Charles McCarry - The Miernik Dossier

Miernik looked around the room carefully. We were alone except for the hotel clerk, who was typing behind his counter at the other end of the lobby, and a couple of old women playing cards in a distant corner. Miernik sat down again and in his methodical way began to put the chess pieces back into their box. Then he folded his hands on the table between us and gazed at me in a way I have come to realize means nothing but trouble. The Black Forest clock over the reception desk had just cuckooed 11:30. Miernik cleared his throat. He blew his nose and wiped his eyes.

“There is something I want to discuss with you, Paul.”

11:31. “As you know,” he said, “I have a sister still in Poland. She is a student of art history, not a very profitable subject in a people’s democracy where everyone’s taste conforms to Comrade Khrushchev’s, but that is what she is studying. She’s six years younger than I am, so she is now twenty-three. I’ll show you her picture.”

He took a photograph from his wallet. It showed an astonishingly pretty blond girl, smiling into the lens with perfect white teeth. He grinned at my reaction. “That is Zofia Miernik,” he said. “She looks like our mother. I favor our father, which shows that God is merciful.”

“She certainly is very good-looking.”

“Yes. And very sweet and kind. I want you to prepare yourself, Paul, to grant me a great favor. I want you to help Zofia as you have helped me.”

11:32. I stared at him and he continued to give me his grimace of friendship, which manages to combine a tremulous fear of rejection with an almost canine look of trust.

“I have made certain arrangements. When we get to Vienna, I want you to continue onward by train or bus for a few miles to the east-across the Czech frontier, in fact.”

“Across the Czech frontier,” I said in a flat tone of voice. “I see.”

“You will see, Paul. Hear me out. In Bratislava, only a few minutes inside the border, you will find Zofia having a cup of tea at a certain coffeehouse. You will sit down where she can see you and order a beer, speaking German. The Czechs have the best beer in the world. On the table you will place a copy of this book.”

From the pocket of his jacket he produced a paperback copy of Schiller’s poetry. “If all is well, Zofia will take a book out of her purse and begin to read it. If you believe that all is well, that you have not been followed, you will read your book. When you have finished your beer, leave the coffeehouse, turn right, and walk to the fourth corner. Turn left into a small street-I’ll give you the name-and there you will see a man in a black Citroën. Get in and show him this book of Schiller. He will drive for a few minutes, and then Zofia will join you.”

I was overcome by a desire to laugh, and also by irritation. “Everything is eminently clear so far, Tadeusz,” I said. “What do I do after we’re all together in the black Citroën?”

“The man will drive you into the country. He knows a place where it is relatively easy to cross the frontier. Of course you will have to wait for dark, and exercise some care. But I am assured you can just walk across through a woods. On the other side, back in Austria, you will find me waiting. We will rejoin Nigel and Kalash at the hotel, have our celebration, and in the morning continue on our way.” Miernik leaned back in his chair and gave me a look of anticipation.

“I’m interested in one of the things you’ve said,” I told him. “What sort of a celebration do you plan, exactly?”

“Something splendid, I think. Dinner, champagne.”

“And a bottle of mineral water for Kalash?”

Miernik got out his handkerchief again. I watched him go though his wiping ceremony, and when he had his glasses back on his nose I said, “Good night.” He gripped my forearm.

“You don’t want to do this,” he said. It was not a question.

“Miernik, you’re crazy. You want me to cross the frontier without a visa on an American passport into the most efficient police state in Central Europe. Then you want me to stroll into a coffeehouse where every waiter is no doubt in the pay of the secret police, flash a book of German poetry at a girl I’ve never seen in my life, and then escort her across a frontier that’s patrolled by soldiers and dogs, strung with trip wires, seeded with mines, and guarded by watchtowers that have searchlights and machine guns on them- all for a glass of champagne and a wiener schnitzel? I think you’re trying to get me locked up in a Czech jail for the rest of my life. I give you the short answer to your small request for assistance. No.”

“No-listen,” Miernik said. “If I thought for one moment that there was any real danger I would never ask you. But I have made arrangements. First, you will have a visa. That has been arranged. Second, no one in the coffeehouse is going to suspect a thing. You look like a German or an Austrian, which means you look like a Czech. You wear European clothes. You speak German with absolutely no accent; in five minutes of listening you will have the accent of the place perfectly.”

“The German accent of the place? There are no fucking Germans in Czechoslovakia-the regime threw them all out after the war.”

“Many people there still speak German. Anyway, you’re not supposed to be a Czech. Everyone will think you’re an Austrian or a German, a tourist or a businessman.”

“For Christ’s sake, Miernik. There are no tourists or businessmen in Bratislava. Czechoslovakia is Khrushchev’s country estate.”

“No, it will be all right. You will only be in public for an hour, at the very most.”

“I agree with that. I’m not likely to be in public again for the rest of my life.”

“Believe me, Paul, that will not happen. You will not have any trouble. Not with the visa, not with the coffeehouse, not with the frontier. The soldiers will not bother you, they will not turn on their searchlights, there are no mines the way you are going. I tell you arrangements have been made. What I am asking for, really, is an act of friendship that will take no more than a few hours.”

“I say it again. No.”

Miernik, in the course of this conversation, underwent a change. He stopped cringing. Now he looked at me with a perfectly steady gaze. “If I could do it myself, I would do it,” he said. “But I would spend the rest of my life in prison, and so would Zofia. I ask you because there is no one else I can ask. I trust you, my friend. You must trust me.

He handed me the book of Schiller. When I refused to take it he closed his hand over mine on the table and gave me a confident smile. “I warn you,” he said, “I will not give up. Tomorrow we’ll talk again. I know you will do this thing in the end. And we both know why.”

Miernik opened the book to a page with the corner turned down and put his finger on a line underscored in green ink. “Alle Menschen werden Brüder,” [4] it read. He patted my arm, cleared his throat as if to say something more, but decided not to speak. With one final squeeze of my biceps, he went upstairs. I heard him pause on the second landing to blow his nose.

13 June. Rosy-fingered dawn had hardly tapped on my window this morning when Kalash awakened me. He was dressed in walking shorts and a heavy ski sweater. When you travel it’s important to go to bed early,” Kalash said. “Otherwise you are tired in the morning and your reflexes are sluggish. I am trying to get some breakfast but I can’t get that cretin downstairs to understand me. You must come down and speak German to him.”

“What time is it?”

“Five-thirty.”

“You won’t get anything to eat at five-thirty. The dining room opens at half-past seven. Go for a walk, why don’t you?”