The Crocodile Hunter

by Gerald Seymour

  Now, nearly three year, later, Jonas Merrick slipped into the café by the side door of Thames House, and had his latte and a Danish. He’d savour them, and perhaps take a turn around the garden further down Horseferry Road before presenting his card and going to work. The agenda said nothing about when he might expect that belated retirement . . . His own opinion, the threat level was the highest he could remember in all his years with the Service.

  It would have been his third cigarette. He flicked it away, had only smoked half of it.

  Be thou my guardian and my guide.

  The look on his face, if they could have seen it, was sour, resentful, brimming with hatred. Cammy grinned, rueful. He thought it was the younger man who had started to sing.

  And hear me when I call.

  Cammy had sung to himself; on the first night as they had navigated the minor roads going north from Bordeaux.

  Let not my slippery footsteps slide.

  The relaxation on his features was momentary. The group had joined in.

  And hold me lest I fall.

  Beyond the dunes, a ferry was crossing the Channel, France to Britain. To have boarded a ferry Cammy would have needed a passport and a ticket; his group would have needed the same, and also valid visas. He did not have either; nor did they. He had, sort of, taken it on himself to get them across, get them over the Channel. So different to when he had gone in the reverse direction. He had raided his mother’s biscuit tin, kept under her bed, where she kept cash for “dire emergencies”, had gone to Gatwick, had taken a flight to Vienna. Would have been around 10,000 feet over the white cliffs and the narrow channel, and then the French beaches and the dunes – where he stood now. There was no joy in coming to this point and staring out at the sea and knowing that home, the final stage of his journey, was within touching distance.

  The world, the flesh, and Satan dwell.

  All of them sang. He supposed it was his favourite hymn. Isaac Williams, 1802–1865, had died young by today’s standards of expectation, except where Cammy had been – when he was Kami al-Britani. There, at the Kobane assault, the expectation could have been a few hours. It had become a meat grinder for the foreign boys, as it was shaping up at Barghuz before they, he and his blood brothers, had done the bug out. Cammy had a good voice, not good enough for the standards set earlier in his life, but pleasant. Isaac Williams’ words were from Hymns Ancient and Modern, number 116. He liked it best of all the ones he had once known by heart.

  Around the path I tread.

  He had sung softly to himself driving north from Bordeaux and the voices behind him had picked up the hymn. Nervous to start, and then gaining confidence, and singing firmly – though not in tune – but finally in a chorus. And explained . . . they were Christians. They had felt the isolation of persecution. They had run from their country, believed that the men among them faced harassment, arrest, torture in physical and psychological form, then imprisonment, and the kids would be denied higher education, and the women would face arrest, perhaps, or being turfed out of their homes and facing hunger. Astonishingly they had known the words of the hymn . . . if he had not hummed that tune and mouthed those words then they would have not admitted their faith. A chorus now and the wind whipped the grasses of the dunes.

  O save me from the snares of hell.

  Cammy had sung when he was with the brothers, when the small unit was indestructible, untouchable and safe; when they were far from the ears and reach of the masked security police, dressed in black, those who did not do the fighting, as he had and those with him. It was a good tune and the words were important, and summed up their existence as they had been pushed back and finally had become lodged on the banks of the Euphrates. The big word was “snares”, like a fine wire tightening around an ankle, intended to strangle a rabbit coming clear of its warren. The village of Barghuz and the enclave was a “snare”, and it had become “hell” as the bombers had lazily circled in impunity then dumped the payload, and the drones had criss-crossed the skies, and the artillery had plastered shells on them, as it had been on the evening they had left, and had found the body of their mentor, the emir, killed by the perimeter guards as punishment for desertion. They had all been jolted that this man, strong and a fighter, had been caught and killed, his testicles and penis shoved into his mouth so that his cheeks bulged, been trapped in the “snares of hell”.

  Thou quickener of the dead.

  He bit on his lip and killed his voice. They started another verse behind him, but he did not lead and by the third line their voices had stuttered and died.

  And if I tempted am to sin,

  And outwards things are strong . . .

  Cammy had no education achievements. Sitting behind him, were a high school teacher and a man who had worked as a psychologist in the principal hospital of Tabriz. The women were not shrunken violets, they spoke good English and seemed aware of the basic tenets of international politics, and the kids were bright, chirpy, and perpetually queried him. He had said nothing of his role as a platoon commander in an international battalion under the black flag, nor said where his home was nor why he would try to cross the Channel with them, and what he intended once he had arrived. They were clever people and he thought them gentle and dignified. Cammy did not regard himself as clever, nor gentle, and had no dignity that he knew of . . . He thought that when they looked at him the black mood settled on his face; they were frightened of him and went quiet.

  He walked away from them. They hung back. He went into the dunes and the ground ducked down and they would have lost sight of him. They did not follow him and would have feared annoying, irritating, angering him, would also have known that without him they would not cross the Channel. His anger was bad and he was alone.

  Jonas nodded the briefest of recognition to the pair of armed police on the pavement, then wiped his face and satisfied himself that no crumbs were stuck around his lips.

  He passed through the security gate and walked down the corridor that led into the atrium, where he should have been on his farewell night . . . Had he been there then he would have been handed a department store voucher: he had never received it, instead a week later a flat-pack greenhouse had been delivered and Vera valued it. Harry had brought it to Raynes Park and assembled it on flagstones collected from a garden centre. Jonas went up in the elevator. He was good at standing in a crowded space and avoiding eye contact, let alone the need to speak. Down a corridor and into the work area – third floor, south side, 3/S/12.

  A favoured corner had been allocated him. He had a window with a view over the river, one prefabricated wall of frosted glass, his own bank of secure filing cabinets, and his own desk. The distorted screen separated him from the dozen or so who shared the space. Nominally this end of the corridor – Rooms 12, 13 and 14 – were the territory of A Branch, who did surveillance . . . Jonas had space inside his personal fiefdom for his work chair, also for a foldaway canvas seat in which he could doze of an afternoon. The electric kettle was used more often than the Service issue laptop. He drank coffee continuously when at work, but preferred paper to electronics and his bank of knowledge was stored in the filing cabinets.

  Jonas was often the first into Room 12, and was usually first out, hurrying to make the 5.49 train when the evening had barely started . . . it was under cover of darkness in autumn and winter and spring that much of the team’s work was deployed. The individuals, those of High Interest, whom they watched, followed, plotted against, preferred the cover of the hours between dusk and dawn. Not a difficulty for Jonas Merrick: he was in early and went home at an appointed hour and fulfilled his allocated weekly hours.

  A swoop was planned for that evening. Those working out of 3/S/12 would be involved, at the front line.

  If the suspect was in his home, among the nineteenth-century terraced streets to the east of the railway station, there would be uniforms, dogs and firearms in support, and a fair excess of excitement for the 3/S/12 people on site. He supposed it
felt similar to the adrenaline rush his cat, huge and powerful, might experience when it tracked a vole or a shrew or a mouse and closed in for a kill: it would not get a meal from the prey but a drift of satisfaction from decapitating the little creature, crunching its skull, then abandoning the corpse and returning to the back door and being lifted by Vera onto the kitchen units to scoff supermarket cat food. The man they were going after that evening, of mixed Somali and Eritrean origin, would let their excitement burn off. They would go in at a rush but leave the laying on of hands to the uniforms, and the shouts would be deafening and the lights would illuminate the street and the guns would add to the drama and the dogs would be straining on their leashes. A good show, but not for much return.

  Jonas knew few policemen. His choice. He was not familiar with detective or investigator culture. He had once heard a phrase used about a Branch man who had worked against the early activists of the Provisional IRA, five decades earlier. The man had been physically unimpressive, with round shoulders and thin claw-like hands and a nose shaped like a parrot’s beak, and wore thick-lensed spectacles: the detective inspector had been brought into Special Branch, it was said, because he was an incomparable “thief taker”. Nice phrase, useful description. Would have had that sense of where to go and where to look, when to act and when to stand back and allow a target to run: a man who could sense the locations and contacts used by the target.

  An American who came into Thames House, open and frank and who seldom shot the party line, had spoken of the massive electronic surveillance effort put into hunting down Zarqawi, the top target of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. US intelligence had put a $25 million reward on his head, dead or alive. A Jordanian spook had won the Americans’ trust; he had been invited in, had walked up to the big wall map and had poked his finger at a city that was nowhere near the province being quartered by the drones and their cameras: it was where they had killed Zarqawi, put a 500lb Paveway bomb down his chimney. All about instinct and a nose . . .

  The one they were going after that evening, in Luton, had been fingered by Jonas. Only three weeks out of gaol, had done a minimal sentence for radicalisation and courier work, and now might, or might not, be into shifting bomb-making precursors across the Bedfordshire town. The decision had been taken, on high, to lift him, hassle him, question him, allow him to sweat and cringe and maybe spit out some useful detail. If Jonas Merrick had declined to endorse the swoop then it would not have taken place. He had shrugged: the man they would lift was a minor player.

  There were others who mattered more.

  There were the ones that he knew of, ones that he had an inkling of, and there were the ones on whom he had scant information and did not know where they were or what they planned, or how great were their networks; those were the ones who frightened him . . . not that Jonas Merrick ever showed personal fear. Because the team who worked at the round table with screens in the centre would be out into the small hours, their line manager would have permitted them to come to work late. Jonas appreciated the quiet around him. He thought well on the train in and on the return journey, and could marshal ideas as he walked from Waterloo and across Lambeth Bridge, and he was good at home when the cat lay on his lap, half buried by files and covert photographs. The boy they would lift tonight was of scant importance; the arrest would make a headline and shake the cage and further clog up the judicial process . . .

  More important were the young men coming home. They were on the move, drifting back to what they knew. Consumed with hatred and anger, comfortable with brutal violence.

  Too many whom he could not name, and far too many that he had no location to pin them to. He had files out and the drawers of his cabinets gaped. He was old-fashioned and used the practices that had long been consigned to the trash bin, but he believed he had the nose and would back his own judgement. That was why the AssDepDG now supported him, stood his corner. He thought outside the loop, was unconventional, and needed the support of a protector, the senior man. They had no common traits, were chalk and cheese, but Jonas was now blessed by his back being watched. Each fed from the other but the link was never spoken of by either of them. Jonas Merrick would not have thought himself unique in his skills, and there were others scattered through the building who gnawed away at similar problems and who might have a better success rate and might not. He could only support himself and hope he was right in the conclusions drawn. If he were wrong, and the others, then their opponents would be under the radar and the results would be catastrophic . . . Each day worse than the last, and each week and month more desperate than those that had gone before.

  He heard footsteps.

  A measured tread, a door opening and closing and then a gentle rap on the glass and a grunt from Jonas. His protector had sought him out, often did, and wanted it frank, no soft soap.

  “Morning, Jonas.”

  A ducked head as a reply.

  “Anything fresh, anything I should have?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Out of a clear blue sky?”

  “Where it always comes from.”

  “And attempting the impossible – to be lucky every time. Which cannot happen. How’s that cat?”

  “The cat’s fine . . . It’s always out of the clear blue sky. And then we have to be running, and running fast.”

  “Pleased about the cat, Jonas . . .”

  And he was gone, and Jonas was back in his files and the quiet settled around him again, and only an idiot would believe quiet meant that peace cloaked the streets around the building, and in their principal cities and across the country. Jonas Merrick was no idiot.

  Chapter 2

  Time for the lunch hour that Jonas Merrick awarded himself.

  No requirement to go to the canteen and queue. Vera would have cooked for him by the time he was home in the early evening, and for now there were the sandwiches she had made, and the flask she had filled.

  Slivers of impatience filtered around and over his partition. They were a disciplined crowd, after a fashion, in that section of A Branch, but that afternoon time was moving slowly, and they wanted the hands of the wall clock to shift faster . . . There were cold pork slices with a smear of pickle on them, and he munched and contemplated and nibbled at a tomato grown early in the greenhouse that Vera supervised, and afterwards he would have his flask and a small chocolate bar, and an apple that he would fastidiously peel. Outside his immediate orbit, beyond the partition, as they shrugged into protective vests or checked the comms links (on the basis that communications failures screwed more operations than any other single cause) they would have known there was not a chance of him coming out of his den and wishing them well, telling them what to look for. He had a new name. Among them he was now known as Wobby. The old one, attached to him with contempt, Eternal Flame, had been ditched.

  He knew he was Wobby, had heard it when he was sitting at his desk and taking a short, sweet, doze, and they would have assumed, outside the partition, that he slept. He was Wobby because of a description given him by the AssDepDG. It would have been the morning after he had been brought back to Thames House, retirement day cancelled. The big man, unshaven, same shirt as the night before and tie askew, had apparently come into 3/S/12, before the commuter crawl had reached Waterloo or while he was still walking past Lambeth Palace, later than usual, had flicked his fingers for attention. There was a woman who fixed defective computers on that floor, and she’d been there, and was similarly addicted to caravan holidays. She’d told him. Rare for that sort of exchange in Thames House, but the love of caravan sites had proved a clincher. The team had been told that Jonas Merrick had been brought back and would rejoin the team. There had been frowns and pulled faces and snorts, but the big man had ploughed on. “What happened last night is not for gossip and will not be shared, but it was significant. Jonas was missing from his retirement party for a very good reason. Truth is that my impression of his work is that he is superior at getting under the skin of targets, better than any of
the rest of us. It is a talent that cannot be taught, is inbred. I have reassessed his value, and I’ll hear no more shit about a dull little creep who knows nothing of what’s around the corner. He’ll have more responsibility and more input. He’s a wise old bird.” Which had stuck. A Wise Old Bird, a Wobby.

  A matter of common sense and understanding the opponent. His card index system told him more than the banks of computers on which the Service depended . . . A doubter had once challenged him. Nothing contrite about Jonas’s answer because he was averse to giving ground: he had told of a junior army officer in the early Ulster days who had made a name for himself as an expert at uncovering the enemy’s arms caches. Just common sense, just a matter of lining up the markers that would aid a courier coming for a pick-up . . . a farm gate off a lane, a dead tree left in a field, and a line between the two would reach a hedgerow where it appeared a fox had dug a den – excavate further and find two Armalite rifles and half a dozen filled magazines. A semi-detached house in the heart of a virulently nationalist housing estate on a windswept hill above the town of Newry and a section of a street where there were telephone poles and lamp posts, and there was one place where they were exactly opposite each other. Stand on one side of the street, line up the poles and posts, and follow that line to a house with a concrete slab in front of the doorstep. The officer had been there, a grudging guest of the Parachute Regiment, had stood on the slab, had moved his hips rhythmically and had found the slab rocked under his weight, had told the squaddies to lift it . . . more Armalites and more magazines and the best find that Para Regiment had achieved in a four-month posting. Common sense, what Jonas dispensed.