The Miernik Dossier (24 page)

5. When I woke I found a black child of about twelve sitting cross-legged beside my bed. As I opened my eyes he poured a cup of tea and thrust it into my hands. He hopped out of the room, returning with a tin bathtub, which he carried upside down over his head. The tub was soon filled with water, and the boy stood by as I bathed, taking the soap out of my hand and giving it back as necessity required. He offered in dumb show to shave me, but I did it myself while he held a mirror over the steamy tub. He gave me a breakfast of fried eggs and what seemed to be peppered mutton, watching brightly while I manipulated the knife and fork. I found that he had unpacked my bags; my clothes, freshly pressed, were neatly arranged in a tall armoire. The whole experience was like a description by Thackeray of the beginning of a weekend in an English country house a century ago. There was even a large pile of writing paper with the arms of the amirate embossed in one corner.

6. After breakfast the boy left me for a few moments, staggering out under a load of crockery. Ilona’s camera case, newly shined, with all the scratches on the leather filled with boot polish, stood on a table. I opened it. Inside the case I found the Lefca with which Ilona takes her innumerable photographs, a lot of film, and the usual extra lenses and filters. There was, also, an Exakta 35.millimetre reflex camera that I had never seen before. This is an East German camera. It contained no film. With no special curiosity, I opened the back of the camera, cocked it, and tripped the shutter. I saw no light through the lens. The opening was set at f2.8, so I should have seen a spot of light the size of a sixpence. I tried again a couple of times, then unscrewed the lens. At the back of the lens, inside the housing of the viewfinder, was a round metal object approximately the size of a half-crown. It was something more than half an inch thick. It took me some time to realize what it was. It was a short-range radio homing device of the kind that is attached to cars. Once activated, it emits a steady signal on a fixed frequency. Anyone knowing the frequency, and having suitable receiving equipment, can locate the homing device, estimate its distance, and follow the car in which it has been planted. As the device in Ilona’s camera was enclosed in a sealed plastic packet, I assumed that it had not been activated. I put it back where I had found it and replaced the other items I had taken out of the camera case.

7. Soon after I made this discovery, Prince Kalash appeared at the door with Christopher and Miernik in tow. We went along to the Arnir’s apartment, a series of very large rooms full of rugs; fantastic geometric designs covered the walls in a continuous
coup d’oeil.
The Amir awaited us at the end of a long room where he sat on a divan with papers covered in Arabic script scattered over the cushions. He is a long bony old man with the face of an eagle; Prince Kalash looks just like him. The Amir’s hair is white, and a close-cropped beard like a strip of bleached felt covers his black cheeks and chin. He looked us over with hard dark eyes and with such an expression of ferocity that I thought we had offended him in some way. None of us had bowed or fallen prostrate, but Prince Kalash would, I suppose, have told us had this been expected. The Amir, after inspecting each of us in turn, began to speak in the perfect English he learned at Winchester and Oxford. “I welcome you to my house,” he said. “I hope that you are comfortable. Your quarters are perhaps less picturesque than you anticipated. My father had the idea, entirely correct I think, that Europeans like to sleep in beds and sit on chairs. In this room you will have to crouch like a native.” He indicated a row of cushions and we sat down. “My son has told me of the great service you rendered him on the journey here. I am very grateful. There have always been fools in our desert, and that at least does not change. I am happy that none of you was injured. I hope to meet the young ladies who accompanied you. I hope they are comfortable too, but of course you wouldn’t know whether they are or not. I believe they are happy enough. As for the Cadillac, it is shot full of holes. I can’t think why that American wanted to give it to me, but it was kind of him. Perhaps he thinks I am an oil sheik. I rather wish I was.” (Prince Kalash afterwards explained that the Cadillac was a gift of “a rich friend of Paul’s.”) He stopped speaking and once again stared at each of us in turn. When his eyes fell on me I said: “We are most comfortable, Your Highness. Everyone has been very kind.” He nodded. To Christopher he said: “You are an American. Your country interests me.” Christopher looked expectant, but the Amir did not elaborate on his statement. Instead, he turned to Miernik and spoke in what sounded to be slow, careful Arabic. Miernik replied. The Amir nodded. “Remarkable that a Pole should speak Arabic,” he said. “What was your purpose in learning the language?” Miernik muttered something about scholarly interest. The Amir glared at him. “In the past we have had very few scholarly foreigners,” he said. “Usually if they spoke Arabic they were worldly indeed. Perhaps you are the herald of a new era in Africa. One hopes so. We have been through a very tiring time with the Egyptians and the Turks and the British.” He sank into another silence, unmoving on his divan. At length he looked directly at Prince Kalash, who stood up at once and led us out of the presence.

8. In an anteroom we found a Sudanese wearing European clothes. He stood idly by a window, smoking a cigarette. Prince Kalash, on catching sight of this man, changed the direction of his stride and seized him by the shoulder. He said something to the man in rapid Arabic and was answered in the same language. The man put a hand on Prince Kalash’s forearm and looked across the room at us, raising his eyebrows. Prince Kalash spoke another sentence in Arabic and then turned away. Miernik had followed the conversation with evident interest, but he made no comment as we walked through the house. I asked Prince Kalash who the man was. “Nobody,” he replied. “One of my horde of cousins. His name is Aly Qasim. He’s an irritating chap.” Miernik gazed silently at Prince Kalash during this explanation, then wagged his head in a gesture of disbelief. He went into his room without a word. If Prince Kalash noticed this behaviour, he made no mention of it.

9. At about five o’clock, we met the girls on neutral territory, in another room furnished in the Victorian style. They had been scrubbed and perfumed by young girls, much as we had been tended by boys. Apparently the household possesses any number of tin bathtubs and enslaved children. I gave Ilona her camera case. She put it carelessly on the floor beside her. “I thought they must have mixed up the bags,” she said. “I ought to get some wonderful colour pictures of this house. I only wish I had lights. What walls! The eye is absolutely caressed everywhere it looks.” She may well assume that I am too much the gentleman to have searched her case. In that she is wrong, as I seem to have been wrong in her. No innocent person carries the sort of thing I found concealed in her extra camera. I wondered if she had used the bug to guide the ALF to our camp at Kashgil, but I now think that unlikely. No doubt she is looking forward to using it in some future situation.
What
situation? I shall keep a close eye on the Exakta. And on Ilona, my newest and least likely enemy.

76.  F
ROM THE FILES OF
C
HIEF
I
NSPECTOR
A
LY
Q
ASIM
.

On the morning of 11th July I flew in a police aircraft to El Fasher and thence by helicopter to the palace of the Amir of Khatar. My departure from Khartoum was precipitate. At five-thirty in the morning I received a telephone call from the prime minister. He was in a state of alarm. The Amir had wakened him ten minutes earlier with a radio-telephone call. Prince Kalash had been attacked near Kashgil by a band of six armed men. He had killed four of his attackers and was unhurt himself. Both the Amir and Prince Kalash connected this attack to my plan to infiltrate the prince into the Anointed Liberation Front. They demanded an explanation. I was instructed to satisfy the Amir that the prime minister was taking measures to ensure the safety of Prince Kalash.

Within fifteen minutes I was dressed and en route to the airport, where the aircraft was standing by. As my car travelled through Khartoum the muezzins were making the call to prayer. My driver looked anxiously in the rear-view mirror, anticipating an order to stop by the mosque, but I had no time even for that. I told him to drive on.

I had left instructions for a detail from Special Branch to proceed to the scene of the attack on Prince Kalash to carry out an investigation. I ordered the pilot to overfly Kashgil, and after some searching we located the site. There were four bodies scattered over the floor of a wadi. They had been abused by the jackals. The clothing was strewn about. As we flew over the scene at low altitude, vultures rose from the corpses. It was apparent that my men would find very little evidence, but I radioed the location of the dead and gave instructions for the investigating team to travel by helicopter so as to reduce the time element.

I arrived at the palace at approximately ten o’clock. It was not until three o’clock that my uncle, the Amir, received me. I had in the meantime been offered no refreshment. These signs of the Amir’s displeasure were underscored when I happened to encounter Prince Kalash in an anteroom. He was accompanied by the three male foreigners who have been travelling with him. With no regard for their presence, he immediately began to berate me. “I will tell you, since the collection of the simplest information seems to be beyond your capacities, that you very nearly got all of us killed,” Prince Kalash said. “Your Communists are very bad shots. Otherwise I and my friends here would be dead.” I made a ritualistic reply, as I knew that the man Miernik understood Arabic. “God is great,” I said, attempting to give Prince Kalash a warning glance. One does not warn princes; they say what they like. “I shall be interested to hear from you how these Communists knew precisely where to find me in a thousand square miles of desert,” Prince Kalash went on. Finally I managed to quieten him. He went away with his friends.

My interview with the Amir began on a painful note. I had, of course, anticipated his anger. Prince Kalash, after all, is his eldest legitimate son. The Amir has trained him since birth for the succession, and he is pleased with the result as only a father can be who sees in his son a version of himself. That this son had nearly met a meaningless death was most upsetting. The Amir himself had put Prince Kalash in death’s way by agreeing so casually to let him be used against the Communists. He was responsible for the prince and he had very nearly lost him. The Amir now needed someone to blame for his own mistake. So it is when things go wrong for the powerful.

The Amir is modern to the extent that he does not require educated men to prostrate themselves on approaching him. Ordinarily I should have stood upright in his presence; on this occasion I lay face down at his feet. “Get up, get up,” the Amir said. “I want to see your face.” He handed me a photograph of Prince Kalash. It was soiled and cracked as if from much handling. “This was found by my son on the body of one of the assassins,” the Amir said. “Explain.”

“I can speculate, Highness,” I said. “But I cannot explain. Who knows what thoughts such men have? We know that these terrorists are looking for a figurehead, some great figure to give respectability to their activities. That is why Prince Kalash was approached, with your gracious consent, to assist us in destroying this so-called Anointed Liberation Front.”

“Their purpose was to kill Prince Kalash,” the Amir said. “That much should be plain even to a civil servant like yourself.”

“With respect, Highness, that is not plain at all.” Here I was able to play the card that in the end saved the situation. “We have laid hands on one of the assassins who escaped. He is in fact under my control. Unfortunately he was unable to inform me in advance of this attack upon the prince’s camp—I say ‘on the prince’s
camp’
advisedly, for such was the nature of the enterprise. There was no intention to harm Prince Kalash. The intention of the terrorists was quite different. Nevertheless, had I known beforehand of this plan I should have taken steps to prevent it. There was too much risk in it for the prince. I blame myself most severely that he was subjected to the smallest danger.

“Prince Kalash has no doubt omitted to tell you of his extraordinary courage in the face of this attempt. While the assassins were shooting into the camp, Prince Kalash stood upright, faced them, and returned their fire. The terrorists were less than fifty yards away. Surely they could have killed him easily had that been their intention. But I believe they had orders that forbade any harm to the prince; had they injured him, much less killed him, they would have answered with their own lives.

“No, Highness. These murderers did not intend to kill Prince Kalash. They had instructions to
capture
him. Undoubtedly their plan was this: to take the prince to their headquarters, use the name of el Khatar as a blessing on their organisation and their activities, and perhaps in the end collect a ransom if they failed. They wanted to kill the Europeans. I know for certain that they were under orders from their masters, the Russian espionage apparatus, to kill all but one of Prince Kalash’s friends. We have not been able to learn which of the Europeans was to be spared. But the prince himself they wanted alive.”

All of this was quite true. The man who furnished the information was a constable of Special Branch named Mahjoub Mirghani. On my orders Mirghani had insinuated himself into the ALF; on fleeing the scene of the attack he had abandoned his companion and made his way to our headquarters at El Obeid. I was in possession of his report only a few hours after the shooting affray. The Amir received my information in his usual way; his blood and his life school him never to show surprise. He sat impassive while I spoke, no muscle of his body or face betraying the slightest movement.