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

“Did you ever sleep with one of your agents?”

“Never,” she said quickly. Too quickly. “Never for operational reasons,” she added, in a tone meant to close the subject.

“What does that mean?” pressed Anna, but the older woman wouldn’t be drawn.

The waiter arrived, opened the Burgundy and served the steaks with great ceremony. He seemed to think there was something quite grand about two women feasting on such a meal. And they did have a grand time, eating and drinking and talking. By the end of the meal, Anna was flush with food and drink and becoming positively boisterous.

“Let me at ’em!” she said exuberantly. “I’m going to kick ass! You wait and see.”

“Don’t say that, my dear.”

“Why not? I’m going to do it the way the old boys do. Tough. Cool. No nonsense. Take no prisoners.”

“Stop it!” said Margaret sharply.

“What’s wrong? That’s the way the game is played.”

“No, it’s not. Or at least it doesn’t have to be.”

“How would you know?” demanded Anna. It was the cruelest thing she could have said, and she regretted it the moment the words were out of her mouth.

The older woman brushed another of those invisible hairs off her face. “My dear Anna,” she said, “I am going to give you one last piece of advice, and I hope you will remember it.”

“I’m sorry. I’m listening.”

“You don’t have to play the game the way men do. They are always talking about kicking ass, and squeezing information out of people, and busting their balls and being a tough SOB and that sort of thing. And I suppose it reassures them, all that tough talk. But that is not the way the business works. Not unless you’re a Nazi.”

Anna eyed the older woman skeptically. “So how does it work, if you’re not a Nazi?”

“Gently. You usually get more information from people by stroking them than by threatening them. Talk to them, flatter them, listen to their boring stories; occasionally, let them imagine you are seducing them.”

“In other words, act like a woman.” Anna said the last word derisively, but Margaret ignored her.

“Precisely. Don’t be afraid to be gentle. All the locker-room talk is silly. And usually it doesn’t work.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Margaret smiled. “Well, there you are. Now you know everything I know.” She reached out her hand to Anna, shook it firmly, and then kissed her young protégée on the cheek.

“No, I don’t,” said Anna.

“What have I left out?”

“You’ve told me how the game is played, but not to what end. And you haven’t explained why you first got into the business.”

“That’s for another night, I think.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Let’s just say that I’m like Edward Stone. We’re from the same generation. We went through the same war. We learned the same lessons.”

“Come on! What were they?”

“We learned how to manipulate people. And we learned to like it.”

Anna nodded sagely, but she had barely heard. “To London!” she said, raising her wineglass one last time. If she had been wearing a mortarboard, she would have tossed it in the air.

3

Edward Stone’s final crusade began that January in the city of Samarkand, in the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan. He was not there in person, of course. He was half a world away, in an office in Langley removed by several floors, and at least one generation, from the new crowd who imagined that they were running American intelligence. But Stone was certainly there in spirit, and he was there by proxy as well. For if there was one thing that Edward Stone had accumulated in a lifetime of work in the spy business, it was the friendly assistance of other spymasters, known in the trade as “liaison.”

Stone had thirty-five years’ worth of contacts upon which to draw—with British, French, Germans, Lebanese, Saudis, Iranians, Pakistanis, Afghanis. Indeed, he had practically built some of those nations’ intelligence services himself. The resulting bonds of loyalty transcended mere agent relationships and became a web of obligation that was stronger, more pervasive, and far less visible. For liaison was the one form of U.S. intelligence activity that remained hidden from prying eyes—not subject to review by Congress, occasionally not even reported to the White House. And that gave Stone and his foreign friends considerable room to maneuver, even in the cosseted world of 1979, even in the dusty streets and alleyways of Samarkand.

The sun rose that particular January morning over a local landmark called the Gur Emir—the tomb of the great emir, Timur—illuminating its blue dome with the soft light of the Uzbekistan plain. A few Moslem pilgrims had come to the shrine at first light, to pray at the tomb of the conqueror, known to Europeans as Tamerlane. This sort of folk worship was frowned upon by the local viceroys of dialectical materialism. But the authorities could not stop it. And so the pilgrims came each morning: round-faced Uzbeks in four-cornered hats, their wives following a step behind in aberband silk dresses, bright as panes of stained glass; a few Turkmen, in long blue frock coats and powder-blue turbans, stroking the wispy strands of their forked beards.

The pilgrims sat under the mulberry trees that ringed the shrine, waiting for the guard to come and open the big padlock on the front door, take their forty kopecks, and let them in. They could have broken into the shrine if they had really wanted to. It was a large, open place, protected only by rickety wooden doors and a low wall that could be climbed by an Uzbek toddler; it was surrounded by a warren of private houses, each hiding its secrets behind plain, whitewashed walls. The Soviet authorities didn’t even bother to post a blue-shirted militiaman to protect the place at night. What was worth protecting in this pagan shrine? It would have seemed almost a joke to any responsible official of the Samarkand Oblast.

Eventually a guard arrived, opened the gate and let the faithful enter the