The Miernik Dossier (4 page)

“Tell me how beautifully the Russians sang,” Inge said. “You people always tell that.”

“The fighting went right by our house,” Miernik said. “I went out when it was over, I wanted to give the Russians something. It was snowing. I found a Russian soldier sitting on a pile of rubble. He was eating bread. He had only this piece of bread. He saw me, a boy, and he gave me half the bread. We didn’t say a word, we sat there chewing the bread. Black Russian bread. He kept smiling at me. Finally he said, ‘I must go. Comrade Stalin has asked us to keep right on to Berlin.’ And he picked up his rifle and went.”

“And the commissars and the secret police came after him,” Inge said. “They haven’t picked up their rifles and gone away, have they?”

Miernik opened his eyes. “No,” he said. “Those people are still there.”

“I should think that you’d want to be with them, those wonderful human beings,” Inge said. “You could be a part of the earth, too.”

Miernik stared at her. There was no expression in his face at all. He took off his glasses and threw them against the wall. The lenses broke.

“I am going to dance,” Miernik said.

He staggered over to the phonograph and started it. Still wearing his coat and vest, dark stains of vodka on his buttoned chest, he began to dance. The room shook, he laughed. He pulled Ilona off the floor. Her black hair swung like a curtain. He placed her on his shoulder and began to spin. She straightened her legs and shrieked like a child on a carnival ride; she put her cheek on top of his head and her hair tangled around both their faces. Miernik was shouting in Polish, his voice loud at first, then blown out by laughter and loss of breath. He fell with Ilona on top of him. She lay there for a moment, then kissed him on the forehead and got up. She stood over him with her legs apart, smiling down on him.

Miernik lay on the floor. He still had no breath. In a moment he gathered enough to shout,
“Ilona Ivanovna, I forgive you!”

He sucked in more breath and cried, pointing his finger at each of us in turn,
“Léon Léonovich, I forgive you! Hassan Hassanevich, I forgive you! Paul Alexandrevich, I forgive you! Nigel Andreevich, I forgive you!”

Miernik staggered to his feet and lifted Inge off the sofa. She tried to pull away. He lifted her by the waist so that her face was in front of his own. “Even you, Inge—what was your father’s name?”

“Peter.”

“Inge Pyotrovna, I forgive you!”

The doorbell rang. “That must be Kalash,” Miernik said. “I will go and forgive him.”

He opened the door to a Swiss policeman. “We have a complaint,” the policeman said. “There is too much noise.”

Miernik would have embraced the policeman, but Brochard stepped between them. “The noise will stop at once,” Brochard said.

“Papers,” the policeman said.

Brochard reached for his pocket. “Not yours. His,” the policeman said.

“This gentleman is a functionary of WRO,” Brochard said. “He has a diplomatic identity card.”

Miernik reached over Brochard’s shoulder and gave the card to the policeman. The policeman wrote in his book and gave it back.

“There will be a formal complaint unless the noise stops,” he said. “I advise you to put this man to bed.”

“Je vous pardonne,” Miernik said.

Brochard went into the hall with the policeman and shut the door. Miernik sat down on the floor. His head sagged. He leaped to his feet and flung open the door. Brochard and the policeman were walking up and down the hallway, deep in conversation. The smile on the policeman’s face went out at the sight of Miernik.

“Do you speak German?” Miernik said to the policeman. The cop stared at him. Brochard let go of the policeman’s elbow and threw up his hands.

“Of course you do,” Miernik said, in German. “You smell like a German. Like gasoline. Gasoline burns. Remember that, you damned machine.”

“You will come with me,” said the policeman.

“I have diplomatic immunity,” Miernik said.

“You cannot insult the Swiss police.”

“I have just done so. I don’t like the color of your uniform.”

Collins and I pulled him back into the room. He struggled with us. Ilona put her palm on his cheek. “Tad,” she said, “come and sit with me.” He followed her to the sofa.

Inge was putting on her coat. “He’s cracked my ribs,” she said. “He’s a bloody Mongolian.”

We went into the hall to talk to the policeman. He asked for all our papers and wrote our names in his book. “You are witnesses,” he said. “I have no more to say at this time.” He went down the stairs.

Collins watched him go. “I don’t think that the copper is going to forgive Tadeusz Jerzyvich,” he said.

Inge came out the door. She gave Brochard a look, and he followed her out. “There’s nothing to do,” he said.

“Mongolian,” Inge said.

Inside, Miernik lay on the sofa with his head in Ilona’s lap. “He’s asleep,” she said.

“Fifteen minutes too late,” Collins said. He beckoned Ilona away from the sofa. She smoothed back Miernik’s hair and stood up.

They all left. I took off Miernik’s shoes and tried to loosen his tie. He opened his eyes.

“Would you agree that I’ve been a fool?” he said. “You were carried away by vodka. We all forgive you. (This business of “I forgive you” is an in-joke at the expense of the Russians. Miernik imitates them: “I had to shoot your mother, Ivan!” “I forgive you, Igor!”)

“That policeman will make a report to the WRO. No contract after that.”

“Yes. And he may file charges, diplomatic immunity or no diplomatic immunity. There’s a law against insulting the police in this country.”

“In all countries.”

“Almost all. It’s a sad world.”

“What about America? What is the law there?”

“You can say what you want to the cops. If they don’t like it, they break your skull.”

Miernik turned over and put his face in the cushions of the sofa. “Tonight I lost everything,” he said. “My contract, my Swiss asylum.”

“We’re both losing sleep,” I said.

“I must become an American. That is the solution.”

“I don’t think you can. You’re a Commie rat.”

“I am a Christian and a lover of truth.”

Miernik sat up. His hair fell into his face. His suit, in spite of everything, was still neatly buttoned. He looked odd without his glasses.

“Paul,” he said, “I am lost. I have insulted the Swiss police. You should have stopped me.

“You were too quick for me. Léon and Nigel both tried to stop you.

“No Swiss asylum now. I am in their files as a troublemaker. The Polish wheel turns against the Swiss wheel, and Miernik is in between.”

“You’d better go to bed.”

“I’d rather go to America.

“With your background, you’ll have to go by Russian submarine.”

“I die. You joke. That’s the American answer to the Polish question.”

“You won’t die, Miernik.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I think you’ve had a lot to drink.”

“I will die, my friend. You will live. Do you know why? Your passport is green, mine is brown.”

“Go to bed.”

Miernik got up and searched for his glasses. He examined the broken lenses and put the frames in his breast pocket. He began to laugh.

“I am now seeing the humor in this situation,” he said. “You are
bored.
Victims bore you. Would you save me if I were less of a bore?”

I didn’t answer. Miernik smelled his own armpit. “I’ve always thought that I smell like a corpse,” he said. “It’s a Central European malady.”

I said good night. In the street, I looked up at his window. He was moving around inside, clearing up the mess of the party. When he opened the sash to let in the air, I saw that he was wearing glasses again—an extra pair, no doubt.

13.  R
EPORT BY AN
A
MERICAN SURVEILLANCE TEAM IN
G
ENEVA.

Kirnov
*
emerged from Hotel du Rhône at 0312 hours on 22 May. He proceeded on foot to the corner of Boulevard Georges Favon and Rue du Stand, where he unlocked a gray Simca Aronde with registration number BE 80987 and drove away.

Chase vehicle kept subject in sight northbound across Pont de la Coulouvrenière, then eastbound on Rue de Lausanne, south on Avenue de France and the quais to the Pont du Mont Blanc. Subject then proceeded to the left bank and through a number of small streets in the vicinity of the Parc de la Grange. This was interpreted as a maneuver to spot our surveillance, and we accordingly ceased following so as to avoid detection.

We made new contact four minutes after breaking it, in Place Neuve. Kirnov parked and locked car and proceeded on foot to 21-bis, Rue Saint-Leger.

He buzzed an apartment inside this building from the entryway and was admitted. After his buzz, a light appeared in a third-story

window, fourth from west end of building. Subject entered the building at 0331 hours.

At 0334 hours, Bamstein entered the building with a passkey and proceeded to the third floor by way of the fire stairs. Bamstein attached a contact microphone to the door of Apartment 23, which had been identified as the apartment with the lighted window.

Apartment 23 is occupied by Tadeusz Miernik, a Polish national employed by the World Research Organization.

The microphone, which was left in place until 0348 hours, picked up nothing but the sound of typing. Microphone was removed when a voice, identified as Kirnov’s, said “Good night” in Russian. This was the only spoken word overheard by Bamstein.

Kirnov and a second white male assumed to be Miernik walked together to the elevator shaft. Bamstein, concealed in the stairway, overheard indistinct conversation in Russian. Bamstein was able to identify the name “Zofia” spoken several times by Miernik. Also the phrase “Don’t worry, I will see to her,” spoken by Kirnov.

Subject left building at 0351 and returned to his own residence by a circuitous route.

14.  T
ELEPHONE CONVERSATION BETWEEN
M
IERNIK AND A FEMALE CALLED
“Z
OFIA”
(G
ENEVA
PTT—C
ORNAVIN BRANCH TO
W
ARSAW
18754)
(RECORDED
22 M
AY AT
0635
HOURS; TRANSLATION FROM
P
OLISH)
.

15.  L
ETTER FROM
I
LONA
B
ENTLEY, ADDRESSED TO AN ACCOMMODATION ADDRESS IN
B
ERLIN USED BY A
S
OVIET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE (TRANSLATION FROM
R
USSIAN)
.

Darling Heinz,

Spring has come to Geneva, and I am foolishly happy about it. The city’s face has changed in a week from that of an old man to that of a young girl with flowers in her hair. Blossoms everywhere, smiles everywhere. It hardly seems possible that a month ago the wind they call the
Bise
was blowing down the lake, that the bridge railings were curtained with ice, that people were so distressed that one read almost every day of another suicide. (The Swiss are bizarre suicides, they always find some way to do it that not even a Hungarian would have imagined: one man suffocated himself in January by placing a transparent plastic bag over his head, sealing it around his throat with a large rubber band. “He drowned in his own breath!” said
La Suisse.)

My little love affair continues. I see him every day. He says nothing of his work. I accuse him of being interested only in an affair of bodies. He laughs. He is not always a gay lover, he has black moods when he will not speak. The state of the world troubles him; he believes that civilization is going into a long night, that the bomb will be dropped, that history is one long prank designed to be played on our generation. On this subject he will not laugh. I never see him on Saturdays. He gets into his car and goes to the Alps. He wears climbing clothes, but perhaps this is a disguise. I accuse him of meeting some wild girl on a mountainside. I have threatened to follow him to see if this is true. I can see that the threat disturbs him. Do you think that I should do this? I should not confront the other girl, if there is one. I should hide behind a tree and watch, perhaps take pictures. Tell me, dear Heinz, if this is what a jealous woman should do?