“Okay.” She was still not entirely pleased, though she couldn’t have said why.
“I’ve arranged for a car and driver to pick you up at the station, take you straight to the B-and-B; you can walk to the beach and be in the water by one thirty in the afternoon.”
“Thanks.” She peered again at the documents, then looked up at Lincoln. “Is anyone else coming?” she asked.
He seemed surprised. “Everyone else is going home tomorrow. Or so I thought.”
“And you?” Because a sliver of ice-cold paranoia had slipped into her brain and for a moment she wondered if she would arrive in Aheloy only to find Lincoln there, with roses and chocolates and a box of condoms, ready to launch himself on top of her once he’d gotten her in his secluded little love trap…
She’d never gotten anything like a sexual vibe from Lincoln, but then she’d been wrong before.
“I’m flying to New York tomorrow morning,” Lincoln said. He peered at her. “Don’t you like Bulgaria?”
“I don’t know enough to know whether I like Bulgaria or not. All I know is that I like their shoes.”
“I considered sending you to Rhodes,” Lincoln said. “But there are no air connections between Greece and Turkey right now, you’d have to fly through Bulgaria anyway, so I figured once there you might as well…” He flapped his hands.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Dagmar said. “Thank you.”
“If you hate it, you can make other plans. But you’ll have to pay for them yourself.”
She patted his arm. “That’s fine. I appreciate your… kindness.”
He smiled, then swept out an arm.
“Why don’t you have a seat? Because I have another business proposition for you.”
Dagmar glanced around and decided on the window seat. Lincoln took the creaking wooden chair that went with the rococo desk.
“Does Great Big Idea have any commitments after this?” he asked.
“Nothing signed,” Dagmar said. “I’ve got three pitches coming up, one to Seagram’s, one to a Korean software firm, and another to a cable company that wants original content.”
“Television company?” His eyebrows lifted. “You’ll be doing television?”
“Television and game both,” Dagmar said. “The two will be linked.”
Lincoln was impressed. “Must pay well.”
“Television pays well because the content provider has to wade through endless network hassle in order to do her job,” Dagmar said. “Frankly, if it weren’t for a whole season’s worth of checks, I’d rather sell the whiskey.”
Lincoln smiled. “Not the software?”
“The Koreans want us to tell them how to sell their product,” Dagmar said. “I don’t think they have much of a future in the North American market.”
“So you might,” Lincoln said, “have room for another project.”
Dagmar waved an arm.
“Bear Cat wants another ARG?”
“Not Bear Cat.”
She settled into the window seat and gave him a level look.
“I suppose you’re going to explain to me why you’ve been emplacing servers all over Turkey.”
Gracefully he shifted course.
“You did a brilliant thing in the last twenty-four hours,” Lincoln said. “You faked out the generals and made them look a bit silly and satisfied your customer base.”
“I made myself a nervous wreck.”
“I gather that’s… normal in your line of work.”
“Anxiety’s normal. Physical danger isn’t.”
Except for me, she thought. My friends get to die for me.
Lincoln placed his elbows on the chair arms and steepled his fingers before him.
“I have… friends,” he said. “Contacts. And when The Long Night of Briana Hall came online a few years ago, and your friends were killed…”
Dagmar flashed him a warning look. “I don’t talk about that,” she said.
“I don’t want you to.” He spoke quickly. “I don’t actually want to know anything.” He relaxed a little, leaned back against the chair’s pink satin cushion. “I just want to say that I looked into some things-where your friend Charlie’s money came from, for one thing-and I read some reports from the FBI and the LAPD, and I drew my own conclusions.”
Dagmar tensed. Lincoln looked at her.
“You handled yourself well,” he said. “That’s all I’m saying. I’m not making judgments; I’m not making accusations. But from where I’m standing, you did well.”
“You don’t know what I did.”
“I don’t,” Lincoln said. “Not really. I only have my guesses.” He raised a hand as she prepared again to object. “And as I said, I don’t want to know-so if you ever have the urge to confess anything, don’t do it to me.”
What makes you think I have anything to confess? she thought-and then decided she didn’t actually want the answer to that question.
“And-as far as the botnet goes-you did well there, too.”
A cold shaft of terror pierced her. Panic yammered in the back of her head. Lincoln knew about that?
Dagmar decided to counterattack. She glared at him.
“So who the hell are you, really?” she demanded. “I checked out Bear Cat, it’s a real outfit, and you’re there on the Web page, but who are you really? Publicity flacks don’t have access to FBI reports.”
He smiled thinly. “I’m not a flack; I’m an account executive. You should know the terminology; you’re in the advertising business.”
“Sorry.” She put as much sarcasm into the single word as she could.
“Sometimes I’m in a position to rain money on Bear Cat,” Lincoln said. “And in return they’re kind enough to provide me with credentials.”
A lightning revelation seemed to strobe across the inside of Dagmar’s skull.
“Oh Christ,” she said, “you’re not telling me you’re some kind of spy.” She began to laugh. “A spy using a James Bond film as a cover! Talk about postmodern!”
“I used to be a spy,” Lincoln said. “I was a spy for thirty years.” He gave a little amused bow from the waist. “Now I’m a consultant. Advertising, and other things. Consulting pays much better.”
She just looked at him.
“And you’re telling me this because…?”
“I want to hire Great Big Idea,” Lincoln said, “to do just what you’ve been doing.”
“Which is what?”
Lincoln waved a hand in an elaborate pattern as he spoke.
“What do you do in your games, Dagmar? You teach people how to use and break codes, to do detailed research, to solve intricate puzzles. You provide raw data, which the players must put into usable form. You send people on missions into the real world to find information or locate objects. Your players have to find hidden motivations and meanings, distinguish truth from fancy. You organize events, both online and in the real world, in which complete strangers unite to complete a common task.”
He blinked his blue eyes at her.
“Do you know what those skills are, Dagmar? Those are practical intelligence skills. I want you to do a project for us.”
She blinked at him. “So you want me to create a game? For the CIA, or the NSA, or whatever it is you actually work for? To train people how to do their jobs.”
“That,” said Lincoln, “would tread on too many toes. We already have plenty of training facilities and trainers.”
“What, then?”
Lincoln smiled and then told her.
She would have laughed, if she hadn’t been so surprised.
ACT 2
CHAPTER SIX
After Bulgaria-which was lovely, exactly the vacation Dagmar needed, sipping gin and tonics as she reclined on a chaise set on a couple of Aheloy’s fifty-six thousand square meters of beach while about eighteen varieties of barely clothed male flesh competed to keep her drink topped up-so after the return to California, and after the set of pitches failed, there was nothing to do but take Lincoln up on his offer. So she found herself on the island of Cyprus, in a set of offices overlooking a British runway baking in the Mediterranean sun.
The building was old but well maintained, and featureless in what Dagmar came to recognize as a military absence of style, efficiency combined with cheapness and an almost fetishistic lack of anything approaching aesthetics-aluminium-framed windows overlooked the runway’s vast expanse, high ceilings with fans and ranked fluorescents, walls thick with decades-old ochre yellow paint and featureless save for pinholes where picture hooks had once been, or placards announcing what to do in case of fire or in the event of an interruption in electric service. Out of some warehouse had come graceless furniture made of metal and painted in unaesthetic colors that only the military employed, as if marking their property by the application of a coat of Ugly.