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

the late nineteenth century from the problems of his decaying empire.

“I will say this for Abdul-Hamid,” said Serif, gesturing toward Yildiz Palace. “He knew how to deal with the Kurds.”

“He let them kill Armenians,” ventured Taylor.

Serif narrowed his eyes.

“Just joking.”

“The sultan had many faults,” continued Serif, “but he was in many ways the first modern intelligence chief.”

“Um,” murmured Taylor. What a distinction. The truth about Abdul-Hamid was that he was a nut. He had been so afraid of conspirators that he rarely ventured from Yildiz. He kept a hundred parrots in cages around the palace grounds to warn of intruders. He kept a loaded revolver in every room of the palace so he could shoot assassins. He drank milk only from his own cows, which were guarded twenty-four hours a day. He had his brother, Izzet, try on his clothes first, to make sure they weren’t poisoned. He was, in short, a lunatic.

“Do you know Abdul-Hamid’s secret?” continued Serif. “His secret was technology.”

Taylor’s eyes widened, but he said nothing.

“It is true! Abdul-Hamid used the telegraph to control his network of spies in Europe. And to gather intelligence about his empire, he sent out teams of photographers. I have one of Abdul-Hamid’s albums here in my office.”

“Is that right?” said Taylor. Feigning interest was an essential aspect of liaison meetings with local intelligence officials—looking at photo albums, sending greetings on Ataturk’s birthday, listening to the hoary myths of independence.

“Would you like to see it?” asked Serif hopefully.

“Of course.”

Serif removed from a desk drawer a thick album of old prints, each mounted in a frame bearing Abdul-Hamid’s tughra in elaborate Ottoman script. It was a catalogue of neatness and order, just the thing to please a paranoid sultan. In the pictures, Taylor noticed, everyone seemed to be wearing a uniform: firemen, policemen, soldiers and sailors, all posing proudly in their distinctive costumes; schoolboys wearing tunics with gold buttons and child-size red fezzes; fencers and gymnasts at play; medical students in double-breasted cloaks, arrayed behind half-dissected cadavers. If nothing else, thought Taylor, the album illustrated the Turkish passion for order: catalogues and lists, neat rows all arranged the same way. It almost didn’t matter what the object was, so long as it was arranged neatly. Visit a Turkish fishmonger and you would see the same thing: the fish displayed in a neat fantail, the big ones and little ones all in perfect rows, heads together, tails together, just so. They were a disciplined, strong-willed people, the Turks. But sometimes a bit paranoid.

“Beautiful photographs,” said Taylor. “But bad intelligence. If that’s all the sultan saw, he must have thought the empire was in great shape.”

“He didn’t believe any of it,” answered Serif. “It only convinced him that his enemies were more devious than he had imagined. So he would recruit more spies!”

Taylor nodded. That was a standard Turkish response, even now. If MIT wasn’t getting enough intelligence about terrorism, it would hire several dozen more informants to hang around in leftist coffeehouses. And it would “interrogate” a few more leftists and Kurds. That was the other constant in Turkish security policy. Interrogating prisoners, now as in Abdul-Hamid’s time, was what the authorities seemed to like best.

“We Turks have a saying,” admonished Serif. “If you don’t beat your children, you will end up beating yourself.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” said Taylor. “Listen, before I go there’s something I want to ask you about.”

“Oh?” said Serif. “What is that?”

“Have you ever heard the slogan ‘Free Turkestan’?”

Serif squinted his eyes. “Say it again.”

“ ‘Free Turkestan.’ Have you ever heard of an émigré group that uses a slogan like that?”

“Of course. Dozens of groups. Once upon a time, every waiter at Rejans restaurant had his own group. Not so many nowadays.”

“Do Turks still care about Turkestan?”

“Of course we do!” said Serif. His dignity had been offended. “My own family came from the Crimea. From Bakhchisarai.”

“No kidding.”

“There is no kidding at all about this. Every Turk remembers our lost empire. We have a saying.”

“And what is that?”

“We say: A man can travel from the Mediterranean to the Pacific Ocean and speak only Turkish.”

“And eat only kebabs.”

“Excuse me, please?”

“Nothing.”

“Why do you ask me about Turkestan?”

“Just curious. I heard the slogan the other day—‘Free Turkestan’—and I wondered whether it was anything serious.”

“For us? For MIT?”

Taylor nodded.

“I cannot tell you, of course.”

“Of course not,” said Taylor. “But if you could tell me, what would you say?”

“Hmmm,” said the Turk. The corners of his mouth were turned up. It wasn’t a smile, but it was close. “I would say that it is not serious. This is a game for old men and waiters from Rejans. We have nothing to do with it anymore.”

In early April, amidst this routine busywork of intelligence, the return mail Taylor had been waiting for finally arrived. He received a unusual cable from headquarters. It was sent on the “Restricted Handling” channel, which meant that it was especially sensitive and treated separately from the agency’s normal, top-secret cable traffic. The message was from Edward Stone. Stone advised that he would be arriving in Istanbul in one week for an overnight stop and wished to visit with Taylor. They would need somewhere secure to talk, Stone said.

19

Every agency of the United States government had a few people like Edward Stone. They were the permanent under secretaries, the master bureaucrats who survived each wave of enthusiastic politicians and kept the agency focused on its historical mission. Part of what gave the Stones their power was that they were living monuments to the world in which their agencies had been created, embodying each one’s bureaucratic culture, its myths and traditions.

For most federal agencies, that time had been the 1930s and the culture was New Deal liberalism. Visit the great domestic departments in Washington even now—Agriculture, Interior, Justice—and you will see the physical remnants: vast murals depicting ordinary Americans, workers and farmers, cops and shopkeepers, engaged in the pageant of American social democracy. If