The Miernik Dossier - Charles McCarry [100]
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