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

As an intermediary in setting up the rendezvous, Anna chose a young French journalist named Danielle Marton. She found Marton’s name in the files summarizing the development work that had been done two years before. Marton was a perfect access agent. She was a more or less witting asset of the Paris station, carrying the cryptonym UNWILLOW, who had met Antoyan through her husband, a doctor, when the Armenian first arrived in Paris in 1977.

Anna, banned by Stone from working through the local station, simply called Danielle Marton on the telephone and invited her to lunch. She never quite explained how she had gotten Marton’s name—and certainly never said she worked for the agency—leaving all that to the French journalist’s imagination, which was much more powerful and persuasive than anything Anna could have said. Anna dropped a few leading questions about the Soviet Armenian doctor; by the end of the lunch, Marton was volunteering to arrange a meeting.

They met at five-thirty one afternoon in a quiet café several blocks from the Boulevard St.-Germain. Anna and Danielle had arrived early and were animatedly discussing one of the great questions of the twentieth century—why had the feminist Simone de Beauvoir fallen so slavishly in love with Jean-Paul Sartre?—when up walked Dr. Aram Antoyan. He was a handsome man in his early thirties—medium height, with dark features, jet-black hair and a thick black beard. He was wearing blue jeans and a tweed sports coat over his blue linen doctor’s tunic. He might have been a resident at an American hospital, except for one unmistakably Armenian feature—the large black eyes that appeared to be deep pools of memory and sorrow, even when he was smiling.

Danielle made the introductions. The young Armenian doctor, though obviously tired from a day at work, tried his best to be charming. He flirted with his friend Danielle, complimented her on her dress, asked her about her latest article. He was more reserved with Anna, obviously curious about what she wanted but waiting for her to take the lead. They conversed in French, but even in that sometimes mannered language, he spoke with a directness and clarity that was almost like English. Danielle excused herself after a few minutes, saying that she had to make dinner for her husband, the doctor. Anna let the conversation meander for another twenty minutes before making a move.

“I’m interested in the Armenian question,” she said eventually, by way of explaining why she had arranged the meeting.

“La question arménienne,” repeated Antoyan, turning the French words over in his mouth. “A ruinous topic. I suppose it is our fate, we Armenians, to be not a people, but a question. Why are you interested in this sad subject?”

“I work for a foundation,” said Anna.

Antoyan looked at her skeptically, his thick black eyebrows arching upward.

“My foundation studies contemporary issues in the Near East and Central Asia. We work with universities, American corporations. That sort of thing.”

“May I please ask you a question?”

“Of course,” said Anna, hoping that her face didn’t betray the anxiety she felt.

“Do you work for the Turks?”

“No,” said Anna, relieved that this was his principal concern.

“Good,” he said with a trace of a smile. “I would be concerned if you were working for the Turks. But if you’re not a Turk, and not an Armenian, I must ask you again, why are you interested in the Armenian question?”

Anna spoke from the heart. She told Dr. Antoyan about her freshman roommate at Radcliffe, Ruth Mugrditchian, with her stories about a great-aunt who crawled across the Syrian desert with a Bible in her hand and another relative who survived because he was hidden at the bottom of a well. Those stories, she explained, had gotten her interested in Ottoman history.

“Yes, yes,” said the Armenian doctor. “That is why everyone becomes interested in the Armenians. We are such perfect victims.” He closed his eyes. Like every Armenian child, he had grown up hearing similar stories of the genocide. But that evening, sitting in a café in St.-Germain, talking with an attractive American woman, it was obvious that he did not want to hear them all over again.

“I’m sorry,” said Anna. “I’m not interested in Armenians only as victims.”

She was angry at herself for being too direct, too clumsy in her opening. She tried to remember the advice of her instructors, so many months ago. Go slow, let your quarry set the pace of the conversation. Let him tell you, in his way, what matters to him. But Aram didn’t seem to mind her clumsiness. He had a wry smile on his face, the look of a man determined to make merry at a wake.

“If you really want to know about the Armenian question,” he said, “you must listen to Armenian Radio. They have the answer to everything.”

“Glad to, but what’s Armenian Radio?”

“Impossible! You mean you have never heard of the famous Armenian Radio and its answers to listeners’ questions?”

“Sorry, but I haven’t.”

“This Armenian Radio distills the ancient wisdom of our people. I will give you an example. Armenian Radio is asked: What is the most ancient and beautiful city in the U.S.S.R.? Armenian Radio answers: Yerevan is the most ancient and beautiful city in the U.S.S.R.

“And how long would it take a nuclear bomb to destroy Yerevan? the radio is asked. Armenian Radio answers: Tbilisi is also a very ancient and beautiful city.”

Anna realized that her leg was being pulled. “So what does Armenian Radio say about the Armenian question?” she asked.

“Armenian Radio answers that the Georgian question is also very important.”

It was a soft September evening, and Dr. Antoyan didn’t seem in any rush, so they ordered another round of drinks and talked about America, the movies, modern medicine, the writings of Solzhenitsyn. There was no topic, it seemed, that Dr. Antoyan wasn’t willing to discuss. He was in that respect typical of the new generation of Soviets that was beginning to travel overseas in the late