Deep State

CHAPTER THREE

Dagmar spent much of the next two days in a frantic search for appropriate clothing-and not just for herself but for the two members of her team who were to accompany her. Tuna Saltik, her Turkish co-writer, at least owned a suit, even if he didn’t have it with him, but Richard, her tech and security specialist, had never worn a suit and never even owned a tie. She not only had to find her own outfit she also had to shepherd Richard through the process.

Richard was known in the office as Richard the Assassin, a name derived from the highly imaginative acts of vengeance he carried out upon players who tried to hack illicit information out of Great Big Idea. He was a trim, olive-skinned young man who favored white Converse sneakers that contrasted with the ninja-dark shade of his T-shirts and jeans. Dagmar couldn’t remember when he’d dressed otherwise.

It was only to be expected that on his first trip to a boutique he revealed himself as a closet fashion slut and, furthermore, a fashion slut with luxurious tastes in fabric and style. He’d chosen a gorgeous suit of cashmere, gray with a subtle blue pinstripe, a tie of hand-painted Chinese silk, and Italian wingtips allegedly made by hand. Dagmar had flat refused to authorize the shoes for the expense account, but Richard had brought out his own credit card for the shoes and had then gone on to accessorize himself with a Girard Perregaux chronograph on a gold band-“chronograph” being what you called a watch when it cost over ten thousand dollars. Dagmar wasn’t aware that she paid Richard enough to afford such things.

Dagmar was even more surprised to discover that this was the first watch he’d ever owned.

“Up till now,” he said, “I just looked at my phone when I wanted to know the time.”

“You do know you can get a Timex for under fifty bucks, right?” Dagmar said.

He held out his arm to admire the glittering object on his wrist.

“I’ll never have to buy another watch, ever,” he said.

“At these prices,” said Dagmar, “you’d better hope so.”

“By the way,” Richard said, “can you teach me how to tie my tie?”

Auditing Richard’s luxurious tastes wasn’t Dagmar’s only problem. Tuna Saltik, the novelist and essayist she’d hired to make certain the game worked in Turkish, hated the new government and didn’t want to go to the reception; he balked at being dragged to the boutique, and he made Dagmar pick out his clothes for him.

“Maybe I’ll be sick tomorrow,” he said.

“You’d better not be,” Dagmar said. “The generals are going to know who shows up and who doesn’t. You don’t want to end up on the wrong list.”

“I’m not afraid of them,” Tuna said.

“Yes, you are.”

He glared at her, and she realized that she’d made the mistake of challenging his machismo, or whatever it was Turks possessed that filled the same slot as machismo on the mental motherboard.

He was a big man, broad shouldered, shaped like a brick. He had a mustache and heavy brows and big hands, and maybe-just maybe-he actually wasn’t afraid.

“Look,” she said. “You’re a writer. Writers have more ways of subverting the dominant paradigm than anyone else on the planet. Come to the palace with me, pay attention to what happens, and then you can write savage satire about the generals, their wives, and their taste in furniture. Or whatever. Just don’t put the rest of us in danger.”

“This is not acceptable,” he said, weakening.

“This is what has to happen. We’re in business; it’s not our job to go to jail.”

Tuna turned sullen. “My friends will learn about this, and then they’ll think I’m one of them.”

“Tell your friends,” Dagmar said, “that your Nazi boss made you do it.”

Which was, she thought, precisely what she was going to tell her friends about Lincoln.

Time was running out on Thursday when she heard a knock on her hotel room door. She opened it to find a young man dressed soberly in a tan blazer and tie and carrying a netbook in a shoulder bag. He was, she figured, in his late twenties; he was slim and a little bit boyish and had studious brown eyes behind dark-rimmed spectacles.

“Lincoln sent me,” he said. “We haven’t met, but I’m your advance man. I’ve been doing publicity for you for weeks now.”

He spoke American English, with only a trace of an accent.

“You’re Ismet Kadri?” she said. She’d spoken to him on the phone, and they’d exchanged a lot of email.

“Yes. Pleased to meet you.”

Dagmar shook his hand. “Come in,” she said.

Papers, belongings, and electronics were scattered over her hotel room. Ismet gazed at the disorder with mild eyes.

“Can I help in any way?” he asked.

“That depends. What can you do?”

“I can translate for you at the palace. And I can… help arrange your schedule.”

“Do you have a car?”

“I have a rental.”

“Do you know Ankara?”

“Pretty well. Not like a native, though.”

“Right. I need to get Tuna and Richard to the tailor for the final fitting. I need to buy some shoes, and get a haircut. And I need to pick up my dress, which should be ready by four o’clock.”

Ismet looked at his watch.

“We have very little time,” he said.

He and Dagmar managed everything except for the haircut-the stylist was backed up, with customers already filling the available chairs. Dagmar hoped that her prematurely gray hair would make up in novelty what it lacked in elegance.

Fortunately for these last-minute expeditions, Ankara was the capital of the country, a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city with up-to-the-instant shops. Ankara also featured over a dozen universities, the presence of which guaranteed a large number of boutiques overflowing with stylish, often eccentric, and reasonably priced styles.

Dagmar bought her shoes in one of the latter-chunky yet strangely endearing Bulgarian footwear that looked like something Rosa Klebb might have worn to a fatal meeting with 007. In a more upmarket place in Kizilay she found a glossy Donna Karan gown, slate blue that would set off her gray hair; in another a beaded handbag just big enough to carry a cell phone, a compact, and a tampon; and from a woman at a restored Ulus caravanserai she bought a flowery pashmina shawl to drape around her shoulders.

She figured she’d be all right as long as she didn’t use the shawl to cover her hair. The military junta were ultranationalists and ultrasecularists, who would rather shoot a pious young Muslim girl than allow her into a school building in a headscarf.

Dagmar herself had no sympathy for religious fundamentalists, but she had every sympathy for their children and thought it was more important to educate young women than to bar the school door with bayonets.

She managed to get her posse to the hotel lobby on time. Tuna, bulky and uncomfortable in his new suit, was sulking. Richard kept admiring his chronograph. Ismet was all quiet efficiency. And Lincoln was discovered in the hotel lobby, lounging by the fountain in his Guatemalan peasant shirt, duck trousers, and tobacco-colored moccasins.

Dagmar raged up to him.

“You’re not ready?” she demanded.

Lincoln gave her a mild blue-eyed look. “You’re the bright future of multiplatform entertainment,” he said. “I’m just the PR guy. I wasn’t even invited.”

“So what will you be doing while I’m kowtowing to the junta?”

“The hotel offers Turkish massage.” He smiled. “I think I owe myself a little relaxation after the rigors of our journey.”

“Rigors?” she demanded. “Relaxation?” Fury blazed through her. “When do I get to relax?”

Lincoln winked at her.

“Saturday night,” he said. “After the game’s over.”

Dagmar’s hands turned into claws, half-ready to gouge Lincoln’s flesh.

“Our ride is here,” said Ismet.

The generals had sent a sky blue limousine to pick up Dagmar’s posse from the hotel, an extended, customized, mirror-polished version of the Grosser Mercedes that movie villains were always driving in seventies action films. Dagmar herded her posse into a passenger compartment that smelled strongly of cigarettes, and slumped onto the backseat, her task done.

From now on, her fate was up to the gods.

The gods promptly wrapped the limousine in a traffic jam. Ismet looked out at the cars inching along Ataturk Boulevard, then looked at Dagmar and smiled.

“You’ve done your best,” he said, “but the rush hour will make us late.”

As long as it wasn’t her fault, Dagmar didn’t much care. Tuna seemed pleased by the delay. Richard looked again at his chronograph.

“Ankara is built on hills,” Ismet said. “All the traffic runs into the valleys and gets jammed up.”

“We worked that out when we were planning our live event,” Dagmar said. “That’s why we had our live event this morning in Anyt Kabir Park-lots of ways for Bond to make his escape from the black hats.”

“Very smart.” Ismet looked at her. “I watched the event online. It seemed to go well.”

“So far.” Crossing her fingers.

“The players were enthusiastic. Especially about the Aston Martin.”

Double-oh-seven’s escape vehicle had been shipped in from a dealer on Cyprus, riding in a truck the entire distance, and would be packed up and taken back the same way.

“Are you enjoying my country?” Ismet asked.

“Good beer,” Dagmar said, “and the best fast food in the world. I’m hoping to enjoy everything else once this is over.”

Ismet grinned. “You haven’t bought a carpet yet?”

“No.”

“My people are slipping.”

Dagmar laughed. “I suppose you have a brother or a cousin who’ll give me a good deal?”

“An uncle. But he’s in Istanbul.”

“We’ll be there tomorrow.”

“He’s in the Cavalry Bazaar,” Ismet said. “I can show you.” He was quite serious.

Dagmar smiled to herself and turned to watch Ankara roll past. The car lapsed into silence. Hemmed in by tall modern buildings and Ankara’s steep hills, Dagmar began to feel tendrils of claustrophobia sinking into her mind. As the Mercedes moved farther south, she saw the police and military presence deepen. As they passed the Confidence Monument, she saw a group of young men in pearl gray uniforms and baseball caps, machine pistols slung over their shoulders.

“Gray Wolves,” Ismet said.

Tuna muttered a few disgusted, inaudible syllables and turned away from the sight.

“What are they?” Dagmar said. “Some kind of secret police?”

“Not so secret anymore,” Tuna said in a leaden tone.

“Officially they’re the youth auxiliary of one of our political parties,” Ismet said. “But now they’re the pets of the new regime.”

“Like the SS,” Tuna said.

“More like the Brownshirts,” Ismet said in his precise way.

As the conversation made this alarming swerve, Dagmar cast a sharp glance at the driver, who of course might well be a fanatic supporter of the junta.

The driver was behind a glass window, impassive. He probably hadn’t heard anything.

But still.

“Maybe,” she said, “we should change the topic of conversation.”

Tuna made another disgusted noise. A faint smile touched Ismet’s lips. He adjusted his glasses.

“Many of the hills here,” he said, “are covered with illegal settlements. People move onto vacant land and build their homes-entire neighborhoods, small towns. When you came here from the airport you probably saw them.”

Richard looked up, calculation glittering in his eyes.

“You have earthquakes here. Do those off-the-grid buildings survive?”

Ismet shrugged. “Usually not,” he said. “Sometimes the government resettles entire communities because they’re so worried about earthquake. But they can’t afford to do that with everyone.” He made a gesture that took in the city, the surrounding country. “In Istanbul the problem is worse. They have eighteen million people, and maybe a third are illegal. They vote for the politicians who promise to give them infrastructure.”

“Who do they vote for now?” Richard asked.

Silence answered him.

Dagmar was trying to wrap her head around the idea that one-third of a city could be squatters. They’d be squatters with jobs, or a hope of a job, and families and at least some money, just without a place to live until they’d built it themselves. And they’d come for the same reason that all immigrants came, because even a fragile jerry-built home on an earthquake-prone hillside was better than the poverty and lack of opportunity in the place they came from.

She’d seen it before, in all the developing world. She’d run games or consulted with other game designers in India and China, and she’d seen a revolution firsthand in Indonesia, where the children of poverty had overrun the glittering hotels and office blocks of the privileged.

Overrun them and dismantled them and carried them away to build new things with the scraps.

“We’re coming up to the palace now,” Ismet said.

A pair of armored cars squatted before the stone walls on either side of the bronze gate. Soldiers with white helmets and gaiters and chromed assault rifles stood on guard. An officer spoke briefly to the driver, glanced into the back of the car, and then signaled his soldiers to open the inner gate and pull up the spike strip.

Once they were past the barriers, a large, brilliant park opened on all sides. Ankara seemed to specialize in parks, but this one was truly exceptional. The grounds blazed with scarlet gladioli and purple lilac, brilliant lilies and soft-petaled lavender. There were several buildings, ranging from the old Ottoman mansion where Ataturk had first lived to modernist office blocks, but the reception was to be held in the president’s residence, a pillared mansion called the Pink Villa.

Dagmar tried to imagine an American president living in a pink building, and failed.

Pink stone pillars loomed above them as the Mercedes drew up to the steps. Functionaries in white jackets and aides-de-camp in uniform clacked their way down the stairs in hard leather heels to open doors and offer hands to the passengers.

Dagmar emerged into bright August light and blinked. The scent of lavender wafted to her nostrils. “This way, please,” someone said, but Dagmar waited for her party to join her before she followed the young uniformed man up the stairway and beneath the mansion’s pink pillars.

Here there was another security check and the party had to surrender their phones. Richard had to offer his chronograph and shoes for inspection; the rest passed. And then they were shepherded into a drawing room, where a trio of somber, dignified photographers snapped their pictures while other cameramen pointed video cameras at them. Dagmar patted her hair and waited, feeling unnecessarily self-conscious. Functionaries ignored them and talked to each other. Dagmar saw that two plush chairs had been placed on either side of a side table. She wondered if she was supposed to sit.

Then there was a stir among the onlookers. The military men clicked to attention, and everyone else straightened. Dagmar turned to the far door and saw the junta march in.

President Bozbeyli hadn’t been seen in a uniform since assuming office: today he wore a soft gray Italian suit and a dignified blue tie. He was very short, seven or eight inches shorter than Dagmar, which put him at an inch or so over five feet. He smiled warmly, took Dagmar’s hand, and bowed over it with olde-world politeness.

Dagmar gazed in surprise at the general’s lavish use of cosmetics. The makeup and rouge failed to entirely conceal the lines and spots of age-and she couldn’t help but see that his hair and mustache were suspiciously black.

Bozbeyli straightened. He and Dagmar held hands and smiled while the photographers’ flashes went off, the cameras went click-click-click, and Dagmar scrutinized the general’s makeup.

The cosmetics were clearly intended for the cameras, not for someone standing a short distance away. The effects were too glaring at close range.

Neither of them had yet spoken a word. It was all dumb show for the cameras.

Words might not even be necessary. The picture of Dagmar shaking hands with the president was probably enough for the regime’s purposes.

“Adoring American media figure endorses president.” That’s the caption they’d put on it.

Unlike the caption she’d use herself: “Dagmar Shaw sells integrity to keep dream job.”

The cameras stopped snapping as if someone had given an order. Then Bozbeyli introduced the prime minister, a white-haired former air force general named Dursun-he wore his age without quite so much cosmetic-and again Dagmar clasped an age-scored hand and gave a close-lipped smile while the photographers clicked away.

Bozbeyli introduced his minister of defense-an elderly admiral who still wore the uniform, along with rouge-and the photographers clicked again. Then there was a pause while the junta looked expectantly at Dagmar, and she realized she was supposed to present her team. She did so-the cameras clicked only a few times for each of them-and then with a gracious gesture Bozbeyli offered Dagmar a seat.

They sat opposite each other. Each entourage stood behind its principal. The cameras clicked some more. The admiral, distracted, fished in his pockets for cigarettes and a lighter.

“I would like to thank you for the work you are doing in bringing modern Turkiye to the attention of the world,” Bozbeyli said, in very good English. “Your efforts are inspiring many of the brightest minds of the nation. We are always conscious that the road to the future is paved with technology.”

Perhaps, Dagmar thought, that metaphor worked a little better in Turkish.

“The technology infrastructure here is very good,” Dagmar said. “We’ve had very few problems.”

She figured that Turkey’s IT backbone was a safe subject for conversation.

The little president gave a grand wave of his hand. “I gave orders that you be allowed to proceed without interference.”

Dagmar was startled.

“Thank you,” she managed. “Everyone has been very cooperative.”

“You wished to have your game in Anyt Kabir Park,” Bozbeyli said. “My security people said-” He changed to a mocking voice. “ ‘No, that’s too close to the Ataturk Mausoleum. There might be terrorists hiding in this game, and they might destroy the monument.’ ” Bozbeyli made an abrupt gesture. “I said, ‘No! This game will be good for Turkiye! Many people will play this game and see this film and then come to see our beautiful country!’ ” He shook his finger at imaginary security officers. “ ‘You must put more guards on the Mausoleum to keep it safe, but do not interfere with this game!’ ”

Bozbeyli sat back, crossed his arms like Napoleon, and smiled.

“That was very good of you,” Dagmar said.

“If anyone offers you trouble,” he said, “you will let me know.”

What power, Dagmar wondered, was Bozbeyli handing her? The power to have someone arrested? Beaten? Jailed?

Whatever power it was, Dagmar decided to ignore it.

“Everyone,” she said, “has been very kind.”

Behind Bozbeyli, the admiral lit his cigarette. Tobacco tanged the air.

“Under the former regime,” said the president, “I could not have guaranteed your safety. Extremists and terrorists were allowed to proliferate. Radical Muslims were on the verge of a coup d’etat. It was necessary to act.”

His hands made a series of chopping movements as he spoke. Maybe, Dagmar thought, he was simply unable to sit still.

“I’m afraid,” Dagmar said, “that your country’s politics are a little beyond my scope. I design Internet puzzles.”

She hoped to detour around the whole subject of the regime and its announced purposes. It was regrettable that she was here at all-but if she had to be in the Pink Villa with the generals, at least she could avoid an explicit endorsement of their rule.

But Bozbeyli persisted.

“Surely,” he said, “you must recognize the danger of religious terrorists.”

“The whole world has recognized that danger,” Dagmar said.

“Then you understand”-again the chopping gesture-“the need for action.”

“Civilization here is five thousand years old,” Dagmar said. “Can it seriously be threatened by a few madmen with bombs?”

Bozbeyli twitched his sable mustache. Behind him, the admiral drew on his cigarette.

“Public safety can be threatened,” the president said. “Lives of ordinary people can be put in jeopardy. The existence of our secular republic was in danger.”

“Indeed,” Dagmar said, “the danger exists.”

That danger, she thought, chiefly being the president and his clique.

Bozbeyli stared at her, as if seeing into her secret thought. As she looked back at him, a mad giddy urge to laugh possessed her. These people-this ancient trio of military mummies, held together with cosmetics and cellotape-they wanted her approval. They had gone to all this effort to get it. And now Bozbeyli was badgering her because she hadn’t provided what they desired.

She leaned close to the president and lowered her voice as if in confidence. “You know,” she said, “I’m really just here to help James Bond.”

Bozbeyli laughed and chopped the air with his hand.

“Well,” he said, “we must give him all the help we can! He fights the terrorists in our country!”

Dagmar responded with her wordless smile.

Bozbeyli turned to view his colleagues.

“My colleagues and I-we did not want this terrible responsibility,” he said. “But the nation was in danger-it was necessary to step forward and act to prevent a catastrophe.”

Dursun and the admiral looked a little bored by this. Perhaps they had heard this speech too many times.

“Every time the military has intervened in our nation,” Bozbeyli went on, “we have stepped down once the country’s security was assured.” He tapped a finger on his knee. “I assure you, we all wish for the day on which constitutional government may be restored.”

Dagmar nodded and smiled.

“Then we have something in common,” she said.

She knew immediately that this was the wrong thing to say. Bozbeyli’s face hardened, and he stood.

“This way, miss,” he said, and marched out without waiting for her. His colleagues followed.

And that was it, as far as hospitality was concerned. Dagmar and her party followed the junta into another room where a long table had been laid with a buffet. Others were there, men and women, to meet the guests, but Bozbeyli’s attitude was very clear, and no one approached.

Dagmar and her party stood at one end of the long table and Bozbeyli and a score of others at the far end. They talked to one another in low voices and every so often turned to look at Dagmar’s group as if sizing them up for their coffins.

Even the waiters didn’t approach. Dagmar helped herself to a glass of tea from a buffet.

“And here I thought it was going so well,” she said.

“Fuck him,” said Tuna darkly. Dagmar glanced at the other party, to make sure no one had heard.

No one was looking at them at the moment.

The grim standoff ended after twenty minutes, when a man in a tailcoat approached and told Dagmar that her car was ready. The group was reunited with its cell phones and returned to the Mercedes and its silent driver.

“Screw it,” Richard said. “It’s been a long day, and I’m hungry.”

Dagmar decided that Richard had the right idea. She turned to Ismet.

“Can you see if the driver will let us off someplace other than the hotel?” she said. “Let’s see if we can’t find someplace good to eat.”

A few minutes later, standing outside a bustling restaurant in Kizilay, Dagmar hit Lincoln’s speed dial.

“Hi, Dagmar,” he said. His voice was languid, and Dagmar imagined him stretched out on a divan, tingling with the aftereffects of his massage.

“I pissed off Bozbeyli,” Dagmar said.

There was a moment’s silence. Lincoln’s voice, when it returned, was less languid than before.

“You’d better tell me about it.”

Dagmar described the conversation as well as she could remember it.

“He said he was longing for democracy,” she concluded. “All I did was agree with him.”

“Where are you now?”

Dagmar glanced up at the restaurant sign. “Restaurant Harman,” she said. “Turkish-International cuisine, whatever that is.”

There was a moment of thoughtful silence.

“Call me before you come back to the hotel,” Lincoln said. “And I’ll check to see if there’s anyone hanging around outside.”

“And if there is?”

“You’ll check into another hotel for the night.”

“What about our things? All my work’s on my laptop. And I can’t wander around for the next few days in heels and a Donna Karan frock.”

“If necessary,” Lincoln said, “I’ll get your things myself.”

“How?”

Amusement entered his voice. “I’ll bribe the hotel staff,” he said.

Dagmar had to admit that this made perfect sense.

“Don’t let this spoil your dinner,” Lincoln said. “In all likelihood it means nothing.”

“I told you at the beginning,” Dagmar said, “that I have a bad personal history with military governments.”

“Noted,” said Lincoln. “Have a nice dinner anyway.”

The staff at the Harman seemed a little surprised at so well dressed a party so early in the evening but behaved with an impeccable, bustling courtesy that only mildly concealed their all-encompassing avarice.

In France, Dagmar reflected, you’d be made to feel second-class for dining so early, but the Turks didn’t care about such things. If you wanted drinks at nine in the morning, or dinner at four thirty, or breakfast at midnight, they’d do their best to accommodate you. They had an ancient tradition of hospitality to which they adhered with easy grace. Besides, good service was their way to a better paycheck, and they seemed to have no notions about either the proper time to eat supper or the proper time to earn money.

President Bozbeyli, she reflected, was the only rude Turk she’d ever met.

Dinner lasted a couple hours, and featured raky and Efes, olives and anchovies, spiced meatballs and grilled fish, and a form of kofte that, according to Ismet, translated as “ladies’ thighs.” When the group left the restaurant the sun was just on the horizon and the first cool touch of evening was on the air. They walked along Ataturk Boulevard while the muezzins sang the call to evening prayer-a sound that sent a primeval shiver down Dagmar’s spine.

The people in the streets ignored the call. Kizilay was busy and modern and filled with young people just beginning their evening. None of the women wore headscarves. It was like any European city.

Dagmar called Lincoln, and he said he’d take a look at the hotel lobby and the street in front, to see if some kind of unpleasantness waited.

Buses and trucks rolled past. Dagmar recoiled from the scent of diesel.

Ismet glanced around. “Want to see something different?” he said. “Have you been up to the castle?”

“There won’t be soldiers?” she asked.

Ismet shrugged. “No more than anywhere else.”

He hailed a taxi. With the three men crammed in the back and Dagmar riding shotgun, they sped north to Ulus and turned where a big equestrian monument of Ataturk stood foursquare on its plinth. Illuminated by spotlights, birds circled over the head of the great man but dared not alight.

To the east rose the walled mass of the city’s old citadel on its steep hill. A spotlit Turkish flag waved above the ramparts. Cell phone towers and the masts of broadcasters speared the evening sky.

The overloaded cab chugged slowly uphill, past a pair of silent museums, along the ancient Byzantine wall, and then through the gates of the citadel. Crowding the road were mansions dating from the Middle Ages, all built with ground floors of stone and wooden upper storeys that jutted out over the street and turned the road into a dark canyon. Some salesmen stood smoking in the doors of souvenir shops, alert to the possibility of oncoming profit-but most of the homes were family residences in varying states of repair, and Dagmar realized that there was an entire self-contained town standing within the citadel walls, a town of children with footballs, men playing backgammon in front of their doors, and old women in headscarves carrying plastic laundry baskets up steep, narrow streets. A town where cooking smells floated on the air and where television’s blue light shone through upper windows.

It was an older presence that she sensed here and much poorer than fashionable Kizilay. Even the little girls wore headscarves, something Dagmar hadn’t seen anywhere else. The present was compounded here with the timeless, present-day Ankara with Hittite Ankuwash and Roman Ancyra, with Byzantine Ankyra and Ottoman Angora, all blended together in the deep blue Anatolian twilight.

The taxi groaned up a steep road and halted in a cloud of biodiesel that tainted the air with the scent of stale olive oil. Ahead was a gate in another wall.

“I’ll tell the cab to wait,” Ismet said.

A guitar strummed chords somewhere above them. Dagmar followed Ismet up a stair and through the gate. She found herself inside a wide tower, perhaps a hundred feet across and fifty high, its courtyard broad enough for some boys to kick a football around. Ismet led the party to a steep stair leading to the battlements. Climbing, she tottered on her Bulgarian heels as one hand brushed the old Byzantine wall for balance. The stair was too much toil after a long meal: she was out of breath when she came out beneath the brightening stars.

She stood on the battlements of the tower, on a wide stone walk. Courting couples embraced in the shadows. Dark shapes sat on the outer wall, kicking their feet over the edge of the abyss. Farther along the wide walkway, some teenage boys clustered around a friend playing a guitar and stared at these formally dressed new arrivals with interest. Across the fort, a tourist in khaki shorts was setting up a camera on a tripod.

“The best view is from there,” Ismet said, pointing to a bastion that stood out on the edge of the hill.

Dagmar gazed doubtfully at the path that led to the bastion. She would have to walk to the outpost along the top of an old wall, with no rail to keep her from falling to a stony landing twenty feet below.

Ismet walked out onto the wall and turned, waiting for her.

She walked to the wall and hesitated, then removed her Bulgarian heels and took a hesitant step onto the smooth old stones. Ismet took a step toward her and held out a hand. She reached for the hand and took it and allowed him to lead her to the bastion. Tuna followed, unimpressed by heights, and Richard more cautiously.

A group of teenage girls in headscarves and long coats were on the bastion, snapping one another’s pictures and giggling. Ismet led her to an unoccupied corner and gestured out at the view.

Below her, Ankara was a stormy sea of red tile roofs, rising and falling with the hills. The towers of isolated developments clustered on hilltops like Crusader castles. A deep red gash on the horizon outlined Ulus in crimson sunset fire, and in the opposite direction the purple shadow of the citadel stretched its long hand toward a rising darkness in the east. To the south, the modern towers of Kizilay stood wrapped in smog.

Dagmar’s heart gave a joyous leap, and she took a deep breath of the night-scented air.

“This is wonderful,” she said to Ismet. “Thank you for suggesting it.”

“I used to come up here when I was a kid,” Ismet said. “My uncle had a shop a few streets north of here.”

“I thought your uncle sold carpets in Istanbul.”

Ismet smiled. “That’s Uncle Ertac,” he said. “It was my uncle Fuad who sold manuscripts up here in the castle.”

“Manuscripts? Like original handwritten manuscripts?”

“Old Ottoman books,” Ismet said. “Printed books. They were in the old Arab script, which no one reads anymore, but they had beautiful illustrations done by hand. So Fuad cut up the books and sold the pages that had pictures on them.”

Dagmar wasn’t sure how to view this literary vandalism.

“Is that allowed?” she said.

Ismet shrugged.

“Apparently it is. Now that the original books are becoming rare, he finds vintage paper and then hires artists to paint pictures in the old Persian style.”

Dagmar was curious. “Does he tell his customers that the pictures are modern?”

Ismet smiled thinly. “I’m certain that he does.”

Dagmar looked up as the teenage girls began to shriek with laughter. Still laughing, they walked rapidly along the old wall to the main body of the tower.

Dagmar’s handheld began to play “ ’Round Midnight.” She answered.

“If the wicked are lurking,” Lincoln said, “they’re pretty well hidden.”

“They generally are,” said Dagmar.

“If the government’s going to give us trouble,” Lincoln said, “it’s going to be in Istanbul.”

“Thanks so much,” Dagmar said, “for massively increasing my paranoia.”

“It’s my job,” Lincoln explained. “Have a lovely evening.”

Dagmar returned her handheld to its holster. Ismet, Richard, and Tuna were looking at her expectantly.

“Lincoln says the hotel’s okay,” she said, and then added, “for now.”

Tuna curled his lip in contempt of the government, stuck his hands in his jacket pockets, and walked back along the top of the old wall to the main body of the tower. Richard fell into his wake. Ismet and Dagmar were left alone on the bastion.

“You were raised in Ankara?” Dagmar asked.

Ismet adjusted his spectacles.

“I lived here for a while. My father is an economist and has worked all over the world-China, Egypt, Germany, England, and Canada. He spent three years in Ankara teaching at the university.”

“You speak American English.”

“I got my degree in the States. In Bellingham.”

“You were planning a career in public relations?”

He looked at her. “No. My degree is in journalism. I still freelance, but PR is a better paycheck.”

“Yes. Print media is dead, or so I keep hearing.”

“You changed your career, too,” Ismet said.

“Yes.” Once she had been a science fiction writer. “How did you know?”

“I looked up your Wikipedia entry.”

She did that herself, now and again. Originally out of vanity, she supposed, but now just to count the inaccuracies. Her biography was really an astounding collection of misinformation, alleviated only by wild speculation.

She never corrected the inaccuracies. She understood that the subject herself could never do that. She’d have to find some authority to quote in rebuttal-but she didn’t know any authorities on herself other than herself.

“The entry mentioned that trouble you had,” Ismet said. “When your friends were killed.”

A chill wind brushed Dagmar’s spine. She felt herself straighten.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” she said.

Ismet was alarmed. “Oh!” he said. “I didn’t mean to offend!”

“No offense,” Dagmar said, and waved a hand dismissively. But she wasn’t about to talk about any of that to a journalist, not even if she was off-the-record.

She realized she had better look up her Wikipedia entry as soon as possible.

Sometimes, she reflected, it was possible to access too much knowledge.

They stayed on the battlements till the last of the sunset faded from the western horizon. All about them were the soft lights of the city, the tall office buildings, the flashing lights on the broadcast towers. Then they went back down the steep, dark stair to their waiting taxi.

Dagmar had the driver drop them a block from their hotel, and they approached carefully and scouted the lobby through plate-glass windows before entering. No one paid them any attention except the young blonde woman behind the desk, who smiled in greeting.

When Dagmar arrived at her room she changed into her khakis and an old giveaway T-shirt from a long-forgotten start-up. Everything else, except for her bathroom case, she packed, and then she blocked the door with her bags to keep anyone from forcing his way in.

She was ready to hit the ground running.

Experience had shown her the value of a fast getaway.