Siro Page 7

  Stone was always surprised when people came to see him, even the regulars like Peltz. For he was trying, in his way, to be invisible. His office was small and austere, far from the busy corridors on the seventh floor inhabited by Hinkle and his coterie of special assistants. Stone’s office was like one of those London clubs that have no name on the door, so that you can’t find them unless you already know where they are. When he moved into this hideaway from the grand office he had occupied as chief of the Near East Division, Stone had brought just one thing with him. It was his framed epigram from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, which read: “Gaze not too long into the abyss, lest the abyss gaze back at you.”

  “You busy?” asked Peltz.

  “Not at all,” said Stone. “I was just heading to Crane’s party.”

  “You’ll like this one,” said Peltz with a wink. He entered the office, closed the door behind him, and handed Stone the cable from Istanbul.

  Stone read the message and smiled. “This is a silly operation,” he said. “Why should I like it?”

  “Because it’s enterprising.”

  “I suppose so. At least someone is having some fun. Who is Mr. Amos B. Garrett, by the way?”

  “Alan Taylor. Nice kid. Actually, he’s not a kid. He’s almost forty.”

  “Still a kid in my book,” said Stone. He handed the cable back to Peltz. “I’ll wager you dollars to doughnuts his little foray won’t produce anything. Is that still a good bet, dollars to doughnuts?”

  “Yeah. If they’re cheap doughnuts.”

  “Keep me posted, would you?”

  “Absolutely. As long as I’m around.”

  Stone shook his head. “Don’t tell me you’re on the purge list.”

  “So I hear.”

  “I’m sorry. Maybe I can say something to someone. Although the front office doesn’t seem to take my suggestions too seriously these days.”

  “Forget it,” said Peltz. “Who wants to work for these assholes anyway, right?”

  Stone shook his head again and looked at his watch. “Forgive me,” he said. “I’m late for Crane’s party. Are you coming? We’ll have a drink on Hinkle.”

  “No way,” said Peltz. “I’ve been to enough retirement parties the last few months to last a lifetime. Anyway, if I saw Hinkle I’d probably slug him. Where’s everybody going later?”

  “I don’t know,” said Stone. “Probably to Oak Hill Inn. That’s where these affairs always seem to end up.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you there,” said Peltz. He opened the door and ambled back down the hall toward the operations center, cable in hand.

  The party was for Alton Crane, who was leaving the clandestine service after twenty-five years. It was held in the executive dining room on the seventh floor, just down the hall from the director’s office. In attendance were Crane’s semi-alcoholic wife, Betty, and his two sons—one with long hair and a beard who was “into carpentry,” the other with short, blow-dried hair who was selling stocks and bonds for the family firm. They were, in their genteel disarray, the standard Washington Wasp family of the late 1970s. The guests were all trying hard to be cheery, talking about what a great run Alton had had, and how much he must be looking forward to getting out of the business and doing a little sailing, or fishing, or whatever it was that he had been longing to do all these years. But everyone knew that Crane was being pushed out the door.

  Hinkle made a brief appearance, thanked Crane for his many years of meritorious service, and presented him with an intelligence medal of the sort they give newly arrived KGB defectors to make them feel important. Then Hinkle left and went back to his office a few doors down the hall. He didn’t even stop to shake hands. The new director seemed to understand that he was intensely disliked by virtually everyone in the room. He had that much sense, at least.

  Stone scanned the room. It was a picture of a generation in retreat. In one corner stood a cluster of old China hands, who had broken their picks against the impenetrable wall of Mao’s China only to see it suddenly open to America in the early 1970s; it was still impossible for most of them to imagine that the United States now conducted joint intelligence operations with Beijing. Nearby was the small remnant still fighting the war in Southeast Asia, still haunted by memories of agents left on hilltops in Laos and street corners in Saigon during the last desperate days. In another corner were the Arabists, who had spent their careers trying unsuccessfully to contain the world’s most intractable conflict and who had, in the process, taken on the elaborate politeness and deviousness of their agents in Beirut and Cairo. And in the middle of the room, embracing all the disparate factions, were the Russia hands; they counted it a blessing if they made it to retirement without being falsely accused of spying for Moscow. So much talent, so many bright careers, devoted to the task of treading water in the polar sea of the Cold War.

  The only person in the room who seemed entirely at ease was Crane himself. He had already imbibed several gin martinis and was trying to enliven all the long-faced colleagues who wanted to commiserate with him. In fact, Crane looked immensely relieved that the whole business was finally over. Stone approached him after Hinkle had left the room.

  “Congratulations,” said Stone.

  “On what?” he answered.

  “Your medal.”

  “Forget it,” said Crane. “You want to know the truth? I can’t wait to get out. I feel sorry for you poor buggers who have to stay. You have to keep up pretenses. Not me. I’ve done my bit. La guerre est finie.” He was smiling as he said it, which made it almost believable.

  “You had a good run, Alton,” said Stone, echoing the party line. He tried to remember just what Crane had done. Germany, along with everyone else; Mexico City; Manila; Rome. No major triumphs, no major flaps. Perhaps it really had been a good run.

  “Did you hear about the lawyers?” asked Crane, still smiling.

  “I don’t believe so,” said Stone.

  “New edict from Hinkle, just announced today. They’re putting lawyers on permanent assignment in all the big stations in Europe so that they’ll be closer to the action. Just to make sure nobody does anything creative.”

  “I once considered becoming a lawyer,” said Stone. “Perhaps I made a mistake.”

  “Nonsense,” said Crane. “You’d make a lousy lawyer. Anyway, you’re all that’s left around here. They need you.”

  Stone looked around the room at the collection of old boys, has-beens and hangers-on. “For what?” he asked.

  Crane laughed. “You poor buggers,” he said again. As he spoke, another well-wisher approached and Stone stepped back toward the door.

  “See you later?” called out Crane.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Oak Hill Inn. Please come. My wife wants to talk to you.”

  Stone winced. “Maybe.”

  “I’m counting on you.”

  “I’ll try,” said Stone.

  Stone did put in a brief appearance at Oak Hill Inn, a tidy establishment on a hill overlooking Route 123 whose virtues included proximity to CIA headquarters. By the time he arrived, Betty Crane was thoroughly plastered and arguing with whoever happened her way, while Alton was singing Cole Porter songs to his secretary, a Hispanic woman in her mid-twenties with chunky thighs and a big chest. To Stone’s great relief, he saw Harry Peltz walking toward him out of a cloud of cigarette smoke near the bar.

  “What are you drinking?” asked Stone.

  “Double whiskey,” answered Harry. “No water. No ice. No nothing.”

  Stone ordered one for Harry and one for himself. It was not a night to be abstemious. Stone took his drink and walked Peltz toward a corner, farther from the Cranes.

  “Has Alton been banging his secretary?” asked Peltz, looking back toward the guest of honor and his Latin song mate.

  “I’m not really the person to ask,” answered Stone. “Until now, I didn’t know that Alton had a secretary.”

  “He’s going to hate r
etirement. All that time with Betty. He’s going to go nuts.”

  “That’s not what he says. He told me at the party how happy he was to be leaving.”

  “Bullshit. That’s just because he hates Hinkle so much. None of the old boys likes the idea of leaving. Not even me.”

  Stone wanted to change the subject. He was tired of talking about retirement, tired of feeling as if he were attending a permanent wake. “What’s happening in your shop?” he asked. “Heard anything more from Istanbul?”

  “Nada,” said Peltz. “Why are you so convinced that operation is a loser anyway?”

  “Why?” said Stone, looking at his whiskey glass. He didn’t usually answer questions about operations, even from old friends. He took a long drink of scotch and looked at Peltz. “Because it’s so old-fashioned. Even if it succeeds, so what? Who really cares what they’re saying in the Soviet consulate in Istanbul. It’s not for real. Do you follow me?”

  “Not really.”

  “What I mean is that it’s static. That’s our problem. We’ve been watching the Soviets so long that we’ve begun to see things their way. They say they’re a superpower and we believe them, so we try to bug their offices and recruit their people. Why? The whole thing is a fraud. It’s a house of cards. We don’t need to spend any more time looking at it. We need to knock it over. That’s somewhat heretical, but do you see what I’m getting at?”

  “Honestly, no. You’re over my head. What have you got cooking anyway?”

  “Not much.”

  “C’mon.”

  “The usual. Playing games. Knocking on doors to see who’s there. But honestly, it doesn’t amount to much.”

  “Cut the crap. What’s up?”

  Stone smiled serenely. “Sorry, I can’t tell you.”

  “That’s okay,” said Peltz. “Who cares. Let’s have another drink.”

  “Do me a favor,” said Stone. “If this fellow Taylor in Istanbul stumbles onto anything noteworthy, let me know. That is a part of the world that interests me a good deal.”

  “Definitely,” said Peltz. He repaired to the bar and returned with two more double whiskeys.

  “To the future,” said Stone, raising his glass.

  “No way,” said Peltz. “To the past.”

  So they toasted the glorious past, and the sorry present, and a good many other things as well. When Crane’s secretary announced that it was time to form a conga line and Crane lined up behind her and put his hands firmly on her ass, Stone decided it was time to leave. Bidding farewell to the noisy group, he had an odd sensation: Headquarters had come to resemble an aging and somewhat tacky cruise ship that was drifting aimlessly offshore; on land, in the outposts of what still passed for the real world, the imperial legions were trying their best to maintain order. It was pathetic. Stone had a plan, beginning to take shape in the neat compartments of his mind. But for now, the best he could do was watch the sorry spectacle—and wait for usable pieces of debris to drift by.

  8

  It was nearly midnight by the time Taylor collected George at his hotel, and Istiklal Avenue had filled with its nighttime population of pimps, street vendors, shoeshine boys, drag queens and political pamphleteers. Most of these night dwellers had the dark, intense features that marked them as Kurds: eyes so black they gave off no reflection; hair so black it seemed like animal fur. Istiklal was a narrow street, crowning the top of a ridge, and the hawkers and merchants clung to the gaudy strip of asphalt as if they feared they might fall off the edge of the world if they strayed too far.

  What those Kurdish vendors found on Istiklal Avenue was a piece of the First World. It was like Hamra Street in Beirut or Connaught Road in Hong Kong, a place where the fashions and accents and ideas were foreign and liberating, rather than native and limiting. It had been the same a century ago, when the district was known as Pera, and all the wealth and arrogance of Europe was compressed into those few city blocks atop the ridge. It was more “Turkish” now; you were more likely to hear Bulent Ersoy in the cafés than Brahms, but the mystique was the same. If you were a poor Kurd from Erzurum in the East, any little bit of the West that rubbed off was a blessing. You might never drive a Mercedes car down the grand boulevard, but you could at least stand on the sidewalk at midnight and smoke a Marlboro.

  “First stop, Giraffe Street,” said Taylor when he greeted George.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ll see,” Taylor said, smiling. He noticed that George was still carrying his little bag of tools. “You won’t need those on Giraffe Street,” he said.

  “Never travel without them,” answered George. Taylor rolled his eyes.

  The driver deposited them at Galata Tower, an ancient monument built by Genoese traders which in recent years had marked the edge of the red-light district. From there, they walked down a steep hill until they came to an iron gate manned by two scruffy-looking policemen. Through the gate was a narrow alley thronged with Turkish men of various ages and growths of mustache. The street sign said: “Zurafa Cadessi.”

  “Giraffe Street,” said Taylor, smiling at the policemen and pushing George through the gate.

  “Why do they call it that?” asked George as they walked down a slight hill toward the first cluster of men. As they neared the crowd, the answer became obvious. There stood several dozen Turkish gentlemen, craning their necks to look through the window of a small establishment at the bodies of two semi-clothed women.

  “Let’s look!” said George.

  “All right,” said Taylor, pushing his friend toward the front of the crowd. “You asked for it.”

  Before them was a shop, perhaps fifteen feet across, lit by a bright fluorescent light. And under this garish light were two of the most surpassingly ugly women Taylor had ever seen, posing for the assembled throng. One was tall and thin, wearing black panties and a cutoff T-shirt that revealed the bottoms of her droopy tits. The other was short and very fat, dressed only in a pair of pink panties. She had turned away from the window to give the crowd a view of her ass. What an extraordinary sight it was! Taylor studied the way the arc of pink fabric spread across the puckering flesh of her backside. It was a vast distance and the material was stretched so tight that the threads at the edges were beginning to fray.

  “That’s your gal,” said Taylor, pointing to the fat one. “For a mere two dollars. Plus tips. Plus sheets.”

  The lady in pink was winking at George. He was smiling back, and for a moment Taylor thought he might actually open the door and engage her services.

  “A little friendly advice,” said Taylor. “Don’t let her get on top.”

  “She’s definitely my type,” said George, “but I think we should keep looking.”

  A few yards down the cobbled street they came to the next establishment, as brightly lit as the first. This was an altogether better spot. The women were younger and prettier, but their breasts were covered, which somewhat reduced the crowd of gawkers outside. “Our Turkish friends tend to be lookers, not buyers,” explained Taylor as he pushed toward the window. “A lot of them are just here for a free tit show.”

  When they reached the front, they could see two women posed against a cheap tile mosaic of a Mediterranean beach scene. One was dressed in a yellow leotard, cut low on the sides to reveal a bit of flesh; she looked as if she might have escaped from a Turkish aerobics class. The other was a young girl, no more than sixteen or seventeen, seated on a stool. She gazed out at the crowd in icy splendor—not moving a muscle as the dozens of eyes stared at her face and body. It was, thought Taylor, a triumph of self-possession and self-disgust.

  “Let’s go in and do a little bargaining,” he said.

  “Mmmmm,” agreed George.

  As Taylor opened the glass door, the resident pimp emerged from behind the stairs. He was a short fat man, dressed in a sleeveless undershirt, with a stubby cigarette dangling from his lips.

  “Hello, my brother,” said Taylor in Turkish. “These are lovely girls, as f
resh as flowers.” The girl in the yellow leotard smiled and tittered. She was surprised to hear a Westerner speak Turkish.

  “Thank you, abi,” said the pimp. “They are clean, thanks be to Allah.”

  “Perhaps I could talk to them?”

  “As you like, abi.” He was looking at Taylor more and more suspiciously. In truth, other than rowdy sailors from the Sixth Fleet, few Westerners wandered down Giraffe Street.

  Taylor looked back through the window and saw that the crowd had grown. Looking at the anonymous faces pressed against the window, wide-eyed and horny, he wished he could free these little Turkish birds from their cage.

  “I like the yellow one,” said George.

  “Smart fellow,” replied Taylor, steering George toward the girl in the leotard, who was by now batting her eyelashes quite furiously.

  “Hello, pistachio,” he said. In Turkish, the word for pistachio—fistik—was a term of endearment for shapely women. The girl smiled.

  “What is your name?” asked Taylor in Turkish.

  “Gungor.”

  “What did she say?” asked George.

  “Gungor. That’s her name.”

  “What kind of a name is that?”

  “Turkish, dummy.”

  George laughed. The young lady in yellow laughed, too, although she hadn’t a clue what they were saying. The Turkish pimp did not laugh. He appeared to be upset by the bilingual conversation, the laughter and the general confusion that had resulted from the entrance of the two Americans.

  “We are under the Turkish flag here,” he said in his most dignified tone. “We speak Turkish!”

  “Kasura bakma,” said Taylor politely. Pardon me. Don’t make anything of it.

  The dignity of the pimp appeared to have been assuaged, and Taylor was about to resume bargaining when he saw a sudden look of terror in the pimp’s eyes.