The Miernik Dossier - Charles McCarry [20]
“My friend Paul,” he said, “I want to discuss this situation seriously. What am I to do?”
“Doing the obvious really is as impossible as you say it is?”
“The obvious? Returning to Poland?”
“Yes. Are you sure it would be so terrible if you did go back?”
“You sound like Nigel.”
“I suppose so. It’s hard to accept that they really want to destroy a man like you.
“A joke of a man? Believe me, they have no sense of humor.”
“They must know something about you that I don’t know.”
“They know things about me even I don’t know. They are artists, these secret police. They make a file. Into it they put their suspicions. To justify one suspicion they must find another, and another. The file gets fat. A thousand lies equal one great truth, just like a novel. When the dossier is fat enough, they send the man to the butcher.”
“How can you know that?”
“It’s natural for me to know it. I grew up in a society you cannot comprehend because it hasn’t happened to you Americans and English yet. You haven’t lived in the future as we Poles have done. From childhood, out there in the future, you learn two languages—one is heard with the ear, the other with the back of the neck. They are after me all right. I hear it here.” He touched the nape of his neck.
“You want me to help you.”
“How can you help me? You say yourself the Americans don’t want me.”
“I think there are easier countries for the citizen of a Communist country to get into right now, yes. I don’t think you’d have a chance with the people in the American embassy.”
“Then what can you do for me? Put a bed in your attic?”
“How would you like to go to Africa in an air-conditioned Cadillac?”
This was the first mention of the trip to Sudan I had made to Miernik. He treated it as a bad joke, and I was not surprised that he did so. It must have sounded like more American frivolity. He began to talk in a loud voice, going back to his own subject, refusing to hear me. Finally I managed to interrupt him.
“That was a serious suggestion,” I said. “Khatar’s father has bought a new Cadillac, and Kalash is going to drive it down to Sudan.”
“Drive it to Sudan?”
“Drive it to Naples, take ship to Alexandria, drive it down the Nile and across the desert. It will take about three weeks. Do you want to go?”
“On what date?”
“In about two weeks’ time, Kalash says. But you know Kalash.”
“I would have to go before my passport expires. That is July 2.”
“That means your passport will expire while you’re in Sudan. Do you want to be stateless in Khartoum?”
“Kalash could fix something,” he said. “Down there he is a royal highness.”
“Maybe you could be a slave. You’d come in handy if the old prince wanted to have a little talk with a Polish tourist.”
Miernik laughed. “Some Polish tourists would be very interesting to a man who keeps a harem. Maybe this is not such a bad idea.”
He cheered up very quickly, a little too quickly perhaps for a man who is going to find himself in the middle of the desert without a passport. He began to rub his hands together, always in Miernik a sign of joy.
“I have always wanted to see Sudan,” he said. “It is an extremely interesting place, you know. The populations, the religion, this ancient society cut off from water, living where no men should be able to live. Not only have they lived, they have been conquerors, even. Fascinating.”
“You seem to know a lot about it.”
“I have studied it for years. One of my secrets, Paul. I want to write a book about it. I even studied Arabic at one time, a little.”
“You speak it?”
“Read it a little. I suppose I would speak it with a Polish accent.”
“That should give Kalash something to laugh about.”
“Kalash. He is no longer very friendly to me.”
Miernik was plunged again into gloom. He reminded me of his outburst in the restaurant a couple of weeks before. “I insulted him. Royalty does not like that.”
“Kalash probably didn’t even notice. He’ll take you along if you want to go. He’ll even get you Somali girls—that