The Miernik Dossier - Charles McCarry [108]
“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