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

rosewood from Italy, and some of the more high-minded members of the consulate staff still liked to refer to the building as the “Palazzo Corpi.” Signor Corpi had died a few months after his dream house was completed, so he never had much chance to enjoy the frescoes of nymphs and satyrs cavorting on the dining-room ceiling. Neither did the Americans, as it turned out. The United States purchased the lavish building in 1907, frescoes and all, supposedly after the American ambassador to Turkey beat the Speaker of the House of Representatives in a poker game. But during the 1930s, a particularly prudish consul general’s wife decided the frescoes were pornographic and had them plastered over.

Every time Taylor looked up at that dull, whitewashed ceiling, he thought of the long-dead ambassador’s wife and said a silent curse. She was an American type, an example of our national desire to paint over the world and blot out the disturbing parts. Perhaps some people still regarded these Americanisms as harmless, but in 1979 Taylor had lost patience.

Alan Taylor was the CIA’s base chief in Istanbul. He had been assigned that post, rather than a larger station with more administrative responsibility, because he was what the agency liked to call a “natural recruiter.” That wasn’t quite a compliment. He was a handsome man, just under six feet, thin at the waist, with a barrel chest that occasionally made him look like a pugilist or a barroom bouncer, despite his dignified features. He had dark hair, which he combed straight back on his head, and although he did not appear to be a fastidious man, he never seemed to have a hair out of place.

Taylor was in his late thirties, in the foothills of middle age but walking backward. He had a vaguely continental look, and people on the street might have assumed he was English or French because of his clothes and manners. But he was in fact a distinct American type, just as much as that long-ago ambassador’s wife: He was the rebellious preppy, the naughty boy from the good family, who loved nothing more than telling the world to go to hell. Men and women tended to say the same thing about Taylor: He was the most charming man they had ever met. He was, as they said, a natural recruiter.

Such people were a vanishing breed in the homogenized world of American intelligence. And the feeling back at headquarters was: good riddance. The hell with the macho Ivy Leaguers, the boys from Beacon Hill who swore like they were from South Boston. The new vogue at Langley was to hire salesmen as case officers. Not ordinary, used-car salesmen, mind you, but serious salesmen. The kind who graduated in the top half of their class at Penn State and went to work for General Electric selling million-dollar electric turbines, who could spend a whole year, cool and calm, preparing a customer for one big deal. The sort of men who could look you straight in the eye as they told their earnest American lies, and make you feel good about it. Whatever Taylor’s faults, he was not a salesman.

Taylor did not refer to the consulate building, ever, as the “Palazzo Corpi.” His wife had done so, in the months before she packed up and left Istanbul, and it had been one of the small things that had gotten on his nerves. She was the sort of woman who should have been married to a diplomat, to one of those sturdy fellows who spent their time drafting unreadable cables about visits by the POLOFF to the FORMIN of the GOT. Taylor’s wife had loathed the CIA, which was another thing she shared with the diplomats. She called it “the Sandbox.”

The State Department had a more elaborate code. They had become so skittish about the agency in recent years that even in secret cables they referred to it only euphemistically, as the “Special Reporting Facility.” And then, when even that tame phrase seemed too specific, by a new four-letter code word—“SIRO”—which sounded like the beginning of something interesting, like “seraglio” or “sirocco,” but in fact meant nothing at all.

Taylor entered the ornate chancery building only when it was absolutely necessary. His home was the shabby office next door, a grayish stucco building the color of Bosporus sludge, which housed the consular section and Taylor’s office.

From his window in the annex, Taylor could see the walls of the old Pera Palas Hotel down the street, and when his mind wandered—­which was often—he would imagine what it must have been like in the salad days of the spy business. A lobby full of absurdly conspicuous intelligence officers from all the capitals of Europe, smoking cigars and trading stories. Mysterious Oriental characters weaving among them, selling information. Exotic, ruined women taking the lift to assignations on the upper floors. It was said that Mata Hari herself had stayed in the hotel once. Taylor had never taken Mata Hari seriously until he read that despite her seemingly voluptuous figure, she was actually flat-chested and wore a padded bra even in bed. From that point on, Taylor had regarded her as a sublime espionage agent—a princess of deception—and when he wandered over to the Pera Palas for a drink after work, he would try to conjure up her ghost. But he was always disappointed. The bar tended to fill up with heavy-breasted German tourists and daffy American girls looking for a two-week adventure. They were not Mata Hari, but they helped pass the time.

Taylor’s immediate concern that January was the Turks. Turkey was one of the loose timbers in the world, but in the general commotion over Iran, nobody quite seemed to have noticed. The Shah’s departure and the turmoil in the oil market had shaken New York and London, and as the aftershocks radiated out toward Istanbul and Ankara, they grew larger and more violent, until the very floorboards began to creak and sway. The problem in Istanbul