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

“Fuckin’ A.”

“Now we’re screwed.”

“No, we’re not,” said Taylor.

“Why not?”

“Because I got the tag number of the second cab.”

Rawls’s cab had almost certainly headed back across the Ataturk Bridge to the old city. Taylor told his driver to wait several minutes and then head for the taxi stand in Sultanahmet Square, across the water, which was a gathering spot for cabbies at this hour. When they arrived, Taylor wrote the license number of Rawls’s taxi on a piece of paper. He gave it to his driver along with five thousand liras and told him to make some inquiries. The inquiries turned out to be rather brief. For just then a yellow Murat sedan with a dented door cruised to the end of the taxi queue.

It took just a thousand liras to encourage the taxi driver to confide that he had just dropped off a tall blond man at an address just off Yeniceriler Street. When they arrived there several minutes later, Taylor realized to his chagrin that they were back almost to where they had started, in the immigrant district near the university.

“This guy is beginning to piss me off,” said Taylor. He had the driver continue on another two blocks and park the car. Then he and George returned on foot to Rawls’s apartment building.

The only light on in the building was the one in the right-hand apartment on the third floor. That must be Rawls’s place, reasoned Taylor. Now they knew where he lived. So what? Taylor was standing in the shadows, wondering what to do next, when the light on the third floor went out.

“Night-night,” said George.

But Rawls wasn’t going to bed just yet. A few seconds later he emerged at the front door and, after glancing quickly up and down the street, set off again, heading back toward Yeniceriler Street. Where the hell was he going? What was he doing in Istanbul?

“Now what?” queried George. “Follow him again?”

But that wasn’t the right answer. An odd look had come over Taylor’s face, a smile so wide that the moonlight seemed to glint off his teeth. It had dawned on him that for the second time in forty-eight hours he had been presented with one of those moments of serendipity—so inviting that it almost compelled a mischievous response.

“Let’s piss on this guy,” said Taylor. He meant it as a term of art. George nodded. It would not have occurred to him to question Taylor’s judgment. Second-guessing was for lawyers and congressmen.

“You got your tools?”

George nodded again. Of course he had his tools. He had lugged them along all night long, from whorehouse to Central Asian cabaret.

“What else have you got?”

“Everything.”

“Mike?”

“Yup.”

“Recorder?”

“Yup.”

“Then let’s wire this son of a bitch up and teach somebody a lesson.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Absolutely.” said Taylor.

Taylor and George crossed the street. The front door was unlocked, which seemed like a further provocation. Taylor looked for a doorman, who might be trouble, but there was nobody in the dim and dusty hallway. So he led George gently up the stairs to the third floor and stood guard while George once again tuned his little orchestra of electronic gadgets. It was absurdly easy to bug the room. He drilled a hole and inserted a contact microphone that could pick up sound from the other side of the wall. It had a built-in transmitter, and when George had covered the hole, it was invisible from either side. All that was left was to put the receiver-recorder somewhere out of the way. George put it under a floorboard on the stairs heading up to the roof of the building.

“This one is a beauty,” said George. “It should be good for a month, unless this guy talks in his sleep.”

“That’s nice,” said Taylor. By this time, he had sobered up. The pleasure of this last, entirely unauthorized adventure had given him a second wind. They found the car, awakening the poor driver from a sound sleep. Taylor told him to go back to Omar’s. But by the time they got there, it was almost five o’clock. Sonia had left long ago and the only person still there was the night watchman. Taylor suggested other possibilities. He knew a call girl in Cihangir who liked to work mornings. He knew a club on the Asian side that never closed. But George wouldn’t hear of anyone but Sonia.

Besides, admitted George, he was getting a bit tired.

George flew back to Athens the next day. Taylor hadn’t planned it that way. He had instructed George to spend the day in bed, dreaming of Sonia, with whom he would absolutely, positively have a date that evening. But Taylor called just after eleven to report that the chief of station in Athens was grumbling about what he claimed was George’s unauthorized absence and wanted him back immediately. Taylor didn’t mention that he had received a similar call from Timmons in Ankara, in which the good name of headquarters was invoked.

Taylor gathered he was in the doghouse. Apparently he had not covered his ass quite enough to suit the paper pushers. Probably best not to make matters worse, he advised George, by telling anyone about the little caper the previous night with the mysterious Mr. Rawls. They would keep that to themselves, wouldn’t they? Of course they would. George told Taylor how to retrieve the tape from the recorder outside Rawls’s apartment, and he gently reminded Taylor that he would at some point need another microphone and recorder to replenish his inventory.

“No problem,” Taylor assured him. And he was sure it wouldn’t be. The little flap over George’s not quite authorized visit would pass like a summer rainstorm. The management-by-objectives crowd might be momentarily peeved. But wait until they began reading the take from the bugged chair in the Soviet consulate and the tales of Bulgarians and smuggled guns. Someone might even get a promotion.

10

The Ottoman chair, it turned out, wasn’t for Kunayev’s office at all. After three days in the