Siro

by David Ignatius

  “It’s a modern expression. When you say a man is hitting on you, it means he’s trying to go to bed with you.”

  “Precisely my point,” said Margaret. “And this presents an obvious problem in our line of work. Because in the early stages of any case, you will have to be alone with the man you hope to recruit. You won’t have told him yet what you really do, but in his mind there will be just two possibilities to explain your interest. Either you want to sleep with him …”

  “Or you’re a spy.”

  Margaret nodded. “Either way, you have a problem. That is why it would help you professionally if you were less attractive. I don’t mean to be a bore on this subject, and I certainly don’t expect you to go out and gain fifty pounds for the good of the firm. But it would help.”

  “You’re not fat,” said Anna.

  “No, but I’m old.”

  The oysters had arrived. Anna picked one off the plate, held it to her mouth, tipped it upward, and let the oyster slide gently down her throat. Margaret used her fork.

  “Let me describe the perfect woman case officer,” said Margaret when the waiter had left. “She would be attractive, but not sexy. She would be confident, without a chip on her shoulder. She would be comfortable about being a woman, but not a women’s libber.”

  “What about the perfect male case officer?”

  “He doesn’t exist.”

  “All right then, the typical male case officer.”

  “There is only one useful generalization, from your standpoint. Your male colleagues will be tremendously tempting as sexual partners, because they will be the only people you can fully relax with. My advice is: Don’t do it.”

  “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Sleep with them.”

  “Of course I did. Every chance I got. But I’m still single, and most of them are still married.”

  Anna thought about that. She had no interest in getting married anytime soon. Still, she didn’t think she wanted to end life alone, remembering all the married men she had slept with.

  “Would you like to hear some female success stories?” asked Margaret.

  “Absolutely. The more successful, the better.”

  “You may not like them.”

  “Of course I will.”

  “All right, but I warned you.” Margaret lowered her voice further, so that it was barely above a whisper.

  “The most successful woman operator we ever had began as a secretary. Audrey, I believe her name was. She had no education past high school, and she was married to a mailman.”

  “A mailman?” Anna lit another cigarette. “No wonder she went into the business.”

  “The mailman divorced her, leaving her with three children to support. Audrey needed a larger salary. Everyone in the clandestine service liked her, so she was promoted to be a clerk in the registry. It turned out that she had a fantastic memory for names and dates, so she was promoted again, to be a research analyst in counterintelligence. And she was superb in that job, so we decided to give her a chance as a case officer overseas, in Europe. Are you getting my point?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Audrey’s secret was that everybody liked her. You couldn’t help it. She had a quality that you find sometimes in a good salesperson in a department store. The woman who’s so warm and friendly that you can’t help talking to her while you’re trying on dresses, and pretty soon you’re telling her your life story and buying something much more expensive than you planned. Audrey was like that. And she had those three children, which made her respectable and safe, and discouraged foolishness on the part of men. Even though she was quite attractive. Bosomy, with very blond hair, nail polish, that sort of thing.”

  “Cheap, in other words.”

  “No. Not cheap. Just down-to-earth. We sent her to Europe, as third secretary in one of our big embassies, and targeted her on an engineer who had access to very secret research. He was in his late fifties, with a wife back in the provinces, and he was quite lonely. So Audrey began seeing him in the evenings. They would go out to a restaurant, or a movie. But never to bed. Audrey made sure of that, and the three children helped reinforce it. If it got late, she would remind the engineer that she had to get home to her children. Or sometimes she would invite him over to dinner, and he would play with the kids. They became like a second family for him.”

  “So how did she recruit him? Or did she leave that to one of the boys?”

  “I’m getting to that. Audrey encouraged the scientist to talk about his work, as any woman would with a man she liked. And at some point she said, ‘Listen, someone in my office is very interested in this subject. Could you help us by pulling together some newspaper articles about it?’ And then, a few months later, she asked if maybe he could write a little analysis of his own, and then, maybe a longer study? And before long, the engineer was bringing Audrey documents out of his safe. He loved her, you see, even though it wasn’t sexual. It was a classic case, in its way.”

  “Very sweet,” said Anna. “But I’d love to hear a success story that doesn’t involve an ex-secretary with a heart of gold.”

  “Don’t be a snob, dearie.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it must have sounded. It’s just that Audrey’s approach—the three children and all that—doesn’t seem very relevant for a single, childless Ottoman historian manqué.”

  “Fair enough,” said Margaret. “I’ll give you another example. But I’m not sure you’re going to like it any better than the first one.”

  “Try me.”

  “I’m thinking of a woman whose background was very similar to yours. She was an economist, with a degree from Bryn Mawr and a doctorate from somewhere or other. A charming, cultivated woman from a good family. And she proved to be one of our better women recruiters.”

  “What was her trick?”

  “She played to her strengths. She was an elegant, upper-middle-class woman who traveled easily in that world and used it to her advantage. We put her in the proper milieu in Western Europe, where she could make contact with foreigners of a similar background. We gave her appropriate diplomatic rank, high enough that she could entertain people who mattered. Eventually, she began to get access to real information.”

  “That’s a marvelous story. Why did you think I wouldn’t like it?”

  “Because the woman in question was a bit heavy. That was probably one of her advantages. It helped her men friends feel more comfortable with her. The sexual tension wasn’t there.”

  Anna frowned. “You make it sound as if men are only comfortable with ugly women.”

  “You misunderstand me,” said Margaret. She finished the last of her oysters and laid the shells in a row. “What I am saying is that in this era of sexual freedom, it is more difficult than you might think for a young, attractive American woman to get a foreign man to think about something other than sex. There is a notion abroad in the world that American women are easy lays.”

  “Outrageous!” said Anna. She studied the neat row of oyster shells. For such a personal subject, the conversation seemed awfully impersonal. “Margaret?” she ventured.

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do when someone you were trying to recruit made a pass at you?”

  “Ah,” said Margaret. She closed her eyes and brushed one of those invisible hairs away from her face. “What did I do? Generally, I would pretend that it wasn’t happening. I would maintain distance in the thousands of subtle ways that a woman can. Some women, without realizing it, often seem to be saying yes—through the tone of their voice, the look in their eye, the way they sit in a chair. Generally, I tried to make sure that I was saying no.”

  “Generally?”

  “Every case is different. Sometimes it’s useful to show a bit of leg.”

  “Did you ever sleep with one of your agents?”

  “Never,” she said quickly. Too quickly. “Never for operational reasons,” she added,
in a tone meant to close the subject.

  “What does that mean?” pressed Anna, but the older woman wouldn’t be drawn.

  The waiter arrived, opened the Burgundy and served the steaks with great ceremony. He seemed to think there was something quite grand about two women feasting on such a meal. And they did have a grand time, eating and drinking and talking. By the end of the meal, Anna was flush with food and drink and becoming positively boisterous.

  “Let me at ’em!” she said exuberantly. “I’m going to kick ass! You wait and see.”

  “Don’t say that, my dear.”

  “Why not? I’m going to do it the way the old boys do. Tough. Cool. No nonsense. Take no prisoners.”

  “Stop it!” said Margaret sharply.

  “What’s wrong? That’s the way the game is played.”

  “No, it’s not. Or at least it doesn’t have to be.”

  “How would you know?” demanded Anna. It was the cruelest thing she could have said, and she regretted it the moment the words were out of her mouth.

  The older woman brushed another of those invisible hairs off her face. “My dear Anna,” she said, “I am going to give you one last piece of advice, and I hope you will remember it.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m listening.”

  “You don’t have to play the game the way men do. They are always talking about kicking ass, and squeezing information out of people, and busting their balls and being a tough SOB and that sort of thing. And I suppose it reassures them, all that tough talk. But that is not the way the business works. Not unless you’re a Nazi.”

  Anna eyed the older woman skeptically. “So how does it work, if you’re not a Nazi?”

  “Gently. You usually get more information from people by stroking them than by threatening them. Talk to them, flatter them, listen to their boring stories; occasionally, let them imagine you are seducing them.”

  “In other words, act like a woman.” Anna said the last word derisively, but Margaret ignored her.

  “Precisely. Don’t be afraid to be gentle. All the locker-room talk is silly. And usually it doesn’t work.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Margaret smiled. “Well, there you are. Now you know everything I know.” She reached out her hand to Anna, shook it firmly, and then kissed her young protégée on the cheek.

  “No, I don’t,” said Anna.

  “What have I left out?”

  “You’ve told me how the game is played, but not to what end. And you haven’t explained why you first got into the business.”

  “That’s for another night, I think.”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  “Let’s just say that I’m like Edward Stone. We’re from the same generation. We went through the same war. We learned the same lessons.”

  “Come on! What were they?”

  “We learned how to manipulate people. And we learned to like it.”

  Anna nodded sagely, but she had barely heard. “To London!” she said, raising her wineglass one last time. If she had been wearing a mortarboard, she would have tossed it in the air.

  3

  Edward Stone’s final crusade began that January in the city of Samarkand, in the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan. He was not there in person, of course. He was half a world away, in an office in Langley removed by several floors, and at least one generation, from the new crowd who imagined that they were running American intelligence. But Stone was certainly there in spirit, and he was there by proxy as well. For if there was one thing that Edward Stone had accumulated in a lifetime of work in the spy business, it was the friendly assistance of other spymasters, known in the trade as “liaison.”

  Stone had thirty-five years’ worth of contacts upon which to draw—with British, French, Germans, Lebanese, Saudis, Iranians, Pakistanis, Afghanis. Indeed, he had practically built some of those nations’ intelligence services himself. The resulting bonds of loyalty transcended mere agent relationships and became a web of obligation that was stronger, more pervasive, and far less visible. For liaison was the one form of U.S. intelligence activity that remained hidden from prying eyes—not subject to review by Congress, occasionally not even reported to the White House. And that gave Stone and his foreign friends considerable room to maneuver, even in the cosseted world of 1979, even in the dusty streets and alleyways of Samarkand.

  The sun rose that particular January morning over a local landmark called the Gur Emir—the tomb of the great emir, Timur—illuminating its blue dome with the soft light of the Uzbekistan plain. A few Moslem pilgrims had come to the shrine at first light, to pray at the tomb of the conqueror, known to Europeans as Tamerlane. This sort of folk worship was frowned upon by the local viceroys of dialectical materialism. But the authorities could not stop it. And so the pilgrims came each morning: round-faced Uzbeks in four-cornered hats, their wives following a step behind in aberband silk dresses, bright as panes of stained glass; a few Turkmen, in long blue frock coats and powder-blue turbans, stroking the wispy strands of their forked beards.

  The pilgrims sat under the mulberry trees that ringed the shrine, waiting for the guard to come and open the big padlock on the front door, take their forty kopecks, and let them in. They could have broken into the shrine if they had really wanted to. It was a large, open place, protected only by rickety wooden doors and a low wall that could be climbed by an Uzbek toddler; it was surrounded by a warren of private houses, each hiding its secrets behind plain, whitewashed walls. The Soviet authorities didn’t even bother to post a blue-shirted militiaman to protect the place at night. What was worth protecting in this pagan shrine? It would have seemed almost a joke to any responsible official of the Samarkand Oblast.

  Eventually a guard arrived, opened the gate and let the faithful enter the tomb. They walked in cautiously under a crumbling brick archway, across the broad outer courtyard of the shrine and into the inner sanctum. It was musty inside, and so dark you could barely see the blue tiles on the walls. In the central chamber that held the sarcophagus of Tamerlane, even the sharp-eyed Uzbek pilgrims needed a few moments to become accustomed to the dark. The men shuffled and muttered; the women put their hands to their faces and whispered prayers. And then an old woman, a grandmother layered with the fat of a dozen childbirths, saw something amiss.

  “Allah!” she cried, pointing to the tomb.

  The other pilgrims looked toward the sarcophagus, made of jade that had once been green but was now almost black from age and neglect. The heavy jade lid of the sarcophagus had been pushed back several feet, opening the warrior’s tomb.

  “Allah!” said the old woman again, her voice trembling.

  “The Prince of War has escaped!” whispered the oldest man in the group. He said it tentatively, hopefully, the way one of the disciples might have said, “Christ is risen!” on the first Easter morning.

  The small room echoed, as others repeated the words. As these voices began to resonate in the small brick chamber, the old woman suddenly let out a shriek and pointed across the marble screen that surrounded Tamerlane’s resting place toward a simpler mud-caked bier known as the Tomb of the Unknown Hajji. Embedded in that burial mound was the trunk of a poplar tree, tall as a telephone pole. Atop the poplar, suspended by a string, was a banner proclaiming in Arabic script: “Allahu akhbar!” God is great!

  “Allahu akhbar!” cried the venerable old man, who learned to read the Koran as a boy, before the great modern darkness descended on Central Asia.

  “Ahhhhh,” gasped several of the Uzbeks.

  “La ilaha illa-Llah,” said the old man, repeating the Koranic injunction: There is no god but God.

  “Allah! Allah!” chanted one of the Turkmen. He said the words quickly, with each breath of air, one after the other, like a Sufi zikr. Others repeated the chant, the sound surging louder and louder until it became a guttural rumble and the small chamber began to reverberate with the emotion of the pilgrims.

  The noise aroused the guard, who c
ame running into the mausoleum. When he saw the open tomb and the banner, he turned and ran from the chamber out into the courtyard, toward the telephone. The Moslem pilgrims rushed out after him, bellowing and chanting, disappearing down the small lanes and blind alleys that radiated out from the square. Ten minutes later the first contingent of militia arrived on their three-wheeled motorcycles, then a second detachment and a third, until they had surrounded the place. After thirty minutes, the army, too, had arrived from a nearby garrison. The troops, like the militiamen, were mostly native Uzbeks and they looked frightened. For already, on their way to the Gur Emir, they had heard rumors of what the pilgrims had found inside the tomb.

  What thrilled the people—and frightened their keepers—was that every Uzbek knew it had happened once before, nearly forty years earlier. The tomb of Tamerlane had been opened then, and the Prince of War truly had been set loose upon the world. That earlier cataclysm had begun when the worshippers of Lenin, the apostles of science and progress, had come east with their charts and instruments to conduct experiments at the tomb. They came at the behest of a famous scientist, Academician Gerasimov, whose name and academic credentials were invoked before the natives like the incantation of a village headman. The holy academician, they were told, was an expert in reconstructing the face of a dead person from the surviving bones and dust, and he proposed to work his magic now on the face of the sublime conqueror Timur, the man who had razed entire towns—slaughtered every man, woman and child—if they so much as hinted at opposition. And now this Gerasimov wanted to measure the distance between the bridge of the great conqueror’s nose and his occipital bone, reconstruct the set of his jaw, stretch artificial skin across the remains of his princely cheekbones. The Uzbeks had opposed it, had pleaded against it, but the academicians from Moscow paid no attention.

  Gerasimov’s men had come to Samarkand and pried open the great jade coffin and removed the noble remains of Tamerlane. They said they wanted to find out if he really had been lame, as legend had it, so they measured his femur and his tibia and conducted other such worthy experiments. Perhaps they paused momentarily to read the inscription on the lid: “The Spirit of War Rests Within This Tomb”—which was surely a “Do Not Disturb” sign, left centuries before. But it can only have made them laugh. So they pressed down on their crowbars and pried open the heavy jade …