Siro

by David Ignatius

  “Stand back!” she said, waving the bottle at him. The Iranian, surprised by her sudden motion, took a step back.

  “Don’t move!” she said. She tried to dial “O” with the same hand that was holding the phone, but her finger slipped out of the dial. Ascari saw her mistake and laughed at her. She was trying to dial again when he rushed toward her with his little scimitar, shouting something in Persian.

  Anna dropped the phone and crouched instinctively into the fighting position an instructor had taught her several months earlier in an Arlington motel room. She leaned one way, then stepped aside as Ali lunged for where she had been. As Ascari went past her, Anna raised the whiskey bottle over her head and slammed it down. She missed Ascari’s head, but hit his right arm hard, just above the elbow. Ascari fell to the floor, overcome as much by surprise as by the force of her blow.

  Anna stared at him a moment, amazed by what she had done. Her arm, holding the whiskey bottle, felt as if it had electricity running through it. Ascari was groggily trying to get up. What was she waiting for? If she ran at that instant, she could probably make it through the door. But Ascari would still be chasing her, and Anna felt, in that moment, that she had done enough running for a lifetime. She raised the bottle again. Her whole body was surging with energy now, as if a switch somewhere had been flipped for the first time.

  As Ascari turned his face toward her, Anna brought the bottle down. This time it hit him on the forehead, hard enough to bruise the skin, but not hard enough to break the bottle. Ascari screamed and fell back to the floor, dazed by the blow. Then Anna did something that her colleagues decided later was probably excessive. She kicked Ascari in his fat stomach. And then, as he was groaning, she kicked him again.

  With Ascari collapsed on the floor, Anna moved quickly. She collected as much of the money as she could find, stuffed it in the attaché case, grabbed her purse from the floor, and headed for the door. She unbolted the lock and turned for a last look at Ascari. He wasn’t moving.

  “Don’t ever do that again!” said Anna.

  She closed the door and ran to the elevator. There was no sign of Ascari behind her. I hope he’s dead, Anna thought to herself as the elevator headed down to the lobby. She walked quickly out the door and along the long driveway of the hotel. Still there was no sign that Ascari was following her. She walked down Cumhuriyet Avenue a quarter mile to the next big hotel and stopped at the door.

  At first the doorman shook his head: No admittance. She realized how bizarre she must look—clothes askew, bathed in sweat, smelling of the half bottle of booze that she had accidentally poured on herself as she struck Ascari. It was only when Anna spoke English that the doorman relented. He pointed her toward a telephone in the lobby, from which she dialed the home telephone number she had been given for the Istanbul base chief, Alan Taylor.

  It was nearly two o’clock when she reached him. Taylor answered the phone with a trace of annoyance in his voice. In the background was a woman’s voice, speaking in Turkish.

  “This is Vera,” said Anna, using the recognition code that had been agreed on before she left London. He was supposed to answer: “Welcome to Istanbul,” and then work out, in code, a time to meet.

  “Who?” answered Taylor, fumbling through his mental Rolodex of real names, work names, cryptonyms and codes.

  “Vera,” said Anna. “This is Vera.”

  “Should I know you?” asked Taylor.

  “Damned straight!” said Anna. She was angry. “I’m a visitor.”

  “Right,” said Taylor. He had a vague recollection of a cable that someone from London would be coming through Istanbul. “Whatever you say.”

  “The reason I’m calling,” said Anna, “is that I’ve had a bit of trouble tonight.”

  Now Taylor was listening. “Whatever you need,” he said. “Where are you? I’ll come get you right away.”

  “No,” said Anna. That would be insecure. What’s more, it would mean surrendering herself to the care and protection of a man, which at this moment she powerfully wanted—and did not want.

  “You sure?” pressed Taylor.

  “It can wait. Let’s meet at two o’clock.”

  “Say what?” answered Taylor. He knew she was talking in code, but he had forgotten what this particular code meant. There were dozens of them, for different agents, NOCs, liaison contacts. In this case, “one o’clock” meant immediately, “two o’clock” meant the next day.

  “Let’s meet at two o’clock,” repeated Anna.

  “Oh, fuck it,” said Taylor. “Let’s just meet tomorrow morning.”

  “Right,” said Anna. “Where?” Obviously if he had forgotten the part of the code dealing with the time of an emergency meeting, he had forgotten the part about place.

  “My shop,” said Taylor.

  Anna hung up the phone. Meeting at the consulate was bad tradecraft, but at that point she didn’t care. She was tired. It didn’t make sense to go back to her hotel, where Ascari might somehow track her down, so she simply checked into the hotel into which she had stumbled. They overcharged her on principle—a single woman, arriving alone at that hour. She didn’t care about that either. She felt unnaturally calm. An Iranian agent had just tried to rape her, and she had beaten him senseless and left him for dead on the floor of his hotel room. She felt as if she ought to be sobbing, or at least sniffling. But she was just tired. She took a shower, crawled into bed, and slept soundly until the next morning.

  16

  Anna had been waiting nearly an hour when Taylor finally arrived at the consulate; he had the woozy look of someone who has had too much drink and too little sleep the night before. Anna was sitting in the reception room on the first floor of the Palazzo Corpi, reading a book, and at first Taylor walked right past her. Apparently she didn’t look like his mental image of “Vera.” The voice on the phone had been tough, sharp, controlled. The dark-haired, green-eyed woman on the couch looked younger and more vulnerable.

  “Where the hell have you been?” asked Anna when the receptionist steered Taylor toward her.

  “Rough night,” said Taylor.

  “Not as rough as mine. Believe me.”

  “Come tell me about it,” said Taylor, taking her arm and leading her across the courtyard to his office in the annex. The office was piled with cartons of new visa applications from Iranians, which Taylor was sifting in the hope of finding people who might have some intelligence value. Taylor cleared one of the boxes from his couch, motioned to Anna to have a seat, and closed the door.

  “Sorry about last night,” he said. “I’m sure I must have gotten a cable about you, but I can’t remember what it said. Who are you anyway?”

  “Amy L. Gunderson,” said Anna. “Does that ring any bells?”

  “Nope,” said Taylor. “But my memory for pseudonyms isn’t too hot.”

  “I’m a NOC,” said Anna. “Based in London.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “Should I tell you?”

  “Sure,” said Taylor. “What the hell.”

  “Anna Barnes,” she said. “I’m new.”

  “So what happened, Anna Barnes?”

  “I had a bad time last night with an Iranian we’re trying to develop.” Her voice was calm, perhaps a bit tired. The electricity of the previous night had flowed out of her body.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Ali Ascari. I had a meet with him last night in his room at the Hilton. He got drunk and abusive. I had to hit him, with a whiskey bottle. I’m afraid I may have hurt him.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “He was trying to attack me,” she said, avoiding the word “rape.” She spoke quietly, almost clinically. “He had a knife. I didn’t really have any other choice.”

  Taylor smiled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You sound apologetic,” said Taylor. “Obviously the son of a bitch had it coming.”

  “He did,” answered Anna. “But it’s sort
of a mess, isn’t it? I hit him pretty hard, especially the second time. For all I know, he may be dead. God only knows what they’ll think back at headquarters. They’ll probably think it was very unprofessional.”

  “Fuck headquarters,” said Taylor.

  Anna smiled. “That’s easy for you to say. But I’m a new kid.”

  “Go ahead. Say it.”

  “Fuck headquarters.”

  “Excellent. Now, I seriously doubt your man is dead. Not to take anything away from your skill with a whiskey bottle, but it takes a hell of whack to kill someone that way.”

  “I kicked him, too. Twice.”

  Taylor squinted at her. She was full of surprises, Amy L. Gunderson. “Congratulations,” he said. “But I still doubt you killed him.”

  “That’s good, I guess.”

  “Don’t be disappointed. Maybe you’ll get another shot.”

  “Never,” said Anna with a shiver. “I’ve had it with this guy. I should never have met him again. I’m the wrong person. The chemistry is all wrong.”

  “I’ll say,” said Taylor. Despite herself, Anna laughed. “Seriously,” he continued, “I’ll send someone over to the Hilton to ask a few questions. In the unlikely event they’ve found a dead Iranian, we’ll get you out of Istanbul pronto and try to tidy things up. If he’s gone to the doctor, we’ll find out how bad he’s hurt. If he’s sitting in his room with a hangover and a lump on his head, we’ll send up some aspirin. Whatever it is, we’ll take care of it. So stop worrying.”

  “If he’s alive, he’s going to be angry.”

  “Tough shit.”

  “But he may want to take revenge, on the agency, or on me.”

  “Does he know who you are?”

  “True name? No. He knows me as Allison James.”

  “Does he know you’re agency?”

  “Yes and no. He knows I’m in contact with agency people in London, and he calls me ‘CIA lady.’ But he probably doesn’t think I’m the real thing. In fact, it’s probably beyond his comprehension that a woman could be a bona fide CIA officer.”

  “You may have changed his mind last night,” said Taylor. “Anyway, don’t sweat it. We deal with bigger assholes than this guy every day of the week.”

  Anna smiled. She appreciated Taylor’s little pep talk more than she wanted to let on.

  “I’m going to need communication,” she said. “I ought to cable London and headquarters right away and let them know what’s happened.”

  “No problem,” said Taylor.

  “And I need somebody to go over to the hotel where I was staying before and pick up my stuff.”

  “No problem.”

  “And then I guess I ought to get out of here. When does the Pan Am flight for London leave?”

  “In an hour. You’ll never make it.”

  “I’ll go tomorrow.”

  “Listen,” said Taylor. “Maybe you want some company later, after you finish your cables. You’re going to feel a little spooked, no matter how tough you are with a bottle.”

  “I’d love some company, to be honest. If you’re not too busy.” She didn’t consider the etiquette of accepting his offer. Taylor was a colleague. He was initiated into the secrets of her world. Which meant she could relax.

  “How about a brief driving tour of the Anatolian countryside, in a bulletproof Chevrolet?” asked Taylor. Anna didn’t answer. She just closed her lids on those radiant, blue-green eyes.

  Anna finished her cables just after noon. The act of writing them, confessing to her various bosses that her jaunt to Istanbul had been a disaster, made her nervous all over again. She looked pale when she knocked on Taylor’s door.

  “Good news,” said Taylor. “Your Iranian friend isn’t dead.”

  “Thank God!” she said. By now, her homicidal fantasies had disappeared. Drafting her cables, she had reflected on the prospect of being tried for murder in an Istanbul court and decided it was not to her liking.

  “He’s not even angry. He’s contrite.”

  “You’re kidding. How do you know?”

  “Because forty minutes ago someone named Ascari called the switchboard with a message for Allison James. Which is you, correct?”

  “Correct. What was the message?”

  “Tell Allison James thank you for the book and that Ali Ascari is very sorry. What book is he talking about?”

  “It was a gift. A guide to Moslem holy places in Azerbaijan. His family is from Baku.”

  “How thoughtful.”

  “What did the switchboard say?”

  “They told him they didn’t know what he was talking about. That they didn’t know of anyone by the name of Allison James.”

  “This guy doesn’t give up,” said Anna, shaking her head.

  “In this part of the world,” said Taylor, “a man doesn’t really respect a woman until she’s hit him over the head with a whiskey bottle.”

  The car was ready at twelve-thirty. Taylor dismissed the driver and took the wheel. “Let’s go to Asia,” he said, gunning the car onto Mesrutiyet Street so that the tires squealed. Taylor’s sense of style was better than his sense of direction, and he got lost on the other side of the Bosporus Bridge. “It’s no use asking for directions,” he advised Anna. “Turks can’t bear to admit they don’t know the way, so they make up an answer.”

  So Taylor, directionless, explored the back alleys of Beylerbey, Cengelkoy and Vanikoy. He found his bearings eventually in Anadoluhisari, up the Bosporus, at a familiar restaurant, where they stopped for lunch and shared a bottle of wine. Anna began to relax. She told Taylor more details about the odious Ali Ascari. She told him about the vicissitudes of NOC-dom in London; by the last glass of wine, she was telling him how, little more than a year before, she had decided to join the world’s most exclusive men’s club. Taylor smiled and drank.

  Taylor’s plan was to go to Polonezkoy, a bucolic little village about twenty miles east of the Bosporus distinguished chiefly by the fact that its residents all had blue eyes and blond hair. They were Poles, descended from Polish soldiers who had fought on the Ottoman side during the Crimean War, received land from a grateful sultan, and settled there with their wives and children (hence the name Polonezkoy). They had behaved like good Polish peasants—building tidy farms and copulating industriously with each other—with the result that the land was very green and the population was very inbred.

  For generations, the yeomen of Polonezkoy had supplemented their farm income by providing food and short-term lodging (very short-term, by the hour) to wealthy Istanbuli gentlemen and their mistresses, who needed someplace out of the way—preferably run by heathen Christians—to conduct their illicit liaisons. It was a charming, Old World version of a hot-sheet motel, and a place where Taylor had more than once brought his own women friends.

  The landscape changed radically a few miles inland. The suburban clutter of the Bosporus gave way to the rugged hill country of Anatolia—dry, dusty and nearly empty of people. Europe lapped over the edge of Asia, at the eastern shore of the Bosporus, but went no farther than a mile or two. Taylor broke his rule and stopped just east of Beykoz to ask directions. “Polonezkoy?” he asked a gaunt Turkish gentleman. The man thought he meant Poland and pointed northwest, toward Warsaw. Eventually they found someone who pointed them in the right direction, and the car bumped along the one-lane dirt road while Taylor fiddled with the radio knob.

  “You’re not married,” said Anna, looking at Taylor’s left hand as he swung the steering wheel toward her.

  “Not anymore,” said Taylor. “She left me, six months ago.”

  “Why? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “We were incompatible.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means we didn’t fit together anymore. My wife wanted me to get serious, take a job back at headquarters, have children, be a normal guy. But she gave up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she finally realized I was a hopeless cas
e. My wife was an improver. A fixer-upper. She never got the point.”

  “Which was what?”

  “The point was that I wasn’t going to change. I liked the way I was. It was wasted effort.”

  Anna nodded. She didn’t know whether to sympathize with Taylor or his ex-wife. Taylor went back to fiddling with the radio knob.

  “I’m trying to find police radio,” he said. The static floated in and out, but amid the blur you could hear the voice of a Turkish announcer intoning the police slogans of the day. “Remember that the police are here to protect human rights,” said the announcer. There was a vigorous police march, followed by the admonition: “You should be the kind of policeman that people will call ‘friend.’ ”

  “I love this station,” said Taylor. “They should have police radio back home.”

  The radio announcer began intoning a summary of the day’s terrorism incidents. His voice had the flat tone of a sportscaster reading the soccer scores. “In Izmir, one shooting; in Trabzon, two shootings and one bombing; in Ankara, four shootings.”

  “What’s happening to this country anyway?” said Anna as the police announcer rumbled on. “It’s a mess.”

  “The usual,” said Taylor. “There’s no political center anymore. Just extremes. So the whole country is going to the mattresses.”

  “In Konya,” continued the police-radio announcer, “one shooting and one bombing. In Istanbul, six shootings and two bombings.” Taylor turned police radio off.

  “What are we doing about it?” asked Anna.

  “Who? The boys and girls from RTACTION?”

  Anna nodded. RTACTION was one of the CIA’s cryptonyms for itself.

  “You gotta be kidding,” said Taylor. “We’re not in the game.”

  The Chevrolet rumbled on. Every few miles they passed a cluster of cement-block houses, each with a muddy terrace and a collection of chickens, sheep and a lame cow or two. Dark-eyed children were everywhere in these settlements, more numerous than the farm animals. Each house had the standard adult complement—a heavy woman in a headscarf and a thin man in a worn coat—that seemed universal in the Turkish countryside. Anna looked at the women, lumpy and misshapen. That was one of the immutable cruelties of the Third World class system: It made poor women fat and rich women thin.