Siro

by David Ignatius

  Taylor was in the midst of composing a fanciful cable responding to this last query (“The ‘night of hell’ began when a member of the Haitian delegation arrived at the conference center escorted by two female members of the Tontons Macoutes …”) when his secretary buzzed that he had a call from America. That was odd. People rarely telephoned from America. Odder still was when Taylor picked up the phone and heard the unmistakable voice of Edward Stone. He sounded as if he were calling from a pay phone near the Beltway. You could hear the rush of traffic in the background.

  “Do you know who this is?” asked the voice.

  “Of course I do,” said Taylor.

  “This is the person you think it is.”

  “Right. That’s what I thought.”

  “Good. I need to see you immediately.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I’ll explain.”

  “Okay. When do you want to meet?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “Where? Back home?”

  “No. Somewhere in Europe.”

  “Where were you thinking of?”

  “I’ll let you know,” said the voice.

  “Have you told our colleague?”

  “Not yet. But I will. That’s another thing.”

  “What?”

  “Your colleague has been bothering me about something. We’ll have to deal with that as well.”

  “No problem. How will I know where to meet you?”

  But Stone had already hung up. The message arrived a few hours later by the simplest and most direct means—a cable to Taylor from headquarters headed, like all such communications: “cite: director.” It advised: “meeting discussed ref a will take place 17 september 16:30z at cevdet pasa 93, bebek.” Needless to say, there was no “ref a.”

  Taylor had to read the cable twice before he was sure he had it right. The address was that of a run-down, fourth-class hotel up the Bosporus from Istanbul, a place where the paint was peeling and they didn’t bother to cover the cigarette burns on the carpets and furniture.

  Stone greeted Taylor late the next afternoon at the door of his hotel room. For the first time Taylor could remember, the old man looked untidy. His eyes were bloodshot and baggy after a sleepless overnight flight; his suit was rumpled from the unsuccessful attempt to bed down on the plane; there was a spot on his tie; and the skin on his face had a soft, fleshy texture, as if it had been applied in layers. If it were anyone else but Stone, you would suspect that he had been drinking. Past him in the adjoining room, Taylor could see Anna, seated in a chair, and through the window, the twinkling lights of ships along the Bosporus.

  “You don’t look so good,” said Taylor.

  “Looks are deceiving,” answered Stone. “I feel splendid.”

  “Have it your way, but you look like you haven’t slept in a month.”

  “What is sleep, my dear friend, when we are on the edge of victory?”

  “Which game are we about to win?”

  “Haven’t you been reading your cables? There has been a coup in Afghanistan. Moscow’s man, Taraki, has just been deposed by an even more ruthless fellow named Amin.”

  “Swell. So the Soviets will be getting out?”

  “Better than that, my boy. It means they will be getting in—even deeper. It means they are almost in the net.”

  Taylor was about to ask Stone what the hell he was talking about, but the old man took his arm and steered him toward the sitting room, and Anna. She stood up slowly and shook Taylor’s hand, cool and correct, a perfect colleague. He tried to catch her eye, but her gaze was elsewhere. Something had changed, but Taylor for the moment didn’t get it.

  “Welcome to Istanbul,” he said. “By the way, I think you need a new travel agent.”

  “No, we don’t,” said Stone. “This hotel will be quite adequate for our purposes. Miss Barnes and I will be leaving first thing tomorrow morning. And this place has ambience. I’m told Hitler’s agents stayed here during the war.”

  “Classy joint. But why are we meeting in Istanbul anyway? Why not Paris or London?”

  “Because we control this environment. Or to be more precise, you—as Istanbul base chief—control this environment.”

  “That will be news to the Turks.”

  “I’m not referring to the Turks. I am referring to our so-called colleagues at Langley.”

  “Oh, them,” said Taylor.

  Anna listened to this exchange in silence. Stone’s machinations interested her far less at that moment than obtaining approval for her operation with the Armenian doctor, who was waiting in Paris for an answer. Stone had put her off when she had tried to raise the issue with him an hour before, when they first arrived at the hotel, saying that they would discuss it as a group. Now, as Anna looked at Taylor, she thought not of love, or even affection, but of how best to manipulate him. And as Taylor gazed back with his bedroom eyes, she concluded that the answer wasn’t very complicated.

  Stone, meanwhile, had opened the window to let in the breeze, and removed from his briefcase a small machine that made a babbling sound, like a roomful of Chinese talking at once in a dim sum restaurant. It served to cover their conversation from the eavesdroppers that Stone assumed were lurking in the next room, always and everywhere.

  “I am sorry to summon you so suddenly,” said Stone over the sound of the noise machine, “but we have a problem.”

  “What’s that?” asked Taylor.

  “Termination.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of our operation. I want us entirely out of business by the end of November. Everything shut down, no continuing operations, no agents running around looking for trouble. No nothing. Finito la musica.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a rush. I would call it prudence.”

  “Cut the crap, Mr. Stone. What’s up?”

  “The pygmies are in pursuit, my friends. The little people in the front office and their legislative chums think they have discovered something naughty, and the Inspector General has been summoned.”

  Anna looked carefully at Stone. Oddly, she felt energized by the old man’s disarray, rather than frightened by it. “What naughty business have they discovered?” she asked.

  “Something in Afghanistan.”

  “And what does this naughty business in Afghanistan have to do with us?”

  “They think I am involved in it. It’s nothing that you need to be overly concerned about. It’s just that once people start asking questions in one area, they inevitably begin snooping elsewhere, checking the laundry basket and counting the silverware.”

  Taylor cleared his throat. “Don’t you think you should level with us, Mr. Stone?” he said.

  “Frankly, no.”

  “I agree with Alan,” said Anna. “You should tell us what you’ve been doing in Afghanistan.”

  “I promise I’ll tell you all about it someday, when we have a few relaxed hours. It’s quite an interesting story. But this really isn’t the time.”

  “Give it a try,” said Anna coolly. “What have you been doing in Afghanistan?”

  Stone sighed. “Very well. A teaser. A war is beginning there, my young friends. On one side is the power and ferocity of the Red Army. On the other is a collection of men in funny hats. How do you suppose this ragtag force is getting the ammunition and training to challenge Moscow?”

  “From us?”

  “Not directly. Not through any channel that would require the sorry characters who inhabit the seventh floor to sign their names. But indirectly, yes. They are receiving support from us.”

  “From you?”

  “From me, if you like. And from several liaison services. But I’m a suitable culprit.”

  “Who authorized it?” asked Anna.

  “Ahh. The blessed authorization. What a wonderful notion we Americans have, that any action is moral and legal if someone ‘authorized’ it, and immoral if someone didn’t. We Americans have become paper fe
tishists, idolaters of official stamps and seals.”

  “Who authorized it?” she repeated.

  “In this case, if you must know, the National Security Adviser asked me in March to do what I could to demonstrate American sympathy for the mujaheddin. I am sure that there is some piece of paper somewhere attesting to that. Not that any reasonable person should care.”

  As Stone spoke, his bloodshot eyes widened and his voice rose. Perhaps it was the fact that he was so tired and unkempt, but it struck Anna, as she watched him, that he was a man at the limit of his physical and emotional resources.

  “The Inspector General will care,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about the Inspector General. He happens to be an old friend of mine who owes me a great many favors. The problem is not the Inspector General but the director, Mr. Hinkle, who has developed the peculiar idea that he works for Congress rather than the executive branch.”

  “I hate to break this to you, boss,” said Taylor, “but the IG’s office is already asking questions. They visited my friend George Trumbo in Athens a few weeks ago.”

  “I am aware of that,” said Stone.

  “You already knew they called George in?”

  “Oh yes. Not to brag, but there isn’t much I don’t hear about, one way or another.”

  “You should have told me.”

  “Why? Why worry you about something that doesn’t matter? I would have let you know if your friend George had said something injudicious that might have caused problems. But he didn’t. His mind seemed to have gone blank.”

  “Good old George,” said Taylor. He made a mental note to send Sonia on a visit to Athens.

  “Now then,” said Stone. “Have we asked all of our little questions?”

  Neither one answered.

  “Good. Then let’s talk about termination. As you young wizards of tradecraft are aware, this should be the first topic of discussion when you start any operation—how to turn it off. We’re a bit late in getting to it, but not hopelessly so. Alan, what about your man Munzer?”

  “He’s thriving. The local Turkestani émigré community thinks he’s the best thing to hit town since Tamerlane. But he shouldn’t be hard to turn off. When the time comes, we’ll just tell him that the movement needs him back in America and ship him home.”

  “What about money?”

  “He’s been a good soldier. You should definitely pay him the pension he says we owe him, and if you feel generous, you can keep him on contract for another year. But I wouldn’t worry about him.”

  “Will he talk if people begin asking questions?”

  “Nope. Not if I tell him not to.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because Munzer likes me. And he’s afraid of me. He thinks I’m slightly nuts.”

  “Clever fellow.”

  “There’s one thing I’d like to know,” said Taylor.

  “Ask away.”

  “What have all our machinations accomplished in Uzbekistan?”

  “They have stirred the pot.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Surely you understand, both of you, that this little drama of ours is playing on two screens. One is Central Asia. The other is Afghanistan. The two reinforce each other. Together, they suggest to the men in the Kremlin that they have a ‘Moslem Problem,’ a rather serious one. The delightful thing, from our standpoint, is that Moscow’s cure for this problem will only make it worse.”

  “What’s their cure?”

  “Invading Afghanistan. When the Soviet troops march in, your Mr. Munzer will know that the real battle has begun. And when they straggle out a few years from now, defeated, he can congratulate himself for having played a small role in one of the great triumphs of the twentieth century.”

  He’s possessed, thought Anna. He’s so locked on his target he can’t see anything else.

  “What if the Russians win?” she asked.

  “They won’t,” said Stone. “I guarantee it.”

  He leaned gingerly toward Anna, as if she were a newly frisky animal that had discovered it had teeth and claws. “Now, my dear, what about Mr. Ascari, the Iranian. How are we to terminate him?”

  “It shouldn’t be a problem,” said Anna. “He doesn’t like me, and he isn’t afraid of me either. But he’s absolutely terrified of Frank Hoffman. He’ll do whatever Hoffman tells him. If we say stop, he’ll stop. If we say keep going, he’ll keep going.”

  “What about severance payments or an annuity?”

  “He has nothing to complain about. Frank is paying him a flat sum for each trip across the border. It’s good money, even for a hustler like Ascari.”

  “What shall we tell London?”

  “About what?”

  “About whether to retain Ascari as a regular DDO agent. The last they knew, you were preparing to hand him over to an inside case officer.”

  “You want my opinion?”

  “Of course.”

  “Dump him. He’s a jerk. The best thing to do is throw him to the wolves.”

  “I’m not sure they would have him,” said Stone. He smiled amiably. There was a long pause, and Stone seemed about ready to end the discussion.

  “Hold on,” said Anna. “What about my Armenian agent?”

  “That is the last item on our agenda,” said Stone.

  “What Armenian agent?” asked Taylor.

  Anna was about to answer, but Stone raised his hand.

  “You will recall,” he said, “that some weeks ago we agreed to let Miss Barnes explore the possibility of engaging an Armenian operative for our enterprise. Now she has found an appropriate person and proposes to do just that.”

  Taylor looked at Anna, who was leaning forward in her chair as if ready to spring. She was, in some subtle way he didn’t yet understand, a different woman from the one he had left in Rockville. “Isn’t it a little late for something like this?” he asked.

  “No,” said Anna. “I don’t see why.”

  “Because we’re closing up shop at the end of November,” replied Taylor, “and it’s almost October now.”

  “That’s enough time, so long as we really do have until the end of November. We’re not going to fold up before then, are we, Mr. Stone?”

  “No,” he answered. “I shouldn’t think so.”

  “Then there’s enough time for what I want to do.”

  “Perhaps you should explain for Alan and me just what that is.”

  Anna nodded, took a gulp of air, and began her pitch. “The Armenian is a doctor, a medical researcher who has been studying in Paris for two years. He’s part of a small network of Armenian activists, inside and outside the Soviet Union. He’s going home to Yerevan in ten days, and he wants us to help him with something, which happens to fit perfectly with what we’re trying to do.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He wants us to give him a device that will allow his friends to pick up satellite television signals from the West. He says it would change everything in the Soviet Union if people could see how the rest of the world works.”

  “He may be right. But what is it, exactly, that he wants from us?”

  “A phased-array television antenna.”

  “What on earth is that?”

  Anna removed the wiring diagram from her purse and handed it to Stone.

  “This,” she said, pointing to the drawing, “is a phased-array television antenna.” Stone studied it for a few moments and then handed it to Taylor. He turned it one way, then the other, held it up to the light, turned it backwards, and then handed it back to Stone.

  “This doesn’t mean a fucking thing to me,” said Taylor. “But I know someone who’d understand it in a minute.”

  “Who’s that?” asked Anna.

  “George Trumbo, my friend from the TSD office in Athens. He’s a genius with this stuff, when he isn’t drunk.”

  “Could he build one of these?”

  “Probably. If so
meone got him the hardware.”

  “Would he keep his mouth shut about it?”

  “Definitely. But are you sure this makes sense?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Absolutely positive.”

  “How would your Armenian pick this thing up, assuming George could make it?”

  “He says we could find a way, over the border. We’re supposed to talk about the details next week, assuming we agree.”

  “I don’t know,” said Taylor. “It seems kind of half-assed. It bothers me.”

  Stone didn’t offer any opinion for the moment. He studied the wiring diagram again, and then rubbed his eyes. Anna had expected strong opposition from him, but across his exhausted face had fallen a look of calm equanimity. It was a shadow cast by some new idea that was working in his brain.

  “I think it’s an intriguing idea,” said Stone eventually.

  “You do?” said Anna. She smiled.

  “Have you made a formal recruitment pitch to this Armenian fellow yet?”

  “Not exactly,” she answered.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I haven’t told him who I work for.”

  “Have you paid him money?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any sort of contractual arrangement with him?”

  “Not really. I’ve only met with him three times. It didn’t seem appropriate.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” said Stone.

  “Why?”

  “Because the bond between you is personal rather than professional. As such, it carries an awkward element of moral obligation. Contracts are so much easier. Still, it’s an intriguing idea.”

  “It bothers me,” said Taylor again.

  Anna wanted to kick him. Why was he sabotaging her chance at the very moment Stone seemed willing to agree? She couldn’t tell, looking at him, whether he was genuinely concerned for her welfare or whether he was simply jealous.

  Stone apparently was growing tired of the discussion.