Lincoln put on his glasses, reached for the papers, and made a note.
“Done,” he said. He looked at her from over the rims of his glasses. “Now that it’s morning in the States, I’ve got to call Judy’s mother and tell her that her daughter is dead.”
Dagmar tried to speak and failed to find the words. Lincoln’s blue eyes seemed to bore into her.
“She was here working on a game,” Lincoln said. “An ARG, for the Turkish market. She was killed in what we believe to be a case of mistaken identity.”
Dagmar nodded dumbly.
“Just in case anyone asks,” Lincoln said. He made a flipping gesture with one hand.
“I think that’s all,” he said.
She rose and left the room and walked back to ops. The Lincoln Brigade was mostly finished for the day and were quietly packing up their drives and running the bar-code stickers under Lola’s scanner. Dagmar checked the clock on the wall, then went to her own office and sent out the day’s spam.
Welcome to Cankaya Wireless Network. Customer service is our most important product! We work constantly to expand our network throughout the Turkish-speaking world.
Anyone signing up to our network in the next month will be entered into a special drawing. Prizes may include cash, a beautiful scarf, or a box of lovely greeting cards! The next drawing will take place by noon on Thursday!
She had just hit the Send key when her office door opened and Helmuth slipped in. He wore an open-necked shirt and a jacket and trousers of linen. He sat on the brown metal chair and waited for her to acknowledge his presence.
“Yes?” she said.
He gave her a hooded look. “Dagmar,” he said. “What the hell are we doing?”
There were any number of commonplace responses she could have given him, but she didn’t bother. She knew well enough what he meant.
“Jesus, Dagmar,” Helmuth said. “We’re getting people killed. We got Judy killed.”
“I know,” Dagmar said.
“Now we’re in protective custody, stuck in an apartment building surrounded by guards with guns. We’re prisoners.” Helmuth leaned across Dagmar’s desk and spoke in an urgent whisper: “Dagmar, we’re game designers. This isn’t our job.” His hands groped the air as if he were physically searching for words. “Our job is to be cool, to make things cool. We can’t make killings and riots cool. We’re amateurs and we’re fucking everything up.”
Dagmar couldn’t disagree. “What do you want us to do?”
“Leave,” Helmuth said. “Just leave. Go home.”
Dagmar looked down at her desk. “What does Richard think?”
“He’s your happy Zen warrior. He just sits at his desk and makes up koans and pretends to be a ninja. He’ll do whatever you tell him.” He sighed. “You should just quit. That’s all.”
“Like Byron?”
Helmuth’s mouth quirked. “Byron’s afraid for his skin. I’m afraid for the people we’re putting in danger.”
“Wouldn’t they be in more danger if we left?” she said.
He gave her an appraising look. “I’m also afraid for your safety. And your soul.”
Dagmar didn’t have an answer for that. She tried to speak, failed.
“You’ve put everything you’ve got into the company,” Helmuth said. “You can’t put that kind of energy into fixing a whole country. It’s just not possible.”
She licked her lips. “I’ve just sent out notices for tomorrow’s demo.”
Helmuth’s eyes turned stony. “Dagmar, Lincoln and his crew failed us. They were supposed to keep us safe, but instead they put us in the same room with someone who sent a hit squad to kill you. It’s their fuckup. Nobody’s going to blame you if you walk out.”
“Let me think about it,” Dagmar said. “I’ll give you an answer soon.”
A dissatisfied look crossed Helmuth’s face. He rose from the chair.
“Think hard, Dagmar,” he said. “And let’s get the hell back to California.”
He left, closing the door softly behind him. She looked after him and tried to think of nothing at all.
Dagmar took the hard drive and her memory stick with the addresses on it and gave them to Lola to be locked in Lincoln’s safe. She went to the ops room, where most of her crew were standing around waiting for the police escort to their new quarters.
Ismet stood behind his desk. He was looking across at the picture of Ataturk. His eyes were dark wells behind the spectacles. She drifted to his side, but he seemed not to notice her.
Ismet appeared to come to a decision. He bent down to his desk, opened a drawer, and took out a small stuffed bear and a box of Turkish delight. He went to the wall, picked up the hammer and box of nails that waited there, and nailed the items next to the trophies from the other missions, the flowers, the towel, the photo, the DVD.
He turned and faced the others. His expression was defiant.
Dagmar’s heart soared. She wanted to applaud.
Ismet marched back to his desk and she put her arms around him.
Lola came to tell them that their escorts had arrived. Lincoln appeared from his office, shambling stiff legged, his face haggard.
“We will be retaining your personal electronics for the next twenty-four hours,” he said.
“God damn it!” Byron said, and swung a fist through the air so hard that it spun him around ninety degrees.
“We’ll be cloning your hard drives,” Lincoln said, “and looking through them.”
“I have a family, damn it!” Byron called. “I need to talk to them!”
“If you wish to contact your family or send messages,” Lincoln said, “you’ll have to do it with me or Lola observing-preferably soon, because we’ll want dinner at some point.”
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Byron kicked a chair across the ops room. Angry Man, Dagmar thought, throwing a tantrum.
Dagmar felt her nerves go nova. She strode to Byron’s side and shouted in his ear.
“Shut the fuck up, you useless whining cocksucker!” she screamed. He jumped and turned to her, round eyes white in his red face.
“We lost a friend today, and all you can do is snivel!” Dagmar shouted. “Snivel like a little bitch!”
Byron began to back away. Dagmar pursued.
“It’s time you learned that this isn’t all about you!” Dagmar said. “If I hear another complaint from you, I’m going to kick you down the fucking stairs!”
Byron had backed up against a desk. Dagmar crowded him close.
“Jesus, Dagmar!” he said.
Dagmar pointed to the exit.
“You have my permission to leave the ops center,” she said.
Byron edged down the length of the desk, then stepped into the aisle and walked toward the exit, putting his feet down carefully, as if he might cut himself on glass. The others silently parted for him. Dagmar found herself shivering and realized her chin was wet.
Lord, she thought, had she been shrieking at Byron and drooling? Here he was pitching his little emo fit and was then confronted with a shrieking, dribbling madwoman, rabid as a vampire bat.
With a quivering hand she reached for a hankerchief and swabbed her chin and lips. Her knees suddenly seemed very weak, and she leaned against the desk.
Gunfire crackled dimly somewhere in her awareness. She tried to shut it off, concentrate on the sound of the ceiling fan ticking over her head.
No one seemed to be looking at her. In the wake of the scene they all seemed to have found something else with which to busy themselves.
Dagmar thought of the break room and thought that perhaps her knees would support her the short distance. She passed by Helmuth at his desk, and he looked at her sidelong.
“Guess that was my answer,” he said. Dagmar said nothing.
In the break room she sat on the little yellow plastic-covered love seat and got a lemonade from the fridge. She sipped her drink and waited till she heard the others leave, then rose and went back to the ops room.
Lola, the Guardian Sphinx, was still at her desk at the end of the hall, her head bent over her work. Dagmar walked across the room to the hall, checked her own office to make sure everything was turned off, then closed the door and walked on.