The Miernik Dossier

by Charles McCarry

  7. The pilot landed the helicopter and the three of us got down into the mud and poked aimlessly at the wreckage. The Land Rover was not damaged, apart from a soaked engine. It was obvious what had happened. The flash flood, roaring down the steep bed of the dry wadi, had caught the Land Rover from behind and turned it over, spilling Paul and Zofia into the water. “Probably it wasn’t raining here,” Prince Kalash said. “They would not even have heard the water coming along behind them over the noise of the engine. The sand deadens the sound—these floods come very quickly. The water can be six feet deep in a narrow place like this. Eventually it just subsides into the sand.” A few hundred yards downstream I found Zofia’s red rucksack, caked with drying sand. I took it with me back to the helicopter.

  8. I sat in the rear of the chattering machine, staring at the back of Kalash’s head. I thought it impossible that Christopher and Zofia Miernik could have survived the accident. Death by drowning in the desert seemed a fitting end to this farcical adventure. It has been a waste of friends from beginning to end. Prince Kalash, without turning his head, reached back and seized my arm with his huge hand. The helicopter made an abrupt turn, the horizon revolving beyond its perspex cabin. When it resumed course I looked downwards and saw Paul Christopher and Zofia Miernik standing on a bald hill. They were holding hands, calmly watching the helicopter as it settled to the ground, raising dervishes of sand around them. I learnt that Miernik was dead. Christopher had found him with Ilona’s Exakta beside him. That discovery answered the question as to the purpose of the homing device. Prince Kalash and I were left alone on the desert when the helicopter left to take Christopher and Zofia back to the palace. We found Miernik’s body not far from the place where the helicopter had landed. Prince Kalash gazed stolidly at the abused and bloated body of his friend. I said: “Odd that they should have killed only Miernik, isn’t it?” Prince Kalash shrugged. “Miernik was the one they found,” he said. “With how much help?” I asked. The prince went still like the future amir he is. “My dear Nigel,” he said at last. “Miernik was bound to be killed by his friends. Be glad you didn’t have to do it.” He took my arm and walked me away from the corpse.

  85. FROM THE DEBRIEFING OF ZOFLA MIERNIK.

  After we found my brother’s body, Paul made the only mistake I’ve known him to be guilty of. He took the wrong fork of the wadi. A few miles east of where we found Tadeusz, the dry stream branched off—one section led straight into Malha, where the road to El Fasher begins, and the other ran south, parallel to the road. Paul wanted to go to Malha but somehow we got off on the second wadi. Normally, Paul would have checked the route with the compass. I suppose he was not himself after finding Tadeusz. He omitted some of the precautions he usually took. By the time he realized his mistake, we were too far along to turn back. Besides, he was not anxious to drive in the direction of the bandits. He told me later he had seen their camp from the hilltop where my brother died. We decided to drive down the wadi, which joined the road forty or fifty miles to the south. It was the intelligent thing to do. I was in no condition to be intelligent. Had Paul suggested walking I would have agreed.

  Q. Why didn’t you camp that night, instead of pushing on?

  A. Because of Tadeusz. Neither of us was sleepy, you understand. The body was beginning to decompose. We didn’t discuss it. It was perfectly plain that we had to get back to the palace as quickly as possible. Actually, we would have been all right but the Land Rover kept overheating. We had to stop every few moments to let it cool off. Finally Paul did something to the radiator—removed the thermostat, I think—and after that it ran better. Nevertheless, we were still in the bed of the wadi when night fell. Darkness comes like the closing of a nursery door out there. We continued, but much more slowly, because the headlights were not much help. It’s not like a road, it’s like driving on the snow—you cannot see the difference between the road and its edges. Paul had to concentrate very hard to keep us in the stream bed. Otherwise I think he would have heard the water coming down the wadi behind us, or sensed that something was wrong. That’s how much faith I have in Paul Christopher—he would have needed a sixth sense to have saved us. A wall of water in the desert? Who could imagine such a thing? I didn’t even know it was the rainy season.

  When the water did come, it was a total surprise. I was just seized by it and flung away. One instant I was sitting in the Land Rover and the next I was at the bottom of a river. I didn’t believe my senses. I thought I had gone insane. I expected to see Paul beside me at any moment, to be back in the Land Rover. I was astonished. Quite rationally I said to myself, “I didn’t know that Tadeusz’s murder and riding with his body behind me had such an effect—I didn’t know I was going to lose my mind this way.” Then I began to swim. It was pure instinct for survival. My mind told me to relax and breathe: the water was a hallucination. The water in my nose and mouth was real enough, however. I got to the surface and swallowed some air and was immediately pulled under again. I struggled less, tried to go with the water. Every few seconds the flood would spit me out for an instant and I could breathe. I kept trying to swim toward the edge of the water. After what seemed an eternity I felt the bottom. I kept swimming. Finally I got out. I ran, falling down and getting up, falling down and getting up, until I was far away from the flood. I fell on my face and retched. My mouth was full of sand and I had swallowed some of the water. The flood was just liquid sand, you know—like porridge. I can still taste it.

  There was nothing to be done. I wasn’t hurt. I was exhausted. I curled up and went to sleep. When I woke up, the sun was overhead and Paul was beside me. He was a wretched sight—his hair full of mud, his clothes ruined, his face scratched and filthy. I practically exploded with love. He had been thrown out of the flood at almost the same spot as I—it was a place where the wadi widened, and I suppose the water just suddenly got shallow and released us. We must have been tumbling along side by side under the surface the night before, never knowing it.

  Paul still had his compass and a pocketknife. Everything else had been lost. We walked along the banks of the wadi and found some of our canned fruit half-buried in the sand. We ate a can of peaches and Paul bundled up the rest in his shirt so we could carry them. He said there was no point in wasting our energy looking for the Land Rover as it would not run. There was no sign of Tadeusz. “We’ll come back for him,” Paul told me. “We won’t leave him here.” I wondered why he insisted on this. Of course I realize now he was afraid I would get hysterical. Perhaps I was hysterical. If I was, it had nothing to do with my brother—he was beyond help. As for his body, I didn’t care what happened to it. The person was gone from it. My hysteria had to do with Paul. I was mad with joy that he was alive like me.

  Paul got out his compass and decided we should walk eastward over the hills. The road we wanted was fifteen or twenty kilometers in that direction. We began to climb. When we got to the top of the first hill we heard the helicopter. Paul dumped the cans out of his shirt and waved it. The helicopter flew right by, sounding like a gun firing. Then it turned and landed a few feet away.

  Kalash shot out of the door and scrambled toward us with his arms hanging down and the rotor blades flashing a few inches above his head. He gave me hardly a glance, but threw his arms around Paul and lifted him off the ground. He stood there with Paul dangling in his embrace for quite a long time. Nigel meanwhile had come up to me. He was carrying a light coat and for some reason he draped it over my shoulders. It was 120 degrees in the sun. “‘Your brother?” he asked. It was the first time anyone but Paul had mentioned Tadeusz since we found him. I meant to give Nigel a calm reply. When I opened my mouth, nothing came out but a series of shrieks. Nigel’s face, always before so cold, twisted in pain and he put his arms around me. He held me upright, muttering into my hair and patting my back, until I got control of myself. They put me into the helicopter. Paul joined me. The pilot flew us to the palace. Kalash and Nigel waited where they had found us—the machine could car
ry only four people.

  I learned later that Kalash and Nigel found Tadeusz. They brought his body back, tied to the landing gear. I never saw it. By the time I knew he had been found, they had sealed him up in a coffin. I never saw any part of his dead body except the face. Perhaps it’s just as well.

  Q. But you did learn what had happened to him?

  A. That man Qasim, the policeman, told me something about it. Apparently a couple of bandits seized him while he was poking around in the ruins. Qasim couldn’t understand why they had killed him instead of holding him for ransom. He kept asking me if Tadeusz was carrying a large sum of money. I didn’t know. I didn’t think so. I had all the money, in my rucksack. Nigel found it, as you know, and gave it back. The rucksack contained Tadeusz’s briefcase when I lost it, but the briefcase was gone when I got it back. All the money was there— over ten thousand dollars. But the briefcase was gone. Paul said I may not have put it into the rucksack after all, but I remember quite clearly. It doesn’t matter. Nothing of value was lost except my brother’s diary. I don’t think I would have read it in any event. What could his diary tell me that I need to know?

  Q. How did you interpret Ilona Bentley’s reaction to your brother’s death?

  A. She was distressed. Ilona came to my room almost as soon as I returned to the palace. She kissed me, which I didn’t particularly like. She said nothing for a long time. Actually she just stood there trembling from head to foot. She had to sit down in order to get hold of herself. Ilona told me she had loved Tadeusz. “I realize you won’t believe me,” she said, “but I did rather love your brother. You and I are different sorts of women, Zofia. I am able to love a great many people all at the same time. Tadeusz was loved by me.” I expect she was telling the truth. What she said was a comfort to me in a queer way. She had been generous with Tadeusz, sleeping with him, whatever her intentions and whatever the results. All that was over. I found myself sympathizing with Ilona for the first time.

  Later on, after we had taken Tadeusz to Khartoum, Ilona came along to the funeral. They all did. They were all absolute atheists, except for Kalash, and he was hardly a good Catholic. But they sat through the mass with me, all very correct. I don’t mean that to sound contemptuous—probably their thoughts of my brother did him as much good as the priest’s ritual and my prayers. We had to have him cremated, of course. This was done after the requiem mass. Theoretically the Catholic dead are not cremated. But I didn’t want to bury him in that damned desert. I wanted to take him back to Europe with me. Nigel and Ilona arranged all that. I’m sure it was very difficult, but they took care of everything.

  Ilona turned up at the plane, when we left with Tadeusz’s ashes, with a bouquet of flowers. I don’t know where she got them in that climate—they were roses. She asked if I minded her having the box containing the urn opened, so she could put the flowers inside. I agreed, and she knelt on the tarmac in the beating sun by the open crate, arranging the roses around the ashes. She was weeping. It was kind of her, I thought. There was no question at all that she was tremendously sorry about Tadeusz. No doubt she always had been.

  86. FROM THE FILES OF CHIEF INSPECTOR ALY QASIM.

  Of the sixty-three terrorists who were engaged by troops of the Parachute Regiment in the main camp of the so-called Anointed Liberation Front on the Wadi Magrur at 0640 hours on 17th July, only four survived. Of these, two were seriously wounded, and despite conscientious treatment by army medical staff, both died before I was able to complete my interviews with them. Of the two remaining prisoners, one was a low-ranking illiterate who was unable to supply any useful information. The other, Fadl Baballah, had been second-incommand of the ALF under a certain Qemal, who unfortunately was killed in the morning’s action.

  Baballah stated that he had joined the ALF in the belief that it intended to serve Islam. He was recruited by the late Ahmed, who was a boyhood friend. Ahmed told him that the USSR was a country governed by devout Muslims who wished to restore the purity of the faith. When Ahmed was executed on orders from the Russians, Baballah was disillusioned. He no longer believed that the Russians were friends of Islam, and he desired revenge for the death of his friend. He decided to kill Qemal, and on 12th or 13th July threatened him with a pistol.

  What follows is a stenographic transcript of Baballah’s description of this incident and certain of the results that flowed from it:

  “The Russian radio told Qemal to kill Ahmed. He did so without hesitation and without giving Ahmed a trial. Always before when a comrade made a mistake, he was judged by a tribunal of the freedom fighters. They would decide his guilt and prescribe his punishment. If it was death, the sentence was carried out in a proper way by comrades of the condemned man. His error was explained to him before he died. But Qemal lured Ahmed into the desert and killed him by trickery. This was a terrible act. Soon all in the ALF knew about it. There was great anger. Comrades came to me and said, ‘Fadl, you must get rid of Qemal and take command of the movement. Qemal killed Ahmed out of ambition. The Russians cannot order the death of a comrade in that way. It is wrong.’

  “Qemal was a clever man and very brave. However, I never trusted him. I never believed that his heart was with the cause, as Ahmed’s heart always was. I thought it best to kill Qemal exactly as he had killed Ahmed—go with him as a friend and shoot him. But when I tried to persuade Qemal to come with me one night, he refused. ‘Fadl, I know what you are thinking,’ he said. ‘I am thinking the same thing, that these Russians are no good. They betrayed us. You are angry because Ahmed is dead. How do you think I feel? It was I who killed my friend because the Russians told me to. I feel so badly I wish you would kill me, and if that is what you want to do I will turn my back now and let you shoot me.’ I said, ‘Very well, turn around, because I certainly intend to shoot you in the head.’

  “Qemal showed no fear. He said, ‘I agree. But first, listen to what I have to say, so that after you have killed me you can save the cause. You will be a great leader, Fadl. I have always thought that you, who are a pure man untouched by foreign ideas, should have been the commander of the ALF instead of Ahmed or myself. I wish to die knowing that Ahmed will be revenged and that the cause will triumph.’

  “Qemal said that we must first of all get rid of the Russians. Ahmed had been saying this secretly for some time, and many of us agreed with him. He saw the truth about the Russians, and that was why he was killed. They cared nothing about Islam, nothing about Sudan, nothing about the ALF. All these three things, which meant everything in the world to me and the other comrades, were only a joke to the Russians. They are imperialists just like the rest of the Europeans. Now Qemal too realized the truth. ‘We must fight on,’ he said, ‘but it’s better to fight on alone than to take orders from the Russians.’ I put away my pistol; I hadn’t the heart to kill him. Besides, he was an educated man and we needed him.

  “After that we had many planning sessions, Qemal and I. We agreed that we should have an important Sudanese as the titular head of the movement. This man would have no power, he would be a symbol for the masses. Qemal said he thought that his brother, Prince Kalash el Khatar, might join us if he understood our purpose. This had originally been Ahmed’s idea. He had sent a team of comrades to capture Prince Kalash, but all of them except one was killed in the attempt by Europeans who were guarding the prince. The Europeans had machine pistols and our men had only the old American rifles and submachine guns the Russians had given us. Those rifles are no good against modern weapons. You saw what happened this morning. Your soldiers had machine guns and mortars; we had no chance with the old guns the Russians gave us. They never gave us enough ammunition. That was one of the ways they controlled us. If there was to be an operation, a plane would come over and drop a few boxes of bullets. Otherwise we had only twenty-four rounds per rifle. The Russians condemned us to death by not giving us bullets, the same as they condemned Ahmed.

  “Qemal arranged to meet Prince Kalash two days ago. Another man called
Siddik and I went along with him. Qemal had promised to meet alone with his brother, so we hid nearby. Now I remembered that on this same morning a Russian called Richard, which was a code name, was supposed to join us. I realized that we were very near the place where Richard was supposed to wait for us. Ahmed, before he died, had told me about the rendezvous arrangements. Qemal never said anything about it, but I supposed he just intended to leave the Russian alone in the desert—not meet him. There were certain arrangements. I had met Russians before, with Ahmed. We used to find them with a small radio. You turn on the radio and it makes a sound like an automobile horn. The louder the sound becomes, the closer you are to the Russian. The Russian carried another small radio that sent out a signal. This was necessary because a stranger cannot find his way in the desert. We always kept the location of our camp secret even from the Russians, and we moved all the time. Then, too, the Russians always came by parachute and sometimes the wind would carry them away from the place they said they were going to land. So the radio device was very useful.

  “As Siddik and I waited for Qemal it occurred to me that the Russian might be nearby. I had the radio device in my Land Rover, which used to be Ahmed’s vehicle, so I got it out and turned it on. The signal came out of it quite strongly. We walked in one direction and another until it got louder. Then we simply followed the signal until we found the Russian. He was standing in the ruins of an old house, looking at them and muttering to himself. He was rather fat, as Russians usually are. I sent Siddik around behind him, and then I stepped into the ruins. The Russian did not see me at first, he was interested in something written on one of the walls. When he did see me, he leaped in fright. Then he smiled and made salaam.