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

Stone led them to a stack of six boxes in the center of the room, next to Karpetland’s modest display of Oriental rugs. He opened one of the boxes and took out a small pamphlet, five by seven inches. The title on the cover was in a Cyrillic script. He handed it to Taylor. “This is for you, Alan.”

“What the hell is it?” asked Taylor.

“This, my friend, is a classic of sorts. It is a manifesto called ‘Turkestan Under the Soviet Yoke,’ written in 1935 by a man named Mustafa Chokay. I have taken the liberty of reprinting it in a format that could fit into the pocket of a Caspian Sea boatman or a shepherd in the wilderness of the Tien Shan mountains.”

“How in God’s name do you know about Mustafa Chokay?” asked Taylor.

“I just do. I am not entirely an idiot, you know.”

“Chokay is Munzer’s hero. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one. Did you know that?”

“I’d heard that, yes.”

“From who?”

“Let’s not get bogged down in details. You’re not the first case officer who’s ever dealt with Munzer Ahmedov, for heaven’s sake.”

“So what do we do with the propaganda?” asked Taylor, pointing to the stack of boxes.

“I would like you and Mr. Munzer to take one box with you to Istanbul, where you should distribute copies in such a way that a few of them will come into the hands of your old friend Mr. Rawls. These will be your bait, these little tracts of anti-Soviet propaganda. I guarantee you that Rawls will swim toward them like a fish toward a floodlight.”

“What do we do then?”

“That’s the hard part, so obviously I intend to leave it to you. Rawls must discover Munzer, and he must imagine that he has stumbled across a Turkestani underground organization previously unknown to him. Munzer should make it known that his ‘organization,’ among its other activities, is smuggling thousands of these pamphlets into Turkestan. You figure out the details. I’m sure you’re cleverer at this sort of thing than I am. My only advice is that you shouldn’t stick things under Rawls’s nose. Make him work. Let him assemble the puzzle himself. Otherwise he’ll never believe it’s real.”

“What happens to the rest of the boxes?” asked Taylor. “You said we should send one to Istanbul, but there are five more.”

“The rest, dear boy, will be going into the Soviet Union.”

“How?”

“Through Afghanistan, most probably. We have friends in Pakistan who are quite active with the rebels there—have been for months. It shouldn’t be any trouble to get them across the Afghan border. A box to Dushanbe, in Tajikistan. A box to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan. A box to Ashkhabad, in Turkmenistan. They tell me that the Afghan border is quite porous. And if the Soviets should catch our little smugglers on the way, so much the better.”

“Slick.”

“Thank you. Let’s continue our tour, shall we?” Stone walked a few steps across the room to a smaller stack of boxes, next to the table that displayed the showroom’s samples of wall-to-wall carpeting. As before, he opened a box and removed one of the books. It was in pamphlet format, like the first, but had on the cover, in Arabic calligraphy, the first sura of the Koran. Below that was the book’s title, written in Cyrillicized Turkic.

“Here,” said Stone, handing the pamphlet to Anna. “This one is for you. Read us the title, if you would.”

“ ‘Guide to the Holy Places of Azerbaijan and the North Caucasus,’ ” read Anna.

“These are for your friend Mr. Ascari. It’s a guide to Islamic shrines. Wondrous places! A rock in the village of Buzovna in Azerbaijan that supposedly contains the imprint of Ali’s foot. Mount Shalbuz Dagh in Daghestan, from which the Prophet is supposed to have ascended into heaven on horseback, leaving behind a hoofprint. Glorious! The book also lists the tombs of various Sufi martyrs who died fighting the Soviets. It’s a lovely little book. A better version of the one you gave to Ascari in Istanbul several months ago, which I gather he quite liked.”

Anna nodded. “Mr. Ascari likes to think of himself as religious.”

“Well then, he’ll love this. We have five thousand of them. I would like you and Frank to arrange with Ascari to get these over the Iranian border into Azerbaijan. For a man of Mr. Ascari’s commercial acumen, that shouldn’t pose any great problem. And again, if he’s caught with the goods, it may actually suit our purposes.”

“How are you going to backstop it?” asked Anna.

“We’ll be sending in, via a separate channel, some handbills calling for demonstrations at several of the shrines in Azerbaijan. We’ll be doing the same thing in Uzbekistan, by the way, Alan.”

“Will people actually go to the demonstrations?” she asked.

“A few, I hope. Enough to make it all look plausible.”

“What will happen to them?”

“They will get arrested, I suspect.”

“Does that bother you?”

“No. Should it?”

Before Anna could answer, Stone had opened the box again and was handing several dozen of the pamphlets to Taylor.

“Alan, you’ll need some of these in Istanbul. Munzer might leave a few of them in places where they will be discovered by someone industrious.”

“Good old Munzer,” said Taylor. “He’ll think he has died and gone to heaven.”

“Now let’s see. What else do I have for you?” Stone walked over to a group of smaller cartons set against the side wall. He opened a carton and removed two cassette tapes, packed in cheap plastic containers with Russian labels. “You’ll love these,” he said, handing one to each of his colleagues.

“ ‘Siberian Folk Chorus,’ ” said Anna, translating the label. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Of course I’m kidding. They are actually tapes of a sermon by a Wahhabi mullah in Riyadh, preaching the downfall of Communism. Great stuff! Fire and brimstone. Sinners in the hands of an angry God. My Pakistani friends will take a thousand of these tapes in-country, via Afghanistan. I have a bunch more for Alan to take to Istanbul.”

“Allahu-akhbar!”