The Miernik Dossier - Charles McCarry [45]
The nearest watchtower was clearly visible above the trees to our right. Its searchlight swept the ground to either side in a W pattern, meeting the light from the adjoining towers at the points of the W. Anything moving across the plowed ground while both lights were working would certainly be seen at once. There were no dark spots. It was perfectly quiet; not even a cricket sang.
I found myself smiling broadly at the back of Kirnov’s nude scalp. If he had set up a trap to have me killed or arrested, I would just have to walk into it with his garden rake in my hand. The time Vienna had arranged for my crossing was fifty minutes too late. If I refused to go across at 11:10, Kirnov’s time, he had only to whistle up the guards. I could hardly dodge around in the woods for an hour, get back to the jumping-off point, and sprint across the border alone. Even if I wasn’t shot on the spot, I was carrying enough forged papers to spend the rest of my life in Pankrac.* The idea of overpowering Kirnov did not seem realistic. I could not have done it quickly enough to prevent Zofia from giving the alarm. Breaking Zofia’s neck was not an appealing prospect. I have never been sure that all that deadly stuff we had in training would work in real life. I could imagine Kirnov slipping out of my judo grip like an eel instead of dying with a twitch and a sigh. The truth of the matter is that Kirnov’s story about the Warsaw attic kept me from getting too bloodthirsty: who could strangle a Jew who had come that close to being killed by the SS?
Kirnov reached over and took my hand. He tapped my watch with his forefinger and then gave my hand a squeeze. It was 11:09. All three of us rose to our knees. We were in a pocket of silence (one does hear one’s own heart at such moments), and then we heard the sound of a man talking loudly in Czech.
The searchlight wavered, then stopped sweeping, its beam pointed away from us at an acute angle. The light on the left kept tracking its own perfect W. There was a corridor of darkness about 50 yards wide directly ahead of us. “Go,” Kirnov said. Zofia stood up and strode out of the woods and into the plowed ground. Before I turned around to begin raking away our footprints, I looked up and saw the light in the window of the farmhouse in Austria. Zofia reached behind her and grabbed the tail of my coat.
It was a very slow trip. I had difficulty seeing our footprints, and the dirt was slick with dew. It stuck to the teeth of the rake. I had to tell Zofia to go slower. She immediately obeyed. Behind us I could hear the officer berating his men. The watchtower was a distinct outline, a skeleton of planks with the light mounted on a pedestal behind the front railing. To the right of the tower, about a hundred yards away, I saw a group of soldiers with slung rifles. They had their backs to us, and they were staring upward at the tower. Zofia walked on, exerting a steady pull on my coattails. “Twenty meters more, fifteen meters more, ten meters more,’ she said in a low, steady voice as we went. Finally she said, “The meadow.”
I felt grass under my feet and turned around. The woods lay before us. Zofia began to run and I loped along behind her, carrying my rake at port arms. We entered the trees and kept going until we were well inside them. When we turned around, the searchlight on the tower had resumed sweeping. It was 11:14. The silence had descended again, and I heard a small noise from Zofia. She was pressing her fist against her cheek and biting her lip. I touched her face. It was wet with tears. She sniffed loudly and moved