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By Root 1040 0

good—a suitable end to a bad lot. If your friends have perished, they are the last victims of this scum. But we are trying to build a nation in Sudan. Publicity over brigands like these only encourages others of their kind. Also, it is, I will be frank, an embarrassment internationally that we should still have such elements in our country. Therefore I ask you to keep what you have seen to yourself, so far as the press and the idly curious are concerned.” Qasim smiled brilliantly. “I am sure you will be discreet, Captain Collins. If you must discuss this—and I know it is a temptation, perhaps even a duty to do so—be so kind as to discuss it only with men who are as discreet as yourself.” Qasim and Prince Kalash growled at one another in Arabic for a moment or two. Two soldiers accompanied by a shouting officer came into our area on the double, carrying a stretcher with a dead body on it. Qasim, Prince Kalash, and Colonel Shangiti inspected the corpse. Prince Kalash returned to me. “I came specially to talk to that chap, he was a brother of mine, but they’ve killed him,” he said. “The army wants you and me to clear out now.” We got back into the helicopter. The pilot apparently was as curious as I about the fate of the “bandits.” He hovered for a moment over the camp. Nothing remained of it except a few scorched places where the tents had been and a pillar of smoke from the burning motor park. The dead had been arranged in a long rank at the edge of the camp. I counted more than fifty corpses. There were no wounded; only the dead. Four men in native robes were being marched under guard towards Qasim. I expect they were later subjected to what Qasim calls “interviews.”

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