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

33

Back in Istanbul, Taylor was running out of bait. He continued to meet Munzer at least once a week, feeding him pamphlets and leaflets from his dwindling supply and waiting for the Soviets to surface. A new box arrived from Washington in mid-July, shipped via ordinary parcel post. It contained copies of another reprint from Stone’s Central Asian library, this one titled “Dar ul-Rahat Musulmanlari,” or “The Moslem’s Land of Happiness,” by the Crimean Tatar writer Ismail bey Gaspraly. First published in Bakhchisarai in 1891, it was a sort of Moslem science-fiction story, outlining life in a perfect Islamic state of the future. Munzer was delighted with this new piece of subversive literature and proudly distributed copies among his friends. But “The Moslem’s Land of Happiness” failed to draw even a nibble.

The date of the Tashkent demonstration came and went. Munzer was curious about what had happened there. So, for that matter, was Taylor. He sent a query to Stone. Because of the old man’s ban on using cables, he sent it by ordinary airmail—what used to be known in the old days, before international postage rates increased, as the “ten-cent pouch.” According to Stone, it was still the most secure method for international communication. A week later Taylor received a reply. Stone didn’t explain how he had obtained his information, but Taylor suspected from the wealth of detail that the old man had somehow gotten an agent into Tashkent at the time of the protest. Either that or he was making it up.

According to Stone’s account, a small group of perhaps twenty people had gathered after Friday prayers in front of the Moslem Religious Board of Central Asia, near Chorsu Square in the old Islamic quarter of the city. The board was a Soviet-sponsored operation, and for that reason ordinary people were generally suspicious of it. A few leaflets announcing the demonstration had circulated in the bazaar the previous week, but most of the people gathered outside the gates appeared to be curious onlookers, rather than actual demonstrators. Apparently the local KGB office and the militia had also seen copies of the leaflet, for they were waiting nearby in large numbers.

The motley group of demonstrators then marched from the gates of the board to the ramshackle ruins of a mosque about a hundred yards away. The mosque was a shrine to Abu Bakr Mohammed Khafal Shasti, and to members of the Qadiri brotherhood it was a sacred place. As the little group reached the shrine, overgrown with weeds, one man—perhaps a provocateur—unfurled a simple banner proclaiming in Arabic the Koranic invocation: “There is no God but God and Mohammed is his Prophet.” The protester was promptly arrested—along with at least ten others. The party newspaper in Tashkent made no mention of the demonstration or the arrests in the days that followed, Stone advised, and the poor Uzbeks were still languishing in jail while the local KGB tried to figure out what was going on.

At his next meeting with Munzer, Taylor summarized the events at the Qadiri shrine, embellishing Stone’s account only slightly. He urged Munzer to have his friend Khojaev, the émigré journalist, investigate the story and publish an account in Great Turkestan. If that could be done, Taylor said, he might be able to help smuggle copies of the magazine into the Soviet Union. That seemed to rouse Munzer’s curiosity.

“How you do that, my friend?” asked the Uzbek. “Soviet border not New Jersey Turnpike.”

“No. But it’s not the Berlin Wall either. There are ways of getting across.”

“Yeah, sure. What ways?”

“Pakistan.”

“What Pakistan, please?”

“Peshawar,” confided Taylor. “You can buy anything in Peshawar, anything at all.”

“And then over borders?”

“Yes. By truck. By horseback. By foot.”

“Munzer understands. No more question.”

Taylor was going to leave it there. But it occurred to him that it was odd, really, for Munzer to be asking such a specific question about operations. That wasn’t his style. Taylor suspected that he was repeating a question someone else had put to him. Which might mean that someone, somewhere, was finally getting nervous.

“Why did you ask me about border crossing anyway?” pressed Taylor. “Has anybody been asking you for information about that?”

“Oh, you know. Is many questions.”

“No, I don’t know. Tell me.”

“Khojaev ask me. He say his friend Abdallah from Tashkent want to know about these pamphlets we getting.”

“Oh, really? Why did Abdallah want to know? Did someone ask him, like our other American friend?”

“Maybe. But Munzer think that don’t make no sense. Why would American man ask Abdallah from Tashkent to ask Khojaev to ask American?”

“Don’t worry about it, Munzer,” said Taylor with a thin smile. “It makes sense.”

Munzer was the toast of Omar’s. He arrived one Thursday night, the night before the Sabbath, when Moslem men like to go out on the town. Sonia noticed him right away, a cute, round-faced man sitting in the corner, nursing a Coca-Cola.

“You are Mr. Munzer?” she asked.

Munzer nodded shyly. Even after twenty-five years in Brooklyn, he still wasn’t fully accustomed to strange women introducing themselves in bars. But when she mentioned that she had heard of Munzer’s exploits as a freedom fighter, and asked if she could sit down for a few minutes with him and hear stories about the old country, Munzer felt entirely at ease. He ordered a beer, and then another, and when Khojaev showed up an hour later, a bottle of champagne. Sonia introduced Munzer to Omar and to some of the regulars—a few Kazakhs and Turkmen and a dark-eyed Chechen who looked ready to slit someone’s throat. And they had a grand time, talking and singing. The older men sat against the wall, holding hands and popping worry beads and talking politics. Just after midnight, Sonia led them all in a chorus of Turkestani songs. It was a glorious evening. Everyone seemed to be there, except the tall blond filmmaker from British Columbia.

Jack Rawls had returned to Istanbul in late July. It was almost by accident that Taylor learned