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Authors: Stephen Hunter
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and it didn’t matter. She was all earnest angles. Her eyes were softened behind large circular hornrims and a tendril of hair had fallen across her face. She looked a bit irritated, or late or just grumpy. She’s also beautiful, Trewitt realized, in an odd, strong way, an unconventional collection of peculiarities that come together in an unusual and appealing way. Jesus, she’s good-looking.
“One of the Technical Services people got this just last week in Boston, where she teaches at Mr. Melman’s alma mater,” Yost said.
“The Harvard staff didn’t look like that when I was there.” Sam again.
“Somehow Miss Hull managed to get into Kurdistan,” Yost continued. “We don’t know how. She wouldn’t speak to State Department debriefers when she finally got back. But she’s the key to this whole thing. Chardy had a ‘relationship’ with her, in the mountains.”
The word “relationship,” coming at Trewitt through the vague dark in which Yost was just a shape up front, sounded odd in the man’s voice; Yost didn’t care, as a rule, to speculate on a certain range of human behavior involving sexual or emotional passion; he was a man of facts and numbers. Yet he said it anyway, seemed to force it out.
“Chardy will love her still,” Miles Lanahan said. The sharpness of his voice cut through the air. “He’s that kind of guy.”
The woman on the wall regarded them with icy superiority. She was wearing a turtleneck and a tweed sports coat. The shot must have been taken from half a mile away through some giant secret lens, for the distance was foreshortened dramatically and behind her some turreted old hulk of a house, with keeps and ramparts and dozens of gables, all woven with a century’s worth ofvines, loomed dramatically. It’s so Boston, so Cambridge, thought Trewitt.
“Chardy had no brief to cross into Kurdistan. This woman had no right. But they both were there, in the absolute middle of it, with Ulu Beg. They were there for the end. In a sense they
were
the end.”
Yost is discreet in his summary, Trewitt thought. The prosaic truth is that sometime in March of 1975 the Shah of Iran, at Joseph Danzig’s urging and sponsorship, signed a secret treaty with Ahmed Hassam al-Bakr of Iraq. The Kurdish revolution, which was proceeding so splendidly, became expendable. Danzig gave the order; the CIA obeyed it.
The Kurds were cut off, their matériel impounded; they were exiled from Iran.
Chardy, Beg, the woman Hull: they were caught on the wrong side of the wire.
Chardy was captured by Iraqi security forces; Beg and Hull and Beg’s people fled extreme Iraqi military pressure. Fled to where? Fled to nowhere. Trewitt knew that Yost wouldn’t mention it, that even the great Sam Melman wouldn’t mention it. But one passage from Chardy’s testimony before Melman came back to haunt him, now in this dark room among Agency elect, his own career suddenly accelerating, his own membership on the staff of an important operation suddenly achieved.
C: But what about the Kurds?
M: I’m sorry. The scope of this inquiry doesn’t include the Kurds.
The last details are remote, Trewitt knew. Nobody has ever examined them, no books exist, no journalists have exhumed it. Only the Melman report exists, and its treatment is cursory. Joseph Danzig himself has not commentedyet. In the first volume of his memoirs,
Missions for the White House
, he promised to deal with the Kurdish situation at some length; but he has not yet published his second volume and somebody has said he may never. He’s making too much money giving speeches these days.
The fates of the three principals were, however, known: Chardy, captured, was taken to Baghdad and interrogated by a Russian KGB officer named Speshnev. His performance under pressure, Trewitt knew, was a matter of some debate. Some said he was a hero; some said he cracked wide open. He would not discuss it with Melman.
He was returned to the United States after six
“One of the Technical Services people got this just last week in Boston, where she teaches at Mr. Melman’s alma mater,” Yost said.
“The Harvard staff didn’t look like that when I was there.” Sam again.
“Somehow Miss Hull managed to get into Kurdistan,” Yost continued. “We don’t know how. She wouldn’t speak to State Department debriefers when she finally got back. But she’s the key to this whole thing. Chardy had a ‘relationship’ with her, in the mountains.”
The word “relationship,” coming at Trewitt through the vague dark in which Yost was just a shape up front, sounded odd in the man’s voice; Yost didn’t care, as a rule, to speculate on a certain range of human behavior involving sexual or emotional passion; he was a man of facts and numbers. Yet he said it anyway, seemed to force it out.
“Chardy will love her still,” Miles Lanahan said. The sharpness of his voice cut through the air. “He’s that kind of guy.”
The woman on the wall regarded them with icy superiority. She was wearing a turtleneck and a tweed sports coat. The shot must have been taken from half a mile away through some giant secret lens, for the distance was foreshortened dramatically and behind her some turreted old hulk of a house, with keeps and ramparts and dozens of gables, all woven with a century’s worth ofvines, loomed dramatically. It’s so Boston, so Cambridge, thought Trewitt.
“Chardy had no brief to cross into Kurdistan. This woman had no right. But they both were there, in the absolute middle of it, with Ulu Beg. They were there for the end. In a sense they
were
the end.”
Yost is discreet in his summary, Trewitt thought. The prosaic truth is that sometime in March of 1975 the Shah of Iran, at Joseph Danzig’s urging and sponsorship, signed a secret treaty with Ahmed Hassam al-Bakr of Iraq. The Kurdish revolution, which was proceeding so splendidly, became expendable. Danzig gave the order; the CIA obeyed it.
The Kurds were cut off, their matériel impounded; they were exiled from Iran.
Chardy, Beg, the woman Hull: they were caught on the wrong side of the wire.
Chardy was captured by Iraqi security forces; Beg and Hull and Beg’s people fled extreme Iraqi military pressure. Fled to where? Fled to nowhere. Trewitt knew that Yost wouldn’t mention it, that even the great Sam Melman wouldn’t mention it. But one passage from Chardy’s testimony before Melman came back to haunt him, now in this dark room among Agency elect, his own career suddenly accelerating, his own membership on the staff of an important operation suddenly achieved.
C: But what about the Kurds?
M: I’m sorry. The scope of this inquiry doesn’t include the Kurds.
The last details are remote, Trewitt knew. Nobody has ever examined them, no books exist, no journalists have exhumed it. Only the Melman report exists, and its treatment is cursory. Joseph Danzig himself has not commentedyet. In the first volume of his memoirs,
Missions for the White House
, he promised to deal with the Kurdish situation at some length; but he has not yet published his second volume and somebody has said he may never. He’s making too much money giving speeches these days.
The fates of the three principals were, however, known: Chardy, captured, was taken to Baghdad and interrogated by a Russian KGB officer named Speshnev. His performance under pressure, Trewitt knew, was a matter of some debate. Some said he was a hero; some said he cracked wide open. He would not discuss it with Melman.
He was returned to the United States after six
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