The Crocodile Hunter

by Gerald Seymour

  The swoop for which the team beyond his frosted screen were heading was down to him. A breakthrough of sorts. A sweet paper dropped. The wrapping for a type of humbug. That variety of sweet sold at a confectioner, a particular one, and not from a supermarket. Next door to that shop was a café. He told them it was where they should mount surveillance. Foot watchers, and two vehicles, and a camera above the awning of a shop opposite, and a target of medium value had come into the café and had bought time, and the guy was skilled in anti-surveillance procedures – but the humbugs had screwed him. No need for the one-time Eternal Flame to leave Thames House. He was not praised, did not expect to be . . . For well over a decade he had provided his small insights to the teams working around him. Often enough they were acted on, and success had beamed down on to the team, and individuals had taken the credit for a suggestion and not spoken of him as the source. He had not complained, not argued his corner, had accepted it. Now that he had the support of the AssDepDG he was, at least, listened to.

  There was a knock on his partition. A young man’s voice. Was it convenient to speak to him?

  “No, it is not. I am having my lunch. I will have finished my lunch at two o’clock and will see you then.”

  Jonas had good hearing. A male voice: “Daft old beggar, why did he have to be so rude, on about his fucking lunch?” A female voice: “He’s never changed, everyone says, will never change, and getting to work for him is a serious shit moment.” The male voice said, loud and with too much irony, that he was deeply sorry to disturb the lunch break and he’d be back at two o’clock. With the keen hearing was a refusal to care about either courtesies or kicked feelings. He was paid to think, to peer through the cloud and mist in the crystal ball, to anticipate . . . Failure would be devastating – and a few bruised egos were a minor complication. Responsibility, not that he would show it, weighed heavy on him.

  A medium-ranked player would be lifted that evening. Maybe, afterwards, if the team were back before “closing” there would be a short session in a bar adjacent to the building. Jonas looked for more important players, and the search for them burdened him. He wiped crumbs off his lap. Impossible to be a Wise Old Bird every day, to be a Wobby every week and every month, and the responsibility seemed to weigh heavier each hour. Not the “lone wolves” from the home counties or the West Midlands or the North West, not the locally grown incompetents from the British cities; no, the ones Jonas Merrick feared were those boys, and girls coming back from war, hardened by what they had seen and where they had been. He poured coffee from his flask and closed his eyes and it was 38 minutes until two o’clock, and he might sleep . . . and not forget the picture in his briefcase.

  Cammy said to them, “I’ll be right back.”

  If any of them believed it, he would have been surprised. He had driven the van to the edge of a parking area for a Nature Park; there was undergrowth there and the sort of privacy that was intended for the campers to watch the multitude of gulls that flocked to the dunes and the beaches. They were huddled close to the vehicle. The light had lifted and thin sun shone through.

  Cammy said, “Don’t talk to people, don’t move away. I’ll get milk and some bread and some cheese.”

  He held out his hand and some euros were pushed into his palm. Given enough cash to buy a restaurant meal and a litre of house wine to go with it. He had been scrupulous on each stop-over to show what he had bought in their name and give them their change. Taking the money and saying what he would buy was probably insufficient to calm their fear that he was quitting on them. They had details of ‘a contact’ who would have made deep inroads into the wads of cash they carried and who would get them into a dinghy for the Channel crossing.

  “You speak with your contact, but I vet them and I decide on them. I’ll be back.”

  He had not been in Bordeaux by chance. Had been told to be there. Cammy was now a valued commodity. He was moved forward with the same foresight that an expert at a game of checkers would have employed when sending a piece further into “enemy” territory on a board. That division of the old security system, now controlling him, was Amaiyet al-Kharji – deep sleepers in European cities, who showed no sign of waking. They gathered intelligence far from the war zones of Syria and Iraq, moved players, looked for new weaknesses to exploit, and required willing bodies. They had Kami al-Britani, and recognised the depth of his hatred. The networks would not have known his name, or the target that he would launch against. When he had arrived in Bordeaux his journey was further plotted.

  Cammy thought it inevitable that the Iranian family would now believe he planned to abandon them; already they had learned to depend on him.

  “I will come back. You have my promise.”

  He would come back to them because he was alone. Before, he had been with Tomas who valued the strength of their section of foreigners: Better to hang together, not separately – his catchphrase and he was loved for it. Pieter, unfailingly cheerful when there was no justification: Never look back, never chase the past, however grim the outlook, and the line buckling and the air attacks screaming closer. Had been with Mikki, dour but strong: Life is short, live it, never taking a step back in a fire fight. Dwayne, Canadian, droll and dry, who used a quote from the Marx gang: Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse, and once with small arms fire crackling around them, and American rangers as opposition, they had all pealed with laughter when he’d said it from the shallow bottom of a make-do foxhole. Stanislau, the dreamer, the sensitive guy who could make them pause and think: I want to snatch the sunset and hold it, and they would all, however awful the day, look to the west and see the sun drop, the sky become crimson, and see beauty. And had been with Ulrike who was the woman who fought with them, killed with them, messed with them and brought what they all said was a German’s logic to the party: Stay calm, it is never a crisis, and had been worshipped by all of them. Had been with them all, one battle after another, one retreat following hard on the last, and all of them surviving together, as if their arms were linked. He was alone. Had never been alone before, wherever he had been, whatever queued in front of him as a challenge, whatever smacked him down.

  Being alone was like being trapped by the hymn’s “snares of hell”.

  He had the pocket full of phones that had been given him in Bordeaux. Use and ditch was the instruction. The guy had refused him more money but had given him phones. A meeting off the rue des Etrangers, close to the old German submarine pens. He had waited by the indestructible concrete walls and the guy had pitched up on a shiny new Peugeot scooter. Had told Cammy where he had to be and when, given him a schedule to be back in England, and had implied that the hardware was already on the move. How was he to get there without travel documents or cash? The guy had shrugged, not his problem. Cammy had thought the guy probably knew his life expectancy, calculated he was not worth more money, and that he would have the skills and the resources to get himself where he had been tasked to be and hold to the timetable.

  He could not see the sea but the wind tousled his hair and blew cold across his face, and in his nose was its smell as the tide turned and carried it further up the beach and nearer the dunes. He had seen people in dips in the sand, small groups of men who eyed him with suspicion, and he had not made eye contact, and behind some of the men crouched their women and small children. He thought it would be a sellers’ market for the people who had the boats, small dinghies . . . He would go into the water along with the Iranians he had befriended. He was alone; he needed them.

  The number he called was locked inside the phone; he had only to press one key. He would aim to cross the Channel by small boat because it was said that the lorry and ferry routes, and the tunnel, were now too heavily policed for him to have a chance of success.

  The call rang out. It was also said that since the collapse of the caliphate’s structure, the forgery of passports was no longer of the standard required for the checks at Calais or at Dover, at Ostend or Zeebr
ugge, Felixstowe or Portsmouth.

  The call was answered, a woman’s voice, hesitant and cautious. He gave his name, Kami al-Britani. Said where he was, and what he hoped for, what time schedule . . . She interrupted him, gabbled a reply, then snapped off the connection . . . He had a postcode now and a time to be there. He did not know where she had spoken from, in what city or what country. By the roadside he found an overflowing rubbish bin, rummaged a hand inside it and buried the phone near the bottom. In the distance ahead of him was a convenience store. He went to buy milk and bread and cheese for his group. The good times were behind him and only the hunger of his hatred and the thirst of his anger sustained him, gave him purpose.

  Victoria’s 24th birthday was in a fortnight. Materially, she had little to concern her as her husband, Gavin, worked most of the hours that God gave at a car showroom on the north side of the city. Her home was a three-bedroom semi-detached in a quiet close in a decent part of Canterbury. As a peace gesture and so that acrimony did not fester at home, she would collect their child from the nursery and then walk to her mother-in-law’s, take a sandwich there and a cup of tea, and then go to their own home. It was a concession she had made, a compromise.

  Much of life was a compromise for Vicky.

  She wore boutique clothes. Sensible shoes for that time of year and weather, a decent skirt, a warm pullover and an anorak, from a quality brand, that was proof against rain and cold. She had signed up to the conventions of being married to a car showroom salesman, was not with the boy who had no fixed job, no marketable assets that anyone had recognised, no place to live other than a room at his mother’s house up on the hill above the village of Sturry. He had said to her once that they should go together, get the hell out. Where to? Should get the hell out and go and it did not matter where they ended up. Do what? It wouldn’t matter if they did “something” or did “nothing”; they would take on the world, make it work for them – like, together, they could ride a rainbow. Her husband’s aim was to “better himself and make a good home for her”.

  He had gone a few years before.

  She reached the nursery. Other mothers were gathering and the crèche was about to empty. She wondered how many of the women around her – some already bulging with another on the way – were happy with their lot: how many of them had a memory of a boy from the past who had excited and entranced. How many, like her, had not quite had the courage to take what was on offer, had compromised instead and turned their back on an opportunity.

  He had shrugged, had said that he’d see her sometime, like they’d cross paths again.

  The wedding had been on the bounce. Gavin was a nice enough man. Came to collect her from her part-time lifeguard shift on his way home from work or on his way there, and always wore a suit, tie, and polished lace-up shoes, and often had a rose in his buttonhole. Her own family were indifferent to him other than to express relief that he wasn’t that boy from up the hill who was trouble and who she was well clear of. Her husband’s mother had made it plain that Victoria was not good enough for her son. She had married. She had a child and a pleasant enough house, and she yearned each day to hold again the laughter and the excitement of the boy who had challenged her.

  She had her little one, strapped him carefully into the buggy. Did not stop for chat and gossip. Headed for her mother-in-law’s home and would hear a bucket of praise for Gavin, and keep her eyes on the china ducks on the wall so that she betrayed nothing.

  It had been two weeks before the wedding that the Counter Terrorism police had come to see her. Had he ever talked about where he was going? No. Had he ever expressed interest in the Islamic faith? No. Had he ever spoken in admiration of a terrorist army in the Middle East? No. Had Cameron Jilkes been in contact with her in the last three years? No. She went to her mother-in-law’s home, would have a sandwich and a cup of tea, would make polite small talk, would bite her lip to stifle the screams . . . Loved him and yearned for him more each day.

  Tristram, staring at Jonas Merrick’s cubicle, said, “I’m not intending to be early, and get that sour response – how long?”

  Izzy said, “It’s three minutes to the hour, and was four minutes last time you asked.”

  “Is this drawing the short straw big time?”

  The team had gone and Tristram and Izzy were alone in the 3/S/12 work area. They were newcomers, just assigned, on probation. What had attracted them to the A Branch of the Service was the variety of the work, and the front line experience they would be totting up. He was three years younger than her, fresh from graduating; her route in had been through a social services care centre. He had looked as miserable as a kennelled dog when the rest of the unit had charged off into the corridor, the vests heavy on their shoulders and the comms draped on lanyards, and the hiss of nervous excitement. Action beckoned. Not for Tristram and Izzy who waited for a clock’s hands to straighten up and the hour to be reached.

  “They say he’s the sharpest mind on the corridor.” She pulled a face.

  Tristram was independent school educated, had an Upper Second in Economics, reckoned he had been head-hunted by a tutor. He’d done a charity stint in Africa and Meals on Wheels in a deprived borough, Tipton in the West Midlands, which ticked good CV boxes. He had seen himself as a certain candidate for fast tracking, but had whacked into what he called a “leaden atmosphere” in his first days at Thames House: no ultimate victory possible, a war without end . . . They were allocated to “a creep”, a guy who was “like a tick from the Remove”, and the pimple on his chin itched.

  “Funny way of showing it – we are on countdown.”

  She said, “How it was put to me, it’s a good opportunity to be given.”

  Izzy’s childhood home had been a council tower block. She was the first member of her family to go to a recognised university, might have been the first from that tower to go to any university, then had become a social worker. Her father was long gone, her mother was trapped on a high floor with agoraphobia, her sister worked in a fast food takeaway and her brother drove a mini-cab. She reckoned herself, going into the Security Service, pretty much a celebrity. But actually the place was quite boring . . . She had arrived, on her first day, making a statement with a purple flash in her hair; had been told by a sour-faced old bitch to get it washed out that lunch-time or expect to work in the canteen. Her social network had not included any boy remotely similar to Tristram and she rather liked him, and sensed some reciprocation . . . and sensed also that both were finding it hard to settle. And they had been given Jonas Merrick as their mentor.

  “And sit inside all day – Eternal Flame stuff?”

  She said, “Afraid that’s getting repetitive, Tris . . .”

  “Sorry.” It was a sincere apology, and a ducked head to go with it. Tristram had no intention of burning boats where Izzy was concerned. Rather fancied her. Different upbringing, different advantages, different ambitions, and a freckle field over her cheeks, short gold hair and a Yorkshire accent, all attracted him. Done anything about it? God forbid. “Up and ready to go.”

  The hour was reached. He took a half pace forward, but her hand was on his arm and held him back.

  Her voice dropped. “Did you hear about the post lady coming by, a couple of months back?”

  “No?”

  “Internal mail, something about his pension. It was about the way the envelope was addressed.”

  “How?”

  “Had the floor, the corridor, the room, his name. And after ‘Jonas Merrick’ were the initials, QGM. Know what that means?”

  “Is it a decoration? What, long service?”

  “Bit off the mark, Tris. QGM is Queen’s Gallantry Medal. Act of considerable bravery . . . Not Other Bugger’s Efforts nor Many Bugger’s Efforts. It’s for excessive courage. I was having a moan, but had my card marked. No one seems to know what he did, but he did something . . . Doesn’t make him liked, he doesn’t climb the popularity ladder. Hardly fits with Eternal Flame, but it was there
on the envelope, the Queen’s Gallantry Medal. Funny old world, Tris . . . Let’s go and see what awaits.”

  He knocked. An exaggerated wait, then they were told to come past the partition. Tristram thought him ugly, unimpressive, and without any cheerful or welcoming gaze. There were no chairs, so he and Izzy would stand. He gestured, almost snapped his fingers at Izzy, pointed to a picture on his desk and a roll of Sellotape, then indicated a place on the wall behind him.

  “Just up there, please – where the space is.”

  Jonas pointed. Where he wanted the picture to go was beside a large image of a caravan, above a portrait of a cat, large and pale coloured and with a serious scowl, and below an Ordnance Survey map that showed a section of the Dorset coast and which had colour-topped pins that indicated favoured camping sites.

  A couple of evenings before, Vera had been leafing through a magazine – an old edition of National Geographic picked up from a charity shop – and he’d heard her chuckle and had looked up to see her showing him, whole-page, a photograph of a crocodile. He saw its nostril cavities, its lines of teeth protruding from the upper and lower jaws, uneven in length and looking wickedly sharp, and there was a dark eye that bulged from heavy lids that hid the mood of the creature. He had stared at it and scratched the thin hair at the back of his head and blinked, and a hiss of breath had been sucked between his lips. He had told her what he wanted and she had gone and done it, had reproduced the picture on the printer in the dining-room, and doubled its size. It had gone into his briefcase the next morning. She had not asked him to explain his interest, made a habit of not prying into his mind and his ideas, let him carry the weight of his work without needless interrogation. No one, looking at the picture, could fail to note the creature’s savagery, its ability and intention to kill if irritated or hungry, the danger it posed.