Siro

by David Ignatius

  “Thank you, my friend,” said Munzer, looking up. His eyes were red. Taylor sat down again, thinking about what to do, and remained silent for a while longer.

  “What could we do to give you hope again?” Taylor said at last.

  “Nothing. I am sorry, my friend, but that is truth. Hope is finished.”

  “But the 1950s were a long time ago. Things have changed. We’ve changed. What would convince you of that?”

  “Nothing. I tell you again.”

  “What if we could do something very specific to show you that we were serious, Mr. Ahmedov? Something that would prove to you that things have changed.”

  “You cannot. Impossible. So do not play games with me, my friend. I am too old and too smart.”

  Taylor lit a cigarette. He told himself to move very carefully now, for this was the essential moment. The wrong suggestion and Munzer was lost. The right one and he might move a first foot across the line he had drawn in the sand twenty-five years ago.

  “Mr. Ahmedov,” said Taylor slowly. “The poem that you asked me to read earlier from the book”—Taylor walked over and picked up the book in his hand—“the poem from this book, called ‘Wake Up, Kazakh.’ ”

  “Yes. By Mir-Yakub Dulatov, one of our great Turkestani patriots. What about this poem? You want book? Here, you keep it. I get another.”

  “Listen to me, Mr. Ahmedov. What if we were to read this poem on the Turkic services of Radio Liberty—in Kazakh, Uzbek, Tajik—read it so that all of Central Asia could hear? Would that change your mind?”

  “Psst. It is forbidden.”

  “Who says?”

  “I know the rules. It is forbidden. It is anti-Russian poem and it is forbidden to broadcast anti-Russian poem on American radios. VOA, Radio Liberty. I tell you before, those are rules. That is problem, my friend. Don’t you understand? That is why I give up.”

  “But what if those rules don’t apply anymore?”

  “Ach! Please. Rules are rules.”

  “But we make the rules for the radios, Mr. Ahmedov. And if we decide to change them, they’re changed. And I am telling you, the rules are changing. That’s what I have been trying to tell you all day, but you’ve been feeling so sorry for yourself that you haven’t heard me.”

  Munzer looked at Taylor warily, with a tiny glint of interest in his eye. “Okay, suppose you are telling truth and rules have changed. How would Munzer know, please?”

  “Just listen to the radio. Or have your people listen for you.”

  “When?”

  Taylor thought another moment, wondering if he could depend on Edward Stone and his mysterious unnamed friend in Munich, and then decided—what the hell—and plunged over the edge.

  “I make you this promise, Mr. Ahmedov. Listen to me very carefully. Within the next week, the Turkic services will read the poem of Mir-Yakub Dulatov which is called ‘Wake Up, Kazakh.’ You have your people listen, and when this poem has been broadcast, as I have promised, then you call me on the telephone and we will talk again. Okay?”

  Taylor handed Munzer his Karpetland card, which had the office phone number in Rockville printed at the bottom. “Is that a fair deal?”

  Taylor didn’t give him time to answer. He extended his hand and shook Munzer’s firmly. Now it was a deal. They had shaken on it.

  “And when we meet next time, Mr. Ahmedov, I will tell you how we will strike a real blow—you and I—at last, for the freedom and independence of Turkestan. All right?”

  Munzer didn’t respond. He looked disoriented. He had been minding his business, living an anonymous and relatively happy life, and suddenly this stranger had arrived, summoning him to arms.

  “All right?” said Taylor again.

  “Yeah. Sure,” said Munzer.

  “I think your man Munzer can be had,” Taylor confided to Stone when he returned to Washington the next day. They met briefly in the parking lot of a drugstore on Wisconsin Avenue, near Stone’s home in Georgetown. The Karpetland van was parked a few yards away. Taylor had driven straight down from New York that morning and called Stone as soon as he arrived.

  “Well done,” said Stone, shaking Taylor’s hand. “He’s not an easy nut to crack, as I recall.”

  “He’s like most émigrés. Gaga about the old country, but otherwise a nice guy.”

  “So how can I help you,” said Stone, “on this pleasant Saturday afternoon which I had intended to spend on the tennis court?”

  “Sorry to bother you. But to close the deal with Ahmedov I need a favor in a hurry.”

  “What might that be?”

  “I need to have something broadcast on the Turkic services of Radio Liberty. You mentioned you had a friend in Munich who had helped you put stuff on the radios in the past, and I thought maybe you could ask him for a favor.”

  “Of course I can. What is it that you want broadcast?”

  “A poem. A nationalist poem called ‘Wake Up, Kazakh.’ I have a copy of it here.” He handed the book he had brought from Munzer’s house to Stone.

  “That shouldn’t pose a problem.”

  “It’s on Ahmedov’s list of all-time greatest hits. Since it’s anti-Russian, Ahmedov thinks broadcasting it is a no-no. I told him we could change the rules. That was my recruitment pitch, to get him on board. So if we can’t do it, I’m screwed. I’ll have to look for another guy.”

  “Not to worry. As I said, it shouldn’t pose a problem. Nobody checks these things very carefully. And even when they do, there are always ways of covering one’s tracks. How soon should this epic be broadcast?”

  “Right away. I told Ahmedov it would be on the air within a week.”

  “How would next Tuesday be? Three days from now.”

  “You can do it that quickly?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “That would be fine,” said Taylor. “Just fine.”

  “Anything else?” asked Stone, looking at his watch. “I have my tennis game.”

  “Not a thing,” said Taylor.

  26

  Anna called Frank Hoffman the day she arrived in Athens, using his old agency pseudonym—Oscar D. Fabiolo. That was Stone’s idea. He thought it would help shake off the cobwebs. Fortunately Hoffman was home, rather than on one of his regular trips to see clients in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi—or, increasingly, to the homes these gentlemen maintained in pleasanter spots, like Monte Carlo, Geneva, Paris and London. Unfortunately, Hoffman was in a grumpy mood.

  “Is Mr. Oscar D. Fabiolo there, please?” Anna asked.

  “No,” answered a gruff voice. “He’s dead.”

  “Mr. Fabiolo?” pressed Anna.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “A friend of an old friend.”

  “Bullshit. I don’t have any more old friends. Just new friends. Who is this anyway?”

  “Lucy.”

  “I don’t know any Lucy.”

  “Good,” said Anna. “That makes me a new friend.”

  “You obviously want to talk to me, whoever you are.”

  “Yes, sir. I do. I’ve come a long way to talk to you.”

  “Are you pretty?”

  Anna thought a moment about how to answer. “Not bad,” she said.

  “Aw, shit,” barked Hoffman. “You might as well c’mon over, honey. I got a million-dollar view here and nobody to share it with.” Hoffman was better at getting mad, it seemed, than staying mad. And “honey” said she would be right over.

  Frank Hoffman was in the security business. He had understood, as the oil boom began in the early 1970s, that the one thing the newly rich princes of the desert would need was someone to help them stay alive and hold on to their dubiously acquired loot. So he had left the agency in 1972 and formed a security company; he had initially planned to call it AA-Arab-American Security Consultants, Inc., hoping to be first in the Riyadh phone book—not realizing that Riyadh didn’t yet have a phone book and that when it did, it wouldn’t be in English. By now, Hoffman was so rich tha
t he didn’t really have to care what anybody called him or his company. He lived in a vast apartment in the Kolonaki district of Athens, at the foot of Lykabettos. The apartment overlooked the Acropolis and had, as Hoffman liked to boast, a million-dollar view.

  Perhaps in deference to his surroundings and his new wealth, Hoffman had in recent years come to resemble a Greek tycoon. He was a short, stocky man—a fat man, to be blunt—but he had stopped worrying about it. He had a fifty-dollar haircut, wore Gucci loafers and open-neck silk shirts and carried around his neck an immense gold ornament shaped like the letter “O.” His only real link with the old days was that he still carried a side arm, having bribed an appropriate official in the Greek Ministry of the Interior for the necessary permit.

  Anna rang the doorbell of Hoffman’s apartment having no idea what to expect. Stone had explained that Hoffman was eccentric, and that he had left the agency in a huff over what he regarded as high-handed behavior by the former director—and, peripherally, by Stone himself—in a case involving a Palestinian agent in Beirut. Otherwise, Hoffman was an unknown quantity. He was one of the colorful characters the old-timers liked to reminisce about, but whom nobody really remembered very clearly anymore.

  “C’mon in, sweetie,” said Hoffman, opening the door of his apartment. It was early evening, and through the huge windows of the salon, Anna could see the pillars of the Acropolis, floodlit and magnificent. Next to the windows, vying for attention, was a large color television that was broadcasting an episode of Starsky and Hutch.

  “Not bad, huh?” said Hoffman, walking her over to the window. “Did I lie to you? Is this a million-dollar view or what?”

  “Maybe two million,” said Anna.

  “Nah. The dollar is still strong here. One million. Have a seat. What are you drinking?”

  “White wine.”

  “Bullshit. I’m having a whiskey.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll still have white wine.”

  “Suit yourself, honey.”

  He went to get her drink. Anna pointed to the television set, which was blaring noisily. “Mind if I turn that down? I can barely hear you.”

  “It’s Starsky and Hutch. A good one, too. Starsky pretends to be a tango dancer to catch a ring of blackmailers.”

  “I’ll catch it another time,” said Anna.

  “Leave the picture on, would you?”

  Hoffman brought her the drink, sat down across from her, and leaned toward her. “So who the hell are you anyway?”

  “My name is Lucy Morgan.”

  “Oh yeah? Is that a work name?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It is.”

  “Well then, what’s your real name, sweetie?”

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you.”

  “Suit yourself.” He leaned back against the couch and resumed watching the soundless Starsky and Hutch.

  “Anna Barnes,” she said.

  Hoffman roused himself. “Is that another work name?”

  “No. That’s it.”

  “How do you know my old pseudonym?”

  “I’m a case officer in London. I was given your name by a colleague at headquarters who said you might be able to help us with something.”

  “Which colleague?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Uh-huh. And why did they send you from London or Washington or wherever the hell you’re coming from when they have a whole floor full of no-name case officers bumping into each other over at the embassy? I could tell one of them no just as easily as I can tell you.”

  “It’s a sensitive case. They’re running it from headquarters.”

  “So they sent you.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’re a female case officer.” He used the word “female” as a qualifier, like “crippled.”

  “Yes. Obviously.”

  “Equal opportunity, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I think it’s a terrific idea putting women in the field as case officers. I just want you to know that. I’d hate to see the national interests of the United States get in the way of equal opportunity. Believe me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” he said. He was either slightly drunk or very rude. “Hey, listen. I’ll tell you a little joke. You’ll like it. It’s cute.”

  Anna said nothing. She was thinking, in the back of her mind, about how soon she could get a flight back to America.

  “The joke goes like this. We parachute an agent into the Soviet Union, and the guy is absolutely perfect. He speaks perfect Russian, with no accent. He’s dressed in Russian clothes, made of the same lousy fabric they use. He smokes the same loopy cigarettes they do. And his identity papers are perfect, right down to the rusty staples that leave red marks on the middle pages. This guy has everything! So when he lands and hides his parachute, he walks into town and goes to a café and asks for a beer, local brand, just right, perfect Russian, no accent. And the lady behind the bar says: ‘You must be from the CIA.’ ”

  “I’ve heard this joke.”

  “So the guy says: ‘How can you tell? I’m a perfect Russian. Clothes, accent, papers, cigarettes.’ And the lady says: ‘Yeah, but we don’t get too many black Russians in here.’ Funny, huh?”

  “Not very. And I’ve heard it before.”

  “Women have no sense of humor.”

  “Look, I think I’d better go.”

  “Hold on. Don’t go. It was just a joke, for chrissake.”

  “Listen, Mr. Hoffman. I didn’t come here to listen to racist jokes or to debate feminism with you. Frankly, I don’t give a damn what you think about those subjects. Or anything else.”

  “Okay, okay. Calm down. So why did you come to see Uncle Frank then? Call him out of the blue, using his old code name? Huh?”

  “Because someone back home had the idea that you might want to help us with an important case.”

  “But why little old me? I’m retired. I’ve gone to seed. I don’t give a shit anymore. Didn’t they tell you that?”

  “Yes, they did, actually.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, fuck them, then. Although it’s true. I have gone to seed. I have too much money and too much fun, and I’m not willing to work with incompetents and nitwits anymore. I guess that makes me a malcontent.”

  “Apparently it does.”

  “Screw you, too. But let’s cut the crap. What’s your little case about?”

  “I’m not sure there’s any real point in going into it. You sound pretty burnt-out, to be honest. That’s not what we’re after.”

  “I am burnt-out, goddammit, and proud of it. I did a lot of burning in my day, which is more than you can say for most of your so-called colleagues. They’re never going to burn out, because they’re never going to get lit. You want another drink?”

  “No. Like I said, maybe I should be going.”

  “What’s the rush? This may be your only chance to see a genuine relic from the dinosaur age. Hold on, I’ll be right back.”

  He visited the lavatory and returned with another glass of whiskey. “Let’s stop playing games, huh? What’s your case about and how do you think I can help you?”

  “It involves Soviet nationalities.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit. They thought you might be worth talking to because you handled some cross-border operations in the 1950s.”

  “So I did. Total fuck-ups, as I recall. Got a lot of innocent people killed. Don’t tell me they’re going to do that again.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I can’t give you details.”

  “So give me generalities.”

  “We’re not going to run cross-border operations. We’re going to pretend to run them. If you follow me.”

  “Deception.”

  “Yes.”

  “Make them think you’re holding four aces when all you’ve got is a pair of twos.”

  �
�That’s right.”

  “Hold on. I think I’m beginning to get the picture.”

  “What?”

  “This has to be one of Stone’s capers.”

  Anna said nothing.

  “Edward Stone. You want me to spell it?”

  Still she said nothing.

  “This is one of his slick little games. Hootchie-kootchie. Now you see it, now you don’t. And he wants me to help with the shit work. Except he doesn’t have the balls to come see me himself, so he sends little Miss Dickless Tracy. Is that it, more or less?”

  “You’re out of line.” She stood up.

  “Hey, c’mon. Sit down. I’m sorry. About the Dickless Tracy part, I mean. I was joking.”

  “You’re worse than they said. What’s wrong with you anyway? What are you so angry about?”

  “What’s wrong with me is that I’m sick of watching us get our ass kicked from one end of the world to the other. It puts me in a bad mood and makes me say nasty things to nice young ladies such as yourself. If you want to know what’s bothering me, just read the fucking newspapers. Do they still do that back at headquarters? Read the newspapers? They probably have a machine now that does that for them.”

  Anna said nothing.

  “Here’s one day’s news, sweetheart,” said Hoffman, picking up from the coffee table a copy of that morning’s Athens Post, the local English-language paper.

  “What’s the front-page headline? ‘Iranian Firing Squad Executes 21 of Shah’s Officials.’ Too bad. I probably know some of those guys. Okay, so we fucked up. What can we do about it? Look on the bottom of page one. Big headline: Leftist bombings in Turkey and Italy. There goes NATO. Ooops, we fucked up again. Turn inside and what have you got? ‘CIA Agents in Greek Armed Forces, Socialist MPs Claim.’ Which would be nice if it were true, but it isn’t. And here’s a gem on page three. You read this one.” He handed the paper to Anna, pointing to a story in the middle of the page.

  “ ‘Soviets Blame CIA for Italy’s Violence.’ ”