The Counterfeit Agent Read Online Free PDF Page A

wanted drama. Any tourist who didn’t understand the game—which every guidebook explained in detail—deserved to be fleeced.
    Taylor expected to be in the city three days. He stayed three weeks, flying home the afternoon before fall term started. He knew his sudden ardor was silly, but was falling for a city more absurd than falling for a woman? Both required a willingness to suspend disbelief. Anyway, now he had what every college student wanted. A goal, and a path to reach it. He would learn Turkish, move to Istanbul after graduation. Turkey had eighty million people and a fast-growing economy. Big companies needed Americans who spoke the language. And the University of Massachusetts shared an excellent Turkish program with other colleges around Amherst. He expected his parents to push back. They didn’t. Dad:
It’ll make you a lot more hirable than a history degree.
Mom:
I always wanted to live somewhere exotic.
Turkish was tough, but Taylor worked hard. By the start of senior year, he was nearly fluent.
    Then al-Qaeda attacked the United States.
    —
    Like his friends, Taylor was terrified and enraged and wanted revenge. Unlike them, he could help. Turkey shared borders with Iraq and Iran. The FSB, Mossad, and Revolutionary Guard all ran major stations in Istanbul. The CIA was badly outgunned. Just four agency officers spoke Turkish. By November, the agency had contacted language programs all over the country in search of candidates. With his 3.8 GPA and spotless background, Taylor jumped out. A recruiter invited him to Boston for a meet-and-greet. The remains of the World Trade Center were still smoldering. He never considered saying no.
    And he had never regretted his decision—not even during his ten-month posting to Iraq, when he’d left the Green Zone only four times. He’d spent most of his career at CIA stations in Istanbul and Ankara, the Turkish capital. Taylor knew he wasn’t a star case officer. The stars worked in Beijing or Kabul or Moscow. But he was reliable, dedicated, and a good fit for Turkey. Though he had joined after September 11, Taylor was something of a throwback. He disliked drones, preferred old-school spying, the careful recruitment of agents from government and business. Guys who lived in mansions, not mud huts. His best sources were mid-level officers in the Turkish army, bureaucrats in the Ministry of Finance.
    So Taylor’s career progressed, and his social life, too. He made a habit of American twenty-somethings who came to town on two-year stints for multinationals. He replaced them easily enough. His years with the agency had given him an appealing air of mystery. His apartment had a killer view of the Bosphorus. Plus he knew every
restaurant in town, and he always picked up the check. Case officers had practically unlimited expense accounts. No accountant at Langley would question a two-hundred-dollar dinner for “recruiting.”
    The CIA promoted Taylor to deputy chief of station in Istanbul on the eleventh anniversary of his hiring. He planned to stay three years, then head back to the United States. He was ready to settle down, have a family. He didn’t think he would ever be a chief. Taylor still believed in the mission, that in some small way he protected the United States. But he supposed that he’d become a careerist. September 11 had faded in his memory, along with everyone else’s.
    —
    Then the letter arrived.
    Almost half a year later, its details were etched in his mind. Noon on a Friday in early September. The consulate mostly empty as the long Labor Day weekend approached. Istanbul stuck in a heat wave, smoking like a kebab on a spit. Taylor’s office was air-conditioned, of course, but through its narrow bulletproof windows the men on the streets looked sullen and irritable.
    A knock on his door. His secretary, Alison. She carried an envelope, holding it by her fingertips. Like it was contaminated. Though the consulate scanned local mail for anthrax and other