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

“I’d rather meet in the coffee shop,” said Anna.

“Then go back to London. You want to see me, you come when I say. Otherwise, forget it.”

Anna thought a moment. He didn’t sound like he was bluffing. Maybe having his friends around would improve his behavior. “All right,” said Anna. “The casino at ten.”

“Dress nice, my dear,” said Ali. “My friends are very rich.”

“Hey! Wait a minute!” protested Anna. But Ascari had hung up.

Anna waited until nearly eleven o’clock. She would be damned if she would sit in a Turkish casino, being propositioned by strange men and feeling like a tart, waiting for Ali Ascari to show up. She spent a long time trying to decide what to wear and settled on a simple black dress and the jacket from one of her business suits—an odd combination, but that was the point. Her fashion accessory for the evening was an attaché case containing a thousand dollars in cash and a battered book in Azeri Turkish.

Ascari was sitting at the blackjack table with his two pals. He introduced them with a flourish: Abdel-Aziz from Saudi Arabia, a rotund man dressed in a white robe that made him look like a walking marshmallow, and Sami from Lebanon, a sallow-faced man in a silk suit. Ascari himself was dressed in a black Nehru jacket that was apparently meant to look like a tuxedo. All three appeared to be somewhat inebriated.

What a crew! Three 1979-model petro-hustlers—gambling, drinking and whoring away their small share of the hundreds of billions of dollars that had, as it were, come bubbling out of the ground. You could have seen them across Europe that season—in Monte Carlo and Paris and London and Athens—taking five percent of someone else’s five percent and still making out like bandits.

“Come play blackjack with us,” said Ascari, throwing Anna $200 worth of chips.

“No, thanks,” she said. “I’ll watch.”

They played with the enthusiasm of drunken men trying to impress a very sober woman. The Saudi hit everything. He hit 15, he hit 17, once he even hit 18. He lost nearly $1,000 in the brief time Anna watched. Ascari was more cagey. He split his aces: he hit 14 but not 15; he doubled when he had the cards. He was ahead $500 at one point but lost most of it. When he won, he would exclaim: “Ya Salaam!” When he lost, he would cluck his tongue and mutter a dark oath in Farsi. The Lebanese was the only one who won consistently. He actually seemed to be counting the cards.

“Mr. Ascari,” said Anna sharply after they had been playing nearly forty-five minutes. She pointed to her watch.

“Yes, my dear,” said Ascari. “I’m coming. I’m coming.” He extended his arm to Anna.

“Bye-bye, boys,” said Ascari. He winked at Abdel-Aziz and Sami. He winked at the blackjack dealer and gave him a $50 chip. They all rolled their eyes. The Saudi blew Anna a kiss. Let them think what they want, Anna told herself. Once they were out the door, she disentangled her arm and moved away from the corpulent Iranian.

“Let’s have a drink,” said Ascari.

“You look like you’ve had enough,” said Anna. “I suggest we go to the coffee shop.”

“It’s closed,” said Ascari, pointing to his watch. It was almost midnight.

“I need to talk to you,” said Anna. “Privately.”

“Then we go to your hotel room.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Then we go to my room. I have suite. Very comfortable.”

“No,” said Anna.

“Okay, then where?”

Anna thought a moment. She couldn’t very well give him the thousand dollars in the lobby of the hotel.

“If we go to your room, there will be no funny business. Understood?”

“Please, please. You hurt my feelings,” he said, putting his hand over his heart.

“No sex talk,” continued Anna. “No hands on knees. Because if there is, I’m calling the police and the American consulate. And you’ll be in more trouble than you’ve ever seen.”

“For sure, lady. For sure. I am hearing you. Ali Ascari is a gentleman.”

Ascari had a bottle of whiskey in his room, as it turned out, and promptly poured himself a drink. Then he excused himself and repaired to the bedroom. Anna surveyed the room. It was filled with the paraphernalia of the petrodollar circuit: packs of cigarettes on every table, opened but half smoked; the remains of gifts to be given and received: candy, silk ties, perfume, a box of Davidoff cigars. It was the messy room of a messy man. Anna checked the location of the phone. She measured in her mind the distance to the door. She moved from the couch to a chair so that Ascari couldn’t sit next to her.

Ascari returned after five minutes with his hair and beard combed, wearing a silk brocade smoking jacket and bathed in more of that awful cologne.

“This shouldn’t take long,” said Anna.

“I am at your service.”

“As you might expect, my friends at the embassy are very concerned by what you told me at our last meeting, about assassination.”

“Oh yes,” said Ascari. “As I expect.”

“They would like to thank you for your help in this matter.”

“Very good. Okay.” Ascari was looking at Anna’s attaché case. “You have a surprise for Ali maybe?”

“Maybe,” said Anna. “But first I have a few more questions.”

“Okay. Why not?”

“My friends want to know who will carry out the assassinations.”

“Khomeini men. I told you last time. They will be Khomeini men.”

“Yes,” said Anna. “But that isn’t very helpful. There are thousands of Khomeini men.”

Ascari paused, tilted his head, stared off into space. It was hard to tell whether he was searching his memory or his imagination. “They will be from Qom,” he said.

Anna took out her spiral notebook and wrote: Qom.

“And from Isfahan maybe.” Anna wrote: Isfahan. “And maybe from Tehran, too.”

This time Anna didn’t write anything. “All three places?” she asked.

“Yeah. Probably.”

“Will they be working with contacts in America, these men? Will they try to enter the country themselves?”

“Contacts,” said Ascari thoughtfully. “They will use contacts.”

“Who are the contacts?”

Ali surveyed the