For a brief, fierce instant she wanted to see her own country burn, just as the Palms had burned.

Then the anger faded, and she looked down at the fried rice that was her supper.

Dutifully, she ate it to the last grain.

FROM: Simone

LadyDayFan, can you set up a fanfic topic?

FROM: LadyDayFan

Fanfic? You want to write fan fiction about Dagmar?

FROM: Simone

Yeah. She’s cool.

FROM: Hanseatic

‹glyph of astonishment›

FROM: LadyDayFan

Well. This is against my better judgment, but here you go.

“Where are you from?” asked the young man with the halberd.

“Los Angeles.”

“That is near Hollywood?”

“Yes.”

“That must be very interesting.”

Dagmar understood that in the Q-and-A conversations favored by the Indonesians, both sides were supposed to ask questions.

“Are you from Jakarta?” she asked.

Paying her ritual morning visit to the concierge-which, following Zan’s advice, she did at a different hour each morning-Dagmar had discovered that the hotel was now guarded by men with medieval weapons. They wore kilts over baggy pants, with short jackets, round pitji hats, and sashes in bright primary colors. The outfits of the young men were black, and of the older men, white. They carried long knives, spears, sticks, and blades on the ends of sticks. They clustered by the hotel entrances and smiled and bowed at anyone walking by. They were making a clear effort not to seem threatening.

Mr. Tong had never reappeared, and his place seemed taken permanently by the young woman in the Muslim headdress. She told Dagmar that the hotel had hired a group of martial artists to secure the hotel.

“What is your group called?” Dagmar asked. Maybe Tomer Zan would know something about them.

“We are the Tanah Abang Bersih Jantung Association.” The young man touched his chest. “Bersih Jantung means ‘pure heart.’ ”

“And the other part?”

“Tanah Abang? That is our kampung-our neighborhood, near this hotel.” He looked at her with curiosity. “Do you like Miley Cyrus?” he asked.

“Miley?” Dagmar said. “I think she’s swell.”

“Bersih Jantung?” asked Tomer Zan that evening. “How do you spell it?”

“It means ‘pure heart,’ ” Dagmar said.

“What is the attitude of these people?” Zan asked. “Are they disciplined? Do you feel safe around them?”

“They seem friendly. They like Miley Cyrus, for heaven’s sake! There are some older men in white who give the orders. They’re trying not to be scary.”

“That’s good. Just remember that this can change at any second. You should be alert to any sign that their attitude is changing. Remember, these are the people that invented the word amok. Well, actually they call it mataglap, but amok is what they mean.”

Great, Dagmar thought. Let’s by all means look inside that silver lining to find that all-consuming black hole.

“How’s the helicopter?” she asked.

“It should be in Singapore tomorrow,” said Zan.

Dagmar wondered whether to tell Zan about the amateur efforts to rescue her that were centered on the Our Reality bulletin board, efforts she had been following online with great attention.

She decided against it.

Let them compete, she thought. Let the free market system prevail. Besides, she thought that Zan probably wasn’t into fan fiction.

FROM: Desi

My friend has checked with his school’s silat guru in Jakarta, and

he’s willing to help Dagmar. As an act of charity, they’ll take her in

and share their food with her, and they’ll take her anywhere that

doesn’t involve danger to their own people.

Their style is called Bayangan Prajurit Pentjak Silat. My impression

is that they’ll take money if we give it to them, but their religion

obliges them to do charitable acts, so they don’t insist on being

paid.

Here’s the problem. Dagmar’s hotel is being guarded by a group

that Bayangan Prajurit doesn’t get along with. The hotel guards are

allied with the military, and their organization is headed by a general.

Bayangan Prajurit are pro-democracy and they won’t cooperate

with the hotel guards in any way.

Anybody have any ideas? Do we have to get Dagmar away from her

own guards?

By the next morning a food shipment had arrived, and for breakfast, Dagmar gorged on Southeast Asia’s finest, freshest, most glorious fruit.

The military were providing food to their allies in the city, and the Bersih Jantung were willing to supply the hotel. Dagmar presumed there were vast bribes involved, money shifting around offshore, where the banks still worked.

There was an upside, Dagmar supposed, to dealing with a corrupt military.

“What’s the word?” Dagmar asked.

“Whatever the word is,” said Tomer Zan, “it’s not a good one. Our people have had a chance to look at this helicopter, and it’s a piece of shit. The maintenance logs are incomplete or nonsensical or forged in some obvious way, and it’s clear we’ll have to do a complete overhaul on the machine before we dare fly it out to you.”

The dry monsoon, which had ceased to be dry, spattered rain against her hotel window. Dagmar let the space of three seconds go by in order to demonstrate to Zan her displeasure.

“How long will the overhaul take?” she asked.

“Depends on whether new parts are required. And of course, what parts.”

Dagmar let more time pass.

“Why don’t you hire one of the helicopters that took the Indians or the Japanese out?”

“They were military aircraft, darling. They don’t rent them.”

“Zelazni Associates has an air division,” she said. “I saw it on your Web page. Can’t you fly me out in one of your own aircraft?”

“We don’t have helicopters, darling. We fly helicopters, we maintain helicopters, but we don’t own them. What we have are fixed-wing transport aircraft to help move our people and their equipment.”

“Can’t you put a helicopter on one of your transport planes and fly it out here?”

Now it was Zan’s turn to be silent.

“Our planes aren’t big enough,” he said.

“Maybe you could find a bigger one.”

“I’ll look at what’s possible,” Zan said after another pause. Meaning, Dagmar supposed, what Charlie was willing to pay for.

“I should let you know,” she said, “that another group is trying to help me leave Indonesia. They’ve actually made some progress.”

“Another group?” Zan’s query was cautious.

“I’ll email you the Web page.”

Maybe, she thought, he’d enjoy the fanfic after all.

FROM: Hanseatic

This game is amazing. How did Great Big Idea get the Indonesian

government to cooperate with all this?

FROM: LadyDayFan

TINAG.

FROM: Hanseatic

Yah, right. My guess is the setup is something like this: we get 200

points for getting Dagmar out of Jakarta to someplace safer, 500

points if we get her out of Indonesia entirely, and 1,000 points for

Total World Domination.

FROM: LadyDayFan

You’re joking, right?

FROM: Hippolyte

Hanseatic, this really isn’t a game.

FROM: Hanseatic

Maybe yes, maybe no. But what difference does it make?

“Are these people serious?” Tomer Zan asked.

“Some of them.”

“Who are they, exactly?”

“The ones I know, I don’t know well,” Dagmar said. “The rest are just handles they use online.”