Charles McCarry - The Miernik Dossier

6. As we flew over the wadi, Prince Kalash told me there had been a cloudburst the night before. More than two inches of rain fell on the hills in the space of an hour. The guerrilla camp had been flooded. “Allah akhbar, “Kalash shouted with a grin, “God is great. These fellows were wringing out their stockings when the army dropped in.” The wadi had been transformed into a lake-shaped, as I’ve said, like a bird’s foot. From the tip of the eastern-most claw a long smear of mud ran along the bed of what was normally a dry stream. It was apparent that a crude earth dam of some sort had been taken out by the sudden weight of the water. For a few moments, the dry stream must have been a torrent; now it was empty again, its slippery surface already beginning to bake and crack in the sun. Christopher had not been captured by the guerrillas. Kalash was now convinced that he was alive and well. “Perhaps Paul tried to strike across the hills to the Maffia road,” Kalash said. “Keep an eye peeled.” We flew low over the glistening mud, nosing round hills. For a long time there was no sign of life. Then, in a steep defile between two brown cliffs, we saw Christopher’s Land Rover. It lay on its side in the mud with its bonnet open and the canvas roof ripped away. It was quite empty. Downstream was a trail of gear, scattered by last night’s flood-jerry cans, pots and pans, tins of food. We saw no human beings.

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.

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.