The Miernik Dossier

51. REPORT BY CHRISTOPHER.

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.