The Miernik Dossier - Charles McCarry [23]
Therefore I told Ilona about Christopher’s idea of going to Sudan. She was most interested. (Why is she so inquisitive? asked the old Miernik. Quiet! She is only being kind, replied the new Miernik.) “This is marvelous,” Ilona said, “you will go away, no one can touch you in Kalash’s desert—you must go, Tadeusz.” I said, joking, “Why don’t you come too?” Her face changed into that expression, merry and secretive, that women have after making love. “That would be interesting,” she said, “to spend three weeks under the stars with you and Nigel—and Kalash.” (Him, too? I cannot doubt it.)
She plied me with questions about the arrangements, the route, the dates. I know almost nothing about it; I may even have left Christopher with the impression that I am not going. Ilona is right—I must go. Duty is duty, and the bridge between the old world and the new. For Ilona it is an adventure—down the Nile, through the desert. Bandits, perhaps. She had a thousand questions; I answered them all. Her hand on my thigh as we talked.
Now, two hours later, the habit of a lifetime comes back to warn me that I should have told her nothing. Suspicion is a disease: guilt’s little sister. I cannot be cured of it even by this girl whom I now love. (I realize that I was tempted to refuse Christopher, and therefore refuse my escape and my duty to go to Sudan, because I wanted to stay near Ilona—at least in the same city, if not in the same bed.) I should have told her nothing.
She shook my hand when she let me out of the car. Her skin is always warm and perfectly dry. Her hair was windblown, her lips a little swollen, I suppose from the excitement of fast driving in an open car; she pulls up her skirt like a child when she drives. I don’t know whom she will sleep with tonight. Nor, my dear Tadeusz, does she.
Entbehren sollet du, sollet entbehren! Das ist der ewige Gesang.*
26. REPORT BY BROCHARD (EXCERPT).
Finally, for its value as entertainment, I include the following note on a conversation between Nigel Collins and Ilona Bentley that I overheard on the evening of 6 June in the Restaurant Plat d’Argent. It contains some useful information about the Pole, Tadeusz Miernik, and other personalities in whom you have expressed an interest.
In the Plat d’Argent are a number of booths with very high backs. I was seated in one of these with a young woman at about 8:30 when I heard, issuing from the adjoining booth, the unmistakable voice of Collins. He was speaking in what he imagined to be an undertone to a female who I at once realized must be Bentley. These two make no secret of the fact that they are lovers.
“Of course you can’t come along,” Collins was saying. “How could you think we’d take you? There’ll be no room in the car if both Christopher and Miernik come. Besides, you’d likely end up in a harem.”
Bentley giggled. “I think I’d rather like that,” she said.
“Yes, I suppose you would. Being had by some diseased old Arab who pumps himself full of aphrodisiacs sounds like one of your sexual fantasies. You can do it without my cooperation.”
“I haven’t noticed that you’ve been so awfully cooperative lately, dear Nigel.”
“Perhaps I need an aphrodisiac.”
“I know someone who doesn’t.”
“Really? How pleasant for you.”
“You don’t want to know who?”
“Really, Ilona, you don’t expect me to rise to that old bait again? You can do as you like.”
“All right, we won’t discuss the shambles of my love life. Normal people, my dear Nigel, often sleep with the opposite sex at least once a week. Sometimes