The Miernik Dossier
THEMIERNIK
DOSSIER
ALSO BY CHARLES MCCARRY
Old Boys
The Tears of Autumn
The Secret Lovers
The Better Angels
The Last Supper
The Bride of the Wilderness
Second Sight
Shelley’s Heart
Lucky Bastard
CHARLES
MCCARRY
THEMIERNIK
DOSSIER
DUCKWORTH OVERLOOK
London and New York
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Copyright © 1973 by Charles McCarry
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For Nancy
On pense à moi pour une place, mais par malheur j’y étais propre: il fallait un calculateur, ce fut un danseur qui l’obtint.
—BEAUMARCHAIS (Le Mariage de Figaro)
This narrative is set in the middle years of the cold war; the year could be 1959. Travelers familiar with that time, and with the scenes in which the story takes place, will recognize landmarks and atmosphere and attitudes. But they will search in vain for familiar figures. No character is intended to resemble any person who ever lived, and no event is based on fact.
THEMIERNIK
DOSSIER
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The attached dossier is submitted to the Committee in response to the request by its Chairman for “a complete picture of a typical operation.”
The file includes:
a) agents’ reports, including those of intelligence services other than our own;
b) written communications exchanged by the principals outside security channels;
c) transcripts of telephone conversations and of other conversations that were recorded by listening devices;
d) certain other documents, e.g., surveillance reports, diary entries, biographical sketches;
e) footnotes supplied by our Headquarters.
Apart from a minimal number of footnotes, which were considered necessary to a full understanding of the material, no comment or interpretation has been provided. It is hoped that the documents will, as it were, “draw their own picture” of this operation.
No changes have been made in any of the documents, except that some have been shortened so as to exclude extraneous material, and each of the principals has been assigned a single fictitious name. In the original documents, they were, of course, identified under a variety of cryptonyms, identification numbers, etc.
For reasons that will be understood by the Committee, the means by which certain of these documents came into our possession are not specified.
The genuinity of all material in this file may be assumed.
1. INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE FILES OF THEWORLD RESEARCH ORGANIZATION.*
To Mr. Khan
The Polish Ambassador has requested, in a conversation with me today, that we not renew the contract of Mr. Tadeusz Miernik when it expires next month. The Ambassador explained that Mr. Miernik’s professional skills are required by the Polish Ministry of Education.
May I have your advice as to whether we may accede to the Ambassador’s wish (which has the effect of a formal request from the Polish government) without undue inconvenience to the Organization?
8 May DIRECTOR GENERAL
To Director General
Mr. Miernik’s work can be assigned to another official without undue inconvenience. I venture to add that I should, in the ordinary course of events, have recommended a permanent contract for Mr. Miernik, whose performance over the past two years has been of the highest quality.
Mr. Miernik has, moreover, expressed a strong interest in remaining with the Organization. He considers that he has personal as well as professional reasons to remain in Geneva.
If you wish me to do so, I shall be happy to discuss these reasons with you, or to arrange for Mr. Miernik to do so himself.
11 May H. KHAN
Chief of Political Research
To Mr. Khan
Would it be convenient for Mr. Miernik to state his case to me in writing?
15 May DIRECTOR GENERAL
To Director General
Mr. Miernik would welcome the opportunity of discussing his case with you. He prefers not to commit his arguments to writing.
15 May H. KHAN
Chief of Political Research
To Mr. Khan
The Director General would be pleased to see you and Mr. Miernik in his office at three o’clock on Thursday, 18 May.
16 May N. COLLINS
First Assistant
2. REPORT BY NIGEL COLLINS, FIRST ASSISTANT TO THE DIRECTOR GENERAL (WRO) TO A BRITISH INTELLIGENCE SERVICE.
Tadeusz Miernik and his chief, H. Kahn, today (18th May) made their case to the Director General that Miernik be retained in the Organization under a permanent contract. Khan confined his arguments to an affirmation of the professional competence of Miernik and then asked to be excused from the remainder of the conversation.
2. After Khan’s departure, Miernik stated with some emotion that he had reason to believe that his government wished to arrange his return to Poland so that he might be tried on political charges and imprisoned. Miernik denies that he has engaged in any activity that runs counter to Polish national interests. He believes, however, that the security services have looked upon his friendships with foreigners (i.e., Westerners) “with their usual demented suspicion.” He fears for the welfare of his sister, a university student in Warsaw who is his only living relative.
3. The Director General made no immediate response to Miernik’s plea. He (the D.G.) is annoyed with Khan, whom he regards as an excitable and rather naive man, for having placed him in the uncomfortable position of judging whether the Ambassador of a member state (Poland) has sinister motives towards Miernik.
4. The D.G. asked me, after Miernik had departed, what I thought about the Pole’s fears. I replied that I was sure that these were, at least in Miernik’s mind, quite genuine. The D.G. replied, after a moment of rather comic thought:
“I can hardly ask the Ambassador to guarantee to me that Miernik will not be shot by his secret police!” He delayed a decision on Miernik’s contract, which expires on 30th June, until the middle of next month.
5. Is it possible to confirm that Miernik does in fact have a sister in Warsaw University?
2 (A). NOTATION, IN DIFFERENT HANDWRITING, AT THE FOOT OF THE FOREGOING REPORT.
22nd May. Warsaw replies that no female named Miernik appears on the rolls of Warsaw University. Other Polish universities?
28th May. Not on rolls of any other Polish university.
3. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF TADEUSZ MIERNIK (FROM OUR FILES).
Tadeusz Miernik was born on 11 September 1929 at Krakow. His father, Jerzy, was a university graduate who worked before World War II as a manager of a meat distributing firm. During the war he was connected to the anti-German underground. From 1947 until his death five yea
rs later, he was employed in a managerial capacity by a state enterprise. The mother, Maria Prokochni, was killed by a strafing airplane during the Soviet-German battle for Poland in 1941. Her son claims to have witnessed this incident.
Miernik was educated at Warsaw University, which awarded him a doctorate in history. He taught Polish history at Warsaw University for a brief period, until he was awarded a fellowship at a Soviet university. Two years after this fellowship expired, he appeared in Geneva and was granted employment under a temporary contract at the World Research Organization.
Miernik speaks fluent English, Russian, and German, as well as good French. His circle of acquaintances includes many persons of Western nationality. In general, he has avoided political discussion, but he has implied that his strong religious beliefs conflict with Communist teachings. He claims to be a Roman Catholic and regularly attends mass. He has stated that his mother intended him for the priesthood, and that he regrets that political circumstances in Poland prevented his entering on this vocation.
Miernik is a sedentary man whose only exercise is walking. He appears to be of studious habit, and he has told friends that he is writing a social and political history of a tropical country, which he refuses to identify on grounds of scholarly discretion. It is believed that the country in question is either Sudan or Ethiopia. (This judgment is based on an examination of books that he has removed from various libraries.)
Physical description: 5 feet 9 inches, 200 pounds. Black hair, brown eyes. Wears eyeglasses at all times. Three-inch surgical scar on inner right forearm (no explanation). Heavy beard but cleanshaven. Clumps of hair grow from subject’s ears. Very strong body odor.
Idiosyncrasies: Fastidious personal habits. Does not smoke. Drinks moderately as a usual thing, but has been known to become drunk. When intoxicated, undergoes personality change, becoming garrulous and physically very active (dances, challenges companions to arm-wrestling contests, etc.). No known sexual abnormalities. No known liaison with any female.
4. REPORT BY PAUL CHRISTOPHER, AN AMERICAN UNDER DEEP COVER IN GENEVA, TO A U.S.INTELLIGENCE SERVICE.
Tadeusz Miernik phoned me early this morning (19 May) to ask that I meet him in the Parc Mon Repos at 11:30 A.M. He explained that he wished to talk to me alone before we joined Nigel Collins, Léon Brochard, Kalash el Khatar, and Hassan Khan for our usual Friday lunch. Miernik sounded over the phone even more shaken than he usually does. (I have mentioned in earlier reports that his normal tone of voice is one of acute distress. I continue to wonder if he sounds like that in Polish, as well as in English, French, and German.)
I found Miernik standing by the edge of the lake with the usual bag of stale bread in his hand. He was feeding the swans. All three buttons of his coat were carefully fastened, and he wore the look of a man who is phrasing his last will and testament. Nothing unusual there: he always looks like that.
Miernik has a way of beginning conversations with a non sequitur, if you know what I mean. “Only a month ago,” he said, “one of these beautiful swans killed a child with a blow of its beak. You saw the newspapers? The child was feeding it. It fractured the child’s skull. Can you tell, by looking at the swans, which is the murderer?” He scattered the last of his crusts on the water and turned his big face to me while he wiped his hands with a handkerchief. “No,” I said. “Can you pick out the guilty swan?” Miernik smiled (a movement of the muscles that always suggests the awakening of Boris Karloff in Dr. F.’s laboratory) and said, “Perhaps the swans know, but they will not talk.” (I give you this extraneous detail so that you will perhaps appreciate the oracular quality of Miernik’s conversation: layers within layers, sorrows within sorrows.)
We walked together along the lakeside. It was a sunny day. The park was full of pretty girls and other people. We could see Mont Blanc and the other high mountains, covered with snow. There were sailboats on the water. Miernik trudged through the crowd with his hands clasped in the small of his back. I have noticed before that scenes of beauty and happiness seem to fill him with melancholy. His eyes moved over the girls, over the children, over the old people. He wore a smile like that of an actor who has renounced the woman he loves because he knows that he is going to die in battle. “All this is not for me!” Miernik seems to sigh. But he adores observing the middle class in its leisure. “These people have the illusion that happiness is a right that cannot be taken away,” he said.
All the benches were occupied by noontime sunbathers, so Miernik led me to an empty place on one of the lawns. I leaned against a tree, waiting for him to say whatever it was that he had rehearsed. (I don’t mean to be flippant; his English is fluent, but studied.) Miernik turned his back to me and looked at the lake. When, at length, he turned around, he was again wearing his doomed smile. “There is something I do not want to discuss at lunch,” he said. I waited. “I wish what I am going to say to remain absolutely between you and me,” he said.
“All right.”
“My contract at WRO expires at the end of next month.”
“I know. You told me.”
“I have learned that it may not be renewed.”
“Is that important? It’s a dull job.”
“Important to me. You are an American. Perhaps you won’t understand what I am going to tell you.
“I’ll do my best.”
“It will not be renewed because the ambassador of my country has demanded that it not be renewed.”
“Demanded? He can’t tell WRO what to do.”
“He can tell them that they will lose the goodwill of my country if they do not do as he asks. My well-being is a small thing to WRO. The Organization survives by avoiding trouble. If I am trouble, it will avoid me.”
“How do you know what the Polish ambassador has demanded?”
“I know,” Miernik said.
“All right. Then why should the ambassador care one way or the other about your contract?”
“He does not. The ambassador is a government servant. Perhaps he guesses the reasons behind his instructions. Unless he is very stupid, he guesses.
“Tell me the reason.”
“Warsaw, someone in Warsaw, wants their hands upon me. Or perhaps someone farther east wants that.”
“Miernik!” I put disbelief in my voice, not to encourage him to tell his story, because he was obviously going to do that anyway. I meant to shake his performance, if that’s what it was.
“You scoff,” Miernik said. “They wish to arrest me, to question me, to imprison me. Perhaps more than that.”
“What on earth for?”
Miernik went on as if I hadn’t spoken: he had hit the rhythm of his role. “Arrest, question, imprison, ”he said. “You cannot possibly hear in those words the . . . echoes that a Pole hears.”
“Probably not. But why you? Do you live a secret life you haven’t told me about?”
Miernik grimaced. “A joke to an American. Something else to a secret policeman. Knowing you is enough to convince them that I work for American intelligence.”
(Don’t be startled by this remark. He meant to joke. Maybe he does think that I work for you—it’s probable, even, that he thinks so. But he wasn’t provoking me here. His tone was: That’s how ridiculous they are. He was keeping up the appearance that he does not suspect me by assigning the suspicion to the Polish secret police, who are known idiots.)
“But if you don’t work for the Americans, and I assume you don’t, then why are you worried?”
“To them, innocence is an illusion. They don’t like my nose. That’s enough.”
(Miernik has an unlovable nose: meaty, red, with a tendency to run.)
“If all this is true, then you have a problem,” I said.
“You don’t think that it’s true?”
“Why shouldn’t I? But is Poland really run by lunatics who’d lock you up for no reason at all?”
“You can’t quite conceive of that, can you?”
“I’ve never been to Poland.”
/> Miernik turned his back again. He blew his nose and cleared his throat into his handkerchief. This is one of his mannerisms when he is under stress.
“My dear friend,” he said, “I do not think that I can go back to Poland.”
“Then don’t go. Ask for asylum here. The Swiss will fix you up. They’ve done it in more doubtful cases than yours.
“I must go back.”
“You just said that you couldn’t.”
“Poland is my country.”
“Which wants to put you in jail for no reason.
“Perhaps not. Once it was suggested to me that I could be useful, in a patriotic way. When I was at the university. Perhaps they want to frighten me into something like that.”
“You won’t know until they try, will you?”
“Perhaps not even after.”
“Intrigue, Miernik. Everywhere intrigue.”
Miernik paid no attention to this remark. “Most of all,” he said, “there is another factor.” He fell into a silence.
(I might say at this point, for the benefit of those who sit inside, reading these reports—there is someone like that, isn’t there?— that there is a certain amount of strain involved in holding conversations with people like Miernik. Two sets of reactions operate at all times. I pretend to like him, for your purposes. I do like him, for reasons that have nothing to do with your requirements. I lie to him, for your reasons. And I lie to him so that he will not suspect that I am lying to him. I assume that he feels and does the same. In Miernik’s case, all this would be more bearable if he did not take himself so seriously. Of course, I don’t know whether he is taking himself seriously, or whether he is just pretending to do so in the name of professionalism. If he is a professional, then this narrative is laughable. If not, it’s not.)