The Miernik Dossier

by Charles McCarry

  MIERNIK: I will wait for your letter. Good-bye.

  “ZOFIA”: Good-bye, Tadeusz.

  15. LETTER FROM ILONA BENTLEY, ADDRESSED TO AN ACCOMMODATION ADDRESS IN BERLIN USED BY A SOVIET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE (TRANSLATION FROM RUSSIAN).

  Darling Heinz,

  Spring has come to Geneva, and I am foolishly happy about it. The city’s face has changed in a week from that of an old man to that of a young girl with flowers in her hair. Blossoms everywhere, smiles everywhere. It hardly seems possible that a month ago the wind they call the Bise was blowing down the lake, that the bridge railings were curtained with ice, that people were so distressed that one read almost every day of another suicide. (The Swiss are bizarre suicides, they always find some way to do it that not even a Hungarian would have imagined: one man suffocated himself in January by placing a transparent plastic bag over his head, sealing it around his throat with a large rubber band. “He drowned in his own breath!” said La Suisse.)

  My little love affair continues. I see him every day. He says nothing of his work. I accuse him of being interested only in an affair of bodies. He laughs. He is not always a gay lover, he has black moods when he will not speak. The state of the world troubles him; he believes that civilization is going into a long night, that the bomb will be dropped, that history is one long prank designed to be played on our generation. On this subject he will not laugh. I never see him on Saturdays. He gets into his car and goes to the Alps. He wears climbing clothes, but perhaps this is a disguise. I accuse him of meeting some wild girl on a mountainside. I have threatened to follow him to see if this is true. I can see that the threat disturbs him. Do you think that I should do this? I should not confront the other girl, if there is one. I should hide behind a tree and watch, perhaps take pictures. Tell me, dear Heinz, if this is what a jealous woman should do?

  My lover and I went to an extraordinary party on Sunday night. Our host was M. (You remember that you thought you knew this man.) He became very drunk and did a wild dance, spinning like a trained bear with me in his arms. It was quite exhilarating, in a way. However, M. has the most extraordinary body odor I have ever smelled. It rose from him in waves. The stink pulsed; it was almost visible. The police came and our host insulted them. I am afraid that there will be repercussions. It was silly, because the policeman meant to do nothing except warn about the noise. Yet M. made a terrible fuss. It was ugly, self-destructive. I thought that he must have wanted trouble. Perhaps that is too fanciful—I am studying abnormal psychology at the moment.

  I made the mistake of being sympathetic to M. I even kissed him, in a sisterly way, as he lay panting on the floor after our dance. Now, to my astonishment, he has phoned to ask if I will dine with him. He is a friend of my little friend’s. Men are such traitors! His company is very dull. Nevertheless, I said that I would go out to a restaurant with him. It may be interesting. I wonder what the effect would be if I told my lover of this engagement. Of course I shall not tell him. Let him be spared the suspicion he has caused me. It will be amusing to deceive him a little with a man who smells like a corpse. If anything truly amusing happens, I shall write to tell you all about it.

  Always your affectionate friend,

  [signed] Annelise

  16. REPORT TO WASHINGTON BY THE AMERICAN CHIEF OF STATION IN GENEVA (22 MAY).

  1. It is our preliminary judgment, based on Christopher’s reporting and certain other information, that Tadeusz Miernik is attempting to defect to a Western country for operational reasons dictated by the Polish intelligence service. The possibility that the Soviets may be involved in this operation cannot be ignored.

  2. Miernik is conducting a stagy show of despair for the benefit of Christopher and other Westerners (e.g., Nigel Collins and Léon Brochard, both of whom are assumed to be agents of their respective national intelligence services). Miernik’s intention seems to be to arouse the sympathy of his friends on a personal level, and the interest of their intelligence services on an official level. The technique has been used before by the Poles. The elaborate nature of the “trimmings” (representations to the WRO by the Polish ambassador, the convenient expiration date of Miernik’s passport, the alleged existence of a hostage sister in Poland) is characteristic of Polish operations.

  3. Outside of his personal contacts with Christopher and his other friends, Miernik has behaved in a most rational manner. He has continued to function in his job. He has arranged an assignation with Collins’ mistress (though the reason behind this may be operational, it’s possible that the girl is his cutout). Except for the breakdowns in personal discipline that Christopher has conveniently witnessed and reported, Miernik has maintained his normal schedule and his usual behavior, with two significant exceptions.

  4. These two exceptions are his clandestine meeting with Kirnov in the early hours of the morning and his telephone call to Warsaw a little later the same morning. Many of the phrases in this conversation, ostensibly with his sister, could be construed to be a code for telephone use (“There is snow in the Alps,” etc.). If our assumption is correct that Kirnov is a Soviet agent, then there is only one logical explanation for his meeting with Miernik. If Kirnov is clean, then there really is no explanation why he should call on Miernik between three and four o’clock in the morning and spend the entire visit pounding on a typewriter.

  5. It can be assumed that Miernik has some immediate operational assignment that depends on a successful defection. If his defection were authentic, or if he were being defected as a longterm asset to the Poles, he would presumably just walk into an embassy and ask for asylum.

  6. Please advise whether we should attempt to determine Miernik’s possible assignment through closer surveillance, including audio surveillance of his apartment and telephone.

  17. TRANSCRIPTION OF A CONVERSATION BETWEEN MIERNIK AND ILONA BENTLEY (LISTENING DEVICE LOG; 26 MAY).

  (Door opens and closes. Indistinct voices of two subjects. Sound of ice tray being emptied. etc.)

  MIERNIK: I behaved very badly to Inge. I’m sure Léon is angry.

  BENTLEY: Why should he be? Everyone has strong feelings. Léon understands that, if anyone does.

  MIERNIK: But the French are so preoccupied with themselves.

  BENTLEY: I suppose that the Poles are not. Or the English, or the Eskimos. You shouldn’t whip yourself, Tadeusz.

  MIERNIK: Humanity should make a treaty with itself never to talk about the Germans.

  BENTLEY: I’ll sign it.

  MIERNIK: You must have more feeling about them than you let on. I can’t believe . . .

  BENTLEY: As I said, I was young.

  MIERNIK: But old enough to remember.

  BENTLEY: When I am reminded, yes.

  MIERNIK: I’m sorry. We’ll talk about other things. The Polish Question.

  BENTLEY: That hasn’t been answered?

  MIERNIK: Not for the Poles. You know the story about the Frenchman, the Englishman, the American, and the Pole who were asked to write about elephants? The Frenchman wrote about the sexual life of the elephant, the Englishman about the way the elephant treated small dogs, the American about the mass production of elephants. The Pole wrote a twenty-thousand-word monograph entitled “The Elephant and the Polish Question.”

  BENTLEY: (Laughs.)

  MIERNIK: You are extremely beautiful.

  BENTLEY: When I laugh?

  MIERNIK: At all times. Was your mother dark like you?

  BENTLEY: Yes. My father was fair, like Nigel. English fairness.

  MIERNIK: As soon as I say you are beautiful, you mention Nigel.

  BENTLEY: That is the Hungarian part of me. Subtle.

  MIERNIK: I like Nigel very much. I wonder if you do not find him frivolous.

  BENTLEY: Why should I? He’s sort of solemn.

  MIERNIK: That side of him I have never seen, except when he is doing his job. Then he has the Foreign Office manner. He glows with secrets, there is a dynamo of class privilege smoking under his good manner
s. But at all other times he does nothing but joke.

  BENTLEY: They learn all that at school in England. It means nothing.

  MIERNIK: You find it attractive?

  BENTLEY: I find it irrelevant.

  MIERNIK: In Nigel’s case only, or in the English as a whole?

  BENTLEY: I’m English.

  MIERNIK: Half.

  BENTLEY: Half, then. But I don’t notice English manners particularly. I notice yours.

  MIERNIK: Mine? Why?

  BENTLEY: Because they are different from my own.

  MIERNIK: And from Nigel’s?

  BENTLEY: Yes. He would never mention any unhappiness he may have had. You mention little else. It’s a difference in cultures more than personality.

  MIERNIK: Perhaps he has never been unhappy in the way that I have been unhappy.

  BENTLEY: Nonsense. Everyone is unhappy.

  MIERNIK: Even you?

  BENTLEY: Even I.

  MIERNIK: Even the beautiful are unhappy. That is very disillusioning.

  BENTLEY: You’re an idiot.

  MIERNIK: No, it’s important that the ugly, the miserable believe that the beautiful are serene.

  BENTLEY: :What an idea. The Edwardians thought that nothing gave the poor greater pleasure than the sight of a rich man. That’s an odd viewpoint for a modern Communist.

  MIERNIK: You think I’m a Communist?

  BENTLEY: Well, aren’t you?

  MIERNIK: No.

  BENTLEY: Why on earth not?

  MIERNIK: Why on earth should I be?

  BENTLEY: The Polish Question. Surely that’s a Communist question from now on?

  MIERNIK: No.

  BENTLEY: But they control your country. They will go on controlling it for the rest of your life, unless Nigel is right and the bombs go off.

  MIERNIK: The bombs?

  BENTLEY: The H-bomb. The Americans will fry us all.

  MIERNIK: Nigel thinks that?

  BENTLEY: Don’t you?

  MIERNIK: No. The Americans do not make horror.

  BENTLEY: Ha! Ask the Japanese.

  MIERNIK: The Americans were out of character when they did that. They say it saved lives because they didn’t have to invade. Perhaps they’re right.

  BENTLEY: They were simply trying to keep the Russians out of Japan. Pure capitalist thinking. They wanted a client state in Asia. Markets.

  MIERNIK: Ilona, I think you are a Communist!

  BENTLEY: Would that be so terrible, if I were?

  MIERNIK: Ugly. It would be ugly. Tell me that you aren’t.

  BENTLEY: All right. I’m not. Am I less ugly now?

  MIERNIK: Infinitely.

  BENTLEY: : You interest me. Your emotions are so generalized. The Polish Question, the Germans, the Communists. What do you feel as an individual towards other individuals?

  MIERNIK: Everything. Despite my nose.

  BENTLEY: Your nose? What’s wrong with your nose?

  MIERNIK: Cyrano, c’est moi.

  BENTLEY: Nonsense. It doesn’t matter in a man. Even Cyrano found that out. He got Roxane in the end, didn’t he?

  MIERNIK: Truth in life and truth in art are not the same.

  BENTLEY: You think women don’t like you?

  MIERNIK: I think that it’s safer to assume that they don’t.

  BENTLEY: What nonsense.

  MIERNIK: A matter of experience. I should be terrified to kiss you.

  BENTLEY: My God.

  MIERNIK: It’s true. Your beauty frightens me.

  BENTLEY: Frightens you? Really frightens you?

  MIERNIK: Yes.

  BENTLEY: Come here.

  MIERNIK: I think not, Ilona.

  BENTLEY: Come here.

  MIERNIK: The beauty and the beast. I’ll get you another drink.

  BENTLEY: Come here.

  (A pause in the tape. Male voice groans.)

  BENTLEY: Did that terrify you?

  MIERNIK: A little.

  BENTLEY: You’re going to sit down again? You’re going to stop?

  MIERNIK: What else should I do?

  BENTLEY: You really are afraid. You’re really afraid.

  MIERNIK: I told you I was.

  BENTLEY: That’s very exciting. Is your heart beating very fast? Let me feel. No, under the shirt. Yes, feel that. It’s leaping in its cage, poor heart.

  MIERNIK: Ilona, you’re cruel.

  BENTLEY: Tell me that later. Here, put your hand there. On my skin. My heart isn’t at all like yours, is it? Do you feel anything?

  MIERNIK: It’s a very calm heart.

  BENTLEY: There, now feel it. There is no cloth in the way now. Move your hand. You’ve touched breasts before. Haven’t you?

  MIERNIK: Yes.

  BENTLEY: Wait. Now you can touch everything. Get up. Take off your clothes. Take them off. Quickly. You’re covered with hair. That’s very exciting. You are a beast. No, stay standing. I’ll take off your shoes. You’re very big, bigger than Nigel. He has no hair, just a little there and around there. He has no skin at the end. The end of yours is moist. It smells like the forest, like ferns in the forest.

  MIERNIK: Ilona, my God.

  BENTLEY: Come down on the floor. Take off your glasses. Put your face there. Kiss. How do I smell? Do you like that smell? Is it a forest smell? Is it a sweet taste? Not inside so much. Find the place. Find the place. There. Sweetly, do it sweetly. Now kiss my mouth. Yes. Taste yourself, taste myself. Turn over. Let me see it. It’s beating too, like your heart. Feel the wet, feel the warm. You’re beating inside me like a heart. Now you’re happy. Now you’re beautiful.

  (Long pause in tape.)

  BENTLEY: You make love with your eyes closed.

  MIERNIK: I do?

  BENTLEY: You do. Why do you close your eyes?

  MIERNIK: I don’t know. Don’t you?

  BENTLEY: Never. I watch faces.

  MIERNIK: What do you see?

  BENTLEY: I don’t know. Pain.

  MIERNIK: You saw pain in me?

  BENTLEY: I think so.

  MIERNIK: It was not pain, Ilona.

  BENTLEY: Did all this surprise you?

  MIERNIK: It positively astonished me.

  BENTLEY: You didn’t say so.

  MIERNIK: There’s a time for keeping quiet.

  BENTLEY: Did my talking disturb you?

  MIERNIK: I never heard anyone talk like that.

  BENTLEY: Sometimes I say worse things.

  MIERNIK: Like what?

  BENTLEY: You’ll hear in a minute.

  MIERNIK: Say only beautiful things. You are too beautiful.

  BENTLEY: Would you say I’m good at it?

  MIERNIK: Yes.

  BENTLEY: So are you, my lad. It’s all that hair, and the smell of you.

  MIERNIK: Thanks.

  BENTLEY: I’m trying to make you laugh. One should laugh after sex. Between sex.

  MIERNIK: Laugh?

  BENTLEY: Out of the joy of it. It’s all we have, Tadeusz. Bits of flesh that fit together.

  MIERNIK: We have more than that.

  BENTLEY: You think so?

  MIERNIK: Why did you do this, Ilona?

  BENTLEY: Because I wanted to. I wanted to see your face.

  MIERNIK: Nothing more than that?

  BENTLEY: I’ve told you. That’s enough. In fact, that’s everything.

  MIERNIK: I don’t think so.

  BENTLEY: You thought so five minutes ago, didn’t you?

  MIERNIK: That was five minutes ago.

  BENTLEY: Yes. I’ll make you think so again in a minute. Keep your eyes open this time.

  18. INTELLIGENCE REPORT FROM THE AMERICAN STATION IN KHARTOUM.

  1. The revolutionary-terrorist organization calling itself the Anointed Liberation Front (ALF) plans to move during June and July from its training ground in the Darfur highlands in western Sudan to a variety of large villages and small cities. Teams of trained men, usually numbering from three to seven, will carry out the assassination of important pub
lic figures, disruption of communications, small-scale attacks against police outposts, and exemplary punishment (i.e., torture and assassination) of those who refuse to cooperate with the ALF.

  2. The leadership of the ALF consists of two Sudanese of unusually good educational and social background. Both were trained in the USSR in ideology, organization techniques, weapons, demolition, and communications. Of these two, one whom we have code-named Firecracker was recruited by us before his departure to the Soviet Union. He has remained our prime source of information about the ALF, although we have penetrated the organization with several other agents of lower rank.

  3. Firecracker states that the ALF is well equipped with submachine guns, grenades, explosives, and other small weapons. All weapons are of American or Belgian manufacture. The weapons, together with medical supplies and other materiel, were dropped by parachute into the Darfur region from unmarked DC-3’s painted gray. Six Land Rovers, with false Sudanese registration, were driven across the border from Egypt and through the desert. A number of camels were purchased with funds provided before Firecracker and his companion left Moscow. Total funds currently available to the ALF are estimated by Firecracker at £5,000 (US $14,000).

  4. In the six months since the return of the two Sudanese agents from the USSR, approximately one hundred men have been recruited and trained as three-, five-, and seven-man teams. Strict compartmentation of teams has been observed, so that the members of one team do not know the names or faces of those in any other team. The teams follow the Soviet practice of using code names even within the teams or cells, so that members know each other only under noms de guerre. Firecracker has been able to furnish us with true names for 61 of those involved.

  5. The objective of ALF is to arouse an Arab resistance to the central government. After the terrorist stage, it is expected that this Arab organization will merge with the non-Arab resistance that has been attempting to operate in the South. The ALF theater of operations will be confined to an area north of a line running from El Fasher in the West to Om Ager on the Ethiopian border. This area includes about half the territory of Sudan, and most of the major population centers.

  6. ALF, as its name suggests, hopes to pass itself off as a revolutionary religious movement in the Mahdist tradition. At the moment it has attracted no figure of sufficient stature from the Islamic community to serve as its leader. Firecracker reports that the ALF is under heavy pressure from Moscow to recruit such a figure.