“ ‘That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.’ ” Quoting Yeats.
Ismet looked at her curiously. “Did you say gong?”
Dagmar smiled.
“Yes,” she said. “I did. But Yeats said it first.”
They were back to the hotel in time for lunch. Richard would return his borrowed electric gear and everyone would have the afternoon off, after which they’d drive over the Golden Horn to a farewell dinner with the players, held in an enormous hotel ballroom. After that the players would go to a specially arranged screening of Stunrunner, which had opened worldwide the previous night, while the puppetmasters-who had already seen the movie dozens of times, on discs that came complete with their very own nondisclosure agreements and prepaid FedEx return envelopes-would go with the techs to the VIP suite in a Beyolu club, where the celebration would go on until exhaustion overtook them all-in Dagmar’s case, most likely before midnight.
Lunch, though, was not a planned event. Dagmar thought she might see if Ismet might want to join her for a midday snack at one of the cafes up the street.
But first she ran into Lincoln in the lobby of the hotel. He’d watched the game finale on his laptop, and when she walked through the door he rose to give her a rib-shattering embrace.
“Brilliant!” he said. “Absolutely brilliant!”
“Thank you,” she said. She felt as if her lungs had just been crushed.
He released her and stepped back. Dagmar gasped in oxygen.
“Dagmar,” Lincoln said. “Could I see you privately sometime this afternoon?”
“Sure.”
She cast a glance over her shoulder, where Richard, Tuna, and a half-dozen techs were trooping into the hotel. Cameras and tripods were tucked under their arms. Cables dragged empty metal sockets across the brown tile of the hotel foyer. Ismet was visible through the front window, talking on his phone.
“After lunch?” she suggested hopefully.
He nodded. “Call me when you have a moment. I’ll probably be somewhere in the hotel.” He looked up at the party of techs. “Can I help you with anything?”
Dagmar let Richard and the technicians sort out the gear, with Lincoln’s help. She took a turn around the lobby, waiting for Ismet to finish his conversation. Standing by herself, she felt a sudden rush of triumph surge through her veins, the heat of victory racing through a brain already a bit dazzled by its own ingenuity. Game brilliant, cool, and over; military thugs confounded; vacation in sight; nothing to do but celebrate.
Optimism seized her. She decided that she would ask Ismet to lunch, spend the night dancing with him in the Beyolu club, maybe drag him off to bed-assuming of course that she didn’t collapse first out of sheer exhaustion.
Maybe he’d be able to beg off from the week’s work of selling electric switches, head south with her to Antalya, spend a week dividing their time between lounging on the beach and having massively satisfying sex in a darkened hotel room…
Ismet finished his call and came into the lobby, neatly avoiding the electronic gear now being sorted into piles. He came to Dagmar and said, “I’m afraid I’ve got to leave.”
“Is something wrong?”
“My sister called.” He gestured with his right hand at the phone held in his left. “My grandma fell and had to go to the hospital.”
“Oh no!” Dagmar felt her carnal dreams spin down the drain even as her face and voice made the proper responses. “Is she badly hurt?”
“Broken arm. But she’s very frail and…” He hesitated. “Well, she doesn’t do well in settings like a hospital. She was raised in a nomad family, and had an arranged marriage to my grandfather, who was from the city…” Ismet gave an apologetic smile. “Anyway, I should go translate between her and the modern world.”
Dagmar’s mind swam with questions that she had never before asked any human being: Nomad? Your grandmother’s a nomad? What kind of nomad? Do you still have nomads in your family?
“If you can come to the dinner tonight,” Dagmar said, “or the party afterward, please feel free to join us.”
He seemed agreeable.
“If I can,” he said. “But I should say good-bye now.”
She hugged him and sensed his surprise at the gesture. He had an agreeable scent, a blend of Eastern spices, with a faint undertone of myrrh…
He returned her hug, gently, then went to the others and said his good-byes. Dagmar, aware of a host of possibilities silently drifting away, carried on a tide toward the Dardanelles, turned to Lincoln.
“You know,” she said, “we might as well have that conversation now.”
Lincoln had a corner room on the top floor of the hotel, with a wide bed, a rococo desk with an Internet portal, and broad windows that displayed spectacular views of the Blue Mosque. Another wall featured a dormer window complete with a window seat, and beyond the shambling bulk of Hagia Sofia.
“Nice,” Dagmar said, going to the broad window just as the muezzin began his call. He was echoed almost instantly by the muezzin in the small mosque behind the hotel, the one down by the old Byzantine gate, and then by calls from other small mosques in the area.
It was, Dagmar thought, one of the last times she’d hear this.
“You’re planning on going to Antalya tomorrow?” Lincoln asked.
“Yes,” Dagmar said. “Shouldn’t I?”
“I wouldn’t advise it. I’m not going to be happy until you’re on the far side of the border.”
She shrugged, another dream gone. She turned to face him.
“So much for my vacation,” she said.
“I’ve taken care of that.” Lincoln went the rococo desk and shuffled through folders: he took out an envelope and handed it to her.
“Compliments of Bear Cat,” he said. “First-class train tickets, and a week’s vacation in the beach resort of Aheloy.”
Dagmar blinked. “Where’s that?”
“The Moesian Riviera. Bulgaria.”
“Bulgaria?” Dagmar could only repeat the word.
“Fifty-six thousand square meters of beach in Aheloy,” Lincoln said. “Someone counted. Better beach than the French Riviera, too. Organic farms and vineyards just up the river-you’ll eat and drink extremely well in the local cafes.”
“Okay.” Cautiously. Bulgaria was not exactly what she’d planned.
Lincoln smiled. “I was there a few years after the Wall fell,” he said. “It was very quaint and olde-world, but I imagine it’s more twenty-first century now. And you’ll be just five kilometers from Sunny Beach, which is a hugely overdeveloped beach resort with boutiques and discos and bars, if that sort of thing is your preference.” He peered at her over the metal rims of his Elvis glasses. “I wasn’t sure.”
She looked back at him, into the startling blue eyes.
“Discos, huh?” she said. “Did you spend a lot of time in discos, back in the day?”
“Naturally.” He shrugged. “Disco was quite the cultural revolution, before overpopularity and Saturday Night Fever wrecked everything. The movie left out the gays and the drugs, and that was half the scene.”
Dagmar tried to picture Lincoln young, dancing in the patterned light of a spinning mirror ball, but failed.
Disco. To Dagmar it was just another style of music that had risen and then crashed, back before she was born. Like calypso, or ragtime.
“I don’t think discos are high on my list,” Dagmar said. “I just want to relax.” Her mind spun, trying to come up with objections to Lincoln’s scheme. She knew next to nothing about Bulgaria, nothing whatever about its Riviera. She didn’t even know enough to raise a valid protest.
“Aheloy is the place to relax, all right.” Lincoln was confident. “I put you in a bed-and-breakfast-you have a very nice bedsit, and you’ve got your own entrance to the garden, so you’ll have privacy.”
“Ah. Thanks.” She fumbled with the envelope, saw schedules, tickets, printouts. No pictures of the garden or the bedsit.
“People from all over Europe go to Bulgaria’s beaches for vacation,” Lincoln said. “Lots from Russia and Ukraine. And a great many Brits, because Bulgaria’s still a place they can afford.”