“I think that’s Muammar Sengor.”
The name meant nothing to Dagmar. Ismet adjusted his spectacles and studied the figure.
“Yes,” he said. “That could be him.”
“Let’s see if Chatsworth recognizes him.”
Lincoln was brought from his office to view the video. He shook his head.
“I don’t know Sengor. After my time. Sorry.”
“I’ve got his Web page here.” Lloyd brought the page up on another screen. It showed a smiling Sengor under a patriotic red banner featuring Turkish stars and crescents. He was a handsome man, in his thirties, with a mustache and a bright white smile.
“It looks like him, all right,” Ismet said. “He’s even got a red tie in his official photo. Maybe even the same one.”
Dagmar cleared her throat. The others turned to her.
“I’m all four-oh-four,” she said. “Who is this freakin’ Sengor?”
“The unfortunate thing about the Kurds,” Lloyd said, “is that they’ve never been politically united. Some are assimilated into Turkish society-Turkey has had Kurdish generals, Kurdish presidents-and others are tribal and owe allegiance to their sheikhs. The Kurds don’t have a common religion-there are Jewish Kurds and Christian Kurds and Yezidis, and even the Muslims are divided between Sunni and Alevi. There are regional dialects of the Kurdish language that make it difficult for Kurds to communicate with each other. And just to complicate things, some Kurds don’t even speak Kurdish; they speak Aramaic. When the PKK started calling for an independent Kurdistan, a lot of Kurds probably wouldn’t have understood what they were talking about. Ethnic identity has always been a little slippery.”
He raised a hand toward Sengor’s picture and waved his fingers as if trying to grasp at something elusive.
“Sengor operates in this realm of ambiguity very well. He’s an assimilated Kurd who has his own political party based in eastern Turkey. He’s supposed to be Alevi, though that’s unofficial. He’s been a supporter of the military government from the start.” His glance shifted to the smiling man on his official Web page. “He’s also said to be a gangster. Probably has a piece of the heroin trade, and is supposed to loan gunmen to the government to kill moderate Kurds.”
“Right.” Dagmar pointed at the frozen picture of the demonstration. “So now we’ve got him dead to rights, leading a phony demonstration intended to discredit the revolutionary movement. We put out our disclaimer right away.”
“That may not be Sengor,” Ismet pointed out.
“Doesn’t matter,” Dagmar said. “The man in the red tie is Sengor from now on.”
Ismet and Lloyd went to work on updating the Web pages with the video while simultaneously debunking it in English and in Turkish.
Dagmar followed Lincoln back into his office.
“Do we have to keep calling you ‘Chatsworth’?” she asked. “Everyone left in the group knows your real name.”
“Squadron Leader Alvarez doesn’t know my name,” he said. “Neither does Alparslan Topal, or any of the people here at the aerodrome.” He took papers off his desk and locked them in his safe. “Now that we’re in the habit of maintaining security, let’s keep doing it. Just in case.”
Dagmar dropped into one of the chrome-and-vinyl seats.
“Someone in the Turkish government is trying to play us,” she said. “It’s not Bozbeyli or the generals-those were the people who sent gunmen to kill me. This is someone new.”
Interest glimmered in Lincoln’s blue eyes.
“That’s possible,” he said.
“You’ve got access to intelligence reports,” Dagmar said. “Do you have any idea who this new person might be?”
Lincoln seemed to give the idea thorough consideration. His eyebrows went up.
“The man who reengineered the High Zap?” he said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Dagmar said. “Do you have any reports on whatever team deconstructed the Zap?”
Lincoln spread his hands. “I have no information here. I’ll make inquiries.” He tilted his head. “But this… gamester.”
“Kronsteen,” Dagmar said. “The chess player in From Russia with Love.”
“Kronsteen,” Lincoln echoed. “Do you have any idea what he’ll do next?”
“He’ll do whatever he can to divide us. He just uploaded a video showing that the rebellion was all about Kurdish independence.” Lincoln began to speak, but Dagmar held up a hand. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I handled it.”
He nodded. “I applaud your initiative.”
“But what other splits can be engineered in our alliance?”
“Religious Turks versus seculars,” Lincoln said immediately. And then, on reflection, “Rich versus poor. City versus rural. Sophisticated, Westernized Istanbul versus the patriotic heartland.” He flapped a hand. “Any society has similar fault lines. And any popular movement.”
“He’ll have a hard time taking this line if he goes too far,” Dagmar said. “Within forty-eight hours he’s already told us that the rebellion is about both a Scottish rock star and Kurdish separatism.”
“Next,” said Lincoln, “it’ll be a candy mint and a breath mint.”
“You’re dating yourself.”
Lincoln sighed. “I roll deep,” he said. He looked up.
“By the way,” he said, “we may be wearing out our welcome from our friends the Brits. A general officer pointed out to me this morning that we can do our job anywhere-which is true enough-and asked when I thought I’d be finishing up here. I think getting hit with the High Zap has strained their hospitality.”
Dagmar considered this. Moving wasn’t necessarily a bad idea.
“We need to shift to a place with a lot of bandwidth,” she said.
“And we won’t have Byron and Magnus to give our location away,” Lincoln said.
Dagmar narrowed her eyes.
“Indeed,” she said. “How much time do we have?”
“Negotiations are in progress on a number of fronts. dai Military Base has been mentioned-that’s in Latvia. So have bases in Germany.”
“I don’t have the appropriate wardrobe for Latvia,” Dagmar said. “I’m used to Southern California, for heaven’s sake.”
“I believe you can afford a coat on what we’re paying you,” Lincoln said.
“I can’t get another wardrobe out of Uncle Sam?”
“We don’t have a regular supplier,” Lincoln said, “for T-shirts branded with the logos of failed start-ups.”
Dagmar gave a laugh.
“Touche,” she said. She thought for a moment.
“We’ve got Byron and Magnus locked up here, right?” she said. “Why don’t we have one of them tell the Turks that we’ve got evicted and that out little project is canceled?” She thought for a moment. “Byron, for preference. If he defects, he won’t see his family again.”
Lincoln laughed.
“You’re starting to think like me,” he said.
“And that,” Dagmar said, “is terrifying as hell.”
By the next morning Rafet had a backup MS-DOS machine set up inside the safe house, with a modem scavenged from a carpet shop. Instructions for joining the DOS network had gone out to the various heads of the various sub-networks. Richard had put together a bulletin board system within DOS, where instructions to the network could be posted. In the event that the Zap struck Ankara again, Rafet would use a landline to call out of the country, to a number set up in Luxembourg. The Luxembourg number would automatically be forwarded to another number, this one in Milan, and so until it reached the computer humming away in Akrotiri.
If the High Zap lasted long enough, the landlines would go down as well, but Dagmar hoped the Turks wouldn’t dare to keep their own cities blacked out for very long. They wouldn’t want to crash their own economy, which like the rest of the world was now dependent on the Internet.
Next morning the military staged a formal military parade down Ataturk Boulevard in Ankara, the Sixty-sixth Motorized Infantry Brigade returning to the scene of their triumph. The junta stood on a reviewing platform in Cankaya and distributed medals. Whose morale the parade was intended to boost was open to question.
What this meant, practically speaking, was that the military and police were busy guarding the parade route, which allowed Rafet to lead a demo near the Cebeci Campus of Ankara University. A swath of old houses had been demolished and not yet replaced, and the demonstrators made a brave sight, waving flags among the ruins and carrying signs in support of the next day’s general strike.