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

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