The Miernik Dossier

by Charles McCarry

  I thought I knew the reason. “What have you done,” I said, “fucked Ilona?”

  (Be calm! There is no way Miernik can possibly know that I heard the tapes you have of the great love scene. My tone was joking.)

  The effect of my remark was about what I would have expected if I had driven a spear into Miernik’s spine. His whole body jerked, his face flushed. I think sometimes that he is a tortured Catholic; I don’t know what else could produce such a paroxysm of guilt. Miernik sat down again.

  “Nigel knows this?” he asked. “Ilona has told him?”

  “You mean you have slept with Ilona?”

  Miernik began to grin. For an instant he looked positively jaunty. “You will not believe this, Paul, but she asked me. An extraordinary girl.”

  “How was she?”

  “Very generous, very—inventive.”

  “I congratulate you.”

  Miernik’s grin got broader. He was more than a little drunk. “Thank you, but I did nothing except surrender. I think she wanted me to die happy.” He rose and began to pace. “The question is, why did she tell Nigel?”

  “You don’t know that she did. Why should she?”

  “Oh, I know. Why else would he have treated me so badly today? He was joyful about everything that happened to me. At the time I wondered if he knew, but I tried to believe he did not. Guilt—I felt guilt. Standing in front of Nigel’s desk I felt that my fate had been given to me by God for having betrayed a friend. Very odd, the human conscience.”

  “Dieu te pardonnera, c’est son métier,”I said. “A minute ago you looked pretty pleased with yourself, old man.”

  Miernik shrugged and spread his hands. “She is something, Paul. Now I really will say good night.”

  “You’d better think about the trip with Kalash. I think it’s your best chance as things stand now.”

  “I don’t think so,” Miernik said. He was smiling again. “Nigel has started to smoke a pipe. How can I lock myself up in a car all the way to Khartoum with someone who blows smoke up my nose?”

  He shook my hand and left.

  COMMENT: In the above conversation, Miernik showed flashes of humor for the first time since I’ve known him. Maybe this is the comedy of desperation, and then again it’s possible he knows something I do not about his situation. If he is serious about avoiding the trip to Sudan, I see no point in going myself. Do you want me to try to change his mind (a move he would be waiting for if your suppositions about him are correct), or have you some alternate temptation you’d like to try on him?

  Please advise.

  24. TELEPHONE CONVERSATION BETWEEN TADEUSZ MIERNIK AND ILONA BENTLEY ( RECORDED 3 JUNE-AT 1955 HOURS).

  MIERNIK: Ilona? Here is the hairy beast.

  BENTLEY: Miernik? Quelle jolie surprise.

  MIERNIK: I waited a week to phone you. I thought you’d admire my self-control.

  BENTLEY: I thought you were making a very slow recovery.

  MIERNIK: Maybe I will never recover.

  BENTLEY: You sound very sick and sorrowful.

  MIERNIK: Yes, I suppose I do.

  BENTLEY: That’s very flattering. Good-bye.

  (Connection broken here. Miernik dials again; Bentley answers on tenth ring.)

  MIERNIK: Ilona, I want to talk to you. Don’t ring off.

  BENTLEY: Why not? I don’t seem to make you very happy.

  MIERNIK: Is making me happy so important to you?

  BENTLEY: Making people unhappy is not what I like.

  MIERNIK: It’s not you. Hasn’t he told you what’s happened?

  BENTLEY: He? Who?

  MIERNIK: Your Englishman.

  BENTLEY: Nigel? What’s happened with you and Nigel?

  MIERNIK: He gave me the sack. My government is taking away my passport.

  BENTLEY: (Laughs). Oh, that. I thought it might be something else.

  MIERNIK: You say “Oh, that?” This is not merely “Oh, that,” Ilona. If I go back to Poland, I go to prison. If I remain here or anywhere without papers I cease to exist. A man without a passport simply vanishes from life. He is a fugitive from everyone.

  BENTLEY: I know. It’s terrible. I’m very sorry, Tadeusz, truly I am.

  MIERNIK: What did you think I was talking about? There could be something worse?

  BENTLEY: Not worse, more embarrassing. I thought perhaps you and Nigel had been comparing notes.

  MIERNIK: Ilona!

  BENTLEY: Men are men. I know how you can be.

  MIERNIK: I cannot be like that. But I think your Englishman suspects something. He is very, very cold to me.

  BENTLEY: Suspects something? How can he suspect anything unless one of us gives him reason?

  MIERNIK: Have you given him reason?

  BENTLEY: I haven’t seen him.

  MIERNIK: Are you sure?

  BENTLEY: What the hell is this, a police interrogation? What I do is my affair—not Nigel’s, and not yours either, my friend.

  MIERNIK: I apologize. I didn’t mean . . .

  BENTLEY: All right. I am not a piece of property.

  MIERNIK: I have been wondering.

  BENTLEY: Wondering what?

  MIERNIK: If you would like to have dinner again. Tonight.

  BENTLEY: I’ve eaten.

  MIERNIK: Now you are angry.

  BENTLEY: No, just not hungry.

  MIERNIK: Tomorrow, then.

  BENTLEY: I won’t be hungry tomorrow either, I’m afraid.

  MIERNIK: I see. Once was enough.

  BENTLEY: There is something I call Ilona’s Law. “Enjoy the experience but watch out for the aftermath.” I see it proved every day.

  MIERNIK: Not with everyone with whom you have an experience, I expect.

  BENTLEY: The vast majority.

  MIERNIK: It’s a new experience for me to be in a majority of any kind. I don’t like it as much as I always thought I would.

  BENTLEY: Miernik, you must stop feeling sorry for yourself all the time. With you, if it isn’t politics it’s sex. Why don’t you just live and make the best of things like everyone else?

  MIERNIK: A good question. I think I won’t see you again. I thank you for everything.

  BENTLEY: Look, Miernik, if you want to . . .

  MIERNIK: Now it is I who say good-bye.

  (Conversation terminates at 2006 hours.)

  25. FROM MIERNIK’S DIARY.

  5 June. Ilona phoned me at the office this morning and invited me to lunch. She drove me at an incredible speed out to Genthod to a restaurant beside the lake. We ate filets de perche and drank a great deal of Mont-sur-Rolle, sitting under the plane trees. Ilona ate her fish with her fingers, very rapidly. A ring of grease around her mouth from the fish. Why are the beautiful never disgusting? The more bestial they are and the more cruel, the better we love them. Ilona was—not contrite, but sorry she had been unkind when I phoned her Saturday night. She said I caught her at a bad time. She said she is like Nigel, all joy one moment and all black despair the next. When their moods coincide all is well. They must be marvelous lovers, or so I kept thinking as she chattered. We sat side by side on a bench. Watching her eat, I became sexually aroused. I hadn’t the courage to tell her this: she would have regarded it as a delightful new perversion.

  Ilona wishes to be my friend. She says that friendship is the most extreme emotion of which she is capable. She calls her affair with Collins a sexual friendship. Ours, I think, is not to be that any longer. I am in difficulty and everyone must rally around, she told me. What could she do for me? She does not imagine that she can destroy me. She is the only beautiful girl I have ever had; I do not suppose that I will ever have another.

  There is no longer any reason not to trust people. This flashed through my mind as Ilona and I talked. For years I have been deprived of half the power of the speech: fear has done this to me, and training and necessity. I have never had the experience of confiding in another human being. Mother died before I had any secrets, Father did not invite conf
idences, Zofia had to be protected from every kind of truth. But now my stars have freed me. I am between an old world and a new one. I am in a free fall between lives. Until my passport expires and I enter my new orbit, I can say whatever I like to anyone. For three entire weeks I cannot harm myself by being trustful.

  Therefore I told Ilona about Christopher’s idea of going to Sudan. She was most interested. (Why is she so inquisitive? asked the old Miernik. Quiet! She is only being kind, replied the new Miernik.) “This is marvelous,” Ilona said, “you will go away, no one can touch you in Kalash’s desert—you must go, Tadeusz.” I said, joking, “Why don’t you come too?” Her face changed into that expression, merry and secretive, that women have after making love. “That would be interesting,” she said, “to spend three weeks under the stars with you and Nigel—and Kalash.” (Him, too? I cannot doubt it.)

  She plied me with questions about the arrangements, the route, the dates. I know almost nothing about it; I may even have left Christopher with the impression that I am not going. Ilona is right—I must go. Duty is duty, and the bridge between the old world and the new. For Ilona it is an adventure—down the Nile, through the desert. Bandits, perhaps. She had a thousand questions; I answered them all. Her hand on my thigh as we talked.

  Now, two hours later, the habit of a lifetime comes back to warn me that I should have told her nothing. Suspicion is a disease: guilt’s little sister. I cannot be cured of it even by this girl whom I now love. (I realize that I was tempted to refuse Christopher, and therefore refuse my escape and my duty to go to Sudan, because I wanted to stay near Ilona—at least in the same city, if not in the same bed.) I should have told her nothing.

  She shook my hand when she let me out of the car. Her skin is always warm and perfectly dry. Her hair was windblown, her lips a little swollen, I suppose from the excitement of fast driving in an open car; she pulls up her skirt like a child when she drives. I don’t know whom she will sleep with tonight. Nor, my dear Tadeusz, does she.

  Entbehren sollet du, sollet entbehren! Das ist der ewige Gesang.*

  26. REPORT BY BROCHARD (EXCERPT).

  Finally, for its value as entertainment, I include the following note on a conversation between Nigel Collins and Ilona Bentley that I overheard on the evening of 6 June in the Restaurant Plat d’Argent. It contains some useful information about the Pole, Tadeusz Miernik, and other personalities in whom you have expressed an interest.

  In the Plat d’Argent are a number of booths with very high backs. I was seated in one of these with a young woman at about 8:30 when I heard, issuing from the adjoining booth, the unmistakable voice of Collins. He was speaking in what he imagined to be an undertone to a female who I at once realized must be Bentley. These two make no secret of the fact that they are lovers.

  “Of course you can’t come along,” Collins was saying. “How could you think we’d take you? There’ll be no room in the car if both Christopher and Miernik come. Besides, you’d likely end up in a harem.”

  Bentley giggled. “I think I’d rather like that,” she said.

  “Yes, I suppose you would. Being had by some diseased old Arab who pumps himself full of aphrodisiacs sounds like one of your sexual fantasies. You can do it without my cooperation.”

  “I haven’t noticed that you’ve been so awfully cooperative lately, dear Nigel.”

  “Perhaps I need an aphrodisiac.”

  “I know someone who doesn’t.”

  “Really? How pleasant for you.”

  “You don’t want to know who?”

  “Really, Ilona, you don’t expect me to rise to that old bait again? You can do as you like.”

  “All right, we won’t discuss the shambles of my love life. Normal people, my dear Nigel, often sleep with the opposite sex at least once a week. Sometimes more often. Does that astonish you?”

  “It astonishes me that you should want to go to the Sudan with me if I leave you so frustrated,” Collins said.

  “We will not be alone. I can creep from tent to tent under the desert stars until my horrible appetites are satisfied.”

  “Yes, you could do that, couldn’t you?”

  “Nigel, I don’t want to do that—really I don’t. I thought it would be rather nice to be with you, away from Geneva, for a time. I’ve always wanted to see the Nile and the desert. Why can’t I come?”

  “Because Kalash hasn’t asked you to come—and won’t.”

  “Of course he will, if you tell him you want me. After all, Kalash is my friend too.”

  “Kalash? Your friend? My dear, the thought that a woman might be a friend is impossible to Kalash. He regards you as conveniences. He’s an Arab and a prince besides. All you or any female can be to him is a warm place into which he can have a discharge.”

  “How poetic you make it sound. He is awfully good-looking, you know.”

  “Yes, and Kalash knows it too. He won’t have you in his Cadillac. He doesn’t need you down there—half the girls of Central Africa are available to him. He has only to pick them off a baobab tree.”

  This sort of squabbling, a good deal better-natured than it seems when written down, went on for some time. It would appear that Collins, Prince Kalash el Khatar, Paul Christopher, and Miernik are planning a trip by automobile to the Sudan. The ostensible purpose is to deliver a Cadillac to Khatar’s father.

  However, it appears to me that another purpose is to remove Miernik from Switzerland while his Polish passport is still in force. Collins suggests that Khatar will be able to obtain a Sudanese travel document for Miernik once he is in that country, where the Khatar family has great influence. The date of departure, according to what Collins told Bentley, will be approximately 15 June, but perhaps sooner.

  Bentley continued to press Collins to arrange for her to come along. “If you ask Kalash, he will say yes.

  “I’m not going to ask him.”

  “Then maybe I’ll find a way to ask him. Would you prefer that?”

  Collins by this time was wholly exasperated. “What are you going to do, Ilona, when your bottom wears out? How will you live?”

  Then Bentley said something so extraordinary to Collins that I can only believe it was part of the wounding game they seem to enjoy playing with one another. She told him, in her clear voice, that she had been sleeping with Miernik. She described Miernik’s body, covered with hair and giving off a strong odor, and in the most minute detail listed the sexual uses to which she had put it.

  Collins rose from the table, threw down some money, and left the restaurant. After he had gone, Bentley had a ladylike chat with the waiter. She explained that her friend had suddenly become ill. Sympathy from the waiter.

  “Have you any wild strawberries?” Bentley asked. She ate a large portion, with whipped cream, and drank a cup of coffee. Then she paid with Collins’ money and walked to the door. She turned and lifted her hand to me. “Bon soir, Léon!” she cried, with a reckless smile. She must have known I had heard everything. She really is extraordinarily beautiful.

  27. REPORT BY A CLERK OF THE SUDANESE CONSULATE AT GENEVA TO THE ANOINTED LIBERATION FRONT (TRANSLATION FROM ARABIC).

  H.R.H. Kalash el Khatar has demanded that visas for entry into Sudan be issued forthwith to the following persons: Collins, Nigel Alexander Spencer (British subject); Christopher, Paul Samuel (U.S. citizen); Miernik, Tadeusz (Polish citizen).

  In an interview with the consul, Prince Kalash demanded also that this Miernik be issued with a valid Sudanese passport. The prince furnished photographs of Miernik. The consul explained that Sudanese passports can be issued only to Sudanese nationals, but Prince Kalash was insistent that an exception be made.

  The consul, aware of the influence of the prince’s family, has instructed me to issue in Miernik’s name not a passport but a laisser-passer. The consulate possesses no such document. Indeed, I have never heard of such a document.

  On instructions by the consul, issued after I vainly protested this improper giving of documen
ts to a non-Sudanese, I am arranging to have a laisser-passer printed by a local printer. Because only one such document is being printed, the cost is enormous, and there is no authorization in the consulate’s budget for such an expense. The consul, when informed of this fact, chose to ignore it. He told me to “find a means to pay this trifling sum.” My own pocket is the only means.

  The consul is hardly less arrogant with me than is the prince with the consul. Khatar regards the Sudanese government as a mere convenience to gratify his every whim. He never takes into account the difficulties he creates for us with his behavior. I have written of the insult he gave to the Ambassador of Egypt at an official function last week, when he remarked that the appellation “United Arab Republic” was a “joke.” In the prince’s view, as he expressed it with the utmost contempt to the Ambassador of Egypt, “Egyptians are not Arabs, they are the descendants of loose females like Cleopatra who offered themselves to a thousand conquerors.

  So long as my country continues to give respect and homage to such relics of the exploiting class it will not be free! Meanwhile, in anger, I must issue these visas, falsify this laisser-passer. Such deeds do not humble me, they feed my hatred, increase my thirst for retribution.

  (The consul would not tell me why these visas, etc., are wanted by Prince Kalash. Probably he does not know himself, though of course he makes a show of being in the confidence of the great Highness.)

  28. CABLE TO WASHINGTON FROM THE AMERICAN CHIEF OF STATION IN KHARTOUM.

  1. WE NOTE WITH INTEREST HEADQUARTERS DISPATCH CONCERNING IMMINENT ARRIVAL HERE MIERNIK, KHATAR, CHRISTOPHER, ET AL.

  2. REFERRING TO OUR OWN DISPATCH CONCERNING ANOINTED LIBERATION FRONT’S SEARCH FOR SUITABLE FIGUREHEAD WE ADVANCE FOR HEADQUARTERS DISCUSSION AND ADVICE IDEA THAT PRINCE KALASH EL KHATAR MIGHT WELL FILL THE BILL.

  3. KHARTOUM REALIZES YOUNG KHATAR HAS NO GREAT REPUTATION FOR ENERGY AND STABILITY BUT THIS SHOULD MATTER LITTLE TO ALF’S SOVIET MASTERS AS HE HAS GREATEST NAME IN SUDAN.