How to delete this indelible directory?

I untarred a corrupt tar file, and managed to end up with some directory that I can not delete, If I try to delete it, it seems like it can not be found, but ls shows it's present, both with bash and with python I get similar behaviour, except right after I try to delete it with rm -rf, ls complains it can't find it, then it lists it (see below after rm -rf). The find command shows the file is present, but still I can't think of a way to delete it.
Here are my attempts:

Here you see both ls and find agree we have a directory,

rl]$ ls mikeaâ??cnt rl]$ find -maxdepth 1 -type d -empty -print0 ./mikeaâcnt 

But I can't delete it:

rl]$ find -maxdepth 1 -type d -empty -print0 | xargs -0 rm -f -v rm: cannot remove `./mikeaâ\302\201\302\204cnt': Is a directory rl]$ ls mikeaâ??cnt 

I can cd to it though and it's empty:

rl]$ cd mikeaâ^Á^Äcnt/ mikeaâ^Á^Äcnt]$ ls mikeaâ^Á^Äcnt]$ pwd .../rl/mikeaâcnt mikeaâ^Á^Äcnt]$ cd ../ rl]$ ls mikeaâ??cnt 

see below that is not a simple file but a directory, plus ls behaves funny after the rm -rf it says it can't find the file then lists it straight after:

rl]$ rm mikeaâ^Á^Äcnt/ rm: cannot remove `mikeaâ\302\201\302\204cnt/': Is a directory rl]$ rm -rf mikeaâ^Á^Äcnt/ rl]$ ls ls: cannot access mikeaâcnt: No such file or directory mikeaâ??cnt rl]$ 

So this is the attempt with python, the file is found, but the name is not usable as a name that can be deleted:

rl]$ python Python 2.6.6 (r266:84292, Jul 10 2013, 22:48:45) [GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-3)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import os >>> import shutil >>> os.listdir('.') ['mikea\xc3\xa2\xc2\x81\xc2\x84cnt'] >>> shutil.rmtree(os.listdir('.')[0] ) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/shutil.py", line 204, in rmtree onerror(os.listdir, path, sys.exc_info()) File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/shutil.py", line 202, in rmtree names = os.listdir(path) OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'mikea\xc3\xa2\xc2\x81\xc2\x84cnt' 

even when I use tab completion the name it picks up is no usable:

rl]$ rm -rf mikeaâ^Á^Äcnt rl]$ ls ls: cannot access mikeaâcnt: No such file or directory mikeaâ??cnt 

using the name that python shows with bash I get this:

rl]$ rm -rf "mikea\xc3\xa2\xc2\x81\xc2\x84cnt" rl]$ ls ls: cannot access mikeaâcnt: No such file or directory mikeaâ??cnt 

Is there anything I can do to get rid of this corrupt dir? The underlying filesystem (NFS) seems functional and no other problems are reported, and I have had no such problems until the corrupt tar file.

EDIT: Here is using find's own -exec option to call rm

rl]$ find -maxdepth 1 -type d -empty -exec rm -f {} \; find: `./mikeaâ\302\201\302\204cnt': No such file or directory rl]$ ls ls: cannot access mikeaâcnt: No such file or directory mikeaâ??cnt rl]$ 

but the file is still there, (ls complains it can't find it, but then shows it anyway)

2nd EDIT:

rl]$ find -maxdepth 1 -type d -empty -exec rm -rf {} \; find: `./mikeaâ\302\201\302\204cnt': No such file or directory rl]$ ls ls: cannot access mikeaâcnt: No such file or directory mikeaâ??cnt 

The behaviour is still unchanged, the file still present

3rd EDIT:

rl]$ ls mikeaâ??cnt rl]$ find -maxdepth 1 -type d -empty -exec rm -rf {} + rl]$ ls ls: cannot access mikeaâcnt: No such file or directory mikeaâ??cnt 

There seems to be more to the name than mikeaâcnt from looking at the output of the python attempt mikea\xc3\xa2\xc2\x81\xc2\x84cnt, and this screenshot:

4th EDIT: This is the attempt with a wild card:

rl]$ echo * mikeaâcnt rl]$ echo mike* mikeaâcnt rl]$ rm -rf mike* rl]$ ls ls: cannot access mikeaâcnt: No such file or directory mikeaâ??cnt 

and my locale:

rl]$ locale LANG=en_US.utf8 LC_CTYPE="en_US.utf8" LC_NUMERIC="en_US.utf8" LC_TIME="en_US.utf8" LC_COLLATE="en_US.utf8" LC_MONETARY="en_US.utf8" LC_MESSAGES="en_US.utf8" LC_PAPER="en_US.utf8" LC_NAME="en_US.utf8" LC_ADDRESS="en_US.utf8" LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.utf8" LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.utf8" LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.utf8" LC_ALL= 

5th Edit:

rl]$ ls -i ls: cannot access mikeaâcnt: No such file or directory ? mikeaâ??cnt 

but also the behaviour has changed, now ls and cd do this:

rl]$ ls ls: cannot access mikeaâcnt: No such file or directory mikeaâ??cnt rl]$ cd mikeaâ^Á^Äcnt mikeaâcnt: No such file or directory. 

This has happened after the attempts to delete, I'm thinking that it might be NFS issues as suggested in one of the answers here by vinc17.

6th EDIT: This is the output of lsof and ls -a

rl]$ /usr/sbin/lsof mikeaâ^Á^Äcnt lsof: status error on mikeaâ\xc2\x81\xc2\x84cnt: No such file or directory

above is wrong, here is the correct lsof invocation:(rl is the parent directory)

rl]$ /usr/sbin/lsof | grep mike | grep rl tcsh 11926 mike cwd DIR 0,33 4096 19569249 /home/mike/mish/rl lsof 14733 mike cwd DIR 0,33 4096 19569249 /home/mike/mish/rl grep 14734 mike cwd DIR 0,33 4096 19569249 /home/mike/mish/rl grep 14735 mike cwd DIR 0,33 4096 19569249 /home/mike/mish/rl lsof 14736 mike cwd DIR 0,33 4096 19569249 /home/mike/mish/rl rl]$ rl]$ ls -a ls: cannot access mikeaâcnt: No such file or directory . .. mikeaâ??cnt 

7th Edit: move won't work, (I tried it before all this, but I did not save the output), but it has the same problem as ls and rm with the file.

8th EDIT: this is using the hex chars as suggested:

 rl]$ ls --show-control-chars | xxd 0000000: 6d69 6b65 61c3 a2c2 81c2 8463 6e74 0a mikea......cnt. rl]$ rmdir $'mikea\6d69\6b65\61c3\a2c2\81c2\8463\6e74\0acnt' rmdir: failed to remove `mikea\006d69\006b651c3\a2c2\\81c2\\8463\006e74': No such file or directory rl]$ ls ls: cannot access mikeaâcnt: No such file or directory mikeaâ??cnt rl]$ 

9th Edit: for the stat command:

 rl]$ stat mikeaâ^Á^Äcnt stat: cannot stat `mikeaâ\302\201\302\204cnt': No such file or directory rl]$ 

Its seems even more likely from all the output, there is a bug or other NFS misbehaviour as suggested in the comments.

Edit 10: This is strace output in a gist since its so large, its the output or these two commands:

strace -xx rmdir ./* | grep -e '-1 E'` strace -xx -e trace=file ls -li` 

https://gist.github.com/mikeatm/e07fa600747a4285e460

Edit 11: So before the above rmdir I noticed that I could cd into the directory, but after the rmdir I could not cd again, similar to yesterday. The . and .. files were present:

rl]$ ls mikeaâ??cnt rl]$ cd mikeaâ^Á^Äcnt/ mikeaâ^Á^Äcnt]$ ls mikeaâ^Á^Äcnt]$ ls -a . .. mikeaâ^Á^Äcnt]$ cd ../ 

Final Edit: I saw a local admin over this and it was dealt with by logging on to the server itself and deleting from there. The explanation from them is that it could be a problem with character sets in the name being inappropriate.