“And the money?”
The phone light was shone into his face. But Cammy’s hand had already moved to the pocket at his hip, had taken the screwdriver and had slid its handle up his sleeve. Would he pay $24,000 for the privilege of putting to sea in the darkness in a craft that any reasonably well-off tourist would have rejected if charged more than $2,400, inclusive of the fuel and the engine? He would not. Would he bargain, haggle? He would not. Would he listen to the entreaties of the Iranians behind him – who did not understand the power of the sea running the width of the Channel – and who were strangely desperate to reach his country? He would not. The phone’s light would have caught his smile; it had none of the previous icy cold, seemed sincere. The Chechen would have made a life’s study of suspicion, employed it through most of his waking hours, and when he was with a whore there would have been a loaded pistol, within reach . . . The smile relaxed him and his boys dropped their guard, and Cammy went forward as if to look more closely at the inflated dinghy.
His smile had disappeared, and his teeth ground together and his lips thinned and the screwdriver was at the Chechen’s throat, and the other hand had the Chechen’s right arm tucked high behind his back, leaving him rocking with the pain. There, for all to see, was the screwdriver blade and the indentation in the skin behind the beard, and also the shock saturating the Chechen’s features. All still as statues for the moments it took for the Chechen to absorb his situation, and for his two boys to read it – and for the Iranians, the men and the women and the children, to appreciate it.
He gave crisp orders. The Chechen’s boys would have looked into the face of their father, what they could see of it, would have taken a signal from his expression, might also have noticed that he had wet the front of his jeans. The Iranians were Christians, refugees in flight, would have believed in cheek turning, in abstaining from violence. Would have seen that, in their name, a fleck of blood seeped into the beard of a man who would have robbed them of their wealth, and watched them drift away to their deaths. The father spoke, from the side of his mouth, and the boys backed away . . . if they had a weapon it would have been in the father’s belt. Cammy called to one of the Iranian kids, told him in clipped English what he should do, was understood. Hands poked around the man’s waist, and he shivered, which deepened the cut in his skin. A pistol was found. Not a PPK Walther but a Makarov PM – and a short-bladed knife. He told the kid to run and chuck them both. The school teacher and the psychologist were to lift the craft and the women between them would bring the outboard engine. The children were to bring the bags from their own vehicle.
Cammy led them through the dunes, between the swaying grasses. He told the Chechen that his sons were to stay at their pick-up and told him that if they intervened then they would have no father. His voice discouraged argument. Cammy kept the screwdriver against the Chechen’s throat, close to his windpipe.
They crossed the dunes and the long grasses, reached the soft sand beyond the tide’s reach. The waves made a drumbeat ahead of him. Much of his time in recent years he had shrugged when the odds stacked badly. Recalled the moments when he had hugged Ulrike or Pieter, Mikki or Tomas – or Dwayne, who used to say that what he dreaded most of all was the “claustrophobia of conformity” – and pushed on with them around him. Now he was alone and tailed by a gang who could barely help him. They crossed the wet sand, and the waves came forward in steady lines. He told the teacher and the psychologist to get the craft into the water and hold it, and told the women to fasten the engine into place . . . It rose and fell, water splashing over them, in their eyes and up their noses, and they were wading.
Cammy manoeuvred the Chechen in front of it, gave him an instruction. Took the screwdriver from his throat. Released the hand holding his arm.
They were up to their waists. Money was passed – $2,400. The kids were in the floor of the dinghy. The women clung to the sides, hitched their skirts and heaved their legs over. Then the men . . . The dinghy bucked and heaved and the waves broke around it, and someone screamed.
The outboard was started and the little propeller thrashed in the water and there was a moment between the waves breaking when it shifted the dinghy forward.
“You’ll be back,” the Chechen called. “Back here, washed up, drowned. It is certain.”
Cammy clung to the ropes at the side, drove the dinghy forward until his feet were no longer on the seabed, then pushed and swung himself aboard. The next wave tossed them and the engine raced when it was clear of the water, and they dropped, and they lost sight of the beach and the rigid white lines where the surf broke.
And, just for a moment, he stretched his neck, tilted his head as if to hear better – force of habit. He heard the noise of the waves and the coughing throb of the engine and he strained to hear that other sound which was the murmur of a drone flying high above him. Where he had come from, the drone and the threat it carried – the missiles slung from its wings. If it were American then it would be flown by a pilot in the far west of the United States, and if it were British then the pilot would be in a Portacabin at a Royal Air Force base in the east of England. The drones and their crews were the principal enemy . . . he heard them often in Syria or Iraq, now he heard only the thrash of the waves and the splutter of the engine, and little squeals of fear.
The Ordnance Survey maps of the west country, featuring the southern Devon coastline, had been folded away and were back in the bookcase. Jonas’s mug of cocoa was drunk. Vera would be standing at the kitchen door and the cat would be prowling around the garden perimeter, sniffing in the flower bed, too lazy to scale the fence and go further.
The radio was off now and his phone bleeped.
Jonas and Vera Merrick lived in a quiet corner of the outer London area: a place of peace, of harmony. The normality of the streets was a mood of calm. He doubted any of his neighbours, going to work in the morning, taking the kids to school, heading for the supermarket, working in education or employment or retired, felt a sense of threat: Jonas did. Was never free of it . . . He thought they came, the opposition, on a conveyor belt. Mostly sad and categorised as losers, and the majority of them could be cauterised. They could, the biggest number of them, be lifted as the target would have been that evening, but the belt would roll on and another found to step on to it. They were not the ones who currently intrigued Jonas, and who frightened him. He inhaled as if he needed to stiffen his sinews. Reached for his phone. Vera had the cat back inside and was opening a tin of food for it.
He gazed at the image that Tristram and Izzy had sent him. Could have been a river or a lagoon, not subject to fast tidal flows, or a lake in a swampland. He magnified the detail. Two minute crude circles were marked on his screen. He zoomed closer on each of them, and closer again. Inside one circle was a strip of softer silver, perhaps where sunlight penetrated the overhanging foliage, and there was a dark point in the centre of it. He eased his focus towards the second circle and the light here was blocked and the water was dark except for a single point where a jewel seemed to shine. He was shown a submerged crocodile’s single nostril and one eye.
The back door was now locked and the cat was eating. Vera would have seen the frown indenting his forehead as he took his mug to the sink, then swilled it, and she’d not interrupt him . . .
There were times when the pressure seemed to crush him, to be an intolerable burden, and there were times when he managed it. But, whatever its weight, Jonas was never free from what he saw as his responsibility. She would go up first and he would switch off the lights and follow her, and he doubted he would sleep well that night.
Chapter 4
Jonas lay on his back, his eyes fixed on the lampshade suspended from the centre of the ceiling, his head resting in his hands.
His role was to think beyond convention. Not to be particularly clever, almost the opposite. To use common sense and trust an instinct: had always done that. The difference in his life had come on a damp evening, funking an embarra
ssing retirement drink, and going walkabout by the river, a little down Millbank from Thames House, and the chance encounter with Winston Gunn. Beside him, Vera breathed quietly, did not disturb his thoughts. There was a street lamp outside their house and it would have taken blackout quality curtains to put the bedroom into complete darkness. Light filtered through, and he noticed a spider working its slow way across the ceiling towards the light fitting.
For years, as the Eternal Flame, Jonas Merrick had sat at his desk, always apart from the main circular table where the team worked. Had built his card index, a mini-library of biographies, had nurtured them with the same care that Vera lavished on her tomatoes in the greenhouse, and had written reports. It was all about risk assessment. He thought the spider took a chance in the survival stakes by staking out its territory up there on the ceiling. In the morning, if it were still there, Vera would take a duster to it, carry the spider to the bedroom window, and toss it outside . . . Jonas did risk assessment, and tried to work inside the priority choices. He watched the spider’s progress, upside down, across the ceiling.
Before divesting Winston Gunn of his suicide gear, Jonas had analysed the information crossing his desk, searched for predictions, submitted conclusions . . . had barely been noticed. He never challenged the seeming lack of interest in his submissions, did not demand an audience with senior staff when his name and contributions were airbrushed out by his colleagues at times of minor triumph. As with Irish targets, and then Cold War spies, he had identified those who seemed to mount a primary danger: did the same with the jihadis. Not that Jonas ever went to the colleges where the young boys supposedly studied, where the radicalisation was rife, nor did he hang around on the pavements outside the mosques where the teaching was fundamentalist. He talked on the phone, and he read. He was voracious in his consumption of information, and from it he made judgements. But the incident with Winston Gunn had changed everything.
The first move, from the AssDepDG, was a trawl through every one of the recommendations posted by Jonas Merrick of 3/S/12. It became obvious that his strike rate was high, and at least one stabbing incident and a vehicle attack could have been prevented if action had been taken on Jonas’s thoughts. And they had gone through his Irish stuff, and then his insight into the work practices of East Bloc spies – best on the Czechs and the Hungarians.
Now, notice was taken of his opinions. His judgements were heard. Thames House had access to the most sophisticated computer programs, could achieve breakthrough science in the manipulation of mobile phones, could summon up brilliant brainpower, but the AssDepDG had given a place of importance to a man who seemed without talent, could not hold his own in argument, seemed dull and boring – that was Jonas Merrick’s assessment of himself. The role of 3/S/12 was to predict the re-entry of UK recruits who had gone to the black flag, had enlisted, had fought, were now heading home. To track them and neutralise them. Easy? No. If Vera had been awake, if he had confided his worries to her, which would have been a crass breach of security and had never happened, he might have said in the privacy of their bed, “The point is that the ones we’re looking for are the most dangerous. They are hardened, have come through a weight of artillery and air bombardment, have been out-gunned on the battlefield, have lost the new family that had embraced them. They have an angry hatred of us who plod to work each day, and watch the soaps in the evenings, and swill beer down at the pub, and to whom the biggest catastrophe in the world is if some bloody football team loses at the weekend, or if the bloke is shagging another woman. They loathe us, only think of getting back and wiping the smugness off our faces. And they are skilled and . . . Do you know much about crocodiles, Vera? No, don’t suppose you do . . .” Did not say it, and nursed the anxiety alone.
The emptiness ahead of the dinghy was broken by two faint lights, might have been those of a small boat, a trawler. Cammy was at the back and held the arm of the outboard and tried to steer them forward and they were lifted high by the waves, then pitched down.
When he turned, he could see more lights moving away, deeper into the dunes. The smuggler team, father and sons, had their own vehicle but would have taken the stolen people carrier . . . It would have different plates on it by morning, and within a week would have been spray-painted: might make up for some of the shortfall in the deal. Then those lights were gone and a blackness formed behind them.
The teacher, at the front of the dinghy, used both hands to cling to the slack rope on the sides and seemed to be flung high and then disappear below the water level when they dipped. The women clung to the two children. The psychologist was rigid in fear and crouched as low as he could. Cammy could not have done without them. They were pathetic and terrified and could do nothing to help drive the dinghy forward, yet he needed them. Had he been with his brothers – Stan and Mikki and Ulrike, with Dwayne and Pieter, with Tomas, there would have been laughter and shrieks of excitement and they would have been together and thought themselves untouchable. The Iranians did not know his name, he had been told their names but had forgotten them. They had researched their trip. They had told him basic facts. They had waded to the dinghy, their clothing was drenched, the crossing – if it was successful – would last for a minimum of ten hours. They would already be suffering from “cold water shock”, and the wind blew a chill air over them and each wave they broke into spattered them with spray.
It was a surprise to Cammy that they made any progress at all. He’d have thought there was a fair chance they would be pushed straight back and that the spinning propeller blades on the outboard would grind into the sand, then break, and they would be dumped in a couple of feet of water: humiliated, screwed. But the dinghy was going forward.
They were level with the twin lights, and then passed them, faced another wall of darkness. The moon, if it were going to appear, was not yet clear of the dunes behind them. Cammy thought it felt like the buffeting they had been under when artillery was called down on them, or a mortar barrage, and they could be lifted, could be dropped, could feel the impact when they were landing in the troughs. The tiny dinghy was somehow staying afloat and was making a hesitant passage. Sometimes they were high above the swell and pirouetting on the wave crests, and sometime they were far below the water level and the spray came over them and he could barely see the teacher clinging on at the front.
The women had screamed when the first waves broke over them. Now they kept up a sort of keening moan. He knew that sound. The brothers would be with a strike battalion that had surged through a village, had fought past Syrian troops or Iranians who did not have the luxury of air support, would have done their combat and then would have trudged back, through the wrecked buildings, and the follow-up cadres would have come after them and would have had the names of all those who were government supporters or who had a son who had gone to fight on the “wrong” side. Bodies would be in the street . . . The sounds that the women made then were the same as the women now as they clung to the sides of the dinghy. A universal cry for the misery to finish, the same note struck in Syria and Iraq, and in Iran.
The dinghy engine raced and howled when out of the water and then chugged noisily against the din of the breaking waves, but it was moving them. He thought they might have gone a mile, thought that the minimum crossing distance would be 30 miles, and he wondered why these people wanted to come to his, Cammy’s, country. They could have walked into Germany, could have stayed in France, could have reached Belgium or Holland. Why were they prepared to put themselves through this terror for a dream of the country that Cammy was now heading back to himself? As the engine thrashed and the dinghy pitched, his mind drifted, and then there was a higher wave and a deeper trough. A shattering impact when the dinghy landed back on the water and it was spun a half-turn. The keening became a scream.
A child had gone over.
The dinghy lurched as one of the women crabbed across the narrow width of the craft. Cammy thought they were about to capsize. Waves hit them and they fe
ll, then rose, and the spray came like an avalanche over them, and if the dinghy was overturned, none of them would get to their promised land. He grabbed her, caught her clothing, felt the seawater wrung out of it from the tightness of his grip. Used his authority, pushed her down. The psychologist had switched on his torch . . . Cammy saw the kid; the one who had taken the pistol from the Chechen’s belt, had thrown it high and far into the dune grass.
Cammy slipped over the side.
The water entered his nose and his mouth, and swilled in his ears, and he felt the weight of his clothes and trainers dragging him down. He saw the kid, barely heard the screaming behind him, but saw the kid and maybe there was a small amount of air trapped below his anorak that kept him afloat. The distance between them grew, widening with each wave. He used the old discipline, the crawl stroke that he had learned in the Leisure Centre, and Vicky there, and powered away from the dinghy – and caught the kid.
He had once pulled a girl out from the pool at Kingsmead; she had panicked and gone under, he had grabbed her and her costume had torn and exposed her, and her mother had seemed more concerned at the girl’s loss of modesty than if she’d drowned. This kid’s mouth had been wide open with fear but he must have seen Cammy go into the water and then had shown a strange calm, which was trust. He brought the kid to the side. The motion of the dinghy made it hard to clamber in. The kid was too cold to help himself. Hands came down, caught him, tugged him back over the side.
The Crocodile Hunter Page 9