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.