The Miernik Dossier

58. REPORT BY CHRISTOPHER.

2 July. Ilona Bentley is a natural mimic. She does a very funny Winston Churchill, and as she emerged from the Hilton this morning to see the Cadillac groaning under the camping gear Kalash has lashed on its roof, she paused and puffed up her body like a fat man’s. In Churchill’s voice she asked, “Is this the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end?”

A good question. We started for the desert in a spirit of amity, if not of gaiety, and arrived at the Pyramids only a few minutes after dawn. Much wonderment on everyone’s part: how did they do it without pulleys and geometry? Miernik, of course, turns out to be an amateur Egyptologist able to quote dimensions, angles, and the exact number of dressed stones in Cheops’s Pyramid. In the shadow of the Sphinx, Kalash gave us more Shakespeare; he played Antony as well as Othello for the drama society before he was expelled from Oxford. “I was found by a languid don with three unclothed English girls in my college room,” says Kalash, explaining his dismissal. “Poor fellow never imagined that heterosexuality existed on such a scale.”

Miernik’s wishes prevailed, as they usually do, and we followed the road along the west bank of the Nile to the Valley of the Kings, and afterward went to Karnak (Thebes, you know). These ruins have no operational importance, so I won’t linger over a description. Even Miernik was struck dumb by the Temple of Amen Ra at Karnak and broke silence only to decipher a few of the enormous hieroglyphs on the broken columns and on Thotmes’s obelisk. Even when these buildings were whole, five thousand years ago, they must have known the stealthy footfall of spies; some Hittite Miernik undoubtedly was watched through peepholes by agents of the pharaoh. (He cannot be what he seems… He seems to be what he is not. The knife! says one. Not until we know his purpose, says another.) It’s a very old profession.

We were all in favor of staying at a hotel in Luxor, but Kalash was anxious to camp out. He shipped an elaborate outfit from Geneva-tents, sleeping bags, folding tables and chairs, stoves, and so on. “As for me, I need nothing but a burnoose and a gun,” says Kalash. “But I wanted you white explorers to have some of the comforts you’re used to.” Kalash does not believe in maps, but I am keeping track of our route as best I can on a big Michelin map. We turned east just south of El Kab and in a few minutes were passing through the empty desert. This is fairly hilly country; the land is the color of old bones.

Night comes very quickly in the desert, as you’ve no doubt heard, but Kalash seems to know exactly when this is going to happen. He stopped near a place called Soukari (before we got to the town: “If the Egyptians don’t know we’re here they won’t come creeping out to steal our shoes”) and we made camp about an hour before the sun disappeared. Kalash has barred all alcohol while we are in the desert, but he has laid in a huge supply of oranges, lemons, and limes. Zofia squeezed some of the fruit and made drinks with the last of the ice from the Hilton. Kalash fished the ice cubes out of his tin cup and threw them into the sand. “You’ll be less thirsty if you learn to drink tepid fluids,” he said. He issued warnings about deadly six-inch scorpions and imparted other desert lore. He is dressed as a sheik for the trip, and his warnings, issuing out of a white headdress, are very believable.

We dined on canned goods heated by Ilona on an alcohol stove and afterward sat around in the light of a gasoline lantern, listening to Zofia’s guitar. She was well taught by Sasha Kirnov-she can play almost any tune after it’s hummed to her. Ilona knows a great many Russian songs, learned from her grandfather. The language suits her well; she looked wild and melancholy in the lamplight with her black hair falling over her breasts. Her hair was the color of the night behind her, so her white face seemed suspended in air, like the face of a girl in a dream. Miernik was hypnotized. So were we all.

It grew very cold shortly after nightfall, and we put on jackets. There were three small tents, each big enough for two persons. The girls decided to share one of these, and Miernik and Collins paired off in another-they want to keep an eye on each other because of Ilona, I suppose. Kalash, after the guitar had been put away, walked beyond the edge of the lamplight and lay down on the ground, drawing an end of his costume across his face. That left me alone in the third tent.

I couldn’t sleep, but it was too cold to get up, so I lay on my stomach in the sleeping bag, looking out at the stars through the open flap of the tent. Kalash was an unmoving white shape a few feet away. At about midnight I heard a slithering sound next door, and then I saw Miernik sliding out of the mouth of his tent. He stood upright, looked around, and then walked straight for the Cadillac. He opened the door softly and the interior light went on briefly. There was a pause before light showed again, this time in thin streaks around the edges of the window shades. There are blinds on all the windows. Of course there is no way to cover the windshield, but the car was pointed away from camp, so the pool of light on its hood was unlikely to disturb anyone.

I got up and put on my boots. Kalash, still not moving a muscle, said, “What is that imbecile doing in the car at this time of night?”

“I’ll ask him,” I said. “Maybe his wounds are bothering him.” (Miernik has removed his sling, but he still moves rather stiffly.)

Kalash said nothing more, and I assumed he went back to sleep at once. I walked to the car and looked in through the windshield. Miernik was sitting in the back seat with his thick Mont Blanc fountain pen in one hand and a smallish book in the other. He turned the pages of the book, ran his finger down the edge of the page, counted the lines to the point where his finger stopped, and then wrote a number on a sheet of paper. Then he repeated the process.

I guess I don’t have to tell you folks that he was writing a message, using a book code. I moved back out of the light but kept watching. Miernik was absorbed in his work. He went at it rapidly, with none of the fussiness and hesitation he usually displays. He’d find a word, note the number of its line on the pages, and enter it with the page number in a five-digit group. Judging by the place at which he’d opened the book, he was using three-digit pages. Therefore the first three digits are the page number and the last two the line number. I suppose he uses the first word on the line cited. The book had a gray cover with red lettering.

After five minutes or so, I started back to my tent. “What is he doing?” Kalash asked from the floor of the desert.

“He’s reading,” I replied.

Miernik came creeping back about ten minutes later. Kalash did not speak to him, and I was glad I didn’t have to. Catching him red-handed bothered me less than I might have expected. There is a certain satisfaction in being a successful Peeping Tom; otherwise no one would do this sort of work. But Miernik’s damn foolishness annoyed me. Why did he choose this time and this place to mess around with a book code? Where would he get rid of it? Not even the Soviets use natives with cleft sticks as moving dead-drops, and in the desert Miernik would certainly find no other way to get rid of his clandestine message. It would be typical of the man to entrust it to the Egyptian mails in the next small town we come to. The whole scene-sneaking out to the car at night, pulling down the shades, scribbling away in circumstances that offered a 99 percent chance for detection-was so amateurish. It made me angry that Miernik could be such a fool.

3 July. Two things to record in connection with the events of last night:

1. Miernik’s book is Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, World’s Classics edition No. 496 (Oxford University Press, 1959). He left it lying on his sleeping bag when he came out for breakfast.

2. This morning, in Marsa Alam, he did mail a letter at the post office.