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By Root 1042 0

the ALF is, in reality, beside the point. We could not foresee that events would develop as they did, but in the end the Sudanese dealt with the ALF in a way that made Miernik’s presence irrelevant. There was some revulsion here over the methods used by the Sudanese army and police: all that killing really was unnecessary and counterproductive. The fact that Firecracker was killed out of cardessness was particularly hard to take. We felt that we owed him something better than that. The Sudanese not unnaturally decided to keep the whole affair quiet, so the idea we had for a really embarrassing exposure of Moscow’s hand in Africa went by the boards. Personally, I think this is just as well: the heroic death of the ALF martyrs was more likely to be an inspiration than a discouragement to other potential terrorists.

You may read the foregoing paragraph as confirmation of your belief that your own assignment was without value. Far from it: we wanted to cover all bets, and you covered Miernik in a style that few could equal. I believe we had the right man, did the right thing, and produced the right results. That’s all that matters. Forget Miernik and go on to something else. You have a brilliant professional future before you. Let’s get on with it.

I can understand why you want to avoid any further reporting on the people who were with you in Sudan. As Bill has already told you, we think you should drift out of these relationships as naturally as possible and as soon as possible for security reasons. We have some residual curiosity about Ilona Bentley. There’s no question that she fingered Miernik, although the results were not what she expected—and maybe not what the Russians expected, either. We taped a pretty hysterical encounter between her and her Soviet case officer, a fellow named Kutosov who operates out of Paris. She accused the Soviets of having murdered Miernik. Kutosov denied it, of course, and blamed it on the stupidity of natives. And on us. They’ve guessed that Firecracker belonged to us, and they naturally conclude that we put him up to the killing of Miernik. Bentley may even believe this, for all we know. As nearly as we can make out, the Soviets recruited her around 1957, promising special treatment and perhaps even release for a Hungarian she knew (knew in the biblical sense) in return for her cooperation. After she got involved, she grew to like the work for its own sake. Kutosov is still running her on a variety of low-grade operations, according to our cousins in London. We don’t imagine that she’ll hold up for very much longer, considering her emotional pattern and the fact that she’s thoroughly blown to half the services in the world.

If I were you, I’d abstain from any more quick tours of Czechoslovakia. The Czech officer commanding the area of the frontier where you crossed over with Zofia defected a couple of weeks ago. His superiors began to wonder where he was getting all his money. Among the things he told the debriefers was this: Sasha Kirnov was shot dead by the KGB man, Shigalov, in the woods behind you as you made your way across the frontier. There are any number of ingenious theories as to why this was done. The most probable one is that the Soviets thought Kirnov had been doubled. He was in contact with a third-country agent in Vienna named Heinz Tanner who had been co-opted by the British. And one of our people in South America had been seeing a lot of Kirnov socially, trying to set him up for defection or recruitment. Our fellow had no luck. Neither, in the end, did Sasha.

We hope to see you before much longer. Betty still wonders when you’ll find the right girl and has a whole platoon of prospective brides lined up in anticipation of your next visit to Washington. If I were you, I’d leave all that for old age. If I have anything to do with it, you’re going to be too busy for a family for a long time to come.

Best regards,

JACK

89. FROM THE DEBRIEFING OF ZOFIA MIERNIK.

The months have gone by, and now we never speak of what happened in Sudan. It’s curious how little difference