IT TAKES THREE TO LOVE

THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE

GCHQ Cryptography Department

DECRIPT OF THE ENCRYPTED REPORT

no.D19/W

Last night I was on a private visit to General P. For a man with the highest status in the country, he lives very modestly and is one of the few local leaders who doesn’t live in one of the villas taken away from the pre-war owners. He told me that he lived very luxuriously before the war, when he was a poet, given that his father was a rich man. Laughing, he told me that his father was rumoured to have been mixing, as a war supplier, sand with salt and that he got rich that way. But, P. assured me, his uncle was actually doing that.

He immediately mentioned my clumsy behaviour in front of the White Palace. I assured him that I was convinced that Goering’s armoured limousine was exactly the right thing for the local chief and that there was nothing behind it but trying to make good money. I said that I understood that it was obviously a mistake, but General P. laughed sweetly and remarked: “You were not wrong. Goering’s fleet suits our leader just right.”

From this I concluded that P. doesn’t have the best opinion of the chief. He told me that he was leaving the army and that he would, almost certainly, become foreign minister. “These villagers don’t understand how someone who’s not a bonehead can command the army. On the other hand, few of them speak foreign languages,” he told me, giggling.

Eventually I asked him again to provide me with a pass for a visit to the Adriatic Workers’ Camp there, scheduled for mid-summer. This time he was suspicious and asked why I was so interested in that visit. “There is nothing interesting there for the British intelligence service,” he said. “Or maybe you are interested in someone personally?” I replied that, as a writer, I’m interested in the phenomenon of coercion and nothing else. “What has the love affair in Alexandria got to do with the interned Stalinists?” he asked. “The connection between lovers and prisoners is in loneliness,” I replied. “A man makes love only to confirm his loneliness.”

*

Monday, 21 June

Something strange is happening with Marija Delikj. Yesterday, she called Dragica for a report and treated her extremely humanely, not to say condescendingly. All gushy, she asked her how she was feeling, if she needed something, if she could help her somehow. Dragica was silent all the time and looked at her with those, I would say, “evil” eyes. Then Marija began to cry! She said nothing, just shed tears for about fifteen, twenty minutes.

In the end, she pulled herself together and shouted at Dragica. She said something like: “Get lost to the construction site, bitch!” Dragica came back and told me everything. Then Rado appeared with the news that, thank God, my Bora was better. He’s still in the hospital, but he began eating. He can even move a little, for now only around the bed. He tells me to be brave and to think only of myself. One of us, because of Mila, has to go through all this, and it’s best to be me!

Things at our port are progressing fast, so I’m afraid what will happen when they are done and when Rado stops coming to Grgur. He and Dragica got lost in the cabin of Rado’s boat for some time today. I kept watch, trembling all the time at the thought of what would happen if someone discovered that the boat was swaying strangely in the wind. Fortunately, no one came by and they came out on time. Rado was full of joy and secretly caressed Dragica. She, however, didn’t show how she felt at all. She just kept quiet and continued to carry stones.

Yesterday they brought us new uniforms and fortified our diet. Punat has been carrying large amounts of water for several days, and today they gave us real soap and something that looks like cream, and it’s called “Pavlovikj’s ointment”. Because of the sun, for our burns to heal. It is rumoured that this is due to an important visit to the camp. Rado says that there is talk among the inspectors that General Jovo Kapičikj will come, and maybe Aleksandar Rankovikj himself.