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

dean of the old boys’ lobby, was an especially obvious target. Better to get out of the way, he had decided. Better to lie low for a while and see if people came to their senses.

And so he did—vanished one day from his spacious office with the maps and safes and went somewhere else, most people weren’t sure where. As Hinkle’s purge of the old boys increased, it was rumored for a time that Stone had been fired, too. But that was wrong. Some of his friends imagined that, like the old stag in the forest. Stone had concluded that his time had come and had gone off to some bureaucratic mountaintop to die a noble death. But that wasn’t quite right either. Stone hadn’t died and he hadn’t gone up to any mountaintop. It would be more accurate to say that he had gone underground, which in a secret agency like the CIA amounted to a kind of double negative.

Taylor’s initial reaction when he received Stone’s message was that he had made the biggest mistake of his career. He didn’t know why his request for traces had come to Stone’s attention or what Stone would do about it. But he had the feeling that he had unwittingly picked a fight with the wrong man. His immediate problem was finding a secure place to meet. The Istanbul base had a secure conference room, the infamous “bubble,” but it was hot and cramped and utterly uninteresting. So Taylor ruled out the bubble. There were restaurants aplenty, but they were too easy to bug. So forget restaurants.

A boat, Taylor decided. A boat trip up the Bosporus appealed to his sense of the dramatic. If his career was about to collapse, then he would go out in style. But what boat? The ambassador had a magnificent yacht, the Hiawatha, which he kept moored in Istanbul. But he was so paranoid that some congressional investigator would find out about it and take it away that he never let anyone use it. So that was out, too. Taylor paid a visit to a navy chief petty officer, who was nominally part of the Turkish-U.S. Logistical command, TUSLOG, but whose real job was taking care of the ambassador’s boat.

“Ali Kaptan’s boat,” advised the navy man.

“Who the hell is Ali Kaptan?”

“He skippers the Hiawatha when the ambassador’s in town, which isn’t too often. But he has a little boat of his own, the Teodora. Maybe he’ll take you out.”

“Is he trustworthy?”

“Better than that. He doesn’t speak English.”

“Sounds like my man,” said Taylor. And a few hours later, he had engaged the services of the good ship Teodora and its skipper.

Taylor picked up Stone at the airport late one afternoon. Stone had arrived on a commercial flight from Frankfurt, and he was carrying his own suitcase. That was Taylor’s first surprise. Senior CIA officers usually toured the empire like kings, flying in private jets and arriving with little armies of bag carriers and door openers. Local station chiefs competed to find the most exotic restaurants and nightclubs for their royal visitors. Careers had been made finding the right fish restaurant in Piraeus, or the best dim sum in Hong Kong, or the raunchiest strip show in Bangkok. But one look at Stone told Taylor to forget about strip shows. The old man was dressed in his habitual winter costume: a three-piece wool suit and a brown homburg hat. As Taylor greeted him, he studied Stone’s face for a hint of the purpose that had brought him to Istanbul. But Stone’s face was a pleasant, impassive mask.

“So you’re Taylor” was all he said. Taylor took his bag and led him to a waiting limousine, which took them directly to the pier by the Dolmabahce mosque. Stone seemed pleased by the idea of a boat ride. He was coming from Berlin, he said, where it had been bitterly cold.

It was, for Istanbul, a pleasant early-spring evening. The sun had burned through much of the haze, and as it set, the sky took on a pinkish glow. Up the Bosporus, to the left of the dock, stretched the white marble of Dolmabahce, a palace so grand it had nearly bankrupted the Ottoman Empire. Sultan Abdul-Aziz had spent two million pounds a year running the palace and its staff of five thousand. It was said, apocryphally perhaps, that he had strapped pianos to the backs of his servants, so that music could follow him around his gardens. Like so much of Istanbul, Dolmabahce stood as a warning of the folly of trying to bridge East and West.

Ali Kaptan was waiting at the dock with his boat. He was a Laz, it turned out, from a village on the Black Sea, and like so many poor Laz boys, he had made his way in life as a boatman. As Taylor and Stone climbed aboard. Ali Kaptan gave them a firm salute.

“The Teodora,” said Stone, admiring the boat as he climbed aboard. “What a lovely name. Did the good captain name her after his daughter perhaps?”

Taylor translated Stone’s query for Ali Kaptan.

“Hayir!” snarled Ali Kaptan. No! He seemed offended at the thought.

“He says ‘no,’ ” said Taylor.

“Who is your boat named after?” asked Stone amiably. Taylor duly translated.

“The Empress Teodora,” said the Turk, wagging his finger at Stone. Taylor rolled his eyes. He explained to Stone that the Empress Teodora was a notorious libertine who, in Byzantine times, had reputedly fornicated with a dozen men at a sitting, occasionally with three at one time.

“How charming,” said Stone. “I hope her holes are all plugged this time.” And with that, they cast off and headed up the Bosporus in the soft glow of the dusk.

Stone didn’t waste any time. “Tell me about your contact with Mr. Rawls,” he said when the boat was under way.

Taylor repeated the story much as he had for Timmons. He explained how he and George had encountered Rawls at Omar’s place; how he had followed him