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

his head, as was his normal style. The combination of his blue-collar getup of lumberjack shirt and work pants and the patrician hairstyle was jarring.

“You shouldn’t wear that outfit,” said Anna.

“Why not?” said Stone. “I rather like it.”

“Do you want a frank opinion?”

“Yes, indeed. Of course I do.”

“It looks silly.”

“How so?”

“Men’s clothes are like uniforms. When a man is out of uniform—or wearing someone else’s—he looks silly.”

“Very well. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Anna returned to her busywork. Her face was downturned. Stone watched her for a moment and then spoke up, as if he sensed that something was bothering her.

“What did you make of my little lecture this morning? I hope it wasn’t too tedious.”

“Not at all. It was fascinating. I just have a lot to learn, that’s all.”

“Did you hear anything that surprised you?”

Anna thought a moment. If ever there was a time to be honest, this was it. “Yes,” she said. “There was something that didn’t make sense to me.”

“And what was that?”

“I know this will probably sound stupid, but I don’t understand why it’s so important that the CIA look more aggressive than it really is. Won’t that just make the Soviets even harder to deal with?”

“Ah, Anna, I knew you were my sort of person,” said Stone. “That’s a very wise and subtle question. The answer is that in the short run, yes, it probably will make them more truculent. But in the long run, it will lead to their undoing.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I’m not sure, in the sense that I can prove it. It’s more a matter of conviction. I believe that, among nations, weakness brings disaster and strength yields success. That is the intellectual bedrock of my life. I could no more doubt it than doubt the rising of the sun. So, inevitably, I believe that if we cannot actually be strong at present, we should at least appear so.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But it still sounds like kicking a hornets’ nest. Why make the Soviets anxious? Why not just walk away?”

“How can I make you see? Let me try a historical analogy, one that will probably be familiar to you. I’ve been doing a bit of reading in your area of specialization these last few weeks, and I have been pondering a question that strikes me as especially interesting—and relevant to our conversation.”

“Fire away.”

“My question is this: Why did the Ottoman Empire decline so rapidly in the seventeenth century?”

“Let me think,” said Anna, suddenly drawn back toward the world of the library. “Various reasons. The sultans became weaker and less competent. The European nations became stronger. The janissaries became corrupt bureaucrats, rather than warriors. Tax revenues weren’t sufficient to support the administrative apparatus of the empire. Take your pick.”

Stone shook his head. “All part of the story, no doubt. But the answer I had in mind is much simpler. It can be summed up in just three words. ‘The Prince’s Cage.’ ”

“Go on,” said Anna, curious to see where Stone’s argument might lead.

“Now correct me if I’m wrong, but as I understand it, the Prince’s Cage began as an instrument of enlightenment and progress. Until the early seventeenth century, each new sultan had made it a practice to have all of his brothers strangled—with a bowstring, was it not?—so they couldn’t challenge his rule. By our modern lights it sounds horribly cruel. Yet it was actually quite an efficient means of checking the sort of rivalry and intrigue that has brought many an empire to its knees.”

“It was outmoded,” said Anna. “And that was also part of the Ottoman problem in the seventeenth century. They were still following their old practices, and Europe was becoming modern.”

“Quite so. Fratricide was old-fashioned. So the enlightened modern sultans stopped strangling their brothers and put them in what amounted to a glorified prison in the grand seraglio. The Prince’s Cage.”

“Correct,” said Anna. “They called it the ‘Kafes.’ ”

“A civilized approach. The sort of thing that would have appealed to a member of Congress, had such people existed in those days. But what was the cost of enlightenment? Rather than knock around the empire learning to be warriors, as their forebears had done, the Ottoman princes now stayed out of harm’s way in the cage. Osman III was in the cage for fifty years before becoming sultan, was he not? And didn’t Suleyman II spend thirty-nine years in the cage, much of it copying the Koran over and over? When these poor fellows finally emerged, they knew absolutely nothing about the world. They were pathetic. But it wasn’t their fault. The system virtually guaranteed incompetent rulers.”

“You’ve been reading Lord Kinross, I see,” said Anna.

Stone smiled sheepishly, like a schoolboy who has been caught with his crib sheet. “Well, he’s right, isn’t he?”

“Kinross is right as far as he goes, although the reasons for the Ottoman decline were much more complicated than he says. But let’s assume that you and Kinross are right. What on earth does this have to do with what I was asking you about Karpetland?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” said Stone. “The forces of enlightenment have decided that the CIA is an outmoded and inefficient relic of the past, so they have placed us in a modern equivalent of the Prince’s Cage. And I am trying to find a way for you—for all of us—to get out of the cage before it’s too late.”

Anna nodded, if not in assent at least in deference to the power of Stone’s vision. But she wondered to herself whether he could really mean what he had said. Did he truly believe that the world would be a better place if the princes of the CIA were freed from the “cage” to do whatever they wished—make the decisions, call the shots—without interference from people like judges and senators and presidents? He can’t be serious, she decided. It was a crazy thought, and Stone wasn’t crazy.

“Lunchtime,” said Taylor. He had returned with the food and a six-pack of Iron City beer. Anna