Charles McCarry - The Miernik Dossier

It is impossible in this countryside to get out of sight of a house. This was no small problem, because I wanted to climb into the secret compartment as secretly as possible. Kalash finally just gave up and pulled the Cadillac off the road between two villas about fifty yards apart near the river. He got the hamper out of the trunk and, sniffing suspiciously at the chicken sandwiches for signs of lard, began to eat. I had a couple of sandwiches, but avoided the large bottle of beer Kalash had provided for me: there would be no way to get rid of it in the secret compartment.

As the clock advanced I found it difficult to breathe normally even with the windows rolled down, and I wished that I had taken the tranquilizers you offered me when the passports and money were delivered. The training we are given, and the experience that follows it, are not good preparation for a jaunt behind the Iron Curtain. It is one thing to sit in an apartment in Geneva and calmly discuss the secret police and their prisons with Miernik. It is another thing to put oneself under the jurisdiction of the secret police even for one day. More clearly than you can imagine, I understood why a Miernik would develop nervous habits; even assuming he is play-acting, his performance is based on the reality of truncheons, water torture, testicle crushers. I thought a great deal about János Kádár, sent back to Hungary as a steer eager to please his veterinarian. Kalash did not find me a very responsive companion.

At one o’clock, after making as certain as we could that there were no faces pressed to the windows of the houses on either side of the car, we opened the secret compartment. I manipulated the rear window switch while Kalash worked the one in front. The space behind the rear seat opened like a charm. I had not seen the compartment before I climbed into it. Kalash, catching his first glimpse of the inside, burst into laughter. “We’ll have to cut off your legs to get you in,” he said, and leaned against the side of the car, overcome with the comedy of this image. I got myself inside by curling up in the fetal position with my hands between my knees and my head on my coat. The fake passports in the inside pocket of the coat dug into my face.

When Kalash closed the trap, the back of the seat slammed into my buttocks; I was frozen into position, unable to move any part of my body except my fingers and my neck. It was pitch black and absolutely silent. The walls are lined with thick felt-sound-proofing, I suppose. It’s very effective: I did not even hear the motor start. The false water tank extends over the top of the compartment and down the wall facing the trunk. The tank was sweating, so the felt was soaked. In moments the knees of my trousers were wet though, and each time the car hit a bump large drops of water were shaken off the roof, splashing along the whole length of my body.

There was, as Kalash had predicted, very little air. I imagined at first that I smelled exhaust fumes, but I think this was nerves. I went to sleep almost immediately. As I drifted off, my mind told me that I was probably being overcome by carbon monoxide; it told me also that there was nothing I could do about it. Kalash would certainly not hear any noise I made, and there was no way to open the compartment from the inside. (A serious omission in the design, I realized too late.)

I was awakened by a thumping sound on the rear wall of the compartment. The car was stopped. I assumed the border police were pounding on the side of the false water tank. The cap of the tank was removed and a long stick inserted and wiggled around: I heard the water sloshing. It was amazing how keen my sense of hearing became as I lay curled up in the dark, blind and frantic to urinate. I hoped that if they discovered that the tank was false, Kalash would have sense enough to tell them how to get me out. I had no confidence at all that he would do so, and I began to imagine the years ahead in which a Czech commissar rode around the country in this confiscated Cadillac, unaware that the mummy of an American spy was pressed against the small of his back.

The car began to move once more. It stopped again after half an hour (I could read the luminous dial of my watch with one eye: it was 2:35). Nothing happened. Fifteen minutes went by. At one point I heard the cap of the tank being screwed off again. A strange noise, like the faraway lowing of cattle, filtered through the wall of the compartment. I put my mind to the problem of identifying this sound. It was impossible. I was convinced we had been caught.

A long time later, the back seat popped open and a gust of fresh air flooded in. I lay facing the back wall, so I had to come out of the compartment blind. I did not know who had opened the trap; I certainly did not expect it was Kalash. My dominant feeling was not fear but a mixture of guilt and embarrassment. This was one hell of a way to be captured: it was like being found in uniform under a bed by enemy soldiers.

I rolled over and saw Kalash sprawled on his stomach across the back of the front seat. We were in a woods, in a narrow track with trees pressed against the windows on both sides of the car, which was filled with lovely green shade. Kalash held one of his enormous shoes in his right hand. The index finger of his left hand was pressed to the switch on the right rear window. The large toe of his bare right foot was on the switch of the left front window. He is six feet eight inches tall. Had he been half an inch shorter, he would not have been able to reach both switches. He wore a look of intense surprise that he had been able to manage the job at all. I plunged out of the car and emptied my bladder. While piss ran into the dust I wondered idly why our peerless technicians had placed the switches for my mummy-case so far apart.

Had they tiptoed into Kalash’s sleeping room and measured him from big toe to forefinger and then designed the car around his dimensions? It’s an absolutely foolproof system as long as you have Kalash or Wilt Chamberlain in the car.

Kalash unfolded himself and joined me on the roadside. It was cool under the trees but my clothes were pasted to my sweating body. “You smell rather like Miernik,” Kalash said. “I thought I might have to leave you inside. Did you hear me hallooing down the water pipe? I wanted to tell you you were trapped, and so you would have been if I hadn’t thought of tripping the front switch with my toe. It required several minutes of squirming to achieve just the right position. The whole experience was most discomforting. Those chaps at the frontier, all wearing funny hats, were suspicious of the water tank. Their officer drew some of it out with a rubber tube and tasted it. They were disappointed that it contained nothing sinister.”

We were parked off the Trnava road, ten kilometers from Bratislava. Kalash had kept an eye on the mileage indicator as I had asked him to do, and he had found the track into the woods exactly where I told him it would be. After he left, with the rear seat back in place, I went to the edge of the road and stepped off the 150 paces specified in my instructions. The motorcycle was just where it should have been, fifteen additional paces off the left side of the road under a pile of brush. I screwed in the spark plug, stowed the wrench, and started the machine.

The knees of my trousers were black with water from the walls of the secret compartment, but the wind dried them by the time I reached Bratislava. I attracted little notice, though the road is a fairly busy one-mostly pedestrians and people on bicycles.

Zofia was on time and in place, seated alone in the Olympia Coffeehouse in Kollárovo Námestie. She wore a plain dress buttoned to the throat and her hair was pulled back into a bun. She had done as much as a girl with her looks can do to be inconspicuous. I sat down and ordered a beer; the waiter did not blink an eye when I spoke to him in German. I had parked the motorcycle several blocks away and come on foot. There was no sight of surveillance, but this is hardly necessary in a city where armed police stand on every corner, glowering at all who pass. Through the glass front of the coffeehouse I saw a pair of police with rifles slung over their shoulders. They seemed to be paying no particular attention to me or to the coffeehouse. At four o’clock they were relieved by another team.