7. The information in para. 6 is confirmed by radio messages from Soviet control in Dar es Salaam to ALF. We continue to intercept and decode this radio traffic with the aid of transmission schedules and a code key supplied by Firecracker.
8. We believe that this operation has reached a stage where a decision must be made by Headquarters as to whether we should continue this project strictly as an information-gathering activity, or whether action should be taken to gain control over the ALF with a view to neutralizing it.
19. REPORT BY COLLINS TO A BRITISH INTELLIGENCE SERVICE.
Prince Kalash el Khatar stopped by my flat on the evening of 23rd May in order to borrow a sharp knife. (Because of his position in the religious nobility, he is much in demand among Muslims to preside over the ritual slaughter of the goats and sheep that are eaten by Mohammedans at this time. Apparently Ramadan, the annual Muslim fast, has either just ended or is about to commence.)
2. Khatar invited me to accompany him on a trip to his home in the Sudan. His father has bought an air-conditioned Cadillac and has instructed Khatar to see that the car is delivered to him at his palace in western Sudan. This involves driving it from Geneva to Naples, accompanying it aboard ship to Alexandria, and then driving it down the Nile and across the desert to the house of el Khatar. The whole trip would take about a month. Khatar anticipates that we might meet some bandits along the way, and he asked whether I might be able to get my hands on a couple of Sten guns. “We shall only need them in Egypt, where the population is not Arab,” said Khatar. “Once we are across the frontier, you will be quite safe so long as you are with me.” Khatar assures me that he has been schooled since earliest boyhood in desert navigation, so there is little chance that we shall become lost in the trackless waste that lies between Khartoum and his home. “If you become lost in the desert,” he says, “you just go back to where you started and begin the whole trip again. It is quite simple. I will teach you to read the stars, in case we become separated.”
3. Khatar intends to invite Paul Christopher, the American, to accompany him. He believes that Christopher will be able to make repairs on the Cadillac if anything goes wrong with it. Further, he thinks that Christopher must be a good shot and an expert outdoorsman. “Americans are very good with motors and firearms,” Khatar says. (The belief that Christopher is any sort of mechanic is, I think, an illusion. But he may be able to shoot a submachine gun well enough, since he was a parachutist in the American Army.) I have no doubt that Christopher will go along on this journey if it materializes.
4. One other companion is being considered by Khatar. This is Tadeusz Miernik, the Pole. Miernik, as I have reported, is about to lose his passport and perhaps his position at WRO. I mentioned these difficulties to Khatar. He waved them away. “I will tell our Ambassador here to give Miernik a Sudanese passport,” he said. Khatar wishes to take Miernik along because the latter, it appears, has a scholarly interest in Sudanese history and culture. Khatar alleges that Miernik has for some time been writing a book on this subject. “He distracts me with his questions about the look of the country, and what he calls social dynamics,” Khatar said. “I hope to shut him up by letting him see it all with his own eyes.
5. I asked Khatar when he intended to begin the journey. “The car will be ready in June,” he replied. “We can leave as soon after that as we wish. As soon as we have the Sten guns.” Procuring these weapons apparently is going to be my responsibility. I explained that automatic weapons are not easy to come by. “Oh, it’s not so difficult. Half the zealots in Sudan have them,” Khatar replied. I asked why he was so determined to have machine guns. “It is better to have them just now,” he said. “There are madmen in Sudan. Everyone knows that.” I pressed him for further details. “One of the forms of social dynamism in the desert,” said Khatar, “is banditry. Part of the local colour, always has been. And just now there are a lot of silly bastards who think that they’re revolutionaries. The Russians gave them guns and bombs and told them to go and kill people. Naturally, people in Cadillacs are very desirable targets. I rather like the picture of old Miernik hosing down a bunch of black Communists with a Sten gun out of the window of an American limousine. If we turn up the radio and the air conditioner, it will be quite like the telly, won’t it?”
6. Subject to your approval, I agreed to go along on this trip. I should be glad of any assistance you may be able to give in obtaining three or four Sten guns, with ammunition.
20. REPORT BY THE AMERICAN CHIEF OF STATION IN GENEVA (26 MAY).
1. Search of the apartment of Tadeusz Miernik has discovered an extensive file of information on Sudan. A card file with more than 700 entries lists important personalities in that country, together with detailed information on tribal matters, transportation system, principal public buildings, power stations, etc.
2. A large number of books in Arabic were found. It is speculated that Miernik reads and/or speaks Arabic, a fact that he has not disclosed to Christopher or, as far as we can determine, to any of his other friends.
21. DISPATCH FROM WASHINGTON TO THE AMERICAN STATIONS IN GENEVA AND KHARTOUM.
1. Information from a highly sensitive source in Warsaw indicates that a Polish national will be put into Sudan under joint Polish-Soviet control as principal agent advising an indigenous Communist movement.
2. Headquarters believes that the movement in question is the Anointed Liberation Front.
3. Headquarters believes, further, that the Polish national in question may be Tadeusz Miernik. (See Geneva’s reporting, this subject.)
4. We have arranged for the delivery of an automobile in Geneva as a gift to the Amir of Khatar, head of the Bakhent Muslim sect. The Amir has instructed his son, Prince Kalash el Khatar, who resides in Geneva, to accompany the car to Sudan.
5. A trained U.S. agent (Christopher), controlled by Geneva, will accompany Khatar and the automobile.
6. Through the intervention of Christopher, Miernik will be invited to join Prince Kalash on this journey. This arrangement will provide for close surveillance of Miernik by Christopher.
7. After Miernik’s arrival in Sudan, Khartoum should facilitate his contact with the ALF and keep watch on Miernik’s activities through existing assets within this organization.
8. No operation against the ALF will be considered until Miernik is in place and until documentary evidence has been developed by Khartoum that he, as a foreign Communist agent, is controlling the activities of the ALF.
9. When the conditions of para. 8 have been fulfilled, Headquarters will issue further instructions.
22. FROM THE FILES OF WRO.
To Mr. Miernik
The Director General has decided not to renew your temporary contract when it expires on 30 June.
The Director General has asked me to express his gratitude for the excellent work you have done during the term of your temporary contract, together with his best wishes for the future.
2 June N. COLLINS
First Assistant
Note for the file
The Director General, on 2 June, informed the Polish Ambassador of his decision to let the temporary contract of T.Miernik lapse. The Director General asked for assurances that the Polish consulate will, if so requested, renew the passport of Mr.Miernik. The Polish Ambassador replied that this was “a routine matter” in which he could not intervene. He added that Mr.Miernik would undoubtedly wish to return to Poland, where employment awaited him, and would therefore have no immediate use for a valid passport. If in future Mr. Miernik wished to travel again, his application for a passport would be treated like that of any other Polish citizen.
2 June N.COLLINS
First Assistant
23. REPORT BY CHRISTOPHER.
Miernik’s distress is complete. His contract with WRO will not be renewed and the Poles will not reissue his passport. He came to my apartment just before midnight yesterday (2 June). I was in bed, reading, when the doorbell rang; it kept ringing until I opened the d
oor. I was not surprised to find Miernik with his finger on the bell. Collins had told me earlier in the day what had happened to him, so I expected that he would turn up to discuss his problem.
Although his clothes are faultless—suit pressed and brushed, shirt clean, vest and coat buttoned, shoes shined—Miernik always manages to look disheveled. His thick body, the huge head set crooked on the shoulders, the big sad face with its strange nose and great hairy ears give him the look of an animal dressed up for a child’s tea party. He was sweating a lot and his breathing was audible, as if he had walked very fast up the fire stains.
Miernik began talking as soon as I opened the door. “I suppose you know the news,” he said. “Nigel informed me this afternoon. He called me into his office and shuffled his papers, which had my fate written across them. ‘My dear Miernik,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid it’s Poland for you. Really, I had to laugh—he seems to think my anxiety is a joke. Your friend Collins has another side you’ve never seen. When he is on duty he is as cold as a fascist. He treated me as a British district officer would treat a native. I asked him—very quietly, very calmly, Paul—if he had any idea what this meant to me. He raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Really, Miernik,’ he said, ‘you must try not to be so theatrical. The worst that can happen is that you’ll spend a short time in custody, and then you’ll be let out. Things will be back to normal for you in no time at all.’ A short time in custody! Things will be back to normal! His idea of hell is his public school.”
“Did he really call you ‘my dear Miernik’?”
“Of course he did. What else would he call me? When I lost my papers, and therefore my identity as a functionary of WRO, I crossed over into another existence. Nigel’s friend Tadeusz vanishes. Miernik the statistic takes his place. Before my very eyes I became a dossier. I no longer have blood. I become a paper man. I am what Nigel Collins and the other bureaucrats write on my new paper skin: Take away his passport. Put him in jail. Kill him.”
Miernik said all these things before he had advanced far enough into the room to reach a chair. I put a drink into his hand and sat down. There was no point in saying anything to him. He emptied his glass, which contained about four ounces of neat whiskey, in a single gulp—and let a tremendous fart.
His face reddened and he clubbed himself on the forehead with his fist. “Aaaah!” he cried, throwing his glass against the wall. “Even before a firing squad I would be a joke.”
Miernik opened a window and began fanning the air with a magazine to drive the smell he had made out of the room. I gave him another drink. “That’s not necessary,” I said. He went on fanning.
“I shouldn’t have got you up for this,” he said. “I’ll go away in a minute.”
“Stay as long as you like.”
His mouth opened in a grin, showing stainless steel teeth at the back of his jaw. “Are you offering to hide me in your attic like a Jew?”
I laughed. “If necessary.”
Miernik, still standing with his arms hanging loose, gave me a solemn look; his jokes never last very long. “You really would do that, wouldn’t you?” he said.
“I don’t think it’s come to that yet, has it?”
“No. I am not in Poland yet.”
“Maybe you never will be.”
“My dear Paul, what do you imagine I am going to do—ascend to heaven on a sunbeam?”
“There are more than a hundred countries in the world. Surely one of them will have you.”
“The U.S.A., for instance?”
“Anything is possible. Walk into the embassy and ask for asylum.”
“Wonderful. I will find some Nigel with an American accent who will make two telephone calls and advise me to go back to Poland, where, after a short delay of perhaps twenty years, I can once again lead a normal life.”
“I think you’re being a little hard on Nigel. It wasn’t easy for him to tell you what he had to tell you. Maybe he was just embarrassed.”
Miernik, scowling, shook his head. Even at the hour of his doom, his compulsive neatness took hold of him. He got down on all fours and began picking up the fragments of the glass he had thrown against the wall. He disappeared into the kitchen and I heard the glass fall into the wastebasket. When he returned he had regained his composure, though he was still breathing audibly, drawing his breath in through his nose. Even more than usual, he had the air of a man who is recovering from a mortal insult.
“My friend Paul,” he said, “I want to discuss this situation seriously. What am I to do?”
“Doing the obvious really is as impossible as you say it is?”
“The obvious? Returning to Poland?”
“Yes. Are you sure it would be so terrible if you did go back?”
“You sound like Nigel.”
“I suppose so. It’s hard to accept that they really want to destroy a man like you.
“A joke of a man? Believe me, they have no sense of humor.”
“They must know something about you that I don’t know.”
“They know things about me even I don’t know. They are artists, these secret police. They make a file. Into it they put their suspicions. To justify one suspicion they must find another, and another. The file gets fat. A thousand lies equal one great truth, just like a novel. When the dossier is fat enough, they send the man to the butcher.”
“How can you know that?”
“It’s natural for me to know it. I grew up in a society you cannot comprehend because it hasn’t happened to you Americans and English yet. You haven’t lived in the future as we Poles have done. From childhood, out there in the future, you learn two languages—one is heard with the ear, the other with the back of the neck. They are after me all right. I hear it here.” He touched the nape of his neck.
“You want me to help you.”
“How can you help me? You say yourself the Americans don’t want me.”
“I think there are easier countries for the citizen of a Communist country to get into right now, yes. I don’t think you’d have a chance with the people in the American embassy.”
“Then what can you do for me? Put a bed in your attic?”
“How would you like to go to Africa in an air-conditioned Cadillac?”
This was the first mention of the trip to Sudan I had made to Miernik. He treated it as a bad joke, and I was not surprised that he did so. It must have sounded like more American frivolity. He began to talk in a loud voice, going back to his own subject, refusing to hear me. Finally I managed to interrupt him.
“That was a serious suggestion,” I said. “Khatar’s father has bought a new Cadillac, and Kalash is going to drive it down to Sudan.”
“Drive it to Sudan?”
“Drive it to Naples, take ship to Alexandria, drive it down the Nile and across the desert. It will take about three weeks. Do you want to go?”
“On what date?”
“In about two weeks’ time, Kalash says. But you know Kalash.”
“I would have to go before my passport expires. That is July 2.”
“That means your passport will expire while you’re in Sudan. Do you want to be stateless in Khartoum?”
“Kalash could fix something,” he said. “Down there he is a royal highness.”
“Maybe you could be a slave. You’d come in handy if the old prince wanted to have a little talk with a Polish tourist.”
Miernik laughed. “Some Polish tourists would be very interesting to a man who keeps a harem. Maybe this is not such a bad idea.”
He cheered up very quickly, a little too quickly perhaps for a man who is going to find himself in the middle of the desert without a passport. He began to rub his hands together, always in Miernik a sign of joy.
“I have always wanted to see Sudan,” he said. “It is an extremely interesting place, you know. The populations, the religion, this ancient society cut off from water, living where no men should be able to live. Not only have they lived, they have been conquerors, even. Fa
scinating.”
“You seem to know a lot about it.”
“I have studied it for years. One of my secrets, Paul. I want to write a book about it. I even studied Arabic at one time, a little.”
“You speak it?”
“Read it a little. I suppose I would speak it with a Polish accent.”
“That should give Kalash something to laugh about.”
“Kalash. He is no longer very friendly to me.”
Miernik was plunged again into gloom. He reminded me of his outburst in the restaurant a couple of weeks before. “I insulted him. Royalty does not like that.”
“Kalash probably didn’t even notice. He’ll take you along if you want to go. He’ll even get you Somali girls—that’s what he’s promised Nigel and me.”
“Nigel is going?”
“Of course. He wouldn’t miss a trip like that.”
“Then the trip is out for me.”
“Because Nigel annoyed you today? Don’t be an ass.”
Miernik closed his eyes. “It has nothing to do with that. But I could not spend three weeks in a Cadillac with Nigel.”
“Why not? He’s the best man in the world on a trip.”
“It’s something I am not free to discuss. It would be painful for me. I cannot go.”
He got to his feet. His glass had left a ring of moisture on the coffee table. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the table and the bottom of the glass. He staggered halfway across the room before catching his balance with a frown.
“Paul, I say good night.”
I did not quite know how to handle this. According to your calculations, Miernik should have leaped at the chance to go to Sudan. At first, he had done so. Now, for no reason he cared to explain, he had decided that he would not go.
The Miernik Dossier Page 5
