“That’s assuming there will actually be trials,” Dagmar said.
Martin looked surprised. “Won’t there be?” he said.
Dagmar shrugged, then introduced Ismet. Martin showed them to some seats in the rear of the aircraft, for takeoff.
The Gulfstream featured mahogany paneling, gold-plated fixtures, a large oval table of what seemed to be polished black marble, and softly glowing leather couches. Postimpressionist watercolors hung from the bulkheads. Martin showed them to some more conventional seats for takeoff.
“Does Attila actually own this jet?” Dagmar asked.
“No, he rented it from a company in Rome. Can I get you any drinks?”
Ismet asked for orange juice. Dagmar, more interested perhaps in relaxation, ordered a gin and tonic.
One of the two smiling cabin attendants came with their drinks a few minutes later. The attendants were both tall and well-groomed, attractive, and female. They spoke with Italian and French accents, respectively. As there was no eye candy for the heterosexual female, Dagmar gathered that the plane’s usual customers were rich men.
The attendants made sure Dagmar and Ismet were strapped in, and the Gulfsteam taxied to the runway, joined the queue behind a Boeing 737, and in its turn launched itself into the air.
The plane refueled in Bucharest, then crossed the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Caspian Sea. They kept well clear of Turkish airspace. The cabin attendants served champagne, caviar, blinis, beef stroganoff, and a hearty red burgundy, all appropriate enough for flying over the former Soviet Union. Dessert was bananas caramelized in butter, spices, and brown sugar, then expertly flamed with cognac by the Italian attendant. A movie was offered but declined. The Gulfstream flew over a triangle of Kazakhstan and then entered Uzbek airspace.
“The nearest airport-the nearest we can set this down, I mean-the nearest to your destination is in a town called Zarafshan,” Martin said. “We’ve got a car lined up for you. Attila also explained that you might be wanting these.”
He produced a series of cases and produced a pair of Beretta 9mm pistols in holsters and a lightweight semiautomatic shotgun in a nylon scabbard. Dagmar was surprised.
“How did you get these on such short notice?” she asked.
“We were in Italy,” Martin said. “It’s the second-largest arms exporter in the world. They have strict regulations if you live there, but if you’re taking the goods out of the country, they practically have a take-away window.”
Ismet looked at Dagmar.
“Do you know how to shoot?”
“I’ve fired pistols,” she said. “Not recently, though.”
Not, in fact, since she was a teenager and briefly had a boyfriend who was a firearms enthusiast.
“Maybe we’d better give you a refresher.”
He very competently field-stripped one of the Berettas, reassembled it, and dry-fired it.
“You’ve had practice,” Dagmar said.
“I was in the army.”
“You were?” She was surprised.
“All Turkish men are required to serve. I got to be an officer because I’d been to university, so it wasn’t bad.”
“What did you do in the army?” Dagmar asked.
“Public relations for the Fifth Corps in Thrace.” He smiled. “My service was pretty dull, which was fine with me.”
He gave Dagmar a brief course in use of the pistol. She expressed surprise at the pistol’s light weight, but Ismet pointed out that adding a magazine stuffed with bullets would increase its mass by a considerable amount.
Dagmar put the pistol down on the marble tabletop. Her hands had a light coating of gun oil, and she reached for a napkin.
“Do you think I might actually need to use this gun?” she said.
“If Slash is not amenable to money,” he said. “We’ve got to make a credible threat.”
“You know,” she said, “I think we have not worked out all the contingencies of this plan.”
“Speaking of money,” Martin said. He took another package down from an overhead compartment and opened it in front of them. Packages of Bank of England notes fell out on the table.
“Pounds sterling,” he said. “Ten thousand.”
Dagmar looked in amazement at Ismet. “We’ve been working for the U.S. government,” he said. “And you know what? They’re pikers.”
One of the cabin attendants appeared. She looked at the guns and money on the table as if they were no more unusual on the plane than copies of Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, then turned to Dagmar.
“I’m afraid our landing may be delayed,” she said. “The pilot is having trouble raising ground control.”
A cold warning shimmered up Dagmar’s spine.
“I wonder,” she said, “how much of the gear on this plane runs on TCP/IP.”
“Tell the pilot,” Ismet said, “to go ahead and land at Zarafshan whether he can raise them or not.”
The attendant looked dubious. “Well,” she said, “I-”
“We have to land somewhere.” Ismet was practical. “It may as well be where we want to go.”
Dagmar unholstered her phone and tried to get a cell phone signal.
“Cell networks still okay,” she said. “But VoIP is definitely down.” She pressed virtual buttons. “I can still get GPS, so the problem is local.”
“Local to Zarafshan,” Ismet asked, “or to all of Uzbekistan?”
Dagmar didn’t have an answer for that. Instead she looked at Martin.
“Attila rented this aircraft, right?” she said. “Did he make any effort to disguise the fact? Working through a shell corporation or anything?”
Bemusement crossed Martin’s face.
“He sent me down with his credit card,” Martin said. “IAG Productions.”
“And I presume the pilot filed a flight plan? Saying he was going to Cyprus, then to Uzbekistan?”
“I imagine so, yeah.”
The generals could be expected to keep a watch on the man who had declared himself an enemy of their regime. Attila might as well have drawn a flaming arrow in the sky pointing to their destination.
Dagmar turned to Ismet.
“The plane and the guns and money are nice,” she said. “But the advantages of working for a covert branch of the U.S. government are now a lot more apparent.”
One of the cabin attendants approached.
“Excuse me, miss, but is that a cell phone you’re using?”
“I’ve got EDET; I can use it on a plane.”
“Oh. Very well, then.”
Dagmar gave a jump as the phone rang in her hand. She saw it was Helmuth.
“Turkey’s down,” he said. “The whole country, plus a chunk of Greece and Bulgaria.”
“So is Uzbekistan. How’s the DOS network doing?”
“Working so far. The landlines are holding up, at least for now.”
“What’s happening?”
“A bunch of politicans have taken over the old parliament building. The one right near the Ataturk statue in Ulus, where Tuna had his action.”
“Don’t send Rafet in there. The last time people tried to seize a building, it just made targets out of them.”
“I’ll tell Rafet.”
“Anything else?”
She could almost hear the smile in Helmuth’s voice. “The German news is full of it. The cops arrested some terrorists in a Berlin hotel-all heavily armed.”
Dagmar gave a triumphant laugh. The first team was out of the picture, and Byron was burned.
Helmuth rang off. The guns were packed away, then stowed in overhead compartments. The money went into pockets and luggage. Dagmar went to look out the window. They were circling a town set in a sandy desert, the Kyzyl Kum, which covered at least half the country. The dunes stood out a brilliant red against deep shadows cast by the westering sun. The town was very, very green-it was amazing in its greenness, especially as contrasted with the brown and rust and alkali that surrounded it. On one side of the town were some kind of mining works, tailing ponds, paved roads. On the other side was the airport, a single strip.
The Gulfstream passed slowly over the airport. Dagmar could see commercial aircraft sitting on concrete aprons near the terminal. There didn’t seem to be any planes preparing to take off.