The Miernik Dossier (16 page)

(Remainder of Polish conversation consists of remarks by female voice on landmarks. Both voices change to English before tape ends.)

47.  R
EPORT OF AN
A
MERICAN SURVEILLANCE TEAM IN
P
ARIS (EXCERPT).

18
June, 1737 hours.
Routine surveillance of Vasily Kutosov continues. In Luxembourg Gardens he approaches a female, aged approximately twenty-five, long dark hair, blue dress, medium height, exceptionally attractive. Kutosov, removing hat, speaks to young woman, who is feeding pigeons.

Conversation between two subjects ensues. Duration 7 minutes, 45 seconds. Forrest approaches subjects at approximately 1740 hours and ascertains that they are speaking Russian.

Kutosov is overheard to say: “It is a simple assignment. You have only to watch him and remember what he does. If he goes out alone, be sure he carries the little device that you will be given. You needn’t worry that he’ll come to any harm.”

Kutosov and female subject, after more conversation that was not overheard (audio surveillance was impractical because of lack of cover for the technician), continue feeding corn to the pigeons. Subject female has never before been seen with Kutosov. Her photograph is attached.

48.  N
OTATION BY
H
EADQUARTERS.

Female subject positively identified as Ilona Bentley, British subject, DOB 11 May 35 Berlin, now resident Geneva, Switzerland.

Cross-files: Geneva (info): Christopher: N. Collins: T. Miernik.

Action (London): Request biographical data British liaison.

49.  R
EPORT BY
C
OLLINS.

Though it is of no probable operational importance, I report to you that Ilona Bentley has turned up in Naples. She appeared at the door of my hotel room this evening (22nd June), explaining that she had arrived in Naples two days before.

2. Miss Bentley joined our group for dinner and evidenced no particular curiosity about the presence of Zofia Miernik. Later she asked where the Miernik girl had joined us, and I told her Vienna. The subject was dropped.

3. I have to report that Miss Bentley wishes to join our group as well. As you may know, she and I have been friends for some time, and there has recently been some trouble between us of a personal nature. I have attempted to persuade Miss Bentley to return to Geneva, but I cannot be certain that she will do so. The ship on which we are travelling to Egypt is fully booked, and it is therefore unlikely that she will accompany us. However, Miss Bentley is an impulsive young woman who at the moment seems determined to renew her friendship with me, and she is certainly resourceful enough to find her way to Egypt by other means of transport. I realize that this unexpected event is awkward, and I shall do my best to sort it out.

50.  F
ROM
M
IERNIK’S DIARY.

The appearance of Ilona is most disturbing. She came down to dinner with Nigel and sat among us as if we had all met by accident in the Brasserie Centrale in Geneva. This is still her world, it seems natural to her to be among friends. But the world of Geneva seems far behind me, and I do not wish to be reminded of it. Especially it is painful to be reminded of it by an Ilona who comes downstairs with Nigel, her face bearing every sign that they have just made love. Ilona attaches no importance to her body apart from the pleasure it gives her; that the memory of it should cause suffering for her lovers does not trouble her. I doubt that it even occurs to her.

Automatic emotion:
Why has she followed us? What is her secret purpose? From whom does she take instructions? All this is nonsense. I will never get away from the beating of my rabbit’s heart. Obviously she has come to make it up with Nigel. It will not be easy. He sat morosely through the whole meal, avoiding my eyes. There can be no question that he
knows.
Were I in his place (and of course I am: if he shares Ilona’s body with me, I share it with him) I would accept things for what they are: a whim of Ilona’s, an indulgence of her sexual curiosity that will never happen again. “Bad luck, Tadeusz!”

Christopher watched the byplay with his usual amusement. There is something about him that Zofia likes. After the adventures they’ve had together, this is natural. It is to Paul that she always talks (they lapse into German when the rest of us are talking about something else: I wonder why?). The contrast between Zofia and Ilona is extraordinary. One cannot judge a sister’s sexuality, but there is something withheld in Zofia, whereas Ilona is so accessible. It is more than manners, more than coloring—the one girl pale and blond, the other olive and black. The girls do not like each other. Ilona’s attitude: “I permit you to talk to the American, but the others are mine—and so would he be mine if I wanted it that way.” Zofia’s attitude: “I see what you mean, and I understand perfectly how you achieve your results.” They have an inborn talent for insult, women.

Tomorrow we sail. All this with Ilona will be behind me. It is a shock, seeing her when I never expected to see her again. After tomorrow, this will finally be true. Regret makes a cold supper. The fact of the matter is, I would abandon the journey, abandon all I have promised myself to do at the end of the journey, abandon my friends—if Ilona were to come to me instead of Nigel. A few doors away, they are together. I know what it is to be sore with love: with sex, as Kalash would say. Even sex is more than I hoped for. It would be enough for me; love is for the beautiful. What is more ludicrous than jealousy in an ugly man? And yet. And yet. And yet. And
yet!

51.  R
EPORT BY
C
HRISTOPHER.

23 June.
Our ship’s sailing has been postponed for at least two days. Engine trouble, says the purser. Egyptian stupidity, says Kalash. She is an oily old freighter called, of all things, the S.S.
Nefertiti.
Her registry is Egyptian. The purser was evidently afraid of losing our passage money, as he loaded the Cadillac, had our baggage taken aboard, and collected our tickets before giving us the news about the delay. He tells us that we are welcome to stay aboard while repairs are made. “Better view of Naples Bay from the deck than any luxury hotel,” the purser said. He’s right about that, but we’ll move back to the Commodore anyway.

The delay is serious for Miernik. The voyage takes six days, so his passport would expire before he reached Alexandria. (I’m beginning to wish that his people
had fixed
him up with an American passport, or at least an Ecuadorian one.) You will have further cause to suspect him, despite all his dilemmas, when I tell you that he burst into Arabic during the discussion with the purser; Kalash says he speaks it well, with a Syrian intonation. Miernik was too upset by the change in the sailing schedule to bother to explain how he happens to speak this language so much better than he told me he did.

Once Miernik is inside Egypt, he can at last throw away his Polish passport; the Sudanese laisser-passer Kalash obtained for him will get him out of the country. (But not into it: his visa is stamped on the Polish passport.) Interminable discussion: what to do about Miernik? Kalash, of course, was in favor of ignoring the entire situation; he has no doubt that he can get Miernik ashore in Alexandria even without a passport. “There will be a certain amount of shouting,” Kalash explains. “The Egyptians are a nation of crazed louts. But in the end I will find someone who knows my name and who will take old Miernik’s money. All will be well.” Miernik is not willing to accept the 10 percent chance that Kalash is wrong. He thinks that Kalash would leave him on the docks, chained to a couple of Egyptian cops, if the plan failed. “Kalash is a wonderful man,” says Miernik, “but you know how he is—he’d have forgotten my existence in half an hour.”

In the end it was decided that Miernik will go back to Rome and fly to Cairo. Money does not seem to be a problem for him. Of course he has his final pay from WRO, and I suppose he has been able to save some of his salary. It’s possible, too, that Kirnov packed a few thousand dollars into Zofia’s rucksack along with the Ecuadorian passport. Then again, if you’re right about his auspices, he has no worry about funds.

The rest of us, including Zofia, will wait for the ship. Kalash will not leave his father’s Cadillac in the care of an Egyptian crew on the high seas: “The governor would be most unsympathetic if I turned up to tell him that I’d let some Egyptian halfwit put the car ashore in Libya. These coasts are teeming with people looking for bargains in big American automobiles.”

The presence of Ilona Bentley in Naples adds a certain drama to the proceedings. Both Miernik and Collins have been looking pretty feverish since she arrived, and the notion of leaving Ilona behind in Miernik’s care does not appeal to the Englishman. Ilona added to the tension by taking Kalash with her in her rented two-seater Fiat when we left the pier, leaving the rest of us to follow by taxi. They did not reappear until dinner time. Kalash told me they had driven to Positano for lunch.

“She ordered some disgusting mess of noodles and began shoveling away,” Kalash said. “Ilona is a very coarse feeder, as you know— must have something to do with all that starvation as a child. She says she saw the value of appetite very early in life, watching her fellow prisoners scuffling around the soup pot in the concentration camp. She’s been indulging all her appetites ever since, so she’ll have something to look back on if ever she’s locked up again. Odd sort of girl. It’s rather appealing, her ignorance of modesty.

“We were lying on the bed a little later. Ilona was messing about with her tongue and I was quite sleepy. She crawled up my body and prised open my eyelids with her fingers. Most annoying, but you know what she is—sex jolts her wide awake. ‘Kalash,’ she said, ‘you are a god.’ I thought that rather nice of her, as I hadn’t put forth any special effort after such a heavy lunch. ‘Kalash,’ she said, ‘take me with you.’ It appears that she wants to join us in our journey down the Nile. Copulation in the desert has a great appeal for English girls. Ilona has always dreamed of ecstasy under the desert stars. She hears the babble of exotic marketplaces in her imagination. She is in love with all of us, including poor Miernik, it seems. She lay there on top of me, murmuring all these secrets, licking my eyes and rolling my member between her knees. Impossible to refuse under the circumstances, although I must say I wonder about the morale of our little group if she decides to do the same for all of us, all at the same time instead of separately.”

So do I. Miernik and Collins do not have Kalash’s sexual insouciance. (Perhaps they would have if they were sharing a black girl instead of a white one; Kalash regards European females as part of the fauna and beds them as casually as an English prince would shoot grouse driven into his gun.) We will at least be spared an orgy aboard the
Nefertiti.
Ilona plans to fly to Cairo with Miernik. Miernik does not as yet know this. Neither does Nigel Collins.

I don’t altogether believe that Ilona’s only motive is sexual adventure, though she certainly gives every indication that this is important to her. I suppose that it would be a good idea to get a rundown on her so that I’ll know whether I’m dealing with a nymphomaniac or something else. You can assume that your man Christopher will be staying on the bench: Ilona is awfully pretty, and as your investigations have doubtless shown, I am normal. But the potential mess is bad enough without my adding to it.

52.  F
ROM THE FILES OF A
B
RITISH INTELLIGENCE SERVICE.

Bentley, Ilona Maria. Born at Berlin on 11th May, 1935, the daughter of a Hungarian national named Hanne Szemle (born at Budapest on 21st December, 1905) and of Bentley, John Brian Thomas, a British subject born at St. Petersburg, Russia, on 9th February, 1899, the elder son of Roger Alan Arthur Bentley, C.M.G. (q.v.), and of Lucy Anne Wyndham. For fifty years before the Russian Revolution, the Bentley family operated an export-import business at St. Petersburg; John Bentley’s father and grandfather served as H.M. Consul in that city for brief interims in the nineteenth century. John Bentley was educated privately in St. Petersburg by English and German tutors; he spoke both these languages, as well as Russian, perfectly. He witnessed the Bolshevik uprisings in St. Petersburg and afterwards claimed personal acquaintance with a number of the leading Bolsheviks, including Trotsky himself. Bentley hinted throughout his life that he had actually taken part in street fighting in St. Petersburg in 1917. In 1919, the family returned to England, and the following year Bentley went up to Magdalen College, Oxford; he took a third in Oriental Languages. In 1926 he published a book about the British expedition to Russia in 1918–19,
The Death Rattle of Imperialism.
It is believed (though not confirmed by documentary evidence) that he became a member of the British Communist Party in 1928. From 1927 to 1931 he frequently published articles in a variety of British periodicals on political and literary subjects. In 1932 he went to Berlin as a correspondent, accredited by a number of British publications including the
Daily Star.
Bentley wrote frequently for the
Daily Worker
under a variety of pseudonyms.

Ilona Maria Bentley, who is Bentley’s only child, was illegitimate. The marriage between Bentley and Hanne Szemle did not take place until 23rd September, 1938, in Berlin. At that time Bentley claimed paternity, and the child was afterwards granted British nationality on the basis of her father’s claim. Bentley had left Miss Szemle and their daughter in Berlin in 1937, when he went to Spain to cover the Civil War from the Nationalist side. Three weeks after his marriage to Miss Szemle, he returned to Spain, where he was killed on Christmas Day, 1938, while covering the Nationalist assault on Barcelona. Bentley’s wife was half Jewish, the daughter of a German-born Jewess. The German government refused to recognize the British nationality of Mrs. Bentley and her child, owing to the German parentage of the mother, and to the disparity between the child’s date of birth and the date of her parents’ marriage. It was believed that the authorities were influenced also by Bentley’s outspoken Communist sympathies. In refusing permission to Mrs. Bentley and her child to leave Germany in 1939, the German authorities referred to an undissolved previous marriage between Bentley and a German woman, but the existence of the earlier marriage was never established to the satisfaction of H.M. Consul.