, completely out of contact. He never called in-never even sent a text message. He said he destroyed the SIM card on his phone, but we don’t know that.”
Indignation seethed in her blood. “He was pinned down!”
“He could have been captured.” Insistently. “He could have been threatened with torture and turned.”
Dagmar spoke with icy logic. “He flew here the very next day. He didn’t have time to-”
“When you turn someone,” Lincoln said, “you get him back to his normal life as soon as possible, before he has a chance to reconsider and before anyone misses him.”
Dagmar’s mind whirled. “That is absurd,” she said.
Lincoln shrugged. “Maybe,” he said.
“The killers!” Dagmar said. “Are you saying that the assassination was set up after Ismet was turned-if he was, I mean? In less than thirty hours? I’m not the professional here, but I’d imagine those sorts of ops require a little more planning time.”
Lincoln gave a controlled nod.
“Normally,” he conceded. “Unless you’ve got the team already prepped and they just need a location and an order to go.” He gave an uneasy shrug. “No lack of nationalist fanatics with guns over on Turkish Cyprus.”
“It still doesn’t sound very likely. Not if they have to plan to get through a secure perimeter.”
His tone turned savage. He made a cutting gesture with one arm.
“It doesn’t matter what’s likely. It only matters what’s possible. I’ve got to take every possibility into account!” He spread his hands. “Otherwise, we’re wrecked.”
Dagmar considered this.
“Aren’t we wrecked anyway?” she asked. “This operation is no longer covert. Bozbeyli can reveal what he knows whenever he wants, and show that all the demonstrators are nothing but foreign puppets. And instead, he decides to kill us.” She waved a hand. “Why is that?”
“I…” Lincoln hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe we’d better start trying to work that out.”
“I would like to do that-” Lincoln picked up papers from his desk and waved them. “But I keep being distracted by mundane tasks, such as the necessity of finding places for you all to sleep!” He dropped his hand and the papers to the desk with a thud. Then he sighed, shook his head, and lowered his voice.
“I was going to ask if you wanted to share my suite. I’ve got a spare bedroom, and it’s in a very secure building normally used by visiting VIPs. That’s probably why they didn’t try to whack me.”
Dagmar’s temper faded. She dropped her hands into her lap.
“That’s very kind of you,” she said. “But I’d much rather have my own place. And whether Ismet is officially my roomie or not, I’ll be spending the night with him.”