Dagmar went on answering questions. She admitted to using marijuana, denied using cocaine.
More questions came along, each layered between trivialities so quotidian that the crucial questions might as well have been shouted aloud.
“Did you kill Judy Strange?”
“No.”
“Do you know who killed Judy Strange?”
“No.”
“Have you ever killed someone?”
“Yes.”
The operator was beyond surprise by now. The next question—about whether or not she liked football—came right on schedule.
“Did you engage in a conspiracy to kill Judy Strange?”
“No.”
“Did you tell anyone about the location of the apartment you shared with Judy Strange?”
“No.”
The operator gave her a thoughtful look as she rose from the chair at the end of the interview.
She let her police escort take her back to the ops room, where she began her prep for the day’s operation. Other members of her crew joined her as their own interviews were completed. Byron arrived last, averting his eyes. As she moved around the room, she could hear him breathing heavily through his nose.
Lincoln returned to the ops room after being briefed by the polygraph operator and called Dagmar into his office. She could see herself reflected in his shades as she took her seat.
“The test suggests you have no complicity in Judy’s death,” he said.
Dagmar nodded.
“The operator offered an advisory of his own, however.”
Dagmar thought about it. “I’d prefer to leave it to my imagination,” she said.
He looked at her, folded his hands on the table.
“This is the point at which I’m supposed to say, ‘If we don’t clear this up, you could be in trouble.’ ”
“Unless you intend to extradite me to Indonesia,” Dagmar said, “there’s not a lot of point in digging any further.”
Lincoln frowned in surprise.
“Indonesia,” he repeated.
“There’s a lot of the Indonesian story I haven’t told anyone.”
Having spent the morning telling the truth, she was now madly sowing lies. Her frantic inventions looped the trail of her life back on itself, obscuring her footprints by running over them with another set of her tracks, all in hopes of concealing her past sins in California.
Lincoln considered this, then held out a hand.
“I said at the beginning,” he said, “that I didn’t want to know anything.”
She nodded.
“I’ll stand by that statement,” he said.
Dagmar was only too pleased to escape the subject. “How about Ismet?” she asked.
“Also cleared. But we have anomalous readings elsewhere.”
“Yes?”
Lincoln opened a manila folder, looked at his own handwritten notes.
“Byron was so angry at being polygraphed that his responses were completely off the scale. The operator was unable to get a baseline to make a judgment concerning what answers were deceptive or not. It’s as if Byron answered every single question by screaming and throwing a desk across the room. His blood pressure was so high the operator was afraid he was going to have a stroke.”
“Interesting,” Dagmar said. She really didn’t know what else to say. Angry Man was staying in character.
“On the other end of the scale, Lloyd was uncannily calm throughout his interview. He passed with flying colors, but his lack of normal response indicated that he might have been trained in techniques for beating a polygraph.”
Lloyd’s father was a retired colonel, Dagmar remembered, perhaps a supporter of the new regime.
“Was he trained to defeat polygraphs by the Company?” she asked.
“I’ll ask him. But of course he’s been polygraphed before as a matter of course. He might just be able to relax through the whole thing.”
“Okay.” Not knowing what that meant.
She seemed to specialize in not knowing anything about Lloyd.
Lincoln scrubbed his chin with his hand.
“Polygraphs aren’t reliable at the best of times,” he said. “Even the most optimistic of the polygraph experts claims only a ninety percent reliability—and that means one in ten black hats walks. And agents would have been trained in beating a lie detector, so the failure rate there is much larger.”
“So,” Dagmar asked, “why are we bothering with the polygraph at all?”
Lincoln sighed. “Because it’s what we’ve got. I can’t afford to ignore any tools at my disposal—and besides, we hit the occasional jackpot.” He waved his notes. “Two of the subjects indicated persistent patterns of deception,” he said. “Helmuth and Magnus.”
Dagmar actually felt her mouth drop open in complete amazement.
“Helmuth?” she said.
“Yes.”
“My Eurotrash?”
Lincoln gave her a cold glance.
“If he doesn’t clear this up,” he said, “there could be trouble.”
“And how is it cleared up, exactly?”
Lincoln spread his hands. “Further interviews.”
“Like you’re doing now.”
“Yes.” His shades gazed at Dagmar in their unblinking way. “Do you want to try getting to the bottom of it? Or should I?”
Dagmar considered that her preexisting rapport might do well with Helmuth. Besides, she had enough experience as his boss to maybe know when he was lying.
“I’ll take Byron,” Lincoln said.
Dagmar called Helmuth into her office. Today he wore soft wool slacks, a polo shirt, and retro Italian shoes with a little gold chain across the instep.
“There’s a problem with your polygraph results,” she said.
“Really?” he said. His eyebrows lifted in an expression of perfect innocence, an expression that only irritated her.
“You lied like a fucking rug,” Dagmar said as viciously as she could. “And I want to know about it.”
For perhaps the first time in her experience, Helmuth seemed physically uncomfortable. He shifted in his chair, patted his sleek hair, and pursed his lips.
“It has nothing to do with what we’re doing here. Or with Judy being killed.”
“Yes?”
He gave her a quick glance.
“There are certain things I’m not prepared to admit to the government,” he said. “That’s all.”
“Such as?”
He gave her a stony look.
“Things that could get my green card revoked,” he said. “Which would mean I’d have to lose my lovely job working for you in Los Angeles and return to Germany.”
“You may have lost that anyway,” Dagmar said.
Again Helmuth shifted in his seat.
“Are you going to tell Lincoln?” he asked.
“Depends.”
He looked at the floor for a moment, then looked up.
“I found a hookah bar in Limassol where we could buy hash,” Helmuth said. “Magnus and I have been going there every night before we head to the clubs.”
Dagmar rolled her eyes. “For Christ’s sake!”
Helmuth’s eyes flashed “You can’t believe the hashish that comes through Cyprus!” he said. “Moroccan, Syrian, Afghan… blond from Lebanon, bhang from Kashmir. It’s a connoisseur’s paradise!”
“Are you out of your mind?” Dagmar demanded. “You didn’t remember who you’re working for?”
Helmuth gave her a cool look.
“I’m working for you, I believe.”
“That,” said Dagmar, “is what we’re here to decide.”
He looked away. A jaw muscle ticked angrily in one cheek.
“Anything else?” Dagmar asked. “Any other little sins I should know about?” He didn’t answer, so she named a few: “Women? Cocaine? Meth?”
Helmuth flapped a hand. “Of course there were women. I can give you names if you like. But none of them ask
ed me where they could find you or Judy, and I never told them what I was doing here.”
“How about Magnus?”
“He’s a pro, is Magnus. He was after pussy, okay, but he wouldn’t give information for it. Not when he had money, and he’s got plenty of dollars in those little kilt pockets.” Helmuth rolled his eyes. “Christ, he’s got a house in northern Virginia that looks like Tara.”
“Anything else?”
He gave her a resentful look.
“Like what?”
Dagmar waved her hands. “Fuck, Helmuth,” she said, “how the hell should I know? Black market activities? Artifacts stolen from archaeological sites? Complicated financial instruments designed to destroy Western economies?”
Helmuth dared to offer a sneer.
“Child’s play,” he said. “I gave all that up years ago.”
“Boys being boys, according to our little Pip.” Dagmar reporting later, to Lincoln in his office.
“Boys doing what, exactly?” Lincoln asked.
“I believe it all falls into the category of ‘victimless crimes.’ ”
Lincoln gave her a bleak look. “You should have seen Cyprus back in the day. Victimless crimes everywhere you looked. All the victims would just…” He twiddled fingers in the air. “Disappear. Or sometimes simply fly into pieces.”
Dagmar dropped into a chair.
“How’d you do with Magnus?”
“Denied everything.” He snorted. “Arrogant kilt-wearing shit.”
“You might polygraph them again, and avoid those questions about past criminal behavior. Just ask about foreign governments and assassination and Judy.”
Lincoln’s face wrinkled, as if he’d just bitten into a lemon.
“I’ll do that. And—since I don’t think this local guy is very experienced—I’m sending for another operator from Langley.”
Another voodoo priest, Dagmar thought.
“And how long will that take?”
“They take the murder of U.S. citizens pretty seriously. A few days, I’d guess.”
And in the meantime Dagmar would be living under guard, along with the person who had betrayed her.
At least Ismet had done well on the polygraph. That was something, anyway.
“I need the drive with the email addresses,” Dagmar said. “Time to send out the two-hour warning.”
Lincoln turned to his safe, reached for the number pad.
“Avert your eyes, now.”
Have you considered taking advantage of the 105 digital television channels offered by Çankaya Wireless Network? Each is delivered with crystal-clear perfection! We have eight plans, and one of them is certain to be suitable to your budget!
Tuna wore video specs for the demo. Somehow his peculiar shambling gait translated to the subjective image: Dagmar, watching a flatscreen in the ops center, knew she was Tuna’s point of view because no one else walked like that. He was marching along Anafartalar, a street named after one of Atatürk’s victories over the British.
Dagmar and Lincoln had chosen rush hour for the action again, and the streets were clogged—a good thing, since it would hinder police reaction.
Tuna dodged off the main street and took a secondary street parallel to Anafartalar. There had been a bombing on Anafartalar some years earlier, and there were CCTV cameras there now, as well as other cameras atop the Sümer Bank across the street.
While Tuna wasn’t under observation he changed his appearance. He paused to reach into his shopping bag for a scarf, which he wrapped around his lower face with a sound that whispered against his microphone, and then a hat that he pulled low over his forehead, cutting off the very top of the video image. Then Tuna hurried on, toward the crowd that could already be seen clustering ahead of him.
The buildings to Tuna’s right opened up, and there was Ulus Square, with its equestrian statue of Atatürk on its plinth. Dagmar recognized it perfectly well—she remembered passing by it in August, on her way to Ankara’s citadel.
Great Big Idea had returned to the Turkish capital for the first time since Dagmar and the others, glancing nervously over their shoulders, had scuttled away back in August. It was hoped they wouldn’t have to run again—if this demo worked, there would be demos every day here, until the generals were driven from the capital or until the resistance was broken.
Anger and outrage was exploding out of the people now. The killings in Izmir had created a fury that might be enough to propel the dissidents into the houses of government.
Video images from the Skunk Works drone overhead showed that Ulus Square was already full, thousands of people standing packed into the small area, with long ropes of people stretched from the square along every major street.
The image on the flatscreen lurched wildly as Tuna vaulted from the road to the elevated square, then looked out over a sea of heads. He was considerably taller than the average Turkish citizen, and he could see clean to the giant bronze statues at the base of Atatürk’s plinth.
The place reeked of symbolism. Across the road from Atatürk’s statue was the former parliament building, now the Museum of the War of Salvation. Down Atatürk Boulevard was the colorful Victorian-Seljuk pile of the Ankara Palace, the state guesthouse where Atatürk had resided while leading his revolution.
Dagmar could scarcely imagine a better place for a demonstration against the junta, unless it was the Pink House itself.
The image panned down as Tuna reached into his shopping bag for a bullhorn, and then he raised the out-of-focus implement to his lips. Ismet translated Tuna’s words as they came from the speakers.
“Take out your greeting cards! Write a message on them, and bring them to the monument!”
Tuna repeated the message several times. Heads bowed as the crowd brought greeting cards out of bundles, bags, and pockets. But though there was a movement toward the plinth, somehow the crowd seemed stalled.
“There’s a problem,” Lincoln said. He turned to Lloyd. “Can you get us a close-up of what’s happening at the statue?”
“Where’s Rafet?” Dagmar asked.
“Caught in the crowd across the street,” Helmuth said.
Tuna was shouldering his way through the crowd, and then Dagmar’s heart lurched as she saw the danger through Tuna’s eyes.
The army had put a pair of armed guards on the monument. They were in ceremonial blue tunics, with white belts and white gloves, and clearly intended as a symbolic presence. Their white helmets somewhat resembled those of the Keystone Kops.
But the guards’ helmets were not amusing, and their assault rifles were not symbolic. They were real, and they were being brandished at the crowd by the white-gloved hands.
The soldiers had mounted the monument’s square foundation, then backed up to the base of the Atatürk plinth and now had nowhere left to go. The crowd formed a half circle around them, silent except for the clicking sound coming from cell phone cameras recording the guards’ dilemma. The guards’ shoulders were touching—they were giving each other what support they could—and their wide eyes stared wildly at the crowd that had materialized before them.
They probably weren’t paying a lot of attention to the hands holding colorful greeting cards. It was the masked, advancing, sinister faces that they would find threatening.
Anything could happen now. If the soldiers panicked they could mow down scores of the close-packed demonstrators before they themselves were either torn to bits or left alone on the scene of their bloody triumph. If the mood of the crowd turned to anger, a mob could attack the guards and bloodied or murdered soldiers seen lying at the feet of Atatürk would be a propaganda triumph for the military government.
Christ, Dagmar thought. Why does it have to be Tuna? Tuna was hot tempered and utterly fearless—of all her crew, Tuna would be the one to lose his patience and charge the guards.
Tuna muttered into his microphone.
“You didn’t scout the target?” Ismet translated.
“Rafet check
ed it yesterday,” Dagmar said. She didn’t bother to transmit the answer—she didn’t want to distract Tuna when he was confronted by armed soldiers.
Tuna paused for a moment, and then he stepped onto the monument’s meter-high foundation. Dagmar gasped, heart thundering, as both rifles swung toward her—toward him— and then he raised his hands, one of them still clutching his bullhorn. He spoke in a soft voice.
“Please, brothers,” Ismet translated. “Don’t shoot.”
The soldiers shuffled a little, but they didn’t lower their weapons.
“Brothers,” Tuna said, “we just want to write some postcards. We’re not here to attack you.”
The soldiers looked nervously at each other, and their white-gloved hands loosened their grips on their rifles.
Tuna continued to speak in his soft voice.
“If you wish to leave,” he said, “we’ll make a way for you.” He turned back to the crowd. “Make a path for the brave soldiers!” he called.
In silence, the crowd parted, creating a narrow lane leading across the road toward the old parliament building. Tuna turned back to the soldiers. Their terrified eyes looked like craters in their heads.
“Please, brothers,” Tuna said. “Leave in peace.”
“Inshallah,” Ismet muttered.
The moment that followed seemed to go on forever. The soldiers looked at each other, then at Tuna, then at the lane that had been cleared for them.
And then they raised the barrels of their weapons and walked toward their escape route.
Dagmar, her head swimming, let go the breath she’d been holding since the start of the confrontation.
“Thank you, brothers!” Tuna called. “We know you are not our enemies!” And then, to the crowd, “Give these brave soldiers some presents!”
A woman in the crowd handed one of the soldiers a colorful scarf as he passed, and the soldier, a little embarrassed, took it. There was a cheer and applause and then more scarves. The last the cameras saw of the soldiers, they were walking through the crowd nearly buried beneath great armsful of pashmina blossoms.
Tuna raised his bullhorn.
“Now, let us write on our cards, and make a memorial! And,” he added, “be sure not to vandalize the statue!”
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