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

“Albania?”

“Somehow the Albanian government found out about the papers in the 1950s, after Natalia began trying to emigrate to Turkey. They wanted them for the Albanian national archives, presumably because Temo was Albanian. Natalia told me that two Albanians came one day to pick up the trunk and she never saw it again. It’s probably in Tirana now, gathering dust.”

“So you never found out what turned the idealists into the murderers?”

“No. That was part of why I gave up my dissertation. I decided I would never really know.”

“What happened to Natalia?”

“The Romanians eventually let her out. She came to Turkey in the late 1960s and settled down in the little house with the green shutters in Beykoz. She’s an old woman now. Tough, and sad.”

“What was in the papers? Did you ever find out?”

“All I know is what Natalia told me. She had looked through the papers as a girl and talked to her grandfather about them. From what she said, they sounded fabulous. They included correspondence among the various branches of the Union and Progress Committee, written in code to confuse the sultan’s spies.”

“What kind of code?”

“I don’t know. The only thing Natalia remembered was that each member and branch had a number. Let’s say Paris was six, so if you were the ninety-first member of the Paris branch, your number was six/ninety-one.”

“No wonder the Albanians were so interested. They’re spy-crazy.”

“There may have been another reason. From what Natalia said, the papers showed something that might have interested certain people in Moscow.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that in 1905, when Sukuti died, the Young Turks were part of a network that stretched throughout the Caucasus and Central Asia. There were Young Georgians in Tbilisi, Young Bukharans in Bukhara, Young Turkestanis in Tashkent, Young Azeris in Baku, Young Armenians in Yerevan. All working together to topple the old empires.”

“So what.”

“So history didn’t begin in that part of the world in 1917, the way the Soviets like to pretend. There used to be something else. There used to be another vision of Central Asia.”

“Interesting,” said Taylor. “But it’s ancient history. Back home, they can’t remember what happened last week. Who’s going to care about what happened seventy-five years ago?”

“Nobody, sad to say. That’s why I decided to stop being an Ottomanist. It was time to get out of the archives.”

“Welcome to the real world, such as it is,” said Taylor. His arm was on the back of the seat, and he let it drop casually over Anna’s shoulder. He pulled her toward him and gave her a kiss on the cheek. As he held her, his hand touched her breast. Anna let it stay there a few moments, wondering what it would be like to sleep with Taylor, what his hands would feel like on her body. By now, Taylor was feeling the curve of her breast in his hand. He was evidently the sort of man who didn’t stop until someone said: “Stop.”

“Stop,” said Anna.

Taylor smiled. No problem. He was easy.

Silence surrounded the car. In the winter chill, small clouds of fog were forming on the black waters of the Bosporus. As Taylor drove, he thought about Anna’s tale of Young Azeris and Young Turkestanis and a network of Central Asians that had existed nearly a century ago. And as he thought, an odd notion fell into his head. He recalled an unlikely encounter a few weeks earlier with a Canadian who claimed to be a filmmaker but showed unusual interest in Central Asian émigrés.

“Let me ask you a question,” said Taylor. “Have you ever met a NOC named Jack Rawls?”

“No. But NOCs don’t hang out together. We’re supposed to be anonymous. Who’s Jack Rawls anyway?”

“Probably nobody,” said Taylor. “I saw him in a bar a few weeks ago. He’s another Central Asia junkie. I thought maybe he might be a member of the brethren.”

“Beats me. But I’m a new kid.”

Taylor kept his eyes on the road as it wound along the Bosporus, still thinking about Rawls. No, he decided. It couldn’t be. They weren’t that smart back at headquarters.

“Forget Rawls,” he said. “This crowd doesn’t want to make trouble in Tashkent. They just want to stay afloat. Anyway, Central Asia is off-limits.”

“So I’ve heard,” said Anna. “But I’m not so sure everybody follows the rules.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Anna didn’t answer at first. Then she turned to Taylor.

“Let me ask you a question,” she said. “Have you ever met Edward Stone?”

“The big shot, back at headquarters?”

Anna nodded.

“Nope. Heard about him, but never met him. Why do you ask?”

“Because he’s interested in Central Asia, too.”

“Is that so?” said Taylor, enunciating each word. “Is that so? Tell me more.”

“I can’t. I don’t know any more.”

“Son of a gun,” said Taylor, shaking his head. Maybe there was life in the old corpse yet.

“I probably shouldn’t have told you that,” said Anna. She made a mental note to send a message to Stone, when she returned to London, summarizing what Ali Ascari had said about the shipment of guns across the Soviet border. It would be a way of making amends for her indiscretion.

“No,” said Taylor. “You probably shouldn’t have. But that’s what I like about you.” Taylor made a mental note, too. There was a certain item he should retrieve from an apartment off Yeniceriler Street.

They returned to Istanbul just after eight and had another drink in the hotel bar. Taylor leaned close to Anna and talked almost in a whisper. It was bedroom talk, but it never got to the bedroom. Anna said good night just before ten. She had a plane to catch the next morning, and the somewhat tangled strands of a new career to pick up back in London. It wouldn’t do to fall for an outrageous character like Taylor on a one-night stand in Istanbul.

   IV

RTACTION

ISTANBUL

MARCH–MAY 1979

17

Taylor retrieved the Rawls tape the day after Anna Barnes left Istanbul. He had no idea what it might