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

Aram closed his eyes. He looked completely exhausted, his face drained of energy and emotion. He rose slowly to his feet and looked around the room.

“I must go now,” he said.

“Stay for a while,” she said softly. She was embarrassed at the thought, but she wanted this young man of the Caucasus to sit with her a while, hold her in his arms; it wasn’t sex she wanted, exactly, but something softer. She wanted to touch his face, massage his back, watch his large, sad eyes close and feel his body fall asleep next to hers.

“I must go,” he said again. “It is dangerous for me to be here. And for you.”

She looked out to the enclosed garden again and turned back to him. “You know, Aram, I’ve had this wrong in my mind. I thought that I was seducing you, but you have been seducing me.”

“You are still wrong. Nobody is seducing anybody. This is real.”

Anna nodded.

“I will have to meet with my colleagues,” she said.

“Yes.”

“That will take a week or so.”

“Yes.”

“If they agree, it will take at least a month to prepare one of these things.” She pointed to the diagram. “By that time you’ll be back in Yerevan. How will we get it to you?”

“There is a way. Your people will know how to do it.”

“What is it?”

“I will tell you when we meet again, in a week. If the answer is yes.”

Anna sighed. “All right.”

“How shall we arrange the next meeting?”

“The same way as before. I will call you at the laboratory. We’ll make a date. You come meet me. The only difference is that, this time, come to the place two hours before the time I mention. If I say eight, come at six.”

He nodded and smiled that charming half smile, for the first time that evening. “You make a lovely spy, my darling,” he said.

They embraced at the door, carefully at first, a kiss on each cheek. It was hard to know which of them gave way first, whose lips opened and whose eyes closed. It was a passionate kiss that dissolved any barrier that had remained between them. Aram put his hands on her breasts, and then on her thigh, and it was only then—as her body was curling toward his, strung so tight with desire that a string might have popped—that she pushed him away.

Aram smiled his delightful smile one last time as he turned and walked down the corridor. Anna knew she had made a mistake in becoming intimate with him. It was a gross breach of professionalism, irredeemable, unforgivable. But at that point, she honestly didn’t care. Like her colleagues at Karpetland, she had some time ago jumped the tracks of appropriate behavior.

38

The supreme priority of the CIA worldwide that September, Taylor discovered after his return to Istanbul, was a summit meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, Cuba. The gathering was an empty propaganda exercise that had wisely been ignored in past years, even by most of its members. But not this year. The President, it seemed, had become interested in “North-South” issues, and headquarters was falling over itself trying to provide intelligence on his pet project. So the cables had gone out, to every station and base in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Near East, requesting intelligence in minute detail about what would happen in Havana in early September. This was known in the trade as “tasking.”

Taylor was tasked on Havana, along with everyone else. But otherwise, headquarters was unusually uncommunicative with the Istanbul base. It was as if they were giving him room, waiting for something to happen. That left him extra time to study the important matter of the Non-Aligned summit, as enumerated in queries stacked atop his desk:

“—Identify the various NAM subgroups, cores, meetings and roving delegations. Are certain members who should normally relate to a group being excluded?

“—Identify the delegations, delegates and outsiders who appear to have unique influence within NAM (the movers and shakers) and their positions.

“—Identify Cuban vulnerabilities in NAM issues and Cuban actions to thwart U.S. efforts to alter Cuban draft.

“—What particular NAM members are the Cubans trying to placate? How?”

It reminded Taylor of the final exam of a sociology course at college, complete with extra-credit problems. He could imagine young CIA careerists around the globe working overtime to provide the latest information on, say, the respective roles of Somalia and Indonesia in discussions of UNCTAD/G-77 economic issues as they affect LDCs.

Taylor initially sent home a cable apologizing that because of Turkey’s non-membership in the Non-Aligned Movement, he would be unable to provide any information whatsoever about the Havana meeting. But it wasn’t quite so easy. Headquarters fired back a cable asking Istanbul to check its Iranian, Kurdish and Arab assets for information, and reminding the base chief that “this campaign is of direct interest to the President.”

Once the Non-Aligned summit had actually taken place, there was a new avalanche of cables from headquarters demanding answers to such crucial questions as: “Did Zambian working groups take any moderating actions or did their actions completely support Cuba?” And for the extra-credit types, there was this stumper: “How did individual country activity in committee sessions compare with their presentations in open sessions? What trade-offs were made by whom and how were they worked out? Countries of special interest in this regard are Kuwait, Nigeria, Somalia, Iraq, Tanzania, Mozambique, Jamaica, Peru and Guyana. (One night was described by delegates as a ‘night of hell.’ What happened that night?)”

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