The Miernik Dossier - Charles McCarry [2]
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