The Crocodile Hunter

by Gerald Seymour

  “This man is alone. He’s faced some rejection – family, emotional, academic. Sees the world against him, but in Syria had found – amongst all the shit there – something he values. He has his own team, and believes them to be invincible. That’s good. He’s not jacking it in while the team holds together, but he’s moving on. They will be motley, disparate, but they will sustain each other. That’s how it will be, contained as far as we are concerned, until the roof falls in . . . or I can put it another way. A man comes and pumps poison into a wasps’ nest. Massacres them. You pay him and reckon it’s safe to have the picnic and the jam sandwiches. Except that one wasp was late getting back to the nest, and is powerfully annoyed and, sure as night, will sting and not give two fucks, excuse me, about the consequences. All good until the roof falls in.”

  No questions, no interruptions.

  “Excitement and drama sustain a restless man in a boring world, and he has his mates around him, and then his world collapses. Don’t ask me how. The luck runs out, it always does. The group scatters, is bombed, is droned, doesn’t matter why or how. Everything that has held them together has gone out of the window, finished. Where to go?”

  Doug paused, rolled his eyes, gestured with his hands. Neither of them needed to answer. Beyond the window, still open to disperse the dregs of the smoke, were the cheerful shouts of pedestrians, and vehicle horns, and the roar of accelerating engines and the scream of wheels braking, and Izzy would have thought it all so normal, and Tristram’s phone – on mute – wriggled on his lap.

  “We think, for his last hosanna, he wants to come home. He is now outside the comfort zone of his section. No friends, no best buddies, and angry enough to want people – you, me, and the great unwashed – to suffer. Wants to be the hard man, the guy without fear. Which is his contempt for and hatred of the rest of us. Wants to go with a bang so that he will be remembered. All part of their quite dreadful vanity. What I’m saying is that we do not need clever people with top academic qualifications, nor the best of the psychologists, nor the sympathetic imams to read him. Just have to know that he is embittered, resentful, like that lone wasp, and he wants to hurt. Quite simple, except for a problem . . . You have to find him.”

  “Grateful for your opinion . . . Are we winning? Is this the end-game?”

  “God, no.” Doug laughed. “Of course not – just holding the line. Each one we lower, another stands up. Actually, they’re regrouping. Your age – it’ll see you to retirement . . . Sorry, you did not expect to hear that.”

  The session was finished. Tristram and Izzy were left quiet, shell-shocked, had to absorb what was so different from the marginally more positive “Teaching According to the Book of Thames House”. All so basic, and from down at the level of the gutter. They did a brief handshake and Doug was already back at the window, leaning out, and there was a flash of his lighter, then smoke, then a muffled voice that echoed back to the room.

  “So, only one problem. Good luck to you. You swat the wasp, but first you have to find him.”

  They went out into the evening. A majestic church in front of them. The river flowing at high tide behind them. Crowded pavements, traffic jams, jostling crowds.

  Tristram checked his phone.

  “That’s Wobby. Wants to see the picture again, the one he tore up. Wants me to mark the necessary on it, the nostril and the eye, what he didn’t see first time he looked at it – now doubting his own judgement. Maybe his nerve’s going. Maybe.”

  The table had been cleared, the dishwasher churned in the kitchen and the radio played a concert, and their talk drifted. Jonas had a notepad in front of him and wrote the barest of details of what needed checking, and thought . . .

  Time to check the caravan’s tyres – probably needed changing.

  The target the team went after that night was closer to “moderate risk” than “strong risk”, but was to go in the net because they were fearful now of letting a potential hazard stay loose on the streets. The men and women who made little secret of their feelings for him would now be deployed in vehicles or on foot, monitoring cameras’ images. It was the time when the Subject of Interest, the SoI, usually came from his brother-in-law’s home, walked the length of three streets, then returned to his own address. They would be sitting in their vehicles and leaning against shadowed shop doorways, and the pictures would throw a dull light inside the back of a van . . . and the police firearms teams would be readying their kit, the lethal stuff that added to the stress levels.

  Time to hustle for reservations because any pleasant site would be booked up, already four months before the summer holiday, high season.

  A front door opening, two men – both of Pakistani origin and both with a heritage in the frontier city of Quetta – hugging each other farewell on the doorstep. Engines starting up and the exhausts chucking out fumes, and fags dropped out of open windows, and the foot surveillance people gulping the last of a chocolate bar or spitting clear some well-worked chewing-gum, and the night’s “boss” watching the images and holding the microphone button in his hand and the veins showing on his forehead: always the big moment. The messages coming in as to which of them, near the SoI, had a good eyeball.

  Time to decide whether this year the cat would go with them or be left with the neighbours; Vera refused to contemplate sending the Norwegian Forest to a kennel.

  The cry was for “Go”. And repeated. “Go” resonant in a dozen earpieces. Never seemed important to Jonas to be there but the team, each last one of them and every team operating in the A Branch of Thames House, seemed to get a big kick out of being there: supposed it would be similar to when a fox was flushed out and the hounds started screaming and the horses galloped faster. Immaterial to Jonas but he was the one despised as the Eternal Flame and now grudgingly accepted because of the initials after his name. The SoI would be walking briskly on the pavement, head mostly hidden in a hoodie, hands in his pockets. The team would be closing around him, coming fast, two cars from the front and two from the back, and the guns out. What they all wanted, the adrenaline rush, and it meant little to Jonas.

  Time to decide whether Vera could take the tomato plants with them, remove them from the greenhouse, and plan where they would be stored during the journey.

  A residential street on the west side of Luton was transformed. The SoI was pitched forward by the first to reach him from the cars. Doors hanging open. Machine pistols aimed. The target flattened and spread-eagled. The air filled with near hysterical shouting because the guns would seek to dominate, and all of them hyper-ventilating and living the moment and believing what they did was “saving the nation”. His wrists twisted behind his back and the restraints being tightened. Hands running over his body, feeling in the orifices they could their get gloved fingers into. The target would have great saucer eyes, and would be panting, the reality of his situation not yet fully comprehended: give it ten minutes. Radios crackling, then the scrape of metal on metal as weapons were made safe. Lights coming on in front rooms, and faces peering from behind curtains, and yelling from the team and from the armed cops for them to get the hell out of sight. The target was down to Jonas, the Eternal Flame, who never went out, did not need to, and who could forego the theatricals. Was the guy armed? He was not. Was the guy likely to implode from an explosives vest? Was not . . . but it was a fair statistic to put him in the cage.

  The target would be hoisted up, propped upright on his feet. A circle of men and women around him, all huge in their stab-proof or bulletproof vests. The target’s rights would be recited in his ear, not that he would understand, not then. The violence of an arrest was partly down to the need to be safe and not let a guy slip away, but also down to the fear lived with by all of the team, and all of the other teams, and the dread of having to crowd around a TV set and watch the carnage played out live, and know that within hours the suits would be probing in the archive looking for who had cocked up, searching for an opportunity to blame. A ferocious world out there
. . . The cars would scream away with blue lights revolving on the roofs, and the target would be sandwiched on a back seat, and the guns would go back into their cases. Some of the team would have to write up a report on the lift, and the others would head to a pub, and there would be drink taken and importance lived . . . and little solved. Another sticking plaster smoothed on.

  The motor home was one of the smaller models, a Toyota HiAce with an elevating roof, but was an ideal size for an elderly couple, Baz and Mags, and so much easier to drive than if they had been towing a caravan. It had UK registration plates. They were in a far corner of the parking space behind a fuel station on the north side of Cologne. Loaded into the vehicle satnav were the autobahn routes of the E314 and E40 and, via Aachen and Maastricht, their destination was the ferry port of Zeebrugge. They sat in darkness and waited for the headlights of a car to approach them.

  “Don’t suppose there’s any chance of a pee?”

  “Better not, Mags, better to wait and keep them crossed, if you can.”

  A little chuckle between them. The motor home had been hired for the trip. They had taken possession of it in the north of England, had driven via the ferry link to the German city, had spent two days of sightseeing there – “A bloody boring place this, Baz, not my cup of tea”, and a response of “Not disagreeing with you, love”. They had done the basic minimum of what the guidebook demanded, and had been told they should play the part fully, keep the cover alive. They had left Cologne in the early evening and had driven slowly, in the heart of the commuter queue on the main route heading north and west, had left the Rhine behind them and had turned off at the fuel station, had filled up, and had parked in this remote corner and waited. It was a comfortable vehicle, one that normally would have been beyond their reach either to rent or to buy . . . But times were looking up and this was a new departure for them and promised to swell their finances.

  No lights illuminated them. Other vehicles came and parked but not close.

  They were not supposed to smoke in the vehicle but they did, failed to open the windows, smoked and, predictably, tension crackled between them. It was the first time they had done a courier run on this scale and with such a reward dangled in front of them. And the promise of more to come. They had almost clean records, nothing that would have jumped off a charge sheet and bitten them, and it was difficult to see why, back home, the police, or the customs, should be concerned with them: would be the green corridor and a cheery wave to the uniformed officials, and another rendezvous at another car park, and then they’d be on the way home, and a fat brown envelope would be in his hip pocket or at the bottom of her handbag. “Piece of cake”, how they’d described it to each other when it had been put to them.

  He checked his watch again. “Right, Mags, reckon it’s time to get things in place.”

  He moved into the back of the camper. He lifted the bench which they sat on when the foldaway table was erected. It was where they had placed spare blankets in case the weather turned cold. Below the blankets were sheets of tinfoil, folded neatly, that they had bought in a German hardware shop; it was a precaution, the tinfoil, because of the need to mask the smell, given off by the cargo they now expected. But there was much that Baz and Mags did not know . . . did not know how much of a recognisable smell would be given off by a Ruchnoy Protivotankoviy Granatomyot 7 grenade launcher. With it were coming six grenades that could be fired by the RPG-7 launcher, fitted with PG-7 HEAT, all good for anti-tank operations and those against defended buildings. The length of the package they waited for would be a metre, and the combined weight of launcher and grenades would be 40 pounds. They did not know the smell, nor did they know that the weapon had been tracked by Croatian homeland security from the time the package had left Bosnian territory on its first leg from the fought-over city of Mostar. Then it had been watched, on distant “eyeballs”, by the Slovenians, then by Austrian domestic intelligence. And they had no idea that the parking lot in which the motor home was now parked was under the surveillance of units of the BfV, the German counter-terror organisation . . . Baz and Mags knew none of this.

  Night-sight intensifier lenses were trained on them but their ignorance was blissful . . . Little squeals of excitement as headlights caught the camper, blinded them, then the brilliance was killed. Nothing said. A car slid close. Two men out of it and fast. The side door of the motor home squealed as it was heaved open. The package, in tightly-wrapped greaseproof paper and with adhesive binding wound around it, was tossed inside, only just caught by Baz. The door was slid shut and the car was gone, and darkness reigned. Baz put the package inside the space and smoothed out the tinfoil and covered it, then heaped in the blankets and closed the bench.

  Baz said, “What I’m thinking, old girl, is that we might just deserve a drink.”

  Mags said, “A bloody large one if I’m pouring.”

  With drink taken, they’d not risk driving, but they had hours to kill before the ferry out of Zeebrugge, and they did not know that camera shutters had hammered through the exchange of the package . . .

  The vehicle edged closer. The sound was muffled in the blusters of the wind. The natural light was long gone and Cammy saw the pinprick illumination of side-lights.

  The engine noise was harsh, grating. He was reminded of the pick-up trucks that carried him and his brothers around the battlefields of Syria. Might get them to a destination and might not . . . In his hip pocket was the screwdriver that he had taken from the tool bag in the back of the transport he had driven from Bordeaux. His anorak was long enough to cover the handle and the narrow blade. He had not allowed any of the Iranians to see that he had taken it. Nor had he expressed an opinion on the deal they reckoned they had done with their contact . . . If he had argued he would have broken their resolve and he would not have been able to launch with them. He could have argued over the cost and over the weather conditions: he had kept quiet.

  The vehicle rattled on the pot-holed track. He assumed these guys, the Chechens – not usually praised for their clemency – would not care how far out into the Channel the craft would manage before it would take water . . . might capsize in the swell, might be intercepted by a French patrol boat and rescued, or might get tossed and turned in the bow wave of a container ship . . . They would not care, would have the money, would charge the same for another craft the next night.

  Along with the approach of the vehicle he heard the singing of the wind and the rumble of the breaking waves. Cammy thought it their best chance.

  The vehicle’s tyres ground into the loose gravel. He thought the Iranian men, the teacher and the psychologist, now looked to him to take the lead, fearful perhaps of what they had agreed. They would have heard the weather. The women held the children close to their skirts.

  He knew the reputation of the Chechens. They were feared, loathed by the Kurds fighting them and by the Syrian troops because of their cruelty to those who were captured. But they also had a reputation of buckling when the fighting was against the Hezbollah militiamen, or the Iranians of the Quds force: were the first to run when the enemy’s air strikes came in, would abandon their position in the line . . . Not for him to tell these good God-fearing people that he had fought against their fellow countrymen. Politics were beyond his remit, and religion. He would define himself by his actions.

  The engine was killed. Three men climbed down from the cab of the pick-up. Cammy recognised the tarpaulin-covered shape in the back. He took the psychologist’s elbow. Held it, pushed it back. His other hand impeded the teacher. He set the rules, he was in front. A cigarette was lit which was valuable to Cammy. The lighter flame, cupped for protection, showed him a young man’s face and then moved on to an older man whose cigarette drooped from his lips, and whose untrimmed beard was grey, then on to a third man who would have been barely beyond teenage years. Likely a father and two sons. Cammy stepped forward.

  English would be the common language. He was addressed in a guttural and rasping voice. />
  “And you are the passenger? The one they take with them. You want to go tonight? Tonight or tomorrow night, or next week? You are going with them? Yes?”

  He didn’t speak, just nodded, and went closer. He was sure they were sons: one had stubble on his face, designer style, and the other had just fluff. He saw that when they dragged on their cigarettes. The older man’s head was shaved smooth but the boys’ hair whipped in the wind.

  “You want to go on the water tonight? You speak for these people? The price is agreed. The price does not change. You know that?”

  He did not answer.

  “We brought the craft you will use. We go a little of the way, we see you into the deep water . . . If you get far out then you telephone the British authorities and they send a boat for you, they pick you up. The other side is a formality . . . a few weeks in a hostel, then you are free. They rescue you, they are very kind. You want to go tonight?”

  Cammy held his silence and gazed into the shadows of the man’s face.

  “You have the money – what was agreed – and we give you a good outboard motor, and full tank and spare gas. We do all that.”

  There might have been a wintry smile on Cammy’s face. The smile would have been recognised by his brothers, not by those who had known him as a child.

  “I want to see the boat.”

  “And I want first to see the money I will be paid.”

  “The boat, first is the boat.”

  It would have been unusual for the Chechen, the father, to concede in a discussion about the terms of a deal. He flicked his fingers behind him and the boys lifted down an outboard engine and then the collapsed shape of a rib. He said that he needed to see it blown up, then needed to see that the engine worked, then they would talk of money. Perhaps he was humoured . . . perhaps the Chechen doubted that anyone would put to sea in the weather that night. Perhaps he was cold, perhaps hungry, perhaps he had a whore in Dunkirk who waited for his return, perhaps he was merely bored. Another gesture . . . a pump was used and the sides swelled, and the craft took shape. One of the boys had a phone out to illuminate the dinghy. They started the engine, which took time, but finally coughed to life, and they had a plastic fuel container that would have taken two gallons and which seemed full.