The Crocodile Hunter

by Gerald Seymour

  It had been a quiet day, and quiet days were those that most unnerved him.

  Chapter 3

  The map covered half the table.

  One of the several skills Jonas Merrick had perfected during his professional life was to manage a compartmentalisation of his days and his evenings. But that evening he picked at his food, a pie that Vera would have picked up from a local butcher, a bit of a speciality and a favourite, and his concentration on the map was forced. Normally he would have eaten his meal with enthusiasm, and would have pounced on the detail of the map with almost excitement. It showed an area of the south Devon coast, the section along from the promontory of Berry Head, taking in the coastal path that stretched to Kingswear and Dartmouth, and then edged close to the estuary where Salcombe provided a sheltered boat haven.

  He was disturbed and his judgement seemed challenged: his own fault.

  The attempts she made to cheer him largely failed, but her efforts were sincere and he felt churlish that he could not respond with the enthusiasm she was owed. An old one, that always seemed to lighten him, was his ability to reverse with the caravan hooked to the tow-bar. Always some unhappy man who was suffering family embarrassment who had locked the caravan behind his car and could not manage the manoeuvre; often, then, Jonas would sidle up and quietly offer to do the business. Never triumphant, usually a little excuse about having “just been on a course and managed to get up to speed – pretty difficult – and where that idiot’s parked doesn’t help”, and she would remind him of successes. Managed a laugh, a little chuckle between them . . . There had been a caravan site east of Exmouth where the ground was sodden after a fortnight’s solid rain and he had reversed six caravans in a row and could have had enough beer from the grateful owners to last him a month – but had not accepted, just shrugged. “Glad to be of help, always tricky when the field’s saturated.” She had tried to drag him back by mentioning that day, but had been rewarded with no more than a wan smile. They were planning their next excursion. Needed to plan their next excursion because if decisions were not taken soon then the best sites would be fully booked. They liked the possibility of a new place outside Stoke Fleming, and another at Harbertonford, but he was unable to concentrate.

  The old adage resonated through Thames House. The Fivers had to be lucky every time, the opposition had to be lucky once. A statement of the Irish Republican Army, the Provisionals. Jonas had no objection to their declaring the obvious, and it was a truth . . . as certain as were death and taxation was also the guarantee that “they” would be lucky once.

  He pushed away his plate. Apologised with his eyes and with a little gesture of a hand, and tried to pull the map forward and over his plate, and made a remark about the qualities of a site at Bigbury-on-Sea they had been to four years before. She took the plate, carried it to the food waste bucket, and he lifted his phone from his pocket. He found his contact, the newest on the list, hit the button. Jonas could not remember the last time he had interrupted a meal with Vera. At least the cat would get the meat that he had abandoned. He typed the message, sent it.

  He had not seen the nostril, nor the eye.

  What if they were there, in the picture, what if he had not spotted them? He had considered that the two young persons, sent to him for mentoring, both probationers, intended to tweak his nose, show a bit of mischief. It was, perhaps, an indication of the pressure he felt – self-imposed – that he had considered their printout of the picture to be between cheek and impertinence. He had made a rare gesture of pique, had torn the image into pieces.

  The cat yowled behind him, grateful for the extra rations. What if he had missed both a nostril and a glint of an opened eye? What if the turgid dark water had hidden the uneven mess of upper and lower teeth?

  The message had been sent. Nothing he could do until it was answered. She brought water biscuits and a Scandinavian cheese, and he had the map between them, and they talked again about the sites at Stoke Fleming and Harbertonford, and the merits of Bigbury-on-Sea . . .

  In old times, before he had relieved Winston Gunn of his vest, he had sent in his reports, expected minimal response, and had felt many times that he had been ignored. Since the AssDepDG had arrived in the night to cancel his retirement he had been listened to and his insights had achieved greater relevance. The sneers had wilted . . . Not that he was more liked, not that he was a part of the team. Responsibility weighed heavier, sometimes almost broke him . . . Two probationers amusing themselves at the expense of a self-proclaimed crocodile hunter. Were there glimpses of a nostril and an eye in a photograph he had dismissed?

  Vera seemed to favour Harbertonford and said the views were pleasant there, and it was near to the moor and close enough to Totnes for a half day, and there was a vineyard on the Dart estuary. He did not dissuade her.

  He wondered how long it would be before his message was answered and his phone wriggled on the tablecloth.

  It was agreed. In his lunch-hour the following day he would telephone the site at Harbertonford, and would try to make a booking, preferably one with a concrete stand and within easy reach of the shop.

  She cleared the table, usually his job, and he sat in his chair, and she had the radio quietly playing music, and he had one of the files out. It was the one listing the men and women who had gone away, been with the black flags, and who were now scattered. Deaths unreported, captures not listed, not those who begged for “another chance” and bleated of the mistakes they had made – always the victim and never themselves to blame; they were the ones who had scratched at him that evening. A bad evening, and they came more often. This file had a sticking power, and any of the men whose names were on the single sheet of paper, two columns of them, had only to be lucky once.

  In a centuries-old house on the north side of the cathedral, in the heart of Canterbury, bedlam had broken out in a dormitory for small boys. A House Mother, attempting to maintain an expression of outrage and horror, swept in and called for silence, a return to their own beds, and muttered something about a “disgraceful carry-on”. A little sheepish, but not seriously so, the boys retreated. They were eleven or twelve, boys who sang treble in the cathedral’s choir. The use of such voices had been central to Christian music since the beginning of organised worship. Books littered the dormitory floor, along with clothes and bedding. The House Mother had a fair stab at conveying anger but it was an unconvincing act. They were the stars of each evening’s evensong service, so beloved of the adults attached to the cathedral and to visitors. They were the public face of the establishment that stood at the heart of a worldwide religious authority. They had sung beautifully that evening. As they had filed out of the quire area, there had been a welling murmur of appreciation from the filled pews alongside them. The performance was outstanding . . . But the boys who appeared in the guise of angels in their purple and white gowns, with scrubbed faces and their hair neatly brushed and parted, were akin to the terminally sick. Their time was coming close. Few of them would have understood the medical detail of the onset of puberty in their bodies, but all knew that a termination point loomed. Their voices would break. They would become surplus to requirements at this level. From being feted, centres of attention, they would fade away and their voices become at best serviceable and at worst unpleasant . . . They were the roses in the cathedral garden that would bloom, then fade. No longer a focus of admiration. The staff at the school that provided the scholarships for the choristers would try to mitigate the inevitable pain. At a predictable date, the voice would change. Some would take it in their stride and go on to sing with amateurs, others would buckle down to more normal school routines, some would collapse mentally and some would take on a rebel streak . . . Some would manage better than others – some would fail to absorb the rejection. They would leave the grandeur of the cathedral, where history lurked in each stone, where there were the graves of warrior princes and a decapitated archbishop, where an altar stood with burning candles to mark the stone slab w
here another archbishop had been hacked to death by the king’s knights, where extreme violence had mingled with prayer. For a very few of the boys the consequences of their voices changing would be drastic.

  The gulls were calling and wheeling and the wind was stronger as Cammy arrived back at the parking area. He could hear the sea, could not escape its sound. He found them, sensed their relief. They started their picnic.

  The teacher quizzed him. “We almost believed you had left us.”

  “I had not left you. I promised to come back.”

  “It is a matter of trust. You did not say where you were going.”

  “Always a matter of trust. I went to get food. I told you that.”

  “You took a long time. That is why we thought you were leaving us. Do you know much of trust?”

  “What I know of trust is that it should only rarely be given – and then for a purpose.”

  “Why should we trust you? We do not have your name. Please, why?”

  Cammy said, “Because you have no one else to trust. No one.”

  Not what they wanted to hear. The adults eating and exchanging glances . . . the kids had found a football among the dunes. Deflated but still serviceable. They had put down stones to make a goal. Cammy saw that, and saw also that there were new tyre marks beside their vehicle, and saw also that there were cigarette ends there, extinguished, but recent . . . With his life he would have trusted Stanislau and Mikki and Tomas, Dwayne and Pieter, and Ulrike: had given them all his trust . . . He stared at the butts, let them see him looking at them. The glances between themselves betrayed guilt. He tore off bread from the loaf and broke clear an untidy corner of cheese.

  The psychologist was kicked on his ankle by his wife.

  “What is your commitment to us?”

  “The commitment is convenience. I brought you here.”

  “We had a contact name, number, to help us go across.”

  Cammy said quietly, mouth full, “I do not. You do. I would look to go with you.”

  Did they know now that he was a fighter going home? Know that or think him a criminal? Whether a fighter or a criminal, did they consider what violence he may have done? On who . . .? He thought them decent people . . .

  The psychologist blinked, breathed hard, prepared for confession. “We had a contact, we met a man. He came with associates.”

  “You should have waited until I was back.”

  The teacher said, “We did not know you were coming back.”

  The psychologist said, “We had a number and we called it.”

  “The man came?”

  “Came with hard men,” the teacher said.

  They were decent people and had no defence. Regarded them as innocents, felt no particular loyalty, would help them each step of the way as long as the journey helped him, Cammy Jilkes.

  Cammy asked, “What deal did you do?”

  The men took turns to answer. “You have to understand that it was difficult to bring money from Iran.”

  “Most of everything we had remains there.”

  “We could not tell friends or relatives that we planned to leave.”

  “We brought some jewels but have left our homes behind, everything in them. Just locked the doors and put the keys in the garbage.”

  “There was a cat, we all loved the cat. We put food out and it had a hatch at the back to go through. When it finished the food it might have gone to a neighbour, might have gone feral, might have been run over in the street. We left it, try not to think about it.”

  “My wife’s mother, we left her. We could not tell her. She has no sense of preservation. We left her as they left the cat.”

  “Left those students I was still permitted to teach.”

  “Left the patients they allowed me to treat – there was never a better time nor a worse time. We have little money left, maybe enough and maybe not. Everybody we meet takes our money . . . I apologise. You do not.”

  “We doubted your kindness, thought you had left us. For that, I apologise.”

  In the last months, before the final break-out from Barghuz, Cammy and his brothers had been with columns of refugees, all on the move to the next location billed as that of the “final stand”, or the destination for the martyrs. Women, children, supposed fighters with their nerves shredded by the bombing, the wounded who hobbled along with the slowest. But the brothers were a fighting unit, an élite, and were supposed to hold up the advance of the Syrian infantry or plug a perimeter gap when there was a chance the Kurds would break through. They did not waste their time worrying about the prospects of the girls who had come from Europe, and did not help them or their kids. He had no responsibility to these people, the Iranian Christians, and yet . . . The cheese was finished, and the bread.

  Cammy asked, “The man who came here, how much did he want?”

  “He is a Chechen.”

  “Is that important?”

  “The Chechens have a reputation.”

  “What is the reputation?” Cammy could have answered his own question. He had not fought, himself, under the instructions of al-Sistani the fighter from Chechnya who was known for his brutality, for his cruelty, for using more deluded kids as martyr material than any other commander. “How much did he ask for?”

  The silence hung. The psychologist turned away and the teacher hung his head and the two women fidgeted but stayed silent. It was the youngest of the kids, bored with football who gazed back at Cammy and his jaw quivered, then came the blurting reply.

  “They asked for four thousand dollars for each of us, four thousand American dollars. That is from the sale of each piece of jewellery my mother has, and our friends, and their mothers. It is gold and rings and necklaces. It is everything. If they take twenty-four thousand dollars then we have only the clothes we stand in when we reach the far side. They say they have the boat, that we can go, and that is the price and they say they will not argue on the price. It is a fixed price. We cannot go back. We can only go forward . . . Are you the same as us?”

  Cammy put out his hand. The kid did not flinch. He let his palm rest on the kid’s head, then worked his fingers into the hair, tugged at it. He said he was the same, said he too could only go forward. He said that he would talk with the Chechen man, and with his associates. There was a little ripple of applause, touching almost. He climbed into the vehicle, sat in the driver’s seat and pulled his cap down, closed his eyes, and would try to sleep. He had no money, could not pay for his own place in a boat. Sometimes the wind brought surges of sand up over the dune and on to the windscreen; he could hear the sea and thought it had become angrier.

  “Hell of a good guy, your Jonas, brave as a cornered she-cat. Not that I’ve ever met him, but we talk on the phone. Working for him, you’re lucky. I’m to give you a crash course: who they are, why they are coming back, what we have to fear – and it’s plenty.”

  In a drab upper-floor corridor of a block of King’s College, where the Department of War Studies was located, Tristram and Izzy had looked for the door’s number. Most of the students had left for the day and only a few staff remained as the evening settled on London.

  “You’re not the first he’s sent to me, and won’t be the last. There’s a reason . . . Jonas would say that your gang are unlikely to think out of the loop, prefer to stay in a comfort zone. What that means is that the kids who are hiking home were recruited as foreign fighters after getting a dose of Islam from a local mosque preacher, and bought big into the religion. Wanted to be martyrs, stop off in the orchards where the virgins waited – too trite and too convenient – and the ones who fit that bill, the majority, are not those who concern us.

  “The kids with religion dripping out of their minds are going to make a noise and might be responsible for occasional atrocities, but they are not clever and rarely have the motivation to push far forward. The ones who frighten me, and I suspect are top of the blips on whatever radar Jonas uses, are those who are shorn of religion and have a differen
t motivation . . . Let me put a thought to you. While we had the war in Afghanistan bubbling along, and regular processions of hearses through Wootton Bassett, and TV programmes about all the maimed soldiers trying to get their lives back after being blown up by IEDs, the recruitment figures for the army drifted nicely along. Then we pulled out of Afghanistan and recruitment nosedived. I’m saying that the young men worth worrying about are those who joined without an idea of the Muslim faith’s core principles. They went for the fight. Got me?”

  They had knocked, heard a distant call to enter. Opened the door and seen a backside and part of a torso hanging out of a window, then a billow of smoke. A face had materialised, and a half-finished fag was stubbed out on the window-sill. This was Doug.

  “Some would have gone for the sheer excitement of getting their hands on a Barrett 50 calibre sniper’s rifle which kills at a range of well over two klicks – it could be a machine-gun, could be an ability, latent before this, to lob mortars. With that excitement comes camaraderie. We’re talking about fish in a river that gravitate towards the same species. Like school, like college. Similar minds and similar motives . . . Musketeers or any desperado gang. Each man in such a group, fighting in the front line of the katibas – those are the battalions of foreign recruits – is now élite rated, valued, and thinks himself a bit above the level of bee’s bollocks. He is a star . . . I doubt he slits throats and doubt too that he helps to chuck homosexuals off rooftops, and I reckon it unlikely he’ll be hammering in the nails for the crucifixion of an alleged informer. As a fighter, in my opinion, he is a street length more expert than those who just went along and mostly were in the way of the Kurd troops on the other side. I rate him, and I fear him.”

  Younger than Izzy, the same sort of age as Tristram, and oozing confidence. Had found a way to beat the anti-smoking technology in the ceiling. A small room with loaded shelves and a desk covered in papers that circled his keyboard and screen. He hadn’t shaved and his shirt seemed worn . . . He’d waved them to two hard chairs, but first they had to dump more paper on the floor. No apologies, no coffee, no biscuits, and the water in the bottle looked rancid.