He turned the key, opened the door a few inches, then paused again and listened. If there had been guns then torches would have speared him and shouting deafened him and he would have been flattened on the step. Heard nothing, held his patience.
Her phone pinged. A text message, sent by their boss. She glanced at it, and grimaced.
Passed her phone across to Dominic, and he had to lean forward to read it.
She said softly, “Bit of a turn up.”
He murmured, “All part of life’s rich tapestry.”
Your passenger is a low-grade long-serving Fiver. Has few friends in-house but many admirers. My advice, don’t pick a fight . . . Keep calm, carry on. Bill. (Read and delete).
“Could be fun, being there at the end. Will know a whole heap that he isn’t sharing.”
“Breaking the duck and all that. Might get to squeeze the trigger.”
She sent back a message. Our guy is having a snooze and his best friend is a borrowed dog, kipping on his lap & (Delete – and go back to sleep).
They heard quiet snoring behind them and did not know if it came from the passenger or the dog: it seemed of little importance.
Jonas dreamed.
On the A303 and approaching Stonehenge.
Had a clear road ahead. Kept his pace and observed the speed limit.
Felt the drag of the caravan he towed. Had a friendly dog on his lap.
Vera talked to her friend on her phone, the one who managed the art gallery, and explained why she would not be there the next day. They were past Middle Wallop and nearing Winterbourne Stoke, and the weather seemed to be brightening in the west, and . . .
His phone shook.
He read the message. Maintaining vigilance. More impertinence from them. He did not like them or dislike them, they were what he had been given. If they failed him then he would bollock them off the park, and if they did well for him then he would curtly acknowledge that they had done what they were paid to do. Too intelligent for this kind of work? Probably what they thought.
Closed his eyes again. Stroked the dog’s head.
Saw the road stretching away in front of him and they would soon be at the junction for Codford St Mary and Fisherton de la Mere, and the weather improving.
But Jonas found it hard to sleep again. It came on him suddenly, seemed to crush him at the shoulders: his responsibility and the weight he carried. Saw the face, scarred and carrying stubble, aged from warfare. Blinked, saw it again and clearer – memorised it . . . Did not doubt that soon, he would look at the face, be close to it.
Chapter 14
Midnight. A church clock struck in the distance.
The rain had stopped. Jonas lowered his window. He needed a break, and the dog did, and maybe Dominic too, and Babs. He assumed they would be expert in choosing the moment when it was suitable to duck into the bushes – and they might enjoy a cigarette: Jonas did not smoke, had not for years, but harboured none of the fascist tendencies against those who did. He had enjoyed a good journey down the A303, the chosen route for those with a dislike of the motorway, never fazed by the length of the queue behind him and his towed caravan. Had appreciated the recollection of the target’s young face. An old picture, and the man would now show the wear and tear of warfare. Would have been a pretty bloody experience in Jonas’s view. He had seen the arrest snaps of Provos in the net late in their conflict – never met with them face to face or sat in on interrogation – and had looked at the monochrome images of the faces and measured the extent of the pressure they had lived under . . . Did not mean he sympathised but he understood better.
“A comfort break, are we up for that?”
All out. He gave Dominic the dog. Babs went deep into shadow. Jonas thought it a caricature of a night operation. Was a little shy himself and stood apart from them, but could see that the dog did its business and so did Dominic, the assault weapon hanging awkwardly from the strap around his neck. Before he’d shaken, Babs was coming back, fastening her belt.
Jonas said, “I suppose it’s something you want to do.”
“What’s that, Mr Merrick?”
“Get a chance to perform. To shoot.”
“Is this conversation, Mr Merrick, or is this for a psychologist’s assessment-of-mental-state report?”
Dominic said, “We had a bit of biography on you, Mr Merrick, but an economic one. Didn’t say what you’d done that singled you.”
Jonas said, “What I call a ‘clear blue sky’ moment. An impertinence on my part. Something happens in front of you, and sparks a reaction. You do something . . . cannot explain it. Didn’t have a manual to leaf through, five hundred pages of regulations. Train and train and make ready, but how will it be? And – will you be up to it – all that palaver? Tonight all three of us are weighed down by responsibility. If I get it wrong, if you get it wrong, then we’ll swing in the wind. Which I suppose is what responsibility is about.”
“How are you feeling, Mr Merrick?”
“Rather tired. Will be glad when it’s concluded.”
“Not the most comfortable place, Mr Merrick, our back seat.”
“But not for much longer. Very close, I’d say.”
“We’ve rather taken you on trust, Mr Merrick.”
“Appreciated.”
“Where is he, Mr Merrick? Any idea?”
“Could already be there. Could be with his mother. Either there or very close. Not going to be fun for him. I think she is a woman of quite powerful resolve. He has put her through pain, some very acute, and she will not have appreciated the ripping apart of her life. He will get the book thrown at him, and maybe the kitchen sink as well. He will not have expected that. He’ll be quite severely shaken. But that is only my assessment.”
“If you are wrong, Mr Merrick?”
“Problem is, I am the only game in town.”
“If he doesn’t come, Mr Merrick?”
“That’s beyond where I am prepared to go. Means he is loose . . . Sitting in your car, and with my new best friend, I was thinking of holidays. Always lightens the mood, don’t you think, the thought of a holiday? Vera and I like to take our caravan down to the south-west. Some very pleasant sites in Devon, which is where we prefer to be, but the same is true of Cornwall. I don’t know the Dorset coast, but I expect it’s quite fun to be near Bridport and looking for those fossils on the beach, those ammonites. Yes, we should try that one day . . .”
He realised there was a quaver in his voice and that he rambled and that both of the police officers were staring at him and there was enough moonlight for him to see that both accepted that he had told the, as he saw it, the truth. He was, for the next few hours, “the only game in town”.
The dog had started to drink from a puddle of rainwater.
He said boldly, “It is a crocodile we’re looking for. When it moves, it shouldn’t be too hard to spot.”
He climbed back into the car and the dog nestled up close, and he held his phone, waited for the call.
He had used that back door, the one into the kitchen, when his mum had brought him back from the college. She had said there was no shame attached to a changed voice, but Cammy had bolted from her and had run around the side of the house, skipped past the bins and the rest of the dumped rubbish, and had waited for her at the kitchen door. Had left her to carry his bag, and not much in it. She had unlocked the door and let him in.
Same door, and he eased it shut behind him.
Sufficient light now for him to register that no furniture had been moved. The table where it always had been, and the four chairs around it, and the fridge in the same place, and the photograph in the frame . . . should have been on the window-ledge. The photograph had been of himself, aged twelve, wearing the full uniform of a cathedral chorister, in colour. His mum had paid £11.75 for the picture and then another £9 for the frame. It had stood on the window-ledge for the remaining year of his time with the choir and then while he was at the local school, and when he had drifted
, and had still been there on the day he had slipped away, told his lie, gone. There was a plate in the sink, and a knife, and an empty mug.
Fighting, killing, air strikes, the loss of friends who he rated as brothers, wounds and gut rot. And he had come through and a source of strength had been home, the semi-detached home at the end of a cul-de-sac, and his mum living there, still giving him that same strength after his money had been taken – and her photograph – on the border with Libya. Now his faith was shaken and all because his picture was not where he had expected it to be.
He crossed the kitchen. The inner door was closed.
Cammy stood by it. Hesitated . . . Wondered if he should turn on his heel and go. Had been through barbed wire entanglements that were strewn with tin cans and would rattle if moved, and had crossed minefields and had gone on his stomach in darkness and had eased his elbows forward so that he could grope in the sand with his fingers and search for a jumping anti-personnel bastard . . . Needed her blessing: wanted food, wanted money, wanted her love. He pushed the door, slipped through, closed it after him. The hall light bathed him. The landing at the top of the stairs was dark and the door into the living-room was closed. Took the gamble, opened it. Did not know whether he would face black-clad men, cops, and weapon barrels, whether lights would blaze into his face. He eased the door closed and stifled the light he had momentarily admitted.
She was sitting in the wing-back chair. Had been her chair as long as he could remember, and next to the chair was a low chest, as there had always been, and on the chest were the zappers for the TV, and anything she was reading, and where there should have been a picture, framed, showing the choir going towards the cathedral’s side door, robes flowing in a brisk wind and winter sun on their faces and their hair riffling.
He rounded the chair, knelt before it. Reached up, took her head in his hands, was resisted.
He leaned towards her. She twisted her head away. His kiss landed on the side of her head, his lips buried in her hair . . . And he had crossed the world for this moment. He let go of her head.
“I came back. Came back for you.”
A small voice but clear. “You were neither expected nor wanted.”
“I came back out of love for you, to see you.”
“I didn’t ask you to, didn’t need you to.”
“Had to see you.”
She stared straight in front of her and did not look at Cammy. “Then hurry up. They’re waiting for you. They’re outside and watching for you. Your choice was to go. My choice was never to want to see you again.”
Only a few at the Station were not asleep.
The Mess had cleared and the grille had been lowered on the bar and the glasses were in the washer, the machine going through its last rinses. In the canteen, lights were low and the only sound was the hum of a refrigerator where breakfast ingredients waited the arrival of the chefs who would serve up the first meal of the day to the early technical and flying staff.
Pilots and navigators slept, those who drove the big Sentry AEW1 and the Sentinel R1 which carried the high dome on its back, all part of the Intelligence Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance hub, and their pint-sized army of communications experts who flew with them . . . those not based down in the Mediterranean and doing shifts over Syrian airspace. Also crashed out were the pilots and sensor operators and intelligence people who flew the Reaper drones, though their aircraft were 2,500 miles away, locked up in Turkish hangars. And the teams of maintenance men, and those who fed the raw data of the locations and identities of the remnants of the black flag groups into the systems. The Station was quiet. No night flights were scheduled.
The few who were awake manned a security control area and had responsibility for the protection of the Station, its equipment, planes and drones, and for those assigned to them. They were RAF Regiment and were armed in a way considered appropriate to deal with any potential threat, likely to come from a home-grown jihadi who would be categorised as a “lone wolf” and carrying an improvised explosive in a vest with crude wiring. The Regiment men whiled away a shift with coffee breaks and, on what had become routine timings, went out with their Land Rovers to patrol the perimeters, and might let their dogs have a run and give them a toy to chew on in place of a volunteer’s padded arm as used in training.
The Station covered many acres, and some buildings included were recently erected and considered temporary, or were modern, and some had served a purpose in the last war when the runway had been used by heavy bombers flying night after night over Germany. The men and women of the Regiment, charged with guard duty, were at a normal level of preparedness: they had not received a threat assessment ratcheted up to levels of Amber, and no indication that might have put them up to Red. There was no intelligence that an attack was either “likely” or “imminent”.
The light rain had moved on, and clearer skies were forecast, and a decent temperature was expected . . . Had information been received that an attack – from however an incompetent quarter – was likely that morning, then the Regiment personnel would have been placed on full alert, and the local police would have drafted in every firearm available. The Station would have resembled a well-defended fortress, would have gone into lockdown . . . But they were in ignorance of any risk, and life was lived as normal within the hours when the place slept, after a fashion.
“I promise, Pieter, you have my promise.”
Fat good it would do Pieter to have Cammy’s promise.
It had seemed, a little after dawn and with the sun not yet high, as if this was a moment hoped for, even – after a fashion – prayed for. They were on foot. The three of them, all that remained of the brothers, had been walking through the night and were nearing, they believed, the Jordanian border. Left behind them in scraped graves were Mikki and Tomas and Dwayne and Stanislau. Ulrike had been leading, and each of the trio was burdened with rucksacks that carried ammunition and grenades, but they had only the scrapings of old food from tins abandoned by other personnel, and a few inches of bottled water between them. They had been looking for a place where they could shrug off the weight of the rucksacks, then hunker down in shade, each had and hope they didn’t get the shits. There had seemed to be a dried river course ahead and some scrub, and what Pieter would have called a kopje, a little hill with substantial rocks. Ulrike had spotted a wisp of smoke climbing, separating, dispersing: Ulrike had the best eyes. She had whistled for their attention, then had crouched.
They had stayed hidden, had seen a small settlement established among rocky crags, well camouflaged. Under tarpaulins draped in scrub branches were two big pick-up vehicles. More tarpaulins over three crevices. There were armed men, black-clothed, squatting. They had also spotted a sentry posted on the summit of the kopje, Pieter identifying his position, but he had disappeared. They whispered among themselves: what had they blundered across? They needed food and water . . . most likely they had found the covert location of one of the big figures of the movement. Cammy had been told, had not known if it were true, that a price of $100,000 was offered for the capture or the corpse of Kami al-Britani. A big man in the black flag leadership would be worth $5 million. The remote countryside of this province, devoid of roads, towns, villages, where there were few farms and no grazing land, would likely be home to various remnant groups of fleeing men, those who had not gone in the net with the women and the kids when the perimeter at Barghuz had collapsed. Had they had food and water, enough for the three of them, then they would have turned away and skirted the small camp. But they would die without food or water.
He would go to them, his decision. Pieter and Ulrike would stay behind, a quarter of a mile back, but would make themselves visible. A brief hug, nothing important.
He had gone only a few paces when he spotted movements among the stones, heard calls, had seen the awkward shapes of rifle barrels peeping between rocks.
Cammy had kept walking, had shown no fear. He had covered half the distance when a
tall rake of a man had appeared from beneath the cover disguising one of the vehicles. A hand was held up, he was to stop. Cammy ignored it. He heard the arming of at least two weapons. His own rifle, the trusted AK that had been with him all of the last year, was on his shoulder and held there with a strap. He made it clear that he posed no threat. Ulrike and Pieter would have been watching him, covering him, Ulrike with her rifle that she could fire – could strip as well – and Pieter with the Dragunov sniper weapon that he coveted. The shouting in front of him rose in pitch. He was a hundred paces from his interrogator when he stopped.
Who was he? Who were they? What did he want?
He was Kami al-Britani. A foreign fighter in a unit led by the emir Ruhan. Wanted food and water and was headed towards a new battleground.
Was greeted as a friend, but told to stand where he was. He could smell meat cooking, would have been goat, giving off a rich scent. Only a man of importance, in flight, staying hidden and hoping to avoid the accursed drones, would have been fed on cooked meat. He saw four guards, big men and heavy-shouldered and all armed. A woman came. Head to toe in black, a pencil-wide slit for vision, no skin shown nor hair, and she came with a plastic bag and a plastic container. Cammy was being offered food and water.
The exhaustion was deep, hunger ached in his belly, and his throat was raw from lack of moisture. The woman, or she might have been a teenage girl, came towards him and four rifle barrels, at least, covered him.
He saw a face. Most of it was hidden behind a grey beard, loose below a sharp pointed nose, and deep-set eyes, and the hair scrambled around a small opening for the lips and his head was cloaked in a black hood. He recognised the man, had never seen him in the flesh. Cammy stared back at Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the caliphate, ruler of a broken cause, architect of a thousand destroyed dreams. He thought the woman would have been a wife, a child bride, and probably the only “groupie” permitted to accompany them . . . Did their eyes meet? Might have . . . Were others aware that their eyes might have met? The woman brought him a plastic bag in which were husks of bread and apples, and her small body was bent under the weight of a couple of gallons of water. They were put down in front of Cammy.
The Crocodile Hunter Page 31
