5. After Zofia Miernik had retired, and her brother had gone out for his usual midnight walk, Christopher rang me up and invited me to the bar. Over a cognac he told me that Miernik was determined to take Zofia along on the remainder of the trip. Prince Kalash is, as I predicted, more than willing. “Miernik is afraid you’ll be disagreeable about it,” Christopher said. “I am to use my influence with you to persuade you to accept the inevitable.” There was no basis on which I could openly object to her coming along. I said I thought it was a bad idea to introduce a girl into the situation, especially such a good-looking one. Christopher refuses to see a problem. No doubt his instructions as well as his instincts tell him to keep an eye on Zofia. Once again I tried to implant the idea that Zofia cannot possibly be Miernik’s sister. “I don’t see why not,” Christopher said. “I don’t look anything like my brothers and sisters. Besides, what difference does it make?” There is between us a sort of cousinship; he sees that I am an agent like himself, and he understands. Each of us takes it for granted that the other is under discipline, though nothing has ever been stated in the open about this. There are limits to this kind of a relationship: I cannot cross the boundary to ask him what precisely he was doing in Czechoslovakia. He cannot come over to my side to volunteer any information. The conversation dwindled down to an hour of good-natured chaff about the Mierniks. “If they do have the same father,” Christopher said, “the old man must have been under an enchantment. He got old Tadeusz while he was still a frog, and Zofia after he was turned into a prince.” That’s as good a theory as any I’ve been able to put forward.
43. REPORT FROM THE FILES OF THE VIENNA CRIMINAL POLICE.
The body of a well-dressed male was discovered at approximately 1015 hours on 19 June in the Prater, in shrubbery between the Hauptallee and the Trotting Course. Discovery was made by Fräulein Hilde Schenker, who had entered the park with the purpose of bird-watching.
There was no identification on the body. Through comparison of fingerprints taken from the cadaver with those in the central police files, it was established that the dead man was one Heinz Tanner, aged about forty, domiciled at III. Vienna, Baumgasse 17.
The body showed no marks of violence. The preliminary ruling of the ambulance physician was that Tanner had died of natural causes, probably of a heart attack.
An autopsy was ordered after the identity of the dead man was established. Time of death was approximately 0130 hours 19 June. Examination of the mucus of the nose and throat, of the lung tissues, and of the other internal organs revealed traces of cyanide. Forensic investigation suggests that cyanide was introduced into the body in the form of a spray.
This leads to the conclusion that the victim was murdered, probably by an assailant who approached and sprayed cyanide into Tanner’s face from extremely close range.
A similar method has been used twice in the past year. The victims were the leader of a Polish émigré group in Munich (18 October) and a young woman in Berlin (11 January) who was suspected of being engaged in espionage activities.
Tanner’s dossier shows a history of contacts with known representatives of foreign intelligence services. (See secret files.)
It is assumed that this crime was politically motivated. No information of any kind relating to this crime is to be made available to the press, which has already reported that an unidentified man died of natural causes in the Prater on the relevant date.
44. NOTATION BY THE AMERICAN STATION IN GENEVA.
Records of the Swiss federal police indicate that Tadeusz Miernik was absent from Switzerland last October 17—18 and on January 11. In both cases he reentered the country by train.
Christopher reports Miernik was absent from his hotel from midnight until at least 0130 on 19 June, the date of Tanner’s death.
Vienna is asked to withhold this information from its Austrian police liaison for the time being.
*World Research Organization: A specialized agency of the United Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland. It carries out research on social questions (e.g., crime, discrimination, medical care, political organization) and publishes reports that take into careful account the sensitivities of its 101 member nations. WRO has a professional staff of 400, representing 71 nationalities. The Organization has always attracted large numbers of Intelligence operatives from a wide variety of countries. Employment by WRO is regarded as excellent “cover” because it provides diplomatic Immunity and, in the eyes of the host country, professional respectability. WRO is typically the base, rather than the target, of intelligence agents who are unwittingly employed by it.
*A Brazilian national of Polish-Russian birth who is believed to have contacts with Soviet intelligence. He travels frequently in Eastern Europe with the ostensible purpose of negotiating contracts for the purchase of goods manufactured in Western countries.
*”You shall abstain, shall abstain! /That is the eternal song.” (A quotation from Goethe’s Faust.)
*”A11 men become brothers.” (From Schiller’s “An die Freude.”)
*A Czech prison, equivalent to the Russian Lubiyanka.
45. REPORT BY CHRISTOPHER.
21 June. Journal of the Miernik Expedition (cont’d): We rose at five and were on the road by six. Through most of the morning it was a silent ride, partly because of the gray weather, partly because of the strain created by Zofia’s presence. Collins does not like having her along, and he is not one to conceal his emotions. He is now barely civil to any of us.
We arrived in Innsbruck in time for lunch. After the meal, Kalash and Miernik went off to find a cuckoo clock for some relative of Kalash’s, and Zofia and I went for a walk through the town while Collins stayed with the car. Zofia was subdued; I don’t know whether it’s a reaction to the excitement of the other night, or whether she’s disturbed by Collins’ hostility. We passed a music shop and I took her inside and bought her a guitar. She was delighted by the gift and kept the instrument with her when we got back in the car. As we climbed toward the Brenner, she played a little and the Polish songs brought a smile to Miernik’s lips. Even Collins softened a little and asked for a couple of songs.
There was still a lot of snow beside the road at the top of the pass. We stopped at the summit and walked around shivering in our summer clothes. It was a brilliant day at that altitude, with the Dolomites rising through the clouds to the south. Kalash got out his camera and posed us all against the snowy backdrop. Miernik moved as the shutter clicked, then volunteered to take a shot of all of us with Kalash. Collins said, “Miernik, why do you always jump about when your picture is being taken? Kalash has a whole roll of film showing one American, one Englishman, and a Polish blur.”
There was difficulty at the Italian frontier over Miernik’s passport. The commandante of the border post was puzzled that Miernik should have been given a thirty-day visa on a passport that expires in eleven days’ time. Moreover, he does not like Polish passports. He examined every page of the little brown book and subjected Miernik to an hour of questions. It was all very polite, but Miernik was in that state of acute distress which any contact with men in uniform seems to produce in him. It was hard to blame the Italian for being suspicious. Zofia, it turns out, is traveling on an Ecuadorian passport. (This document may well be genuine; it shows her true name and actual date and place of birth; no doubt Kirnov has an obliging friend in some Ecuadorian consulate.) Kalash, too, is a rare bird to appear at an Alpine outpost, and both Collins’ passport and mine are filled with suspicious visas and stamps. By any standards, we are a peculiar group.
Kalash saved the situation in the end. He did not mind the wait (he has told me that he has no sense of time, a quality he regards as one more proof that he is a wiser and happier man than any white who grew up surrounded by clocks) but he saw that the rest of us were getting impatient. He strode into the customs post and we saw him through the window, talking to the Italian while Miernik fidgeted in the background. I thought he might try bribery, and I had a picture of all
of us languishing in some damp jail in Bolzano.
Then we saw the commandante smile, nod, and sit down at his desk. He scribbled for a moment in Miernik’s passport and banged away at it with his rubber stamps. Miernik and Kalash emerged. “That man is a bureaucrat,” Kalash explained. “He needed a way to cover his tracks, but of course he hasn’t the imagination to invent a solution. I told him to cancel Miernik’s thirty-day visa and substitute one that expires when the passport expires. A great light broke in his brain, as perhaps you saw through the window. So we can go, taking this dangerous Communist along with us. I think I have a great future in diplomacy. Ambassador to some Christian country. It’s good for the mind to deal with the Catholics, they are so eager to be honorable. If that man had been an Arab, we could have given him some money and avoided all this bother. But where would the intellectual challenge have been?” He patted the roof of the car, as if rewarding a willing beast. “The Cadillac had a good deal to do with it as well,” he said. “Had we arrived on motorcycles, old Miernik would be in chains. A policeman always reckons that if one has money enough to buy a big car, one has money enough to buy a bigger policeman. He hesitates to trifle with a Cadillac. A Rolls-Royce would have been just as frightening in your palmy days, Nigel. No more, alas.”
“Such foolishness,” Miernik said, stamping around in the road, flourishing his passport. “If I were a spy I would not be coming into Italy on a Polish passport. Spies have American passports. He actually searched my sling for concealed weapons or maybe microfilm. I could not reason with him.”
Kalash pushed Miernik into the car and shut the door. “You really must speak to Miernik,” he said. “I found him talking Latin to that Italian. The man speaks perfectly good English. He asked me why Miernik was speaking Romanian if he was a Pole. Really, I’m surprised Miernik didn’t unpack his rosaries and wave them about. Latin. I ask you, Paul. He suffers from intellectual egomania.” As is his habit when he is overcome by disgust, Kalash went promptly to sleep in the back seat. I drove down the mountain, a good deal slower than Kalash had driven up the other side.
We arrived in Verona in the late afternoon. Miernik, of course, had all the Baedeker details. He took us on a walking tour of the city, ending in a grubby little courtyard in which is located, according to the tourist guides, the balcony of Juliet. Miernik denounced it as a fake. Kalash picked up Zofia and tossed her onto the balcony, which is not far above ground level. Then, standing with one hand on his heart, he recited Othello’s death speech.
“That’s the wrong play, Kalash,” Miernik said.
“I know it is, you bloody pedant. I never played Romeo at Oxford, at least not on stage. It’s a foolish play in any case, all Shakespeare’s plays are very foolish. People killing themselves for sex—an Italian might, I suppose. But a Moor? I rather like that line about taking the circumcised dog by the throat, though. My ancestors were certainly put off by all that English foreskin. Made the fairies among ’em shudder. Autre pays, autres mœurs. ”
We walked on to the Albergo Due Torre for supper. The atmosphere seemed gay enough when we entered—music, dancing; eager waiters: Italy is the last outpost of cordiality. We ordered food and wine and sat back to enjoy the scene. At the next table was a party of Germans. One of them, a blond type in a coat with a belted back, rose and bowed to an Italian female child at the adjoining table. He called for a waltz and danced with the little girl, who must have been about eight years old. His companions, another man and two middle-aged women, laughed in delight. The German took the child back to her parents and thanked her with another deep bow. Then he sent her a big pink drink full of fruit, and bowed again, clicking his heels. Miernik watched coldly (as did all of us except Kalash), and Zofia stared fixedly at her wineglass. The Germans wore that air of racial superiority which some of them seem to think is the correct attitude for a traveler south of the Alps. It was apparent that they had been officers at one time, and they spoke Italian. “Waffen SS,” Collins murmured, “returning to the happy scenes of wartime duty.”
The violinist, a small, shriveled man wearing round smoked glasses (not sunglasses—old-fashioned smoked lenses, almost black), scuttled across the floor to the Germans’ table. He smiled and asked in broken German if he could play a German song for them. The man who had danced with the child gave him a cursory glance and named a song. The violinist played it. The other German requested a different song. None of the Germans paid any attention to the musician as he played; they went on with their conversation, laughing across the table at one another.
The Germans began by asking for songs everyone knows: Röslein, Die Lorelei, and so on. Then they changed to a long list of obscure German drinking songs. They gave the violinist no rest between tunes. As soon as he completed one they asked for another and demanded that he play each faster than the one before. “I want to see your fingers dance, Maestro,” said one of the Germans with a guffaw. He and his friends began giving the instruction in unison: “Più rapido!”The violinist obeyed them. He tap-danced around the table, pointing the neck of his violin at the ceiling and floor, wiggling his hips, smiling in a crazed desire to please. It was Pavlovian. Zofia said, “That man must have been in one of their camps.” I believe she was right. The skin of his face was drawn back in a desperate grin, his body jerked. It was like watching a skeleton dance out of the gates of Dachau.
In the middle of a tune, the Germans rose. The violinist continued his jig, the grin fixed on his face. He was running with sweat. The Germans dropped money on the table to pay their bill. Then the one who had danced with the child gave his companions a humorous wink. He took a thousand-lira note out of his pocket, spat on it, and slapped it on the violinist’s sweaty forehead. It stuck there. The violinist gave a high giggle and kept on playing with his head thrown back so the bill would not fall off.
Miernik’s chair went over backwards. He was standing and speaking to the Germans. He held a table knife in his hand. The Germans stood their ground, either astonished by this display of bad manners or unfrightened by a one-armed man with a dull knife. One of the German women carried a Pekingese in her arm; throughout the meal and the violin concert she had been feeding it and talking to it.
“One moment,” Miernik said. “I want to kill your dog.” The woman shrieked, and a look of real horror came into her eyes. Her husband stepped between the dog and Miernik. “You are drunk,” he said.
“Quite sober,” Miernik said. “Hand over the dog. We have been watching you and we have our orders. The dog must die.”
The German turned on his heel and began to herd his friends toward the door. “Halt!” Miernik shouted. “Come back or I shoot.” The Germans stopped and turned around again—all except the woman with the dog. She now had both arms around the animal. She stared at Miernik over her hunched shoulder. “You are insane,” she cried.
“How long have you been hiding this dog?” Miernik asked in the loud German he was speaking. “Speak up—and remember there are witnesses present.”
“Who are you?” asked the German. “You are not a German.”
“My name does not matter. It is enough that you know that I am an officer in the Dog Death Brigade. You have forgotten that dogs are not human beings. They are dogs. Dogs. Dogs who are shitting on our sacred soil, taking food from the mouths of good human children.”
The violinist looked from Miernik to the Germans, and his giggle changed to a spasmodic, snorting laugh. He had heard this sort of talk somewhere else. With his hand over his mouth, he scuttled away, the thousand-lira note fluttering to the floor behind him.
“If you did not have that arm in a sling,” the German said, “I would slap your face for you.”
“I don’t doubt it for a moment,” Miernik said. “Your late leader, Reichsführer Himmler, would do practically anything to protect a dog. He may be dead, but the kingdom of his ideas lives on. Take your dog and go. But remember: one day soon the gutters will run red with the blood of dogs.”
The
German put his arm around his wife, who by this time was sobbing as she reassured her Pekingese in baby talk. They left. Miernik poured wine for all of us, and sat down.
The Miernik Dossier Page 12