The Crocodile Hunter by Gerald Seymour (best summer reads of all time txt) 📕

with Harry at the wheel. But Jonas Merrick, true to form, had played contrary and allowed them to take him only as far as the station. Had travelled to Waterloo in his own style and in his own time, with his briefcase and with a filled sandwich box. Inside the building, at the outer desk, a fresh ID card awaited him.

Now, nearly three year, later, Jonas Merrick slipped into the café by the side door of Thames House, and had his latte and a Danish. He’d savour them, and perhaps take a turn around the garden further down Horseferry Road before presenting his card and going to work. The agenda said nothing about when he might expect that belated retirement . . . His own opinion, the threat level was the highest he could remember in all his years with the Service.

It would have been his third cigarette. He flicked it away, had only smoked half of it.

Be thou my guardian and my guide.

The look on his face, if they could have seen it, was sour, resentful, brimming with hatred. Cammy grinned, rueful. He thought it was the younger man who had started to sing.

And hear me when I call.

Cammy had sung to himself; on the first night as they had navigated the minor roads going north from Bordeaux.

Let not my slippery footsteps slide.

The relaxation on his features was momentary. The group had joined in.

And hold me lest I fall.

Beyond the dunes, a ferry was crossing the Channel, France to Britain. To have boarded a ferry Cammy would have needed a passport and a ticket; his group would have needed the same, and also valid visas. He did not have either; nor did they. He had, sort of, taken it on himself to get them across, get them over the Channel. So different to when he had gone in the reverse direction. He had raided his mother’s biscuit tin, kept under her bed, where she kept cash for “dire emergencies”, had gone to Gatwick, had taken a flight to Vienna. Would have been around 10,000 feet over the white cliffs and the narrow channel, and then the French beaches and the dunes – where he stood now. There was no joy in coming to this point and staring out at the sea and knowing that home, the final stage of his journey, was within touching distance.

The world, the flesh, and Satan dwell.

All of them sang. He supposed it was his favourite hymn. Isaac Williams, 1802–1865, had died young by today’s standards of expectation, except where Cammy had been – when he was Kami al-Britani. There, at the Kobane assault, the expectation could have been a few hours. It had become a meat grinder for the foreign boys, as it was shaping up at Barghuz before they, he and his blood brothers, had done the bug out. Cammy had a good voice, not good enough for the standards set earlier in his life, but pleasant. Isaac Williams’ words were from Hymns Ancient and Modern, number 116. He liked it best of all the ones he had once known by heart.

Around the path I tread.

He had sung softly to himself driving north from Bordeaux and the voices behind him had picked up the hymn. Nervous to start, and then gaining confidence, and singing firmly – though not in tune – but finally in a chorus. And explained . . . they were Christians. They had felt the isolation of persecution. They had run from their country, believed that the men among them faced harassment, arrest, torture in physical and psychological form, then imprisonment, and the kids would be denied higher education, and the women would face arrest, perhaps, or being turfed out of their homes and facing hunger. Astonishingly they had known the words of the hymn . . . if he had not hummed that tune and mouthed those words then they would have not admitted their faith. A chorus now and the wind whipped the grasses of the dunes.

O save me from the snares of hell.

Cammy had sung when he was with the brothers, when the small unit was indestructible, untouchable and safe; when they were far from the ears and reach of the masked security police, dressed in black, those who did not do the fighting, as he had and those with him. It was a good tune and the words were important, and summed up their existence as they had been pushed back and finally had become lodged on the banks of the Euphrates. The big word was “snares”, like a fine wire tightening around an ankle, intended to strangle a rabbit coming clear of its warren. The village of Barghuz and the enclave was a “snare”, and it had become “hell” as the bombers had lazily circled in impunity then dumped the payload, and the drones had criss-crossed the skies, and the artillery had plastered shells on them, as it had been on the evening they had left, and had found the body of their mentor, the emir, killed by the perimeter guards as punishment for desertion. They had all been jolted that this man, strong and a fighter, had been caught and killed, his testicles and penis shoved into his mouth so that his cheeks bulged, been trapped in the “snares of hell”.

Thou quickener of the dead.

He bit on his lip and killed his voice. They started another verse behind him, but he did not lead and by the third line their voices had stuttered and died.

And if I tempted am to sin,

And outwards things are strong . . .

Cammy had no education achievements. Sitting behind him, were a high school teacher and a man who had worked as a psychologist in the principal hospital of Tabriz. The women were not shrunken violets, they spoke good English and seemed aware of the basic tenets of international politics, and the kids were bright, chirpy, and perpetually queried him. He had said nothing of his role as a platoon commander in an international battalion under the black flag, nor