The Miernik Dossier

38. REPORT BY CHRISTOPHER.

I have already given the essentials of the Zofia Miernik operation in my verbal report. In the following narrative I’ll begin at the beginning and end at the end in the hope of filling in details that may be useful in case anyone else ever wants to do the one-day tour of Bratislava.

Kalash had no difficulty getting a Czech visa. One of his uncles is ambassador to Austria. “My Uncle Embarak sent some little chap hopping over to see the Czechs with my passport, Kalash explained. “Everything is laid on at the frontier. While you crouch in the secret compartment, your air supply slowly running out, wishing desperately for a lavatory, I shall be sweeping through the customs, decadent jazz playing on my radio. Uncle has given me some pennants for the front wings of the car. All will be well.”

When on the morning of the sixteenth we went downstairs, the Cadillac was waiting, washed and shined by the servants at Kalash’s embassy. Two pennants were attached to the fenders-the flag of Sudan and another one I didn’t recognize. “That is a small replica of the battle flag of the Mahdi,” Kalash explained. “My great-grandfather, as I may have mentioned to you, led the charge of savages who wiped out Hicks Pasha at Kashgil in 1883.I believe he castrated the senior Englishman with his own sword, which was by that time very dull after hacking at the whites and their tame Egyptians all day. Uncle Embarak has explained the significance of the pennant to the Czechs, so I expect to be cheered at the frontier as the descendant of a very effective anti-imperialist.”

Upstairs, there had been an emotional scene as we prepared to leave. Miernik came into our room while we dressed and sat on an unmade bed, watching in silence. As we started to leave, he shook hands with Kalash, who then went downstairs to supervise the loading of a picnic hamper he had ordered from the hotel kitchen. As the door closed behind Kalash, Miernik rose and flung himself across the room at me. With his good arm he embraced me, and he planted a kiss on my cheek. Then he stood back, with his hand on my shoulder, and looked into my face. Behind his glasses his eyes were filled with tears. “My friend,” he said huskily, “I await your return.” He walked briskly out of the room, like a man hurrying off a train platform after saying good-bye to a brother he knows he will never see again.

Kalash and I started off in the Cadillac at about nine o’clock. By ten we were on the outskirts of the city and well on the way to the border. As soon as we were on the right highway, I turned over the wheel to Kalash, who doesn’t like to drive in cities. We rolled over the country along the Donau, making better time than I expected. I didn’t want to approach the frontier much before two o’clock, since my appointment with Zofia was at 3:40 and I did not want to spend several hours wandering around Bratislava. We found a side road and followed it, looking for a place to stop and waste some time. Kalash did not take very kindly to the delay. He wanted to see Czechoslovakia, turn around, and get back to Vienna in time to catch the early evening shift of prostitutes. “After six o’clock they are no longer fresh,” Kalash said. “You must catch them early or they are covered with footprints.” He calculated that he would have to recross the border no later than four o’clock in order to be in the Mozartplatz, where he had arranged to meet a girl he specially liked, by six.

It is impossible in this countryside to get out of sight of a house. This was no small problem, because I wanted to climb into the secret compartment as secretly as possible. Kalash finally just gave up and pulled the Cadillac off the road between two villas about fifty yards apart near the river. He got the hamper out of the trunk and, sniffing suspiciously at the chicken sandwiches for signs of lard, began to eat. I had a couple of sandwiches, but avoided the large bottle of beer Kalash had provided for me: there would be no way to get rid of it in the secret compartment.

As the clock advanced I found it difficult to breathe normally even with the windows rolled down, and I wished that I had taken the tranquilizers you offered me when the passports and money were delivered. The training we are given, and the experience that follows it, are not good preparation for a jaunt behind the Iron Curtain. It is one thing to sit in an apartment in Geneva and calmly discuss the secret police and their prisons with Miernik. It is another thing to put oneself under the jurisdiction of the secret police even for one day. More clearly than you can imagine, I understood why a Miernik would develop nervous habits; even assuming he is play-acting, his performance is based on the reality of truncheons, water torture, testicle crushers. I thought a great deal about János Kádár, sent back to Hungary as a steer eager to please his veterinarian. Kalash did not find me a very responsive companion.

At one o’clock, after making as certain as we could that there were no faces pressed to the windows of the houses on either side of the car, we opened the secret compartment. I manipulated the rear window switch while Kalash worked the one in front. The space behind the rear seat opened like a charm. I had not seen the compartment before I climbed into it. Kalash, catching his first glimpse of the inside, burst into laughter. “We’ll have to cut off your legs to get you in,” he said, and leaned against the side of the car, overcome with the comedy of this image. I got myself inside by curling up in the fetal position with my hands between my knees and my head on my coat. The fake passports in the inside pocket of the coat dug into my face.

When Kalash closed the trap, the back of the seat slammed into my buttocks; I was frozen into position, unable to move any part of my body except my fingers and my neck. It was pitch black and absolutely silent. The walls are lined with thick felt-sound-proofing, I suppose. It’s very effective: I did not even hear the motor start. The false water tank extends over the top of the compartment and down the wall facing the trunk. The tank was sweating, so the felt was soaked. In moments the knees of my trousers were wet though, and each time the car hit a bump large drops of water were shaken off the roof, splashing along the whole length of my body.

There was, as Kalash had predicted, very little air. I imagined at first that I smelled exhaust fumes, but I think this was nerves. I went to sleep almost immediately. As I drifted off, my mind told me that I was probably being overcome by carbon monoxide; it told me also that there was nothing I could do about it. Kalash would certainly not hear any noise I made, and there was no way to open the compartment from the inside. (A serious omission in the design, I realized too late.)

I was awakened by a thumping sound on the rear wall of the compartment. The car was stopped. I assumed the border police were pounding on the side of the false water tank. The cap of the tank was removed and a long stick inserted and wiggled around: I heard the water sloshing. It was amazing how keen my sense of hearing became as I lay curled up in the dark, blind and frantic to urinate. I hoped that if they discovered that the tank was false, Kalash would have sense enough to tell them how to get me out. I had no confidence at all that he would do so, and I began to imagine the years ahead in which a Czech commissar rode around the country in this confiscated Cadillac, unaware that the mummy of an American spy was pressed against the small of his back.

The car began to move once more. It stopped again after half an hour (I could read the luminous dial of my watch with one eye: it was 2:35). Nothing happened. Fifteen minutes went by. At one point I heard the cap of the tank being screwed off again. A strange noise, like the faraway lowing of cattle, filtered through the wall of the compartment. I put my mind to the problem of identifying this sound. It was impossible. I was convinced we had been caught.

A long time later, the back seat popped open and a gust of fresh air flooded in. I lay facing the back wall, so I had to come out of the compartment blind. I did not know who had opened the trap; I certainly did not expect it was Kalash. My dominant feeling was not fear but a mixture of guilt and embarrassment. This was one hell of a way to be captured: it was like being found in uniform under a bed by enemy soldiers.

I rolled over and saw Kalash sprawled on his stomach across the back of the front seat. We were in a woods, in a narrow track with trees pressed against the windows on both sides of the car, which was filled with lovely green shade. Kalash held one of his enormous shoes in his right hand. The index finger of his left hand was pressed to the switch on the right rear window. The large toe of his bare right foot was on the switch of the left front window. He is six feet eight inches tall. Had he been half an inch shorter, he would not have been able to reach both switches. He wore a look of intense surprise that he had been able to manage the job at all. I plunged out of the car and emptied my bladder. While piss ran into the dust I wondered idly why our peerless technicians had placed the switches for my mummy-case so far apart.

Had they tiptoed into Kalash’s sleeping room and measured him from big toe to forefinger and then designed the car around his dimensions? It’s an absolutely foolproof system as long as you have Kalash or Wilt Chamberlain in the car.

Kalash unfolded himself and joined me on the roadside. It was cool under the trees but my clothes were pasted to my sweating body. “You smell rather like Miernik,” Kalash said. “I thought I might have to leave you inside. Did you hear me hallooing down the water pipe? I wanted to tell you you were trapped, and so you would have been if I hadn’t thought of tripping the front switch with my toe. It required several minutes of squirming to achieve just the right position. The whole experience was most discomforting. Those chaps at the frontier, all wearing funny hats, were suspicious of the water tank. Their officer drew some of it out with a rubber tube and tasted it. They were disappointed that it contained nothing sinister.”

We were parked off the Trnava road, ten kilometers from Bratislava. Kalash had kept an eye on the mileage indicator as I had asked him to do, and he had found the track into the woods exactly where I told him it would be. After he left, with the rear seat back in place, I went to the edge of the road and stepped off the 150 paces specified in my instructions. The motorcycle was just where it should have been, fifteen additional paces off the left side of the road under a pile of brush. I screwed in the spark plug, stowed the wrench, and started the machine.

The knees of my trousers were black with water from the walls of the secret compartment, but the wind dried them by the time I reached Bratislava. I attracted little notice, though the road is a fairly busy one-mostly pedestrians and people on bicycles.

Zofia was on time and in place, seated alone in the Olympia Coffeehouse in Kollárovo Námestie. She wore a plain dress buttoned to the throat and her hair was pulled back into a bun. She had done as much as a girl with her looks can do to be inconspicuous. I sat down and ordered a beer; the waiter did not blink an eye when I spoke to him in German. I had parked the motorcycle several blocks away and come on foot. There was no sight of surveillance, but this is hardly necessary in a city where armed police stand on every corner, glowering at all who pass. Through the glass front of the coffeehouse I saw a pair of police with rifles slung over their shoulders. They seemed to be paying no particular attention to me or to the coffeehouse. At four o’clock they were relieved by another team.

I got out my copy of Schiller and read for a few minutes. When I looked up, Zofia was reading her book. I paid and left. The police across the street gave me a routine glance. I walked along the route Miernik had laid out in his instructions, but stopped a block short of Drevena Námestie, the street in which the black Citroën was supposedly waiting. There were no police in sight and almost no one else, except for an occasional housewife going in or out of a bakery on the corner. In moments, Zofia came along, followed by a man in workman’s clothes who had his eyes fixed on her buttocks. She has a brisk way of walking with her heels clicking on the pavement and her head held high; I wondered if she had ever been to drama school-it is the walk of an actress. When she saw me she did not hesitate, but strode right up to me with her hand held out. She has her brother’s handshake-up, down, moist palm. The workman, with a look of regret, continued on his way.

“This is the wrong place,” Zofia said. “We must go on to the next street to find Sasha.”

Zofia was in command of the situation, smiling and calm. We might have been childhood friends who met on this corner every day. When I took her arm and began to walk in the wrong direction, her muscles grew tense, but she followed along.

“There has been a small change in plans,” I said. “Let’s walk for a moment.”

We were speaking German. Zofia’s voice is low, but it carries very well. “I am not free to accept changes in the plan,” she said, smiling into my face. A woman in a kerchief, passing by with a string bag full of bread, looked at us in a startled way and scurried on. At the other end of the street a pair of policemen appeared, and the woman headed straight for them. She seemed to be walking faster than before, and I expected that she would report that a pair of strangers were lurking behind her, talking in a foreign language.

“Those policemen may be here in a minute,” I said. “You are a Swiss tourist named use Oprecht. I am your husband, Johann. We live in Zurich, and we entered Czechoslovakia on June 12 at Cheb, coming from Germany.” I gave her the wedding ring and, after a moment’s hesitation, she slipped it on her finger. When I asked if she was carrying any papers that conflicted with the ones I had for her, she shook her head.

“Sasha took everything,” she said.

I told her I had her passport and a wallet full of other papers. “You can tell the police I always carry all the papers because I’m a domestic tyrant,” I said.

“Here they come,” Zofia said. My back was to the police. “The woman crossed the street without talking to them, but they are coming anyway. They are walking slowly.”

We went into the bakery. The girl behind the counter did not understand German. Zofia, smiling, struck up a conversation in pantomime. She and the clerk giggled back and forth over a tray of pastries. Zofia took one, bit into it, made a delighted face, and offered it to me. I took a mouthful and tried to duplicate Zofia’s look of pleasure. The police stopped outside the shop and stood side by side, staring though the display window. We went on buying pastries. The girl put the half-dozen we selected into a screw of paper and helped us count out the necessary coins. She showed us to the door and opened it for us. Its little bell tinkled.

The police were still on the sidewalk. Under their caps and crossbelts they were young boys. Zofia, her whole body signaling gaiety and holiday sexuality, gave them a bright smile and took my arm. They let us walk by. Zofia looked up at me, laughed, and put her head on my shoulder. I kissed her on the forehead. One of the young policemen said something in a low voice. The other laughed. They turned around and went back to their post at the other end of the street.

Once around the corner, Zofia slowed our pace. “We must go to Sasha at once,” she said. “I don’t know what all this business about Swiss passports is supposed to mean, but I know nothing about it. What did my brother tell you to say to me?”

I had forgotten to give her the identifying phrase supplied by Miernik. There had hardly been time to do so, and I began to wonder if there ever would be. Two new pairs of policemen were now in sight at either end of the narrow street in which we were walking.

“Your brother told me to say that Sasha likes to eat his turnips by an open window,” I said.

She looked relieved and responded, “Les couleurs de Princeton sont orange et noir.”

“Well, I guess you are you and I am I,” I said.

She giggled. “No one but Tadeusz could have invented that greeting.”

Zofia’s lack of nervousness was having an effect on me. She seemed to feel no fright at all, and that was a good deal more than I could say. Those constant glimpses of police, and the ostentatious curiosity they showed in us, did not make for a relaxed atmosphere.

“We can’t stand on corners talking,” Zofia said. “We’re already five minutes late, and Sasha will have moved the car. It’s a long walk to the new meeting place and we have only fourteen minutes. Come.”

She set off briskly. I had a choice of following or getting into an arm-pulling match. I followed.

As we walked I told her of the new plan. She set her lips and shook her head, and I could see a resemblance to Miernik. That is one of his gestures. She has others-brothers and sisters sometimes may not look much alike, but they keep the facial expressions and the movements of the body they acquired in childhood.

“What you have in mind will never work. Nobody can cross the frontier on a riverboat,” Zofia said.

“People do it every day.”

“Not people with false passports. They will know who came across at Cheb on June 12. Herr und Frau Oprecht will not be on the list. You can’t fool them. They have had too much practice.”

It was obvious that I was never going to get her on a river steamer. The psychology of this kind of work is very odd. My first worry was not that the plan had failed, but that she was now in a position to blow my cover to Miernik by telling him that I’d turned up with a pocketful of perfect forgeries. Would this proof of my sponsorship (who but an intelligence agency could produce false passports on such short notice?) ruin the purpose for which we’d taken the risk of going in after Zofia? Obviously Miernik would only bring me into whatever he was doing in Sudan if he could keep up the pretense that I am a good-hearted, slow-witted American. I wondered why we didn’t think of this.

Zofia led me through the back streets of Bratislava as if she had lived there all her life. She crossed intersections, cut through parks, turned into alleys with no more hesitation than I would have shown in Boston. We must have encountered twenty teams of policemen; they passed Zofia from one guard post to another in a linked series of hungry stares. At length we turned a corner and there, parked in the shade of a flowering tree that hung over the wall of a little graveyard, was the black Citroën. A small bald man sat in the front seat with his hands on the wheel. There were no police in sight. “You in the front,” Zofia said briskly, as she tucked her legs into the back seat and closed the door behind her.

The bald man held out his hand to me. “Sasha Kirnov,” he said. “It’s very kind of you to go to all this trouble.”

Kirnov put the car in gear and moved off through the empty streets. “These Communist towns,” he said matter-of-factly, “have the advantage of being very quiet-nothing like the traffic you have in the West. And some of them, particularly here in Czechoslovakia, are quite beautiful. It’s a pity you haven’t more time. Not many Americans see this part of the world.” He turned his head and smiled; he might have been a host, collecting a weekend visitor at the station.

“Zofia and I did a little sightseeing on the way to meet you,” I said. “Very interesting rifles on almost every street corner.”

“Tadeusz said you spoke excellent German. It’s quite perfect- better, alas, than mine. I have to change gears from Yiddish all the time. Did you study in Germany?”

“Yes.”

“Remarkable for an American, if you’ll forgive such a remark. You people don’t have a reputation as linguists.”

“No.”

“Strong peoples never do. They make others speak their language. How many Romans spoke Helvetian or ancient British? Or Russians any of the languages they now move among? It’s natural for the weak to have quick ears.”

We were by this time at the outskirts of the city, moving along an empty road. As we rolled to the top of a hill I saw the countryside stretching before us-little copses dotting the fields, horses and oxen working, the distant outline of the Little Carpathians. And, a mile or so off to the left, a high wooden watchtower on the frontier with the sun flashing on the lens of a searchlight.

Zofia touched my shoulder and said, “Excuse us a moment.” There followed an exchange of Polish between her and Kirnov. Kirnov gripped my knee and grinned. “My dear boy,” he said, “Zofia was telling me of your plan to take the riverboat. Very enterprising, but it would have been quite fatal. I see your reasoning, of course. It was obvious, to take the boat-so obvious that you thought it would attract no notice. Let me tell you, the Czech police do not think in that way. They always look first of all for the obvious. So you would have been caught in no time. No, no, no. It would never have done. But I congratulate you for being suspicious of us. It shows you are intelligent. One should trust nobody. Because you were suspicious of us, I may say I trust you a little more. So it’s a gain for all of us, this plan of yours, even though we cannot use it.” He looked in the mirror at Zofia. “You will have good company in our young Paul,” he said.

Zofia squeezed my shoulder. “I think you’re right, Sasha. Getting Swiss passports was very clever, Paul. We do appreciate all your trouble. But Sasha’s way is better. You’ll see.”

All this patting on the head was annoying. “Maybe you’ll let me judge that for myself,” I said. “I’d like to know right now where we are headed and what Sasha’s plan is, exactly.”

“Of course you do. What could be more natural?” Kirnov said. “Soon we’ll be at a place where we can talk comfortably. We have a little while to wait. Zofia will make us some tea, we will have something to eat, and we will go over the whole thing together. You will know everything.”

Kirnov turned the car into a dirt track leading away from the frontier. He drove fast, raising a cloud of dust. The old Citroën snaked over the rough ground, its unlatched hood flapping, its muffler rattling. Kirnov is not much larger than a half-grown child. He sat on a cushion, peering through the spokes of the steering wheel and working the pedals with the tips of his toes. He steered into a woods and followed what seemed to be a cow path at undiminished speed, running over rocks and crossing a good-sized stream, throwing up sheets of water that sprayed through the open windows. He laughed delightedly. At the end of the path we found a small house in a clearing. There were geese in the yard and a goat tied to the fence; the geese set up a racket when the Citroën emerged from the woods. Kirnov turned off the engine.

“The owners are away for the day,” he said, “but we can make ourselves at home. Zofia, the tea!” Kirnov helped Zofia out of the car and the two of them strode across the yard, scattering geese before them, and went into the cottage. It was obvious that they were on familiar ground. Still the keen observer, I noticed a lot of tire tracks in the dust near the Citroën and concluded that they had been staying here for some time. I watched the odometer and the landmarks, so I could doubtless locate the cottage on a relief map of the area. These admirable skills did not seem to mean much as I reflected on my situation. Our plan was out the window. I was thirty kilometers from my motorcycle, the riverboat had departed, and I was in the middle of a woods, unarmed, outside a strange house that might very well contain a detachment of security police.

Kirnov came to the door with a bottle in his hand. He smiled cheerfully and clinked the bottle against a glass. “The sun is over the yardarm,” he called in English. Kirnov has a jocose quality; you expect him to start tumbling or juggling at any moment. It was impossible to be afraid of such a tiny man. I started toward the house. “Pay attention to the big goose,” Kirnov said. “She bites.”

Inside, Zofia was pushing twigs into the stove. She laid the table and sliced bread and cheese and a large salami. Her skirt swung with each strong cut of the knife. “Simple food gives the greatest happiness,” Kirnov said. He poured vodka for all of us. “To the happy future of this beautiful girl!” Kirnov and I drank. He filled our glasses again. “To our brave American!” This time Zofia drank. So did I.

Kirnov sat down on a kitchen chair and drew his short legs under him. He looked more than ever like a bald child. (He is not a dwarf, though he cannot be much over five feet tall; he is just a very small man.)

“Now you wish to know everything,” he said. “Very well. We will stay here until after dark. It is quite safe, everything has been arranged. At ten o’clock we will leave, once again in the car. Very innocent-a little drive along the road to a certain point. There we leave the car. We go through a woods to another point. There we will find a signal if all is well-a beer bottle on a stump. We will be very near the frontier. I will accompany you to the edge of the forbidden zone. A strip of land along the border has been plowed and harrowed, to show footprints. You will have a rake. As you go over the plowed strip, you will rake out your footprints. It will take you four minutes, perhaps five. Then you must cross a small meadow. At the edge of the meadow is a woods. You will be in Austria. Nothing will go wrong. It’s a simple plan.”

Kirnov put a piece of cheese into his mouth and gave me a merry look of conspiracy. My stomach churned with anger, and I waited for it to subside. It did not subside. I had come here with the idea of running an operation and I found myself being taken for granted by this Polish midget.

“At last I understand,” I said. “I am here because you needed someone to rake away Zofia’s footprints.”

Kirnov stopped chewing. “You are annoyed,” he said.

“No. I am astonished that you think I’ll accept to go along on this holiday you’ve planned, knowing no more than you’ve just told me.

Kirnov stood up. “But surely Tadeusz told you what was involved? You knew before you came that you’d be making a night crossing with Zofia.”

“I knew very little else. I still don’t. Some things you have left out, Sasha. For example, how close is the nearest guard tower? Are there any mines? Are there any trip wires? What is the schedule of the searchlight sweeps? Are there any patrols? How do we maintain direction going across? What are the frontier guards going to be doing while we stroll by under their noses, gardening as we go? What is your alternative plan if we are discovered? Little things like that.”

Kirnov held up his hand. “All those questions I can answer, gladly. In a word, you have nothing to worry about. We have a secret weapon.”

“I see. And what might that be?”

“The oldest of all secret weapons. Human nature. In this case, greed. There is a certain officer of the frontier forces who likes money. He has been paid. The exact sum is five thousand U.S. dollars. Pretty good for five minutes work. He is an honest workman. Don’t worry. You will not be discovered.”

“I’m sorry. That’s not good enough, Kirnov. I want facts, not reassurances.”

“Naturally,” Kirnov said. He hitched his chair closer and beckoned Zofia to sit down with us. “First, to all your questions- there are no trip wires where you will be walking, no patrols, no searchlights. The nearest watch-tower is fifty meters from your starting point. That sounds risky, but it is the essential safety factor. Our man will pay a call to this watchtower at exactly 11:10. He will find something wrong with the way the tower is being manned. He is an officer, he does not have to be logical. He will bring the entire crew to attention and berate them for five full minutes-inspect their rifles, criticize the timing of the searchlight, accuse them of every kind of negligence. At this time, the patrol will be on the other side of the watchtower. They will not see you or hear you. There is no moon tonight. On the Austrian side of the border, on a hilltop beyond the woods, there is a house. There will be a light in the window. You walk straight toward the light. This is important, because you are right-there are mines everywhere except where you will walk. As long as you walk with your eyes on the light, never deviating, you will be all right.”

“If I am raking, I’ll be walking backwards.”

“Yes, but Zofia will be walking normally. She will be your guide. Of course you’re right about the raking-we have to hide the footprints so that it will not be known that anyone went across. That’s why it takes two persons, one to guide and one to rake. Otherwise, our rich officer would not have the opportunity of spending his dollars.”

Zofia smiled proudly at Kirnov. “Satisfied?” she asked me. “With Sasha’s good intentions, yes. Do you mind if I ask how well you know this officer you’ve paid?”

“Very well,” Kirnov said. “Oh, very well.”

“You’ve dealt with him before?”

Kirnov turned solemn. “I do not use a girl like Zofia, who is like my own child, as a guinea pig. If I had the slightest doubt that things will go exactly as I have told you, I would not let her leave this cottage. You can believe me when I tell you that.”

Zofia rose and put her arms around the little man. “Yes,” she said, “you can believe that. Now, Sasha, your tea.”

We ate our cold meal in silence by the light of an oil lamp. Zofia kept stealing glances at me. I rewarded her with no smiles, and gradually her air of happiness dissipated. Kirnov produced two large Havana cigars and offered me one. I refused-the idea of smoking a cigar before going over the top was the final touch of incongruity. Kirnov cut his Havana carefully and lit it with a splinter of its wooden wrapping. As he smoked I noticed that he wore a ruby ring on the index finger of his right hand. I realized that his dandyism-the double-breasted blazer, the suede shoes, the precise speech, and now the ring and the Havana-had annoyed me from the start. If headquarters is right in their suppositions about him, he belongs to another era of Russian secret agents. Kirnov belongs in E. Phillips Oppenheim, not in the KGB.

Zofia cleared the plates, giving Kirnov an adoring look as she did so. A guitar hung on the wall, and she took it down and struck the strings. “Sasha taught me to play when I was a little girl,” she said. Smiling at Kirnov, she played a tune I did not recognize. He closed his eyes in pleasure. When she finished, he said, “I always see your mother when I hear that song. A woman of gold.”

“Have you always known each other?” I asked politely. There seemed no point in adding to the bad atmosphere. I was committed to them for the rest of the evening.

“Always,” Kirnov said.

Zofia, with the guitar in her lap, said something in Polish. Kirnov shrugged.

“Sasha was always a friend of my parents,” Zofia said. “He is my godfather and Tadeusz’s too, which is a little strange because he is of course a Jew. My father and mother did not mention this to the priest when we were baptized, and Sasha had no hesitation in promising to raise us as believers in Christ because he saw nothing wrong in revering a fellow Jew.”

“Zofia, no blasphemy. I take my duty seriously. If all those millions of Christians believe Jesus to be God, he is God. All it requires to make a god is belief. Q.E.D.”

“So all through our childhood,” Zofia said, “there was Sasha, with candy and books and stories of his journeys. He always traveled. A long time would go by sometimes. Where is Sasha? We’d look out the window for him. Then, one day, up the walk would come Sasha, buried under a mountain of dolls for me and soldiers for Tadeusz.”

“Books for Tadeusz,” Kirnov said. “For Tadeusz, always books.”

“Then one day when I was very small, Sasha came to live with us. We woke up one morning, and Mother took us into the sitting room to tell us that Sasha was in the house. But we must never tell that he was there. We knew the Germans were in Warsaw. They wanted to kill Sasha because he was a Jew. So Sasha was going to live in our attic and we would keep him alive. From now on, we could never take any children upstairs. There were many rules, all to keep Sasha from being killed. He remained in the attic for four years, and that’s when he taught me to play the guitar.”

“I’ll tell you an amusing story about that,” Kirnov said. “One day in 1943, when I had already been upstairs for more than two years, I was giving Zofia a guitar lesson. It was early evening, just getting dark. You could always tell in those days when it was dusk, even if you had no windows in your room-and of course I had no windows. At dusk the air was filled with the smell of turnips cooking. In a thousand houses, turnips were in the pot-that was all anyone in Poland had to eat. So I smelled the turnips while Zofia tried to learn to play the guitar. I owed her a great deal-she came upstairs every day to see me. And she did other things. It’s indelicate to tell you this, but it will give you an idea of what the times were like. For a man in hiding there is always a problem- he cannot go downstairs to the toilet. One used a newspaper. So each day, Zofia would take a package on her bicycle as she rode to school, and each day put it in a different trash can along her route. For four years, the little packages. This long-haired blond girl on her bicycle with her books.

“Back to the guitar lesson. Zofia is playing. I am correcting her mistakes. We are laughing, I am singing the notes for her to follow. Then-a horrendous banging at the door downstairs. Germans shouting. Where is the Jew?Zofia’s father and I had made a hiding place between the partitions of the wall. No other Jew in Poland could have fitted into this tiny space, but for Sasha Kirnov it was all right. ‘Keep playing. Don’t be afraid of the Germans. Don’t look at the hiding place,’ I told Zofia. I got into the space between the walls. Under my feet was a carpet of rat droppings. A strong smell of rats. I had a pistol, just a small one-not for the Germans but for myself. I held it against my temple, standing between the walls, ready to shoot myself if I was discovered. I heard Zofia playing her guitar. Then the boots of the Germans on the stairs. They burst into the attic and found a little girl playing the guitar, but no Jew. Naturally we hid all traces of my presence during the day-blankets into the trunk, cups and saucers downstairs, and so on. For an hour they searched, pounding on the walls, trying to find a secret hiding place. They failed, as you can see. They had never heard of a man hiding between the walls. After they went away, I came out. I was shaking. I can tell you. Little Zofia took the gun out of my hand. I remember just what she said: ‘Sasha, look at you! You have dirt all over your face, even right on top.’ I always told her that a bald man was lucky because his face never stopped like other people’s-it went right over the top of his head.”

Kirnov, chuckling, relit his cigar. Zofia’s face was wreathed in a smile. “Sasha,” she said. “I had never seen you dirty before.”

They were as cheerful over this memory of fifteen-year-old danger as they seemed to be concerning the hazards of crossing the frontier a few hours hence. They were proud of each other, a sly old fellow and a beautiful young girl who between them could outwit the world. They had done it in Warsaw and they could do it again. These two knew each other better than anyone else could know either of them. Whatever Sasha may be-KGB agent or part of a plot to do murder in the Sudan-he is a very good godfather to Zofia Miernik. He has raised her to live by her wits, and in her kind of life that is a more valuable training than religion.

No one who was in that cottage with them could have doubted that the current of love and trust that passed between them was real. I looked at Kirnov, who once again had his feet tucked under him like a tailor, and made a decision that I knew was not rational. I decided to trust him absolutely for the rest of the time I was in Czechoslovakia.

At a few minutes before ten, Kirnov began to tidy up the cottage. He removed all traces of our presence, wiping every surface we might have touched with a damp cloth; he even took the plates Zofia had washed out of the cupboard and polished them. “Now,” he said, “hands in pockets until we go. It’s always wise to leave the nest clean.” Zofia returned from the bedroom, wearing slacks and heavy shoes and a kerchief knotted under her chin. She carried a small red rucksack.

Inside the car, Kirnov turned to me. “Paul, I don’t for a moment think you are such a romantic as to carry a gun, much less use it. But I like to anticipate everything I can.”

“I won’t be doing any shooting,” I said. Absolute trust does not extend to telling an opposition agent whether you’re armed- especially when you’re not. Kirnov nodded in a satisfied way and started the Citroën. The ride was sedate, compared to our trip out from Bratislava. Kirnov seemed to be keeping to a close schedule; he looked at his watch often, and twice stopped the car to wait. Once, after checking the time and the landmarks, he pulled into a side road and turned off the lights and the motor. Through the open window I heard a couple of bicycles whir by on the highway. “Patrol,” Kirnov explained. We drove from there with the lights off and once nearly ran over an old woman in black who leaped out of the way with a yelp of fright.

We were driving north. On our left were the white fingers of the frontier searchlights along the Morava River. At Kúty we left the main highway and turned northwest over a series of dirt roads. Kirnov, still running without lights, put his head out the window. We crossed two rivers on wooden bridges; these must have been the Morava and the Dyje. Turning south, we passed under a railroad embankment, and Kirnov asked me to get out and walk ahead of the car. “You’ll see a grass path on your left in a few minutes,” Kinov said. “Guide me into it, please.”

Searchlights were visible again, only a few hundred yards to the south. I found the path Kirnov wanted, and he drove in and parked the car. We walked on for another half mile, through a grove of straight young trees. We were directly between two towers. I caught Kirnov’s sleeve and asked him where we were. “Twelve kilometers east of Drasenhofen,” Kirnov whispered. I snorted: Kirnov’s greedy officer of frontier guards was also our greedy officer of frontier guards. Sasha had led me to the crossing point I had been going to use in case I missed the river steamer.

It seemed unlikely that any amount of greed would persuade this officer to permit two crossings at the same point in one night. The escape Kirnov had arranged was scheduled to take place fifty minutes before the one Vienna had arranged for me. I fervently wished I had been told how much we had paid: any figure over five thousand dollars would have given me confidence that the officer planned to open fire at 11:30 P.M. instead of midnight. But I didn’t know.

Zofia was busy, pinning a white handkerchief to the back of Kirnov’s coat. “No more talking from here,” Kirnov whispered. “I’ll lead on.” He moved off, feeling his way among the slender trees. It was a shallow woods, and as we approached the edge of it there was some light from the backwash of the sweeping searchlights. These now lay only a few hundred feet ahead of us. Kirnov stopped, then straightened up with a large green bottle in his hand. “All is well,” he whispered. “Lie down. Ten minutes.” Zofia handed me the rake; I hadn’t noticed that she was carrying it, and in fact had forgotten all about it. Zofia and Sasha forget nothing. She unpinned the handkerchief from his coat and stuffed it into his pocket. Her teeth shone as she lay looking into Kirnov’s face; she was sprawled on her side, her head propped on her elbow. She kissed the little man.

The nearest watchtower was clearly visible above the trees to our right. Its searchlight swept the ground to either side in a W pattern, meeting the light from the adjoining towers at the points of the W. Anything moving across the plowed ground while both lights were working would certainly be seen at once. There were no dark spots. It was perfectly quiet; not even a cricket sang.

I found myself smiling broadly at the back of Kirnov’s nude scalp. If he had set up a trap to have me killed or arrested, I would just have to walk into it with his garden rake in my hand. The time Vienna had arranged for my crossing was fifty minutes too late. If I refused to go across at 11:10, Kirnov’s time, he had only to whistle up the guards. I could hardly dodge around in the woods for an hour, get back to the jumping-off point, and sprint across the border alone. Even if I wasn’t shot on the spot, I was carrying enough forged papers to spend the rest of my life in Pankrac. [5] The idea of overpowering Kirnov did not seem realistic. I could not have done it quickly enough to prevent Zofia from giving the alarm. Breaking Zofia’s neck was not an appealing prospect. I have never been sure that all that deadly stuff we had in training would work in real life. I could imagine Kirnov slipping out of my judo grip like an eel instead of dying with a twitch and a sigh. The truth of the matter is that Kirnov’s story about the Warsaw attic kept me from getting too bloodthirsty: who could strangle a Jew who had come that close to being killed by the SS?

Kirnov reached over and took my hand. He tapped my watch with his forefinger and then gave my hand a squeeze. It was 11:09. All three of us rose to our knees. We were in a pocket of silence (one does hear one’s own heart at such moments), and then we heard the sound of a man talking loudly in Czech.

The searchlight wavered, then stopped sweeping, its beam pointed away from us at an acute angle. The light on the left kept tracking its own perfect W. There was a corridor of darkness about 50 yards wide directly ahead of us. “Go,” Kirnov said. Zofia stood up and strode out of the woods and into the plowed ground. Before I turned around to begin raking away our footprints, I looked up and saw the light in the window of the farmhouse in Austria. Zofia reached behind her and grabbed the tail of my coat.

It was a very slow trip. I had difficulty seeing our footprints, and the dirt was slick with dew. It stuck to the teeth of the rake. I had to tell Zofia to go slower. She immediately obeyed. Behind us I could hear the officer berating his men. The watchtower was a distinct outline, a skeleton of planks with the light mounted on a pedestal behind the front railing. To the right of the tower, about a hundred yards away, I saw a group of soldiers with slung rifles. They had their backs to us, and they were staring upward at the tower. Zofia walked on, exerting a steady pull on my coattails. “Twenty meters more, fifteen meters more, ten meters more,’ she said in a low, steady voice as we went. Finally she said, “The meadow.”

I felt grass under my feet and turned around. The woods lay before us. Zofia began to run and I loped along behind her, carrying my rake at port arms. We entered the trees and kept going until we were well inside them. When we turned around, the searchlight on the tower had resumed sweeping. It was 11:14. The silence had descended again, and I heard a small noise from Zofia. She was pressing her fist against her cheek and biting her lip. I touched her face. It was wet with tears. She sniffed loudly and moved her head away from my hand.

We climbed up a bank onto the highway. Zofia removed her kerchief and shook out her hair. I was surprised to see that it fell to her shoulder blades. Tears were still shining on her cheeks when Miernik arrived seconds later to meet us.

He had come out from Vienna in a taxicab.