They headed up the main road to the seaside town of Margate. Two or three of the fellow members of their Caravan Club in Raynes Park had been to Margate for holidays, had booked into sites outside the town and said that the views over the Channel were impressive, but quite boring. They passed a retail park with the usual big brand names of electrical goods outlets, and he saw the floodlit perimeter fence of the city’s sewage treatment works, and there was a Park and Ride place, and a Mercedes dealership. Like anywhere else: new homes going up, crammed close to each other. Nothing exceptional. He had seen the cathedral tower, floodlit, from the station but they drove away from it. An unremarkable road, and a route towards what he assumed would be an unremarkable estate, and in the middle of it would be an unremarkable home. He appreciated being in places that could be accused of unremarkable boredom. It seemed appropriate.
Jonas Merrick, of course, had never been to Syria. But neither had he visited, in his counter-espionage days, the cities of Russia, and in the times of the Troubles it had never been thought necessary to fly him to Ireland. This evening marked something of a first for him, and the road out of Canterbury towards the village of Sturry was suitable, meshed with the traits of his character. Would have been wrong to have cornered a fighter, a man who acted out the part of a wounded, angry big cat, and allow him to get a foothold in that Valhalla place that he no doubt yearned for. Much better that it would be on ground chosen by Jonas Merrick, where there was nothing special – not a place where a doomed hero would have wanted to be. There would be no last stand, courage and bravery to the fore, in an irrigation ditch of a corn or maize field in Syria, and no “down to the last round but keeping one for suicide” in a military bunker, and no weaving between palm trees and attempting to avoid the heat-seeker cameras of a pursuing helicopter. Would be nothing of romance for Cameron Jilkes . . . he would not make it easy for the lad.
With his eyes closed and his breathing regular he would have shown no indication to the two officers in the front of the car that the events of that night and into the early morning would play out – in his opinion – in any extraordinary way. Not for them, Dominic and Babs, nor for Cameron Jilkes who would have been gulping down doses of vengeance – as they all did in their final hours, as they hoped. He would aim to make it, as best he could, a tedious finale, and unremarkable . . . Like a balloon when the air was allowed to leak from it, not with a dramatic hiss but a slow subsidence of emotion.
They were in the village, and she swung the wheel. It would be good to see Cameron Jilkes, see his face close-up and register the pain lingering there, and the anger. Would also be good to speak with him . . . it had been too long since the conversation he had enjoyed with Winston Gunn. Could recall the monosyllabic statements the boy had uttered, and Jilkes was unlikely to be very different.
No doubts in his mind. There had been stress points when he was alone in his work space, behind the partition. Also, magnified moments of anxiety when the heavy footfall of the AssDepDG had come down the corridor. Now, blissfully, Jonas seemed free of them, the stresses and the anxieties. Not a matter of arrogance, nor of conceit, but an assessment of his own abilities to read and predict an opponent.
He sat up, yawned, stretched. Jonas said, “Very smooth ride, thank you. Just need to check my phone, then we’ll get down to talking, and I’ll tell you how it will be . . . sorry, how I think it will be. But to be going on with, the target’s name is Cameron Jilkes, and . . .”
She said, “Sorry to interrupt. You call him a target?”
“I do. A serious target . . . an experienced fighter from Syria. Anyway, more of that in a minute . . . but, serious, dedicated, and dangerous.”
He had no business there.
The traffic breezed behind him, flowing fast on a main road.
He had come to see his mother, he owed it to her to come – and because he needed to be fed, and needed money – and then he would be moving on, starting out on his final journey. Where he stood now, away from the street lights and sheltered in shadow, was stupid, emotional: Cammy would have declared his contempt for both stupidity and emotion. Never once had any of them been guilty of such barefaced and cardinal sins. If any one of them was behaving like an idiot or being soft, they would have had a sharp kick in the arse and would have been on their way: even if it had been Ulrike on whom they depended, the punishment would have been the same . . . Stupidity and emotion weakened a fighting man and stripped him of focus: “focus” was staying alive, fulfilling a mission.
A car turned off the main road and its headlights caught him. The car slowed. Cammy turned on his heel and walked away briskly, enough to satisfy the driver that an unknown man in the side street no longer loitered. The car drove to the far end of The Avenue. By the time that Cammy had turned again, taking more care to hug the shadows, the driver was parking on a forecourt four doors away from the number given him by Cindy Piggot. He stared at the house, the windows and the lights behind poorly drawn curtains.
He saw her.
Did not actually see her face, saw her shadow as she passed the front room window, and the light was turned off. Lights coming on upstairs. He would have expected at this time of the evening that her husband, whatever he did, would be home from work, his car parked on the driveway but the space was empty. Faintly heard a baby yelling, listened to that for a while and the rain pattered on his shoulders and on his head, and his stomach groaned with hunger.
When he was with his brothers, he would never have felt the pain of loneliness. Would have read the riot act at them, any of them, for being soft.
The baby went quiet.
The front door opened. She came out. He saw Vicky . . . the first girl he had made a pitch for, first girl he had kissed properly, and first girl he had been on top of and him groping at his clothing and her wriggling with her own, and the first girl that he had walked away from without a kiss or an explanation . . . The only girl he had been with because he had never touched any of the scum kids who had come from Europe. She carried a plastic bag. The rubbish bin was at the pavement edge. She wore a blouse and a skirt and her hair was tied clumsily and the light caught it. She dumped the bag in the bin, then jogged back to the door, would have wanted to be out of the rain. The door shut. The light above the door lasted half a minute then went out . . . What little did Cammy know of married life: assumed that she would have left the front light on for her husband’s return.
He had no business to be there; it was idiocy and emotion that kept him motionless, standing in the gentle rain and in the shadows.
Tristram and Izzy stepped out. Would have seemed – and how they intended it to appear – like any young couple. The sounds around them were of subdued TVs playing behind drawn curtains. Cars were parked up and the residents, young and old, had returned to their homes for the night.
There was a location, east London, in Epping Forest, where there had once been a prisoner of war camp; it had become a police firearms training base, and had also had facilities for Fivers to learn particular skills. They had both been through it, not together but in successive induction courses, had been taken through sessions on self-defence, and the point had been laboured that it was not always possible for the backup to be close. Might be, as near as made no difference, on their own. Facing what, on their own? Facing a guy – maybe – pumped up from years of getting the shit bombed out of him in far away Syria, survived – just about – the slaughter inflicted on a defeated rabble, now in a foul mood. Coming where? Here on the say-so of Jonas Merrick, guru of the hour in Thames House. They were at the end of a cul-de-sac, peering its length and looking into the shadows and hearing the patter of rain off leaky gutters. And backup? The cavalry were somewhere behind them, but not identified. The training course in the Forest had given them the basics of self-defence. Hairy big bastards, tattooed arms, moustaches, bald heads, piercing and sneering eyes. Had done simulated attacks on guys and girls in the surveillance teams who were on their own, then had shown out. Jus
t pretend attacks, but both Tristram and Izzy could remember them. They had come with such suddenness, from nowhere, supposed to be warned but still not expected, that Tristram – the first time – had broken wind, gasped, shrieked, then gone down in an armlock, too petrified to fight back. Izzy – not proud of it, bloody embarrassing – had wet herself, had been incapacitated, too shocked to make a response.
A recruit on Tristram’s course had queried the action of the instructor: she had asked whether the “ferocity” of the play-acted attack breached Health and Safety regulations. Was there a statute laying down acceptable levels for the effects of the shock inflicted? The rest of them, so Tristram said, had all muttered about “snowflakes”, and anyway that girl had failed to make it through . . . And all of them had said later that “There but for God’s grace go I, go each last fucking one of us”. But, of course, it never would happen, would it? They were all graduates, all chosen by rigorous selection, all had good brains and above-average awareness and their job would be to analyse, to predict, to turn out the plods to do the heavy lifting . . . Would not be alone, the two of them, in a darkened cul-de-sac where some crazy embittered idiot would be coming – according to the Eternal Flame – to visit his mum. No backup. No weapon.
They reached the end of the road and stopped.
Could not have said, either of them, who made the move. Hands close, then touching, then fingers entwined. Not affection but a mutual need for safety. Other than the rain and the TVs and one bloody owl that kept shrieking, they heard nothing. They were under a tree which took some of the rain and there was an evergreen shrub that took some more of it, and a pigeon exploded out of it and broke the quiet. It thrashed in the branches as if in panic flight and she squeaked and he gasped, and they held each other tightly.
She did not let go of his hand, had no weapon to hold instead, said, “Well, come on. Let’s get this fucking business moving.”
Doing what they did best, getting all the pieces in place.
She did the check-in, and Baz was parked up in the line for vehicles waiting to collect tickets. Not gone for long, not more than five minutes. He watched her walking towards the camper. A lesser woman than his Mags would have waved the tickets at him so that he would see the moment of success, or would have done a high-five for him. Too clever, his Mags. That would have been the behaviour of kids, not of professionals.
He guessed there would be layers of bureaucracy to get through. The German tail would have first done their own search, been unwilling to cry “Failure” too quickly. Then they would have called in their local control. The local people, either in a command car or taking over a police station office in Cologne or Aachen or where-fucking-ever, would then have had to go up to a national level. From national level there would then be a fast sub-committee meeting, when they could get enough people together who were not stuck in traffic, already on their way home, and then a decision would need to be made. Face lost, bucket-sized. Having to explain at an international level that a surveillance team had fouled up – and a British target, and Brits in this day and age were the least favourite chums to have on board. So, reluctantly the bad news would be spread. Given to the Dutch and to the Belgians first because they were on the obvious route the camper would be taking . . . then the French. That would have been a hard pill to get down the gullet. As he had often enough said to Mags, “I may be a complete arsehole but I’m not a complete fool”. He reckoned he understood the way the systems worked.
At the French end it would reach – might not have done so yet – an office in Paris. A junior would have fielded it, and he or she would pass the parcel up the ladder and try to contact a relevant duty officer, and that’s how it worked . . . Likely as not be a call back to the unhappy Huns asking for more details, and then the British might get a query and it would end up in a labyrinth where pride and national prestige played their part, took centre stage. Reckoned he knew how it worked, and reckoned he had read it well.
She opened the door, shook herself and water cascaded off her. “I done well.”
“Would have expected nothing else, not of you.”
“Did a bit of negotiation.”
“God, you’re a cheeky cow.”
“A discount for late booking, and a cabin thrown in.”
He helped her up and on to the bench seat, and they laughed together. He did not have to ask whether her antennae had twitched. She’d a better sense of cock-up than he did, sharp as a razor’s blade. She’d have told him. A peck on his lips, and she handed him the tickets. He powered up, went to get in line. They’d time to kill, would sit it out.
Would say to her, later, “No second thoughts, going on with it?”
Her answer; “None. Doing what we’re paid to do. Anyway, I reckon it’s all quiet ahead.”
“No offence, Mr Merrick, but time for some talking.” Dominic had twisted around to face him.
“So that there are no misunderstandings, Mr Merrick.” Babs had tilted her mirror so she had a view of him.
“My experience, mistakes happen when matters have not been talked through.”
He saw an eyebrow flicker up, regarded the gesture as intentional and impertinent.
“And mine, and the best way, Mr Merrick, to avoid mistakes is to lay down the ground rules and then stick to them.”
She noticed him blink but not in any way to acknowledge what she said.
Dominic turned to their passenger. “You’ve not yet favoured us with an explanation for why you are here, why we are here.”
Babs had extended her seat belt, was able to gaze into Merrick’s face. “When we are assigned to a situation it is because there is an estimate that total force may be required, which is what we have to offer.”
“Yourself, Mr Merrick, you described this target, as yet unnamed, as ‘serious, dedicated and dangerous’, and that means that we have primacy.”
“And you, Mr Merrick, whatever your so far unexplained role in the Security Service may be, whatever your responsibilities there, are a civilian.”
“We lead and civilians follow our instructions.”
“We say what can happen and what cannot happen.”
“Say what you can do.”
“Where you can go.”
“You are not in charge of us, Mr Merrick.”
“We call it.”
Dominic would have expected that the man from London, foisted on them, elderly and needing to rest though it was not yet night, would have started to offer a series of explanations, guarantees. “I have absolutely no intention of moving outside the orbit of the protection you are able to provide me with.” That sort of stuff. The man stayed silent.
“Not that we have been told why it is only us who are assigned when dealing with a man who is – your description, Mr Merrick – ‘serious, dedicated and dangerous’. Would have imagined that if it were believed that this individual was on his way to this housing complex then we would have called out all available resources, brought our people in from across the county. Put it at the top of any list. It’s like it’s a circle that doesn’t square.”
Babs said, “I can say confidently, Mr Merrick, that you do not appear to me to be a man with a detailed knowledge of political violence, except what is taught in seminars. We have that experience from the training programmes and can deal with pretty much anything thrown at us. Above all, given evidence of a threat, we have the ability to call for a lock-down on an area, we can sanitise it. I’m not hearing you, Mr Merrick.”
“Why have you come from London?”
“What is it that you are expecting us to do?”
“Our training is very thorough, all situations are covered.”
“If it’s the Security Service, then we assume it’s a matter of terrorism, likely the Middle East, and it could go along with where we were at dawn this morning – the beach at Deal – and a guy coming ashore having brought in a boatload of migrants. If confronted with such a man then we have a duty . . .”
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�. . . and not a duty to be taken lightly.”
“. . . a duty to protect life. What that adds to is us needing a guarantee from you.”
“I reckon I know where my colleague is going, Mr Merrick. The guarantee is that you will adhere to our instructions at all times, and once you have accepted that then we can plan what is possible and what is not possible.”
“Not a matter of debate, not negotiable. We are looking for your guarantee.”
Babs said, “All our training points to these people as being ruthless, very violent and needing to be met with equivalent force.”
Dominic said, “Not wanting to scare you off, Mr Merrick, but I could wager you have never come into direct contact with these front line jihadi people. We had a lecture only last month from the military about these guys – lunatics of course – and wanting a quick ride to God and Heaven, and not caring who gets in the way.”
“I am getting aggravated that you have declined to give us the assurance we have requested.”
“I’d call it ‘pissed off’, how we are feeling.”
“So, what is your answer?”
And both drew breath. He was annoyed and she was irritated. They had pulled in by a T junction, where a slip road led to the small car park for a convenience store. They could barely see the man’s face. His clothes were those, Dominic would have said, that pensioners wore when they walked along the esplanade at Deal or were on guided tours of the Castle at Dover, went to hear a retelling of the “miracle of Dunkirk”, yesterday’s man and dressed for yesterday. His appearance, Babs would have said, showed that Five, the Box, had this one as a low priority or they wouldn’t have sent someone from the bottom of the talent barrel. No dynamism. A few late shoppers passed, barely gave them a glance. And they waited for their answer, for their guarantee, and were kept waiting. They had tried to make it plain enough, clear to a simpleton, that they were about to run a show and the passenger would do as he was bloody told. He had not yet answered, stared back at them and his mind seemed to be far away. They might have wondered whether a single word they had said, coming at him with their argument and pincer movement logic, had been taken in. Might not have heard a word, might not have listened to anything they’d said. He had a small bag by his feet, and had started to rummage in it. They waited. One certainty, the sergeant back in Dover, at the station on Ladywell, would get a heavy-grade bollocking for letting them loose on this cretin, and both would batter him with their problems. A file was taken out. The guy, Mr Merrick – and they had both been scrupulously polite while their voices dripped sarcasm – extracted a picture, an individual’s head and shoulders, what would have been a passport snap blown up. He used a pencil-thin torch to illuminate the picture and Babs saw that the name of a south Devon caravan site was on its side. The beam was shone on the picture. A decent enough looking lad, nice enough hair, no tattoos on his neck, what seemed like a genuine and understated smile – not cocky and not supercilious – but the smile was still hard to gauge because of the smear ringing the mouth.
The Crocodile Hunter Page 23
