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

said Taylor, “but what does all this get you? You aren’t recruiting anyone. You aren’t collecting a scrap of real intelligence. All you’re really doing is throwing a monkey wrench into the Soviet machine.”

“And what’s wrong with that? The Soviets work very hard to maintain Moscow as a controlled environment, in which they can orchestrate every event to their purposes. Our job, sometimes, is simply to sabotage the machine. Unfortunately, our colleagues at the State Department have never understood this.”

“Understood what?”

“How pervasive the system of control is. They don’t realize that the KGB monitors every foreign diplomat and journalist in Moscow and plays them off against each other. The ones who are cooperative get rewards—a concession in negotiations, a special interview. The ones who resist get punished—they can’t find an apartment; their toilets keep backing up; their car won’t work. Eventually even the toughest-minded give up and go home. The saddest part is the way our diplomats play along with this theater of illusion. The liberal young foreign service officer imagines that he is succeeding in Moscow because he is a sensitive and reasonable fellow, and that his more stubborn colleague is failing because he doesn’t understand the Russian people or speak their language adequately. Preposterous! These people don’t seem to grasp that Moscow is a vast Skinner box, designed to condition certain types of behaviors. And the U.S. diplomatic corps is living proof that it works! So yes, I am a Luddite. I want to sabotage the machine. Frankly, I think that’s all we really can do, for now.”

“Do you run all this from Washington?” queried Anna. She was still having trouble understanding how Stone’s operation worked bureaucratically.

“Yes,” said Stone. “And I do business only in person, with individual officers from the Moscow station when they come to visit me. I insist that there be no discussion of these operations inside the station, and no cable traffic whatsoever.”

“Why?”

“Because Moscow station is insecure. Even the supposedly secure communications areas are insecure.”

“Why?” she asked again.

“I can’t tell you that,” said Stone curtly. “I’m sorry. All I can say is that I believe the Soviets are reading our mail in Moscow, and that the only activities that can remain secret are those that are run unilaterally from here, off the books.”

“Does headquarters agree with you?”

“Sensible colleagues agree. Foolish ones do not. But I really cannot discuss this issue with you any further.” Stone turned away from Anna and toward Taylor, who was clapping his hands silently.

“Mr. Stone,” he said. “As I told you once before, you are a devious son of a gun.”

“Son of a bitch, I think you said. But save your applause, please. I’m just getting to what matters most for our purposes. About a year ago, it occurred to me that we could use the various language services of Radio Liberty to reinforce this pattern of shadows and feints. So with the help of an old chum in Munich I arranged to put a few odd things on the air.”

“Like what?” asked Taylor.

“Curiosities. Variations in the normal pattern of operations. Things that a trained analyst might conclude were messages to one of these invisible spies we appear to be servicing in Moscow. For example, if you play the same musical theme to introduce the news every morning at nine, change it once—just once—and the clever analyst will be convinced it’s a signal. Or you put nonsensical messages on the air. “The sky is green.” “Tolstoy is alive.” Or you have the announcer deliberately give the wrong time one afternoon. Whatever strikes your fancy. No matter how silly it is, you can be reasonably sure that it will have them scratching their heads back at Moscow Center. And that’s when I got to thinking,” said Stone, his voice trailing off.

“Thinking about what?” asked Anna.

“About Soviet nationalities, which are the rawest nerve of all in Moscow. I began wondering whether we might in some way play upon the KGB’s abiding fear that the peoples at the extremities of the empire—the Uzbeks and Tajiks and Georgians and Armenians—despise the Soviet state, and that the United States may be prepared to help them gain their freedom.”

Anna looked at him warily, remembering her first conversation with Stone a few months before. “How did you do that?”

“At first, simply by using the radios. My friend in Munich agreed to introduce some small changes in the format. Very small to us, but quite worrying to the Soviets. The reading of a prerevolutionary essay on the Uzbek service. An item on the Chechen-Ingush service commemorating the birthday of Najmuddin of Hotso, who fought the Red Army almost single-handedly in the North Caucasus during the early 1920s. That sort of thing. Little needles. Pinpricks that might, over time, bother Moscow enough that it might cut back on foreign adventures and spend more time minding its own backyard. There were a few other things as well.”

“What other things?” asked Taylor.

“Oh, I mentioned to a senator I know how pleased I was that the agency was looking at the nationalities problem again. I’m sure he gossiped about it. As a matter of fact, there is no better channel for false information about CIA operations than conservative members of Congress. They’re so eager, and so gullible.”

Taylor closed his eyes. “So that’s what you were talking about in Istanbul,” he said.

“How’s that?”

“When I asked you why the Soviets would ever think the United States might get involved with a bunch of crazy Uzbeks, you said there had been a few hints to make Moscow nervous.”

“Did I say that in Istanbul? I shouldn’t have. But yes, there were hints of new American interest in Soviet nationalities, and yes, the hints came from me. The odd thing is, I didn’t really think it was possible to follow through on this project in any meaningful way. Not until I learned of your little encounter in Istanbul with this man Rawls. After that, of course, the rest was fairly obvious.”

“Who’s Rawls?” asked Anna.

“A KGB man,” said