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

Anna stared at him a moment, amazed by what she had done. Her arm, holding the whiskey bottle, felt as if it had electricity running through it. Ascari was groggily trying to get up. What was she waiting for? If she ran at that instant, she could probably make it through the door. But Ascari would still be chasing her, and Anna felt, in that moment, that she had done enough running for a lifetime. She raised the bottle again. Her whole body was surging with energy now, as if a switch somewhere had been flipped for the first time.

As Ascari turned his face toward her, Anna brought the bottle down. This time it hit him on the forehead, hard enough to bruise the skin, but not hard enough to break the bottle. Ascari screamed and fell back to the floor, dazed by the blow. Then Anna did something that her colleagues decided later was probably excessive. She kicked Ascari in his fat stomach. And then, as he was groaning, she kicked him again.

With Ascari collapsed on the floor, Anna moved quickly. She collected as much of the money as she could find, stuffed it in the attaché case, grabbed her purse from the floor, and headed for the door. She unbolted the lock and turned for a last look at Ascari. He wasn’t moving.

“Don’t ever do that again!” said Anna.

She closed the door and ran to the elevator. There was no sign of Ascari behind her. I hope he’s dead, Anna thought to herself as the elevator headed down to the lobby. She walked quickly out the door and along the long driveway of the hotel. Still there was no sign that Ascari was following her. She walked down Cumhuriyet Avenue a quarter mile to the next big hotel and stopped at the door.

At first the doorman shook his head: No admittance. She realized how bizarre she must look—clothes askew, bathed in sweat, smelling of the half bottle of booze that she had accidentally poured on herself as she struck Ascari. It was only when Anna spoke English that the doorman relented. He pointed her toward a telephone in the lobby, from which she dialed the home telephone number she had been given for the Istanbul base chief, Alan Taylor.

It was nearly two o’clock when she reached him. Taylor answered the phone with a trace of annoyance in his voice. In the background was a woman’s voice, speaking in Turkish.

“This is Vera,” said Anna, using the recognition code that had been agreed on before she left London. He was supposed to answer: “Welcome to Istanbul,” and then work out, in code, a time to meet.

“Who?” answered Taylor, fumbling through his mental Rolodex of real names, work names, cryptonyms and codes.

“Vera,” said Anna. “This is Vera.”

“Should I know you?” asked Taylor.

“Damned straight!” said Anna. She was angry. “I’m a visitor.”

“Right,” said Taylor. He had a vague recollection of a cable that someone from London would be coming through Istanbul. “Whatever you say.”

“The reason I’m calling,” said Anna, “is that I’ve had a bit of trouble tonight.”

Now Taylor was listening. “Whatever you need,” he said. “Where are you? I’ll come get you right away.”

“No,” said Anna. That would be insecure. What’s more, it would mean surrendering herself to the care and protection of a man, which at this moment she powerfully wanted—and did not want.

“You sure?” pressed Taylor.

“It can wait. Let’s meet at two o’clock.”

“Say what?” answered Taylor. He knew she was talking in code, but he had forgotten what this particular code meant. There were dozens of them, for different agents, NOCs, liaison contacts. In this case, “one o’clock” meant immediately, “two o’clock” meant the next day.

“Let’s meet at two o’clock,” repeated Anna.

“Oh, fuck it,” said Taylor. “Let’s just meet tomorrow morning.”

“Right,” said Anna. “Where?” Obviously if he had forgotten the part of the code dealing with the time of an emergency meeting, he had forgotten the part about place.

“My shop,” said Taylor.

Anna hung up the phone. Meeting at the consulate was bad tradecraft, but at that point she didn’t care. She was tired. It didn’t make sense to go back to her hotel, where Ascari might somehow track her down, so she simply checked into the hotel into which she had stumbled. They overcharged her on principle—a single woman, arriving alone at that hour. She didn’t care about that either. She felt unnaturally calm. An Iranian agent had just tried to rape her, and she had beaten him senseless and left him for dead on the floor of his hotel room. She felt as if she ought to be sobbing, or at least sniffling. But she was just tired. She took a shower, crawled into bed, and slept soundly until the next morning.

16

Anna had been waiting nearly an hour when Taylor finally arrived at the consulate; he had the woozy look of someone who has had too much drink and too little sleep the night before. Anna was sitting in the reception room on the first floor of the Palazzo Corpi, reading a book, and at first Taylor walked right past her. Apparently she didn’t look like his mental image of “Vera.” The voice on the phone had been tough, sharp, controlled. The dark-haired, green-eyed woman on the couch looked younger and more vulnerable.

“Where the hell have you been?” asked Anna when the receptionist steered Taylor toward her.

“Rough night,” said Taylor.

“Not as rough as mine. Believe me.”

“Come tell me about it,” said Taylor, taking her arm and leading her across the courtyard to his office in the annex. The office was piled with cartons of new visa applications from Iranians, which Taylor was sifting in the hope of finding people who might have some intelligence value. Taylor cleared one of the boxes from his couch, motioned to Anna to have a seat, and closed the door.

“Sorry about last night,” he said. “I’m sure I must have