Siro

by David Ignatius

  “We’ll be sending in, via a separate channel, some handbills calling for demonstrations at several of the shrines in Azerbaijan. We’ll be doing the same thing in Uzbekistan, by the way, Alan.”

  “Will people actually go to the demonstrations?” she asked.

  “A few, I hope. Enough to make it all look plausible.”

  “What will happen to them?”

  “They will get arrested, I suspect.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “No. Should it?”

  Before Anna could answer, Stone had opened the box again and was handing several dozen of the pamphlets to Taylor.

  “Alan, you’ll need some of these in Istanbul. Munzer might leave a few of them in places where they will be discovered by someone industrious.”

  “Good old Munzer,” said Taylor. “He’ll think he has died and gone to heaven.”

  “Now let’s see. What else do I have for you?” Stone walked over to a group of smaller cartons set against the side wall. He opened a carton and removed two cassette tapes, packed in cheap plastic containers with Russian labels. “You’ll love these,” he said, handing one to each of his colleagues.

  “ ‘Siberian Folk Chorus,’ ” said Anna, translating the label. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Of course I’m kidding. They are actually tapes of a sermon by a Wahhabi mullah in Riyadh, preaching the downfall of Communism. Great stuff! Fire and brimstone. Sinners in the hands of an angry God. My Pakistani friends will take a thousand of these tapes in-country, via Afghanistan. I have a bunch more for Alan to take to Istanbul.”

  “Allahu-akhbar!” said Taylor. Anna cringed. The Islamic mania of the operation was beginning to bother her.

  “The Korans!” exclaimed Stone. “I almost forgot! We have small-format Korans, from Pakistan. Thousands of them. We’re actually piggybacking on our Saudi friends, who’ve been sending Korans into the Moslem republics covertly for the last few years. They do it mostly by giving the books to Moslem sailors, I gather, although I’m not sure I’ve ever met a Moslem sailor. In any event, the Saudis will be increasing shipments during the next several months. Back in Moscow, it’s going to look like someone has declared a jihad!”

  “Mr. Stone,” interrupted Anna. “I’m sorry, but something is bothering me.”

  “What, again?” Stone didn’t sound quite so genial this time.

  “Why are we only working with Moslems in the Soviet Union? There are lots of other national groups that would like to be independent.”

  “Because those are the cards in hand, Miss Barnes. The game is being played at present with a Moslem deck. The Soviets are making our lives unpleasant in Iran, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Turkey and from one miserable end of the Arab world to the other. And we are going to remind them that the Islamic card can be played in two directions.”

  “But it’s a rotten game!”

  “How so?” Stone put his hand to his ear.

  “I don’t want to give a sermon, but religious extremism is the problem in this part of the world, not the solution. Christians and Moslems have been at each other’s throats for centuries. The reason is that each ethnic group always goes for a unilateral solution. Turkestani Moslems only care about Turkestan. Christian Armenians only care about Armenia. Nobody ever tries to bring them together.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, my dear. It’s a dreadful business, pogroms and all that. But I don’t see what we can do about it.”

  “We can draw some Armenians into our operation. Or Georgians. But Armenians would be better.”

  “That’s not realistic.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Uzbeks and Azeris don’t like Armenians.”

  “So what? If we go against what’s traditional, so much the better. That will frighten the Soviets even more.”

  “Why would it do that?” asked Stone, his eyes brightening. He was willing to consider anything that would give the Soviets heartburn.

  “Because Moscow’s biggest fear is that someday these ethnic groups will all get together and start shooting Russians. That’s why the KGB works so hard to keep them suspicious of each other. The Ottomans were the same way. Divide and rule. If you really want to scare the daylights out of Moscow Center, then make them think there is an underground movement that links Armenians and Azeris.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Re-create the golden age, before 1914. Back when all the people in that part of the world were rising together against their imperial masters. It’s not impossible. There are historical precedents.”

  “It sounds so … utopian.” Stone said the last word as if it had a sour taste.

  “What’s wrong with that? If we’re going to create an imaginary network, why not make it perfect? And as I said, that’s the best way to give the Russians a heart attack.”

  “An appealing thought. But it’s late in the day to add something new to our kit, I’m afraid. Why don’t we save this for another time.”

  “There won’t be another time.”

  Stone shook his head, like a bemused father. He looked at his watch. “We’ve got other matters to deal with. Do you really care about this?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve been worrying about this problem, one way or another, for nearly ten years. It matters to me. And I know what I’m doing.”

  “Very well,” said Stone, tiring of the discussion. “Suppose we make you head of the Armenia desk? Would you like that?”

  “What would it mean?”

  “It means that if you can come up with a plausible way to draw an Armenian into our little charade, then I will try to accommodate you. Is that fair enough?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Any objections, Alan?”

  “Nope.”

  “How will I find names of Armenians we could try to recruit?”

  “I’ll have Marjorie get you traces on any live prospects that are in the registry. We’ll pull their 201 files and get you the vital statistics. It will take several weeks. You can deal with it when you get back from Athens. Is that agreeable?”

  “Fine,” said Anna. She felt that she had won at least a temporary victory, a chance to paint on her own canvas, rather than simply carry out Stone’s design. She excused herself and went to the ladies’ room.

  “Alan,” said Stone, when she was out of earshot. “I wonder if you could stop by my house this evening.”

  “Sure. What for?”

  “A little business I’d like to discuss privately with you.”

  “What’s the address?”

  Stone wrote out his address on N Street in Georgetown and handed it to Taylor. “Come around seven. Cocktail time.”

  Anna returned, still smiling from ear to ear. She sat down on the couch and put her feet up on the coffee table—a first.

  “I have one more little surprise for the two of you, and then I must go,” said Stone.

  “Uh-oh,” said Anna.

  “Not to worry. You’ll like this one. I’ve been thinking about it for weeks.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Alan, do you remember the Ottoman chair purchased by the Soviet consul general in Istanbul, into which you and the TSD man from Athens inserted the bug?”

  “Of course I do. How could I forget that stupid fucking chair? What a waste of time.”

  “Now, now. Don’t be so harsh. The chair helped bring us together. But the consul general sent it home, as I remember. To Alma-Ata.”

  “Correct. He sent it to the party first secretary in Kazakhstan as baksheesh.”

  “And so you forgot about it.”

  “Sure. What could we do? The transmitter only broadcast a half mile. And who really cares what the party first secretary in Alma-Ata has to say?”

  “We do,” said Stone. “Or at least we might want people to think we do. We might very well want people to think that a covert operation in Central Asia is so extensive that the Central Intelligence Agency has taken the trouble to instal
l a very sophisticated bug in the office of the Kazakh party leader. And if people wonder how it got there—and that puts the Soviet consul general in Istanbul and his wife under a cloud—then we’ve accomplished a good day’s work.”

  “That’s diabolical,” said Taylor.

  “You flatter me. In any event, my friends, this is how I propose to terminate our piece of theater. In a few months, at an appropriate moment, we’ll find a way for the KGB to discover the bug in Alma-Ata. We’ll let them do the rest of the work for us, and sit back and watch the fun.”

  “From a safe distance, I trust,” said Anna.

  “Of course, my dear,” said Stone. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  That evening, Taylor made the slow passage down Wisconsin Avenue’s corridor of traffic lights in the white Karpetland van. He parked several blocks from Stone’s house and walked the rest of the way. When he reached the address he stopped and studied the house. It was an architectural equivalent of Stone himself: an elegant red brick building, four stories tall, built at least two hundred years ago but lovingly maintained, as if in defiance of the passage of time. Taylor peered inside the leaded-glass window. There was an elegant front parlor, decorated with antique furniture. Down the hall, in what looked to be the study, sat Stone in a leather easy chair. Taylor rang the bell, and up padded the old man.

  “Do come in,” he said. He was wearing a cardigan sweater and smoking a cigar. He escorted Taylor back to his book-lined study, which overlooked a deep garden. When they were seated, Stone offered his guest a cigar, which Taylor eagerly accepted. It was a Davidoff No. 1, smuggled in by one of Stone’s legion of friends.

  “Miss Barnes is a marvelous woman, isn’t she?” asked Stone as Taylor was lighting his cigar.

  “Absolutely,” said Taylor. “Great kid.”

  “And she’s doing extraordinarily well, wouldn’t you say, given how little real experience she’s had?”

  “Yup. She’s hit the ground running.”

  “Do you think she’s entirely comfortable with the operation? I wondered a bit, listening to some of her comments today.”

  “She’s okay. She had a couple of problems, but once she got them off her chest, she seemed to lighten up. I wouldn’t worry about her. She’s a tough cookie. She’s not going to bail out on you now.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that,” said Stone. “Certainly she’s a strong-minded woman, with ideas of her own about how things should be done. But perhaps that’s all to the good.”

  “All to the good, definitely,” agreed Taylor. What’s this all about? he was wondering. But Stone was, in his fashion, getting around to the point.

  “What did you think about her plea for Christian-Moslem amity?”

  “It’s harmless,” said Taylor. “I wouldn’t worry about it. It might even be a good idea.”

  “One advantage is that it will keep her occupied, which will leave you free to do other things.”

  Taylor cocked his head. “Such as?”

  “How shall I put this? In managing this operation, Alan, you shouldn’t feel limited to the particular items that we discussed today.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you, Mr. Stone.”

  “I mean you don’t have to limit yourself to the things that I sent over to Karpetland. The books and pamphlets and cassettes. You can try other things with Munzer as well, if you think it makes sense.”

  “Like what?” Taylor suspected that Stone was about to open a new door in the inner chamber, but he hadn’t a clue where it led.

  “The sky’s the limit, really. In putting together this imaginary underground network, you can use whatever materials a real underground would use.”

  “Not just pamphlets and cassettes, but other things?”

  “Yes, other things.”

  Taylor finally began to understand. “Like guns,” he said.

  “Yes. Like guns. And other things.”

  “Explosives?”

  “Yes, indeed, surely. That would be appropriate for an underground organization that wanted to have an impact in Central Asia.”

  Taylor examined his nails for a moment, giving himself time to think. He was an impulsive man, but he wasn’t a fool. And he knew Stone was proposing something extraordinary, even by the standards of his inner circle.

  “Sounds like you’re declaring war,” he said eventually.

  “I’m turning up the heat,” replied Stone. “I’m tired of the Cold War, to tell you the truth. At this rate it’s going to last forever.”

  Taylor studied Stone’s face. He knew enough about how the government worked to understand that this part of the operation wasn’t authorized by anybody, anywhere.

  “What happens if we get caught?” he asked.

  “A flap. But we won’t get caught.”

  “Right. But suppose we do.”

  “Trust me,” said Stone. “I have more friends in this city than any of the politicians. You won’t suffer for it, unless your greatest ambition in life is to become a GS-18 before you’re fifty. That I cannot promise you.”

  Stone knew his man. Just as there are some adolescent boys who can never refuse a dare, no matter how foolhardy, there are some middle-aged men who would rather die than acknowledge they have reached that stage of life. And with Stone’s last remark, Taylor lost whatever remaining inhibitions he still had about the project. He leaned toward Stone.

  “So how would we go about it, assuming it made sense?”

  “You and Munzer could drop some hints in Istanbul that this Central Asian network isn’t just a bunch of religious fanatics, that it also has a military wing. And I would follow up from here.”

  “Hot stuff.”

  “Very hot,” agreed Stone.

  “Who would do the shipping?”

  “We’d handle some of it through Pakistan, have Frank Hoffman do the rest with this Ascari fellow. But it seemed to me, as we were talking today, that Miss Barnes might not feel entirely comfortable with this part of the operation.”

  “So you’d like me to do it?”

  “Yes. That’s right. I thought it might make sense for you to go see Frank in Athens, after he has met with Miss Barnes. Would that be possible?”

  “I’d be screwing Anna. It’s her case.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said Stone with a wink. “You’re getting used to that, aren’t you?”

  Taylor was going to protest. Stone could blow up half of Central Asia if he wanted, but snooping into Taylor’s love life was going too far. And it worried Taylor, too, in a vague sort of way, that Anna seemed to have moved in Stone’s mind from being part of “the team” to some other, indeterminate status. He wanted to say something, at least to register his concern. But just then Stone gave him another conspiratorial wink and handed him a snifter of fine old brandy.

  Anna stayed up late that night waiting for Taylor. They hadn’t set a formal time to meet. Taylor had mumbled something about having a drink with a friend, and Anna had said she would see him when he got back. Reliability about such matters had never been a quality Anna valued much in men. It was such an ordinary, middle-class virtue. Solid, reliable, on time. It was one step away from boring. Dentists had to be reliable. Bankers had to be reliable. Lawyers had to be reliable. Reliability was a turnoff. The men Anna had fancied were the would-be poets and adventurers, the ones with frayed shirt collars and a hint of self-destructive recklessness in their souls. They didn’t have time to be on time.

  But now that she had actually found such a man, Anna wondered if she shouldn’t revise her views. Excessive tidiness wasn’t sexy in a man, it was true; but neither was sloppiness. Punctuality wasn’t sexy, but neither was lateness. And there was nothing sexy at all about staying up till midnight in your motel room waiting for Romeo to come home.

  Taylor finally returned at twelve-thirty, thoroughly looped, talking a blue streak about a scheme he’d hatched with Stone over late-night brandies to go boar hunting in eastern Anatolia. He gave Anna a wet
kiss on the mouth and put his big hands on her breasts, and it appeared that somehow, despite all the booze, he intended to make love to her. But when they were nestled together in bed, and Anna was waiting for him to caress her, she realized that he had fallen sound asleep.

  31

  It was high summer when Alan Taylor returned to Istanbul. The city was painted in the bright haze of July; the Sea of Marmara shimmered beneath his approaching airplane like a still salt lake. Coming in from the airport, Taylor asked the embassy driver to let him out at the ferry terminal at Eminonu, on Seraglio Point just below Topkapi Palace. It was Taylor’s favorite spot in Istanbul—perhaps on the planet—capturing in a few hundred square yards the unruly human comedy: the barking chorus of vendors selling lottery tickets and bread; the arterial flow of travelers surging aboard the afternoon ferries to Uskudar and Besiktas; the churning black water beneath the ferries as they jostled offshore, belching smoke, waiting to dock; and just across the Golden Horn, the steep hill of old Pera, capped now with neon signs advertising Turkish banks and Japanese televisions. If there is a black hole on Earth, a place into which the matter of the universe is irresistibly drawn, thence to disappear into oblivion and eternity, it is surely the ferry dock at Eminonu.

  Taylor moved through the crowd with the easy grace of a fish thrown back into his favorite pond. He crossed the Galata Bridge, passing the restaurants strung along the walkway below the main span, filling his nostrils with the smell of fresh fish cooking on the makeshift charcoal grills. The narrow walkway was filled with people pushing in both directions, and Taylor lost himself in the eastward flow, emerging a few minutes later on the Pera side. He began climbing the hill, still borne along by the human tide, joining with the Turks as they pressed their faces against the windows of small shops selling radios, batteries, plumbing fixtures, linoleum tiles, electrical switches, power drills, videocassette recorders—a veritable Noah’s Ark of commerce arrayed item by item, shop by shop. Thinner now, the crowd moved up the last steep incline, where the younger men quickened their pace and turned toward Giraffe Street and the red-light district. By the top of the hill, the human stream had dispersed. Taylor walked alone the rest of the way to the consulate, refreshed by his reimmersion in the Orient, savoring the sense of anonymity and surrender that is the true religion of the East.