The Miernik Dossier - Charles McCarry [44]
No one who was in that cottage with them could have doubted that the current of love and trust that passed between them was real. I looked at Kirnov, who once again had his feet tucked under him like a tailor, and made a decision that I knew was not rational. I decided to trust him absolutely for the rest of the time I was in Czechoslovakia.
At a few minutes before ten, Kirnov began to tidy up the cottage. He removed all traces of our presence, wiping every surface we might have touched with a damp cloth; he even took the plates Zofia had washed out of the cupboard and polished them. “Now,” he said, “hands in pockets until we go. It’s always wise to leave the nest clean.” Zofia returned from the bedroom, wearing slacks and heavy shoes and a kerchief knotted under her chin. She carried a small red rucksack.
Inside the car, Kirnov turned to me. “Paul, I don’t for a moment think you are such a romantic as to carry a gun, much less use it. But I like to anticipate everything I can.”
“I won’t be doing any shooting,” I said. Absolute trust does not extend to telling an opposition agent whether you’re armed— especially when you’re not. Kirnov nodded in a satisfied way and started the Citroën. The ride was sedate, compared to our trip out from Bratislava. Kirnov seemed to be keeping to a close schedule; he looked at his watch often, and twice stopped the car to wait. Once, after checking the time and the landmarks, he pulled into a side road and turned off the lights and the motor. Through the open window I heard a couple of bicycles whir by on the highway. “Patrol,” Kirnov explained. We drove from there with the lights off and once nearly ran over an old woman in black who leaped out of the way with a yelp of fright.
We were driving north. On our left were the white fingers of the frontier searchlights along the Morava River. At Kúty we left the main highway and turned northwest over a series of dirt roads. Kirnov, still running without lights, put his head out the window. We crossed two rivers on wooden bridges; these must have been the Morava and the Dyje. Turning south, we passed under a railroad embankment, and Kirnov asked me to get out and walk ahead of the car. “You’ll see a grass path on your left in a few minutes,” Kinov said. “Guide me into it, please.”
Searchlights were visible again, only a few hundred yards to the south. I found the path Kirnov wanted, and he drove in and parked the car. We walked on for another half mile, through a grove of straight young trees. We were directly between two towers. I caught Kirnov’s sleeve and asked him where we were. “Twelve kilometers east of Drasenhofen,” Kirnov whispered. I snorted: Kirnov’s greedy officer of frontier guards was also our greedy officer of frontier guards. Sasha had led me to the crossing point I had been going to use in case I missed the river steamer.
It seemed unlikely that any amount of greed would persuade this officer to permit two crossings at the same point in one night. The escape Kirnov had arranged was scheduled to take place fifty minutes before the one Vienna had arranged for me. I fervently wished I had been told how much we had paid: any figure over five thousand dollars would have given me confidence that the officer planned to open fire at 11:30 P.M. instead of midnight. But I didn’t know.
Zofia was busy, pinning a white handkerchief to the back of Kirnov’s coat. “No more talking from here,” Kirnov whispered. “I’ll lead on.” He moved off, feeling his way among the slender trees. It was a shallow woods, and as we approached the edge of it there was some light from the backwash of the sweeping searchlights. These now lay only a few hundred feet ahead of us.