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

of the consulate cars, bringing with him the box of explosives and the envelope with the drawings. He fought the rush-hour traffic across the Ataturk Bridge and up the boulevard toward Aksaray. He parked his car at the corner of Munzer’s little street just as dusk was falling. The parked car was a giveaway, but what did it matter? For all Taylor knew, the Soviets had already wired Munzer’s apartment.

Taylor knocked loudly on Munzer’s door.

“Kim o?” asked Munzer in Turkish. Who is it?

“Arkadas,” answered Taylor. A friend.

“Who friend?” demanded Munzer in English.

“Come on, for chrissake, open up!”

Munzer opened the door. He was dressed in his pajama bottoms and a sleeveless T-shirt. He looked puzzled.

“Why for you come?” he asked sleepily. “Is okay everything?”

“Yes. Everything is fine. But I need to talk to you about something. I want to store some things here, where they’ll be safe.”

“What things, please?”

“Why don’t you sit down, Munzer. This is pretty important.”

“Okay, okay.” He walked to the living room and sat down in a chair.

“Now listen, my friend. I told you back in Brooklyn that we were getting serious about liberating Turkestan, and I meant it. And don’t forget, that’s what you wanted.”

“I no forget. What you got in there?” He pointed to the box.

“Some surprises. For the Russians.” He opened the box very carefully and took out a fat sack containing a whitish substance.

“What is this?”

“Explosive,” whispered Taylor.

“Allah!” Munzer’s sleepy eyes suddenly lit up. Taylor couldn’t tell whether it was from fear or joy.

“Don’t touch it. Don’t look at it. Don’t think about it. Just put it somewhere out of the way. Do you have a closet?”

“Yes. Here is closet.” Munzer opened a door at the back of the room.

“Let’s put it there, then.”

“What this is for, please?” asked Munzer as Taylor carried the box across the room and gingerly laid it down.

“For operations.”

“Where?”

“Can you keep a secret, my friend, until the day you die?”

Munzer pounded his heart and growled an unintelligible oath.

“I trust you, Munzer. So I’m going to show you some of the targets.”

He took the large manila envelope in his hand and removed the drawings, handing them one by one to Munzer. With each piece of paper, Munzer breathed a sigh of amazement, adding an occasional oath of battle.

“I am showing you these things because I need your help. It’s not safe to keep them at the consulate, so I want to leave them here for a few days. Is that all right?”

“Yes, please.”

“What’s the safest place in your apartment?”

Munzer thought a long moment. “Under mattress,” he said.

It was an obvious hiding place, the place a good thief would check first, but Taylor didn’t mind. He walked solemnly to the bedroom with Munzer, raised the mattress a few inches, and slid the manila envelope onto the box spring. Taylor glanced at Munzer and noticed that the round-faced little Uzbek man was standing at attention, like a soldier.

“I have to go soon,” said Taylor. “Any questions?”

“This very big secret,” said Munzer.

“Yes. Very big.”

“Munzer can talk about it with anybody?”

“No,” said Taylor.

“Can I tell my Turkestani brothers, please, that at last we have real army?”

“Do you really trust any of them?”

“My friend Khojaev maybe?”

“But he’s a journalist. They all talk too much.”

“There is Kirdarov.”

“Where’s his family from?”

“Kirgizia.”

“Too dangerous. He may have contacts with the Chinese.”

“What about Abdallah? He keep some big secrets, I think.”

“Are you sure you trust him?”

“Yes, why not?”

“Okay. You can tell Abdallah we’re planning operations. But that’s it. And no details.”

“Okay. Promise.”

“One more thing, Munzer. Come here a minute.” Taylor motioned him toward the bathroom.

Taylor led Munzer into the john and turned on the water faucet. Then he leaned toward Munzer and spoke quietly, under the sound of the running water.

“Don’t you touch either of these containers, under any circumstances. Do you understand me? I have marked each of them so that I will be able to tell if anyone other than me has opened them. And if that person is you, you’re finished. Got it?”

“Okay. Munzer understand.”

Taylor turned off the water and walked back to the entrance hall. At the door, Munzer gave him a hug and a kiss on both cheeks.

It took just a week. Taylor returned to Munzer’s apartment the following Tuesday with a device that would show whether anyone had tampered with the parcels. And to his great satisfaction, he found that both had indeed been opened. The hand-drawn maps had undoubtedly been photographed, one by one. One bag of explosive had also been opened, presumably so that a tiny sample could be removed and analyzed back in Moscow. Taylor didn’t let on that the parcels had been opened. But he did badger Munzer once more about security, just to make sure that he hadn’t snuck a peek.

“Are they all right, please? Nobody touching?”

“They’re fine,” said Taylor. “No problem. I’ll take them back now.”

“Why? Is time now for operation to begin?”

“Yes, it’s time. I have to get this stuff to the people who will actually be using it.”

“Munzer can go?”

“No, my friend. Not yet.”

“Soon, please. Munzer want to be there when war start.”

34

The first bomb arrived in Tashkent in late summer, carried in the hand luggage of an Indian businessman from Delhi. He had been in the city five days, negotiating an agreement to purchase cotton from the vast collective farms in northwestern Uzbekistan, and he was scheduled to leave that night on a flight to Kabul and thence back to Delhi. His name, so far as it mattered to Stone and his friends, was QRCOMFORT. His passport identified him as Ramchandra P. Desai.

It was a bright summer afternoon, the sort of day when Uzbek party officials like to show off the capital of their republic. Tashkent was a city of broad boulevards, three-lined streets, a splendid park bisecting the center of the city, with rose gardens and graceful fountains. The Paris of Uzbekistan, you might say. The great advantage Tashkent had was that the wretched buildings