The Miernik Dossier

by Charles McCarry

  4. Because all ALF assault teams have been recalled on Soviet instructions, virtually the entire strength of the organization is now encamped at its headquarters. Although all six members of the team that attacked Christopher’s camp are missing, only four bodies were found at the scene by ALF scouts. Firecracker claims to have had no prior knowledge of this operation. He does not know its purpose, or what orders were giver to the assault team by Ahmed. Firecracker passed our information concerning Miernik to Ahmed on 7 July; the attack took place on 9 July. Firecracker states that he has not been able to discover whether Ahmed passed this information to Dar es Salaam by radio.*

  5. ALF lookouts this date reported the landing of a police helicopter at the palace of the Amir of Khatar. It is assumed by them that this has some connection with the attack on the Christopher party. Firecracker seems unaware that Qasim himself was present in the Amir’s palace.

  COMMENT: If Firecracker has not yet lost his nerve, he is on the point of doing so. He is obviously in the toils of the double-agent syndrome. I believe that if his personal danger increases appreciably (or if he simply believes that it is increasing) he will attempt to escape to Uganda, probably with no prior notice to us. The presence of virtually the entire strength of the ALF in one place, and the apparent breakdown of discipline attendant on the execution of Abmed, provides an obvious opportunity for the Sudanese. They may wish to move in at once, and there are persuasive reasons why they should do so while we are still able to assist through our control of Firecracker.

  80. INTERCEPTED TRAFFIC FROM THE SOVIET TRANSMITTER (14 JULY).

  1. Two companies of parachute troops equipped with automatic weapons and mortars will depart Khartoum by air during night 15 July. Destination El Fasher for quote routine maneuvers unquote.

  2. Disperse all ALF personnel immediately. Abandon your headquarters.

  3. Cancel rendezvous with Richard. Richard will contact Qemal 15 July at time and place of Richard’s choosing.

  4. Suspend all operations until consultation with Richard. Hide all arms and ammunition. Destroy all documents.

  (Note: This message was not acknowledged by the ALF transmitter. The Soviet transmitter rebroadcast the message at hourly intervals on 14–15 July. It was not unusual for the ALF transmitter to fail to acknowledge messages. Only Ahmed and Firecracker were trained to operate the radios. On date of message Ahmed was already dead. Therefore only Firecracker would have been able to receive the Morse signal, decode it, and understand the Russian in which it was written. At 0732 and again at 1932 on 16 July, the Soviet transmitter repeated this message in clear, in the Arabic language. This final attempt to contact ALF headquarters evidently failed. There was no acknowledgment.)

  81. FROM THE FILES OF CHIEF INSPECTOR ALY QASIM.

  Acting on my orders, Constable Mirghani rejoined the main force of the Anointed Liberation Front and delivered a letter from me to Qemal. Mirghani had been lightly wounded in the action at Kashgil and he was unable to travel until the night of 13th July. He told Qemal, again on my instructions, that he had been captured by the police, questioned by me, and given his freedom on condition that he deliver the letter. Qemal may or may not have accepted this story, but he took no action against Mirghani. Instead, he sent Mirghani back to me with a verbal message that he would meet Prince Kalash on the morning of 15th July at a place west of Mellit, about fifty miles west-northwest of El Fasher. He guaranteed that he would come alone and unarmed.

  I informed Prince Kalash of these arrangements. He was provided with an escort from the Amir’s household: two men armed with Sten guns and revolvers. On 14th July I requested the commander of the army troops to station a squad of picked men on the high ground surrounding the meeting place as additional protection for Prince Kalash. In the event of any untoward event, these men were to intervene at once. They took up their positions the night before. They were armed with machine guns, a mortar, and grenades in addition to their rifies. They were equipped with a radio transmitter. Other troops were positioned to intercept any persons attempting to escape the meeting place.

  Prince Kalash took the man Miernik with him to the rendezvous. I had no foreknowledge of this incredible action. After the fact, I learned that the Amir believed he was doing me a service in delivering Miernik into the hands of the ALF. On 14th July, the day before Prince Kalash’s meeting with his half brother Qemal, I had confided to the Amir my suspicion that Miernik might be a Soviet agent sent to take command of the ALF. The Amir decided to test my theory. “One assumed that Qemal was waiting for this foreigner,” the Amir told me. “If Miernik joined him, then his guilt was established.”

  It was useless to point out to the Amir that Miernik’s disappearance proved nothing. We can never be certain that the man was not abducted by Qemal and his thugs. By putting Miernik out of our reach, the Amir put him beyond proof of my suspicions. He also put in hazard all the carefully laid plans that depended on a successful meeting between Prince Kalash and his half brother. I feared that Qemal, seeing Miernik in Prince Kalash’s company, would smell betrayal.

  However, Qemal kept the rendezvous. He apparently had concealed himself some time earlier in the small trees that grow nearby. The troops did not discover him until he walked out of the trees and presented himself to Prince Kalash. Qemal’s unsuspicious behaviour had something to do with the fact that Prince Kalash had left Miernik approximately one mile to the south, at the site of some stone ruins. Because the troops had no orders to watch Miernik—his presence had not been anticipated and therefore was not dealt with in their instructions—they kept no watch on him. (I digress to remark that this blind stupidity is typical military behaviour.)

  Qemal agreed to assemble the personnel of the ALF shortly after dawn on 17th July at their headquarters. He gave Prince Kalash the precise location of this place. The main ALF camp was located between the east and middle forks of the Wadi Magrur, fifty miles west of Malha. Prince Kalash provided me with no details of his remarks to Qemal, except to say that he had greeted him as a brother. The lieutenant in charge of the troops reports that Prince Kalash, on meeting Qemal, embraced him.

  After their conversation was concluded, Qemal disappeared on foot into the bush. Prince Kalash turned his Land Rover around and returned to the ruins where he had left Miernik. Miernik was not there. Prince Kalash was observed calling Miernik’s name, and he and his bodyguards conducted a search of the area that lasted for the better part of an hour.

  The troops did not interfere. They had earlier observed a second Land Rover, which had been concealed in the bush, proceeding in a southeasterly direction through open country. It contained four men but the distance was too great to permit identification.

  Prince Kalash afterwards reported that he and his men found Land Rover tracks beginning at a point about two hundred yards from the stone ruins. The tracks led in a southeasterly direction.

  Only after intensive questioning did Prince Kalash tell me that he had taken Miernik into the desert, and there abandoned him, on the Amir’s orders. It was a bitter task for the prince. He felt that he had deceived, and perhaps killed, his companion. “Qemal got a look of madness in his eyes when I told him I’d brought Miernik along,” Kalash said. “He went off snarling about the Russians. I tried to beat him back to the ruins. I wanted to get Miernik away from there. But he was gone. Prince Kalash was by now convinced that a mistake had been made. He wanted to pursue Qemal and Miernik in my helicopter, but I could not permit that. The Amir forbade Prince Kalash to involve himself in any kind of a rescue attempt. ‘Kalash says this Pole is a harmless fool,” said the Amir. “Aly states that he is a Communist spy, Qemal thinks he is a Russian. Let Qemal decide what to do with him.”

  82. FROM THE DEBRIEFING OF ZOFLA MIERNIK.

  No one had any idea that Tadeusz and Kalash were going into the mountains together. They simply went. Ilona saw them from the window as they were getting into the Land Rover. As she told it later, she ran out to talk to them. Tadeusz to
ld her they were going to look at some ruins—a morning excursion. Ilona thought so little of the incident that she didn’t even mention it to me. I can understand why. It didn’t seem important, much less dangerous. Living in that palace, which is really a fortress, surrounded at all times by the Amir’s power, one readily forgets danger. What happened on the trip only a few days before seemed far away in time. It was inconceivable that anything could happen to any of us so long as we were guests of the Amir.

  Kalash had been back for some time before I was given the news. I expect he had to talk the situation over with his father before telling Nigel and Paul. I was the last to know, and it was Paul who told me. He could easily have deceived me—made the situation seem less serious than it was. I would have been ready to believe that Tadeusz had just wandered away and lost his bearings. That would have been serious enough, but after all there seemed to be hundreds of people about the palace, so a search party would have been easy to organize. Almost anyone else would have thought it merciful to lie to me. But Paul told me the truth, and told it at once. We met in a small courtyard; it was a hanging garden, really, with vines and shrubs growing up the walls and over the top. There was a fountain—a fountain in that desert! It had some sort of an American device that circulated the same few liters of water forever. The American ambassador had given several of these pumps to the Amir, who quite adored them. It was a cool place. I went there every day, to read and exercise. We never saw the boys, you realize. It was a strict Muslim household where the sexes came together only for breeding purposes.

  So I was a little surprised to see Paul, but very glad. I felt close to him. He is a sympathetic type, you know, and strictly speaking he saved my life at least twice in the space of a couple of weeks. As you seem to be interested in such things I may as well tell you that I was madly signaling to him that he was welcome to climb in the window whenever he wanted. I realize that I am not coming to the point very quickly. You must forgive me. I have a tendency to cry when I tell this story. I want to give you the facts as coldly as possible.

  Very well. Paul comes into the garden. It must have been very early afternoon. The sun was overhead and strong. The floor of the courtyard was dappled with shadow. Shafts of sunlight, perpendicular columns of white sunlight. Paul walked through these, out of the shadow, into the light. It was a very theatrical effect. He sits down beside me. With no preliminaries—not even speaking my name in a tone of voice that might have warned me—Paul told me. Tadeusz was missing in the desert. Kalash thought he might have been abducted. No trace had yet been found of him. There had been talk about organizing a search party. The Amir had forbidden it. If Tadeusz had been kidnapped, we would hear from the bandits when they demanded a ransom. To approach the kidnappers now, with the threat of force, would create the risk that Tadeusz might be killed.

  I just stared at him. What was he telling me? Paul’s face was serious but not worried. He was watching my reaction very closely. I thought, Ah ha! He expects me to get hysterical. I said, “What do you think of his chances?” Paul said, “I don’t know. Kalash says there’s no possibility that your brother is merely lost. He’s sure someone grabbed him. If he was taken by friends of the people we shot a few days ago, obviously his chances are almost nonexistent. But maybe not. I would think that men wanting revenge would simply have killed him where they found him. The other possibility is kidnap and ransom. Kalash tells me the local kidnappers are pretty honorable—if you pay, they give back the victim unharmed. It’s a matter of business ethics. So we can wait and pay if the second possibility is the one we believe in.

  I asked him how much the ransom was likely to be. Looking back, it seems insane, this conversation between Paul and me. For all we knew my brother lay dead out there somewhere—perhaps having been tortured—and we sat in a garden by a splashing fountain and discussed price. The fountain smelled of chlorine, by the way. The chemical smell of it made me angry: these damned Arabs with their American fountains, their Cadillacs, their pet lions, their harem filled with children. You know what it was. Subconsciously I was blaming Kalash for everything that happened. He was so supremely indifferent to other people, to life itself. Now he had done this to Tadeusz. To Paul I said, “How much do you think they’ll want?”

  “The Amir says that they usually demand only a modest sum. What he considers a modest sum I don’t really know. Kalash guesses it would be a thousand pounds.”

  I had a good deal more than that in the rucksack. Sasha had given it to me, as you know. Bundles and bundles of dollars, worth millions of zloty. At the time I’d thought he was crazy—what did I need with all that money? Now I was glad I had it. I blessed Sasha, who . . . One of Sasha’s sayings was “You cannot think of everything, but if you have enough money it’s not necessary to think of everything.” Even Sasha could not have thought of this— Tadeusz in the hands of bandits. Good God, who could this day and age?

  Q. Did you confide in Christopher about the money?

  A. No, and I don’t really know why not. I just nodded and said we’d pay. I said something like, “I have a little money.” Paul didn’t question me. He never questioned anybody, you know. Everyone confessed to him all the time, but he never invited it. My brother told him everything,and I assure you that was not like Tadeusz. There was something about Paul. One simply trusted him.

  Q. Did you trust what he was telling you about what may have happened to your brother?

  A. I trusted him. I had the feeling he was withholding his own opinion. At least I think that’s what I felt. Be honest. Who knows after the fact what you knew and didn’t know? Anyway, Paul told me that he didn’t think we should just sit down and wait. He agreed that an expedition to rescue Tadeusz was a dangerous idea. I knew he would have to go out alone, if he went. Kalash would never help him.

  Q. Why not?

  A. Kalash did not like my brother. He thought he was a fool. By Kalash’s standards he was a fool. Tadeusz lacked nonchalance-totally lacked it. That embarrassed Kalash, made him contemptuous. Nigel was nonchalant. Paul was nonchalant. Ilona was nonchalant. Even I, a little bit. That was the quality Kalash prized above all others. After the shooting that night, Kalash and Paul and Nigel were no different than they had been before. No emotion, no anger. They kept up appearances. Making no mention of the fact that Ilona and I were naked, never even referring to that fact is an example of what I mean. Drinking tea and chatting beside the dead bodies, all that was part of their style. Tadeusz ran behind the tents and threw up. For days afterward he was withdrawn, silent. His hands trembled. The other three rode through the desert eating oranges and making witticisms.

  Q. How did Chistopher happen to take you with him?

  A. I insisted on going. It’s true he didn’t oppose me, but I thought this was just another example of his sensitivity. He realized I would be happier taking part. He was my brother’s only real friend in that crowd. I’ve told you he didn’t interfere with others, didn’t judge. When I said I wanted to go, he thought for a few moments. Then he said yes. So we went.

  Q. What was Christopher’s motivation, in your opinion?

  A. His what? His motivation? Why did he do what he did? He wanted to find Tadeusz. He wanted to help. Simple friendship. Perhaps a certain regard for me as well as for Tadeusz. Paul and I liked one another.

  Q. You didn’t think he had any ulterior motive he wasn’t telling you about?

  A. Oh, for Christ’s sake. Of course not. What could it possibly be? He was likely to get himself killed. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had some experience with these madmen already, you know. He knew what those people who had Tadeusz were capable of.

  Q. All right, Miss Miernik. Let’s go on. We’d like you to describe what happened after you and Paul started out together. Just begin at the beginning.

  A. The beginning I’ve already told you. In the garden we agreed that we’d go out together. We hadn’t much hope that we’d actually find Tadeusz. We didn’t know the country. If we had known more
about it I think we wouldn’t have tried at all. It’s a hopeless place to search for anyone. Mountain after mountain, little valleys, forests of dwarf trees, caves. It’s a labyrinth up there. I had the feeling that we were not on our own planet any longer.

  However, we didn’t foresee any of that. I went back to my room, with my girl trotting along with me—annoying, that, always having a servant with you—and changed into trousers and boots. I put some things into the rucksack on top of the money. I still thought the money would be useful, that we could buy Tadeusz back. Then I went back to the garden and waited for Paul. Pretty soon he came along and took me to the Land Rover. He had packed some of the camping gear and filled up the jerry cans with water and gasoline. Also, he had that portable radio set they had taken from the bandits, the walkie-talkie. And the Sten gun, lying on the front seat. Kalash was there with the big black fellow who let us in the night we arrived. He was a special chum of Kalash’s—went everywhere with him. Kalash said nothing to me, absolutely nothing. At least for the time being he left off giving me looks of sexual invitation. That’s beside the point. Kalash and Paul were looking at a map. Kalash drew a line on it, to show where he had last seen Tadeusz. They were as cool as could be; one would have thought they were discussing the best route between Geneva and Lausanne. The famous nonchalance again. Kalash folded up the map, handed it to Paul, and said, “Cheerio.”