Siro
Page 49
“What point?”
“I want you to come back.”
“Where?” Anna looked toward the door.
“To the agency,” whispered Margaret.
Anna laughed aloud, not quite spontaneously or convincingly. “Are you kidding?” she said.
“No,” said Margaret softly. “I’m serious.”
“But I just told you. I think the business is amoral. The people in it are either con men or drones. Not that I care. It’s not my problem anymore. I’m finished.”
“Of course you care. That’s why they need you. You’re one of those rare good people who are strong enough to do good things. There aren’t enough of you at headquarters anymore. They’ve all gone. The old guard has left, and the new one hasn’t arrived yet. They need you.”
“Stop it.”
“I mean it. They need you. And if it’s morality you’re interested in, then I don’t see anything particularly admirable about parking yourself in graduate school. You’re about as moral here as a potted plant. This life is not worthy of you, my dear. It shows on your face. You’re bored stiff.”
“Still the recruiter. I would have thought you’d learned your lesson, with me at least.”
“You were a questionable recruit before, but not now. Now that you’ve had all the nonsense burned out of you, you may actually be able to accomplish something.”
“This is ridiculous, Margaret. No matter what I might or might not want to do, they wouldn’t take me back. Not for anything interesting at least. I’m trouble. I was part of a flap that everyone would rather forget. They were delighted to see me go.”
“Not so. Hinkle was, but he’s already packing his bags, and the new management would welcome you back with open arms. They know Stone played a dirty trick on you. I’ve talked to them about it. They think you’re a heroine.”
“They’re fools, then.”
“Tell me that you’ll think about it. They need you. And the fact is, you need them. You’re miserable here, and you know it.”
“Then I’ll do something else.”
“Like what? Go to law school? Sell municipal bonds? Don’t be silly. Once you’ve been in the intelligence business, you’re no good for anything else. It gets under your skin.”
“My skin is thicker now. Let’s drop the subject. It’s giving me indigestion.”
Margaret sighed. “All right, my dear. I just hate for you to give the old boys the satisfaction of saying they were right.”
“About what?”
“About women in the intelligence business. They’re all telling each other how your case proves that women can’t handle the stress of operations. They get the jitters, and then they quit.”
“I didn’t get the jitters.”
“Of course not. But you know how the old boys are. It wounds their vanity to imagine that a woman could actually do the job. They’re even claiming that you betrayed CIA operations to the Soviets during interrogation.”
“That’s a fucking lie.”
“Of course it is. That’s why I hate to see you give them the satisfaction.”
“Margaret, you are infuriating. How do I get you off my back?”
“By telling me that you’ll think about going back.”
Anna shook her head. “Why would I want to go back to all the lying and manipulation and secret mumbo jumbo? Explain that to me again.”
“Because you want to do something useful with your life. And because you want to play the game.”
“What did it get you, after all these years?”
“A moral challenge. A chance to sit here with you tonight. Life itself.”
Anna picked up the half bottle of champagne and found that it was empty. She called the waiter and ordered another.
“Tell me you’ll do it,” said Margaret.
“Will it make you happy if I say I’ll think about it?”
“Yes. Very happy.”
“Okay,” said Anna. “I’ll think about it. But we both know what the answer will be.”
Author’s Note
This book is a novel, drawn from the author’s imagination. Readers will search in vain for real counterparts to the events and people described. They do not exist. This is not a roman à clef or a veiled description of real events. It is a work of fiction, as will be evident to those who know the true details of the period I have described.
I would like to thank those who helped nurture this book: my wife and once again my first reader, Eve Ignatius; my parents, Paul and Nancy Ignatius, and my sister, Sarah Ignatius, who read and commented on the manuscript; my friends Garrett Epps and Lincoln Caplan; my peerless agent, Raphael Sagalyn, and especially my editor, Linda Healey, whose encouragement and wise advice helped shape every page of this book. She is the sort of editor writers dream about.
Thanks finally to my guides across the terrain of this novel: in Istanbul, Thomas Goltz and Stephanie Capparell; in Moscow, Yerevan, Tashkent and Samarkand, a series of Soviet and American friends who helped me see the nationalist revolution that swept the Soviet republics in 1990. I am also grateful to Rusi Nasar of Central Asian Affairs Consultants for sharing his knowledge of Uzbekistan and to Colonel Barney Oldfield for his store of Armenian Radio jokes. Special thanks to three Ottoman historians: Sukru Hanioglu, who described his research into the Ibrahim Temo papers, and Serif Mardin and Yvonne Seng, who were kind enough to read and critique the manuscript but are in no way responsible for its errors and biases. I am also grateful to many others unnamed, who generously shared some of their insights into the Great Game.
Praise for
SIRO
By David Ignatius
“This is neither a dose of jamesbonderie, filled with heroes, villains and derring-do, nor another of those exposés of the C.I.A. that shows its employees to be democracy’s worst enemies. The moral environment Mr. Ignatius describes is much too devious—and yet, somehow, obvious—for such easy judgments.”
—Robin W. Winks, New York Times
“Gnawing suspense.… In Ignatius’s universe the political ends—and complications—of spying are never forgotten.” —Scott Turow,
author of Burden of Proof
“Ignatius, the foreign editor of The Washington Post, has an insider’s grasp of recent world crises and an unusual talent for inserting CIA operatives into those events.”
—Richard Gid Powers,
Entertainment Weekly
“Exceptionally good. The characters are wonderfully attractive and intelligent, the southwestern Asian shenanigans sadly believable. It’s all very funny—and quite sad.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Fast-paced, accurate, and suspenseful; the characters are memorable … so realistic that it is difficult to believe it is fiction. First-rate.”
—Dolores M. Steinhauer, School Library Journal
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by David Ignatius
First published as a Norton paperback 2013
“Our Gods” from Poems 1959–2009 by Frederick Seidel.
Copyright © 2009 by Frederick Seidel. Reprinted
by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
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ALSO BY DAVID IGNATIUS
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