Siro by David Ignatius (short books to read txt) 📕

when the Persian planted his lips on the woman’s veiled cheek, they burned through the material and left a red mark of shame upon the lady’s face. Tamerlane, needless to say, was not amused when he returned. He had his faithless consort thrown from the highest tower of the new mosque and was going to do the same to the Persian architect. But when the architect reached the top of the minaret, the legend had it, he sprouted wings and flew home to Persia.

The Iranian loved retelling the story of his putative kinsman. He shared it at several places in the bazaar. He even went through all the details in the little bookstore on Akhunbabayev Street, across from the university dormitory and next to the militia barracks. They interrogated the manager of the bookstore at length the next day, and he remembered it clearly. The man was an Iranian, an architect. He came into the shop and asked to look at an engineering textbook, a standard one for sale in nearly every bookstore in the Soviet Union. He looked at the book and then said no, he already had that one, and pulled an identical book out of his bag to show that it was so.

No, the bookstore manager didn’t think the Iranian could have switched the two books. He had watched so carefully, the man being a foreigner. But perhaps it was possible. There were other customers in the shop. And yes, the manager had put the engineering book back on the wall, on the side of the shop that adjoined the militia barracks. Of course it hadn’t felt strange, he told the comrade inspector. It was the same engineering textbook. Otherwise the bookstore manager wouldn’t have put it back on the shelf.

The bomb wrecked the bookstore. But what made a considerable impression on the local people was that it also blew a sizable hole in the wall of the militia barracks. The militiamen like to imagine that they are invulnerable—strutting about in their high leather boots—and they are widely disliked, especially in a simple out-of-the-way place like Samarkand. So the local residents were almost glad it happened, and more than a little admiring of the Persian architect who had done the dirty deed and then—as it were—flown away.

The Persian architect had most certainly disappeared—vanished into thin air despite an elaborate search. But as the authorities checked their records, they discovered, to their chagrin, that they had no record of any such person entering or leaving Uzbekistan. The Persian identity, it seemed, had been a ruse.

Despite these setbacks, the KGB knew what to do. A new rumor began making the rounds in the bazaar. The bombings in Uzbekistan—for everyone knew there had been another, in Tashkent—were the work of an Armenian terrorist organization based in Yerevan. The Armenian merchants in the bazaar wanted more money, and they were trying to frighten honest Uzbeks with their bombs. That made perfect sense. It was the Armenians’ fault.

   VII

LUCY MORGAN

WASHINGTON / PARIS ISTANBUL

SEPTEMBER–NOVEMBER 1979

35

“Hullo, Mr. Antaramian.”

“Hullo, hullo! How glad I am to meet you. I have not seen you for a long time.”

“Where are you going?”

“I am going into Henry Seigle’s new store to buy a suit of clothes to wear in my work. Won’t you come with me?”

“Yes, I think I will. I have not seen that store yet.”

“It is a magnificent building—the largest in Boston.”

“Here it is, let us go in.”

Anna Barnes read the dialogue in her Armenian-English grammar, trying to follow the Armenian version that was printed alongside the English. She had bought the book years ago at a rummage sale in Somerville and had kept it as a curiosity, a charming piece of flotsam that had washed up from a distant shore, never imagining that she would have any practical use for it. Now, as she searched for a possible Armenian recruit among the dozens of names in 201 files and spotters’ reports that Marjorie was stacking on her desk, it seemed possible that she might actually find some use for the old grammar. She turned to a passage marked “Meeting a Lady Friend on the Street.”

“Hullo, Agnes, where are you going?”

“Hullo, Mr. Giragosian, I am going to church. Won’t you accompany me?”

“No, thank you. I am going to the beach.”

“Oh, please, do come with me. There is nice singing in our church, and the pastor will speak on the subject of ‘The Wages of Sin Is Death.’ He is an elegant young man and an elaborate speaker. Come, I will introduce you to him.”

“Yes, but I am not a Protestant, I am a Grigorian.”

“It makes no difference, we are all Christians. Come for my sake.”

The dialogues went on like this for many pages, with advice on every facet of life for the new arrival in America. The author, one E. A. Yeran, had provided suggestions for what to say to the immigration officer (“Are you going to any address in particular?” “Yes, sir, I am going directly to my uncle”), how to rent a furnished room (three dollars a month is too much, even for a room with three windows, steam heat and electric lights), how to buy a suit for under ten dollars (tell the salesman: “I want a dark color, so that it will not show the dirt, as I will wear it in my work”) and even a sample dialogue for use in the Chinese laundry:

“Hello, John. Give me my laundry.”

“You got checkee?”

“Oh, say, I have lost my check. It is not in my pocket.”

“No checkee, no shirtee. You ’Melican man loozee checkee oli time.”

Anna combed the files, looking for a modern-day Mr. Antaramian or Mr. Giragosian who could be drawn into the operation. Each morning Marjorie arrived with a new collection of paperwork from the registry, to be returned to Langley that afternoon before four-thirty. Anna was curious how Stone had arranged this flow of material. The files, bearing the true names