The Miernik Dossier

83. REPORT BY CHRISTOPHER.

15 July. If anyone but Kalash had come to me with the information that he had lost Miernik in the mountains on an archaeological expedition I would have reached for my revolver. In Kalash’s case, it was perfectly believable. “Miernik has been rooting in my father’s library ever since he arrived,” Kalash told me, “looking for a link between our family and the old sultans of west Sudan. He will not be convinced that we came from Arabia. One indulges these fantasies in scholars. I thought he’d like to see the ruins; there are some rather dim pictures on the old walls. As I was going right by on my way to see someone I offered to drop him off. I could not have been more astonished when he vanished.”

I immediately assumed that Miernik had taken advantage of Kalash’s expedition in order to make contact with the ALF. When Kalash told me that his meeting was with his half brother Qemal, I no longer had any doubt that Miernik had slipped away to take command of the guerrillas. In a way, it was amusing that Miernik had in the end outwitted me through such a simple device. While I slept the morning away, he got in a Land Rover and rode innocently away, making no attempt at concealment because he had equipped himself with one final perfect cover story. The ancient kings of Darfur. It was a pretty operation.

No doubt I could have accepted his disappearance as the proof we’ve wanted that he is the Soviets’ principal agent to the ALF. But a mixture of duty and pride (mostly pride) made me think that I had to follow him to make absolutely certain. I was curious to know what change would come over him once he was freed of his cover personality and acting as head terrorist.

I did not imagine that Miernik would have been so careless as to leave any clues behind him, but I searched his room anyway. His clothes were all neatly hung and folded; there was nothing in the pockets. I felt the linings of his suitcases and looked for hidden compartments; it seemed possible that Miernik would use such devices. Finally, in a locked valise, I found three oblong metal boxes filled with file cards. These were covered with Miernik’s large handwriting, in green ink and in Polish. There was nothing else. The small briefcase that Miernik always carries with him was missing. I took the card files to my own room and told my boy to let no one touch them in my absence.

Kalash agreed to let me have a Land Rover. He wanted to send along a couple of his father’s men as protection, but I refused. Later I had cause to regret this: I could have used a couple of strong natives for some of the work that lay ahead. I thought the best protection I could have was Zofia Miernik. If there was anything genuine about her brother, it was his blundering love for Zofia. I didn’t plan to use her as a human shield as I shot my way out of the camp of the ALF, but I did believe that Miernik would control his men if she was present. Also, I didn’t want her disappearing while I was wandering around looking for Miernik. She agreed to come without hesitation. Her agitation over Miernik’s disappearance seemed genuine.

After I left Zofia I went outside to load the Land Rover. Kalash was already on hand, and with him was Aly Qasim. They gave me a marked map and a walkie-talkie, and we agreed on a radio routine that would permit them to keep track of my movements as long as I didn’t get out of radio range. Qasim was very direct. “I assume,” he said, “that we have a mutual friend in Harrison Burbank. [10] He is a splendid chap. I will mention to Harrison what you are doing when I speak to him today. He will have a natural interest in the activities of an American citizen. I will tell you now what I shall have to tell Harrison later on-that I cannot offer you any protection once you are out of my sight. This is a very large country, very wild.” Qasim unfolded the map and drew a circle around a spot on the middle fork of the Wadi Magrur. “I advise you to avoid this place,” he said. “Good luck.” He shook hands, smiled brightly, and walked into the palace.

Zofia and I found the ruins where Miernik had last been seen, and a little distance away the tracks of the other Land Rover. These led southeast for two or three miles, then turned straight north. As the ground rose, it became less sandy, and following the tracks became increasingly difficult. Mostly I guessed at the route: in that terrain, which is a jumble of ffinty hills and gravel fields, there in nowhere to go except through the passes. Occasionally, on a patch of soft ground, I’d find a tire track, and once a smear of oil where the Land Rover had apparently been parked while Qemal and Miernik and their friends ate lunch: there were pieces of food strewn over the ground, and behind a rock a pile of human excrement.

The country was absolutely empty and silent, with not even a bird showing itself against the sky. The sun was very strong. I had taken the canvas roof off the cab of the Land Rover: I wanted to see behind me. Zofia rode beside me, not talking, not complaining. I put her to work as a lookout, wondering all the time if she would tell me if any of the ALF came sneaking over a hilltop. I more or less thought she would; she couldn’t be certain that any armed men she happened to see belonged to her brother. I couldn’t be certain that she knew anything about her brother’s mission.

We covered perhaps seventy miles, mostly in first gear, before dark. We camped in an oasis and went separately to the spring to take bucket showers. I made contact with Kalash at nine o’clock, the agreed transmission time, before we went to bed.

Zofia had difficulty sleeping. I awoke about midnight when I heard her rummaging around in the Land Rover. She was looking for her cigarettes, she said. She sat down near me to smoke, and in the flare of the match I saw that her face was wet with tears. She has a silent way of crying-no sniffling or whimpering; the tears just squeeze out of the corners of her eyes and run down her cheeks. Zofia is a very appealing girl. She asked in a perfectly steady voice if I minded her talking to me. I told her to go ahead.

“Have you any curiosity about my brother at all?” she asked. “I’d like to know what you really think about him, Paul.”

“What do you think about friends?” I said, shrugging into my wonderful-person role. “You take them as they are. Tadeusz is certainly a little more colorful than most people. I like him. It’s natural to like a man who interests you.

“Not many people have ever liked Tadeusz. You and Sasha. My father never liked him. He was an ugly man, like Tadeusz. Perhaps he didn’t want to be reminded of his own looks every time he saw his son. That’s Tadeusz’s explanation. He was badly damaged by our father’s indifference. It was not cruelty. Father wasn’t even unkind. He simply ignored his son. That’s always been Tadeusz’s fate, to be ignored.”

“Well, he seems to have broken that mold with a vengeance. Half the people in these mountains are thinking of nothing but Tadeusz at this moment.”

“Why do you say that?” Zofia said sharply.

“The obvious reason, Zofia. If he has been kidnapped, then his captors must be very much aware of him. I know I am. Kalash, Nigel, the Amir-your brother is in everyone’s thoughts.”

She drew on her cigarette in the darkness. “You sound exasperated,” she said. “I guess I can’t blame you. This really is a stupid situation, and it’s all Tadeusz’s fault. I’d like to blame Kalash, but that’s unfair. My brother isn’t a child. Why should Kalash have held his hand? He wouldn’t have done it for you or Nigel. There would have been no need. With Tadeusz, there has always been that need. Things happen to him. He falls over everything.”

I couldn’t see Zofia’s face, but the tone of her voice fitted the words she was speaking. Her speech was flat, bitter, hopeless. If she did not believe Miernik to be the man he pretended to be, she was a gifted actress. There were only marginal reasons to doubt her. (None of my relatives knows what I really do for a living. Why should Miernik’s?)

“I will tell you a truth about Tadeusz,” Zofia said. “This quality he has of being a victim is not a fault. It’s his natural condition. It goes back to his birth. Each person is born intact, I believe, and is the same all through his life in spite of education, in spite of training, in spite of experience. No one ever changes. Tadeusz was born sad and clumsy. I’ll tell you something else. I have tried all my life to love him, and I’ve failed utterly. Pity I can feel for him; ever since I can remember I’ve been anxious not to hurt him. I have always done everything I could to make him certain that I, at least, love him. I can’t be sure he believes it, I don’t know how he can. But I hope he believes. Some people can be absolutely hopeless, unable to do the simplest thing, and still be lovable. Tadeusz is merely irritating. The more he tries to please, the more annoying he becomes. Had he come to Bratislava to fetch me instead of you, I don’t know what I would have done. I am so aware of his kindness, his loving nature. But I practically strangle with exasperation every time he does something for me. Of all the people my brother has ever known, only Sasha and you have been able to be patient with him. It’s a terrible thing. A person like Tadeusz traps anyone who feels sorry for him; he imprisons you in your own pity for him.”

Zofia fell silent. She was smoking one cigarette after another. Her voice, which is as light as a girl’s voice can be, had fallen into a monotone. She was ashamed of herself, but she couldn’t stop talking.

“When I was a child,” she said, “Tadeusz liked to play with me. I don’t mean games. He liked to dress me up, fondle me, it was like being a doll in a dollhouse. He would say something to me. Then he’d say, ‘Now you say…’ He’d give me my lines. It was Tadeusz speaking to Tadeusz out of my mouth, inventing my kindness. After Mother died he became my personal maid. I was very young, so I needed someone to help me get dressed and so forth. Each morning he’d wake me up with a wet kiss. Even as a young boy he had that very large head covered with black hair that stands on end, and big thick glasses covering his eyes. He’d get me up, wash me, dress me. He’d comb my hair for me. Everything he did with those hands of his hurt me. He pulled the hair right out of my head with the comb. He didn’t mean to, of course, the poor boy was trembling with the desire to be gentle. But he hurt me all the time. I used to squeeze my eyes shut and bite my lips to keep from screaming. I knew he would be devastated if I showed any pain. Father let him do it-I suppose he had my same feeling that to prevent him would be sadistic. Sasha talks about my spending all my time with him in the attic. Well, I loved Sasha-but I was up there playing the guitar mostly because it was a way to get away from Tadeusz. Tadeusz would follow me into the attic. Sasha taught him foreign languages with a kind of game. They would write each other secret messages out of foreign books. You pick the first word on a line, and note down the page number and the number of the line. Tadeusz would have to read and translate hundreds of words until he found the right one for his message. Sasha has a gift for making difficult things fun to do. Tadeusz loved this game of the book code. He always wanted me to play, but I could only do it with Polish books. I can’t tell you how glad I was when I reached an age where Tadeusz could no longer touch me. I don’t mean there was anything sexual in what he did. It was never that.”

Zofia gave a sudden deep laugh. “You know what I think?” she said. “I think my brother is a saint who was born too late. In the Middle Ages he could have gone into a monastery, where he would have been valued. By the time he was born, all the monasteries were closed. So he carries an invisible monastery around with him wherever he goes. In spite of everything he can do, the world keeps poking its fingers through the bars at him. Mouths whisper through the windows. Tadeusz cannot keep the world away from him, and now it really has got hold of him. I’ll bet he’s lying in some place a lot like this one, bound hand and foot, hungry and sore and thirsty and frightened out of his wits. And do you know what he’s thinking? He’s thinking, ‘What will happen to Zofia without me? Will she finish university? Has she had a good supper?’ It’s maddening, Paul. He’ll die, perhaps. And if he does, he won’t die screaming with fright, but muttering with worry.”

I remembered Miernik, kneeling in the moonlight at Kashgil with the Sten gun at his shoulder, and the tape recording of his session on the floor with Ilona, and the way he boxed me into going to Czechoslovakia, and a good deal besides. Zofia’s explanation of the book code didn’t much move me. To me Miernik didn’t seem quite the passive bungler Zofia made him out to be. Or any more in need of love than the monk she imagined he should have been. Miernik had found his monastery, all right. It was one of the last ones left, I thought sardonically, and the abbot was Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria and his spiritual successors. This was my last sardonic thought about Miernik.

Zofia still couldn’t sleep. I really could not listen to any more analysis of her brother. The girl and I lay in the oasis, talking about the stars. To keep her from telling me more about Miernik, I named all the constellations I could remember: Gemini, Orion, Perseus, Cassiopeia, Pegasus, Cygnus, Serpens. We calculated the distance to Alpha Centauri in miles and kilometers. Had Miernik been there he could have traced the connection between the prechristian myths after which the stars are named and the religious anxieties of the nuclear age. But he was down the road somewhere.

16 July. We started north again at sunrise. I was lightheaded and a little raw from lack of sleep. Both Zofia and I had painful sunburns. As we traveled north, the country became rougher and what little vegetation there had been ran out; we were only a hundred miles or so from the edge of the Libyan desert, and the air was hot to the touch, like the bottom of a cooking pot. The Land Rover, running in low gear and four-wheel drive most of the time, overheated. I kept on adding water from the jerry cans I’d filled at the oasis, straining out the green slime and the sand through a T-shirt.

I navigated as best I could with a compass and the relief map Kalash had given me. The map was an old British job and not always accurate; I thought often that I was lost when hills appeared before me that were not marked on the map, but finally I concluded that many features of the country simply had not been noted. I expected to find the ALF on the other side of every hill. The Land Rover, its motor roaring and its load rattling, seemed louder by the moment. Any terrorist within two miles could have heard us coming.

We had been moving north for about four hours when I faced the fact that we had lost Miernik’s trail. I had seen no tire tracks, and no other sign of his Land Rover, for a couple of hours. There seemed to be no other route than the one we had taken (I’d turned off into five or six blind canyons before settling on the route we now followed through a maze of dun-colored hills). At ten-thirty I stopped the car, got out the walkie-talkie, and climbed to the top of the highest ground in the neighborhood. All I got on the radio when I tried to contact Kalash was static, so I concluded that we were out of range for daytime transmission. There must have been enough solar radiation in that scorched sky to block a fifty-thousand-watt station.

I was trembling from the strain of climbing a five-hundred-foot hill with a walkie-talkie in one hand and a Sten gun in the other. Therefore I had difficulty holding the binoculars steady, and on my first sweep of the country ahead I missed the object on the next hilltop. I caught it on the second sweep. It was about a mile away, a vertical thing different in color from the earth. The atmosphere was full of heat waves, and I thought at first I might be seeing a mirage. At the base of the object there was a steady flash of light, as if the sun were hitting a mirror. I adjusted the glasses and studied the scene, squinting in an effort to make it out.

Finally I slid down the hill and got into the Land Rover. I told Zofia nothing, but drove straight on toward the hill I’d been studying with the binoculars. We reached the bottom of the second hill in about five minutes. The summit was not visible from where we were. I told Zofia I was going to climb up to have another look ahead. I gave her a pistol and told her to shoot at anyone she saw. She looked at me round-eyed and bit her lip; I was sorry to frighten her, but it was better than taking her up the hill. By this time I had an idea what I was going to find at the top. There were Land Rover tracks all over the ground where we had parked.

I hung the Sten gun and the binoculars around my neck and started up the hill. I went as slowly as possible, partly because I wanted to have some breath and reasonably steady hands when I got to the top. Halfway up the slope I stopped and searched the ground below me with the glasses. There was no sign of life, only Zofia crouching in the shade of the Land Rover with her yellow hair catching a nimbus of sunlight.

Miernik was hanging by his heels on an X-shaped cross, one anlde tied with wire to each of its upper arms. His corpse was naked, and a streak of dried blood, as brown as dung, ran from his crotch down through the matted black hair on his chest. He was pretty badly cut up-all the fingers of his right hand had been lopped off and there were knife wounds on his feet and legs. His genitalia were stuffed into his mouth. None of these injuries was sufficient to kill him, and I found no gunshot wounds. Evidently Miernik had been left on the cross to bleed to death. I removed the trash from his mouth and buried it in the sand.

Around the base of the cross (I wondered where they’d got the lumber) was a jumble of stuff: Miernik’s glasses, which explained the flash I’d seen through the binoculars; an Exakta camera with the film pulled out of it; Miernik’s scuffed old briefcase. A few feet away I found his diary, page after page covered in green ink. There was a rosary, a psalter, a comb, and Miernik’s copy of the pocket edition of Democracy in America. Also his passport. All his possessions had been abused: the glasses smashed, the camera bent as if someone had stamped on it, the rosary missing its cross, pages torn out of the books. I put everything back in the briefcase and took it with me down the hill.

There was no need to say anything to Zofia. She watched me as I came down the hill with her hand shielding her eyes from the sun. The briefcase told her everything. She stared at it as I walked across the flat ground between us, and when I was close to her, she reached out her hand. I gave her the briefcase. She ran a fingertip over its pebbled surface, fingered the worn brass catches, and then lifted it to her face and kissed it. She got into the Land Rover and sat in the front seat, her eyes straight ahead.

I got a pair of pliers out of the toolbox and took the tent and a coil of rope back up the hill. I cut the wires around Miernik’s ankles, and his body, still wired to the cross at the wrists, tipped over and slammed into the ground like a side of beef. I freed the wrists and dragged the corpse onto the outspread tent. Miernik was frozen into his spreadeagled position. It was impossible to move the rigid arms and legs. I didn’t want to do his body any more violence, so I didn’t try to break his limbs, but wrapped him as best I could in the canvas, tying the bundle with rope. His feet and arms protruded; I covered his ruined right hand with my handkerchief and tied it around the wrist. Some merciful person had cut the veins. I wasted a lot of energy pulling the cross out of the dirt and breaking it up.

Then I sat down beside Miernik and got out the binoculars once more. A couple of miles to the north I caught sun flashes. Focusing in, I saw what I supposed to be the camp of the ALF There were a couple of Land Rovers with the sun on their windshields, a few camels, a dozen striped Bedouin tents, and twenty or thirty men moving around. There was no sign of anything but routine activity. I hoped they didn’t have any scouts out.

Miernik in life had been a heavy man. Dead he was like a boulder; it was impossible to lift the body. I took hold of the ropes and dragged him down the hill. The canvas slid easily over the sand on the steep slope, and by the time I got to the bottom I was digging in my heels and holding back the corpse. Miernik had an eagerness in death that he had never shown when alive.

Zofia met me at the bottom of the slope. She knelt in the sand and touched the green canvas bundle. “I’d like to see his face,” she said. There was no point in refusing her. I felt around until I found Miernik’s head, and pulled the canvas aside. His eyes were rolled back so that only the whites showed, and his mouth was gaping, with black blood on the teeth. “Leave him a minute,” Zofia said. She went to the Land Rover and came back with a jerry can of water; she leaned away from its weight, carrying it on her thigh. She poured water on a cloth and washed Miernik’s face. We covered him and dragged him to the Land Rover. Zofia helped me lift him into the back. I lashed him down so he wouldn’t bounce around, and wrapped the roof canvas around his bloody feet. Zofia scrambled in with Miernik and sorted out the sleeping bags and the food; she packed these under her feet in the front seat.

As nearly as I could make out, we were about forty miles west of the road that runs through the Tabago hills from Malha in the north to El Fasher. The map showed a long dry wadi alongside the road. I drove eastward and in an hour or so we found the stream bed. Its floor was fairly smooth, with great cracks running through the gritty dried mud. The Land Rover could make twenty-five or thirty miles an hour over this ground. I hoped we could make the El Fasher road by dark. I planned to continue driving until we got back to the palace. Miernik had already been dead for some time, and perhaps it was his ghost that whispered worriedly in my ear about the danger of corpses in a hot climate.