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

He never lost his temper, abandoned self-control. Never screamed, shouted, yelled, never lashed out with his fists. Loss of control was weakness. Stayed calm. Not saints, any of the brothers, but not sinners. Could have ranted down the comms link when they were up and ready to spearhead an attack but the suiciders had not arrived to make the diversion: had been composed, ice-cold. Could have verbally thrashed Tomas when the little Estonian boy had lost the book in which the code frequencies for radio links were written, and the garbled words that would be used. The brothers had backtracked and had searched until the book was found – fallen from his pocket when he’d dropped his pants for a crap in the sand.

“Your call, Mum. I don’t argue. You choose, Mum.”

Might have had a knife stuck in his guts, and felt the pain of it around the blade, but his voice stayed steady. Would like to have thrown the money back into her lap, but needed it.

Now, she spoke, had a gentle lilt to her voice. She said, “I remember, Cameron, a service in the cathedral about two months after you had been welcomed to the choir. A Sunday service. Was so proud of you, and used to come to hear you sing and would sit somewhere you wouldn’t notice me. There was a sermon, a dean or a bishop. I did not know the Bible before you went to the choir. Always remember the text. It was Luke fifteen, the prodigal’s return. I thought it was rubbish. A kid goes away having badgered his father into forking out an advance on his inheritance. Spends it on tarts, comes home broke, but a softy father kills the fattened calf as celebration in spite of an elder brother bitching that it’s a bad response. Dad said, ‘We had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found . . .’ Didn’t hold with it then, and don’t now.”

“That it, Mum?”

“Play the prodigal if you want, but there’ll be no welcome here. I want you gone.”

Jonas might have dozed but the dog shifted and the movement alerted him . . . His phone screen was still blank. In the front they were both awake.

Dominic asked him, seemed genuinely concerned, “Hope you are surviving, Mr Merrick. We’re not offering the best hospitality.”

He grimaced, “Surviving well. Perfectly comfortable.”

Babs said, wry smile, “Apologies there’s no coffee, no croissants, nothing to offer.”

“There’ll be time enough for breakfast.”

“After we’re relieved, when the big battalions move in?”

“Time enough,” Jonas said.

“When we’re surplus?”

“It’ll be a good breakfast, and we might try to find a biscuit for our friend before she goes home.” Jonas patted the animal’s head.

“If it’s not impertinent, do you know the final target, Mr Merrick?”

“I think I do, cannot promise I do . . . Unless we lose him, the target is an irrelevance. If we lose him then I’m for the high jump. I think I do . . . Tough old world, isn’t it?”

“One more question, Mr Merrick.”

“One more.”

A long time since Jonas had laughed out loud but he managed it and the dog started vigorously to scratch its ear.

Chapter 15

The dog still scratched and Jonas soothed it, might have murmured something in the velvet-soft ear about patience, and it took a while for Dominic to work out how to pose the question.

“Would he know you, Mr Merrick?”

He chuckled. “We can call him ‘he’, or can identify him as Gustave. Gustave is a very large crocodile and lives in a steamy wide river, the Ruzizi which flows into Lake Tanganyika, and it is probable that he ate – or at least killed – some three hundred farmers snatched off the river’s banks. Or we can call him Cameron Jilkes, one-time chorister with a voice like an angel’s. So, is it ‘he’, or Gustave, or is it Cameron?”

“He, Mr Merrick . . . Does ‘he’ know of you?”

“Don’t think so. Very much doubt it.”

“Would he understand the structure of your organisation?”

“Most unlikely.”

“And never heard of you?”

“They’re mounting up, these questions. Not heard of me, a lowly bottle-washer in Thames House, and not heard the name of my superiors, or of the AssDepDG to whom I report. Ignorant of me, but not of the more immediate enemies who governed his life until his flight. He’ll be familiar with Russian sector commanders and I assume with UK or US Special Forces units, and he’d know about the tactical habits of an Iranian officer from the Quds force. He would know of Syrian government commanders and Hezbollah leaders . . . But all such information is now useless to him. Not knowing of me, and I offer up no conceit, is a mistake on his part. It’s the way these things happen. I don’t usually talk much but sometimes it helps me to stay awake. The way these things happen is that a mistake is made. I’m rather good at spotting areas where mistakes may occur. You do not need a university degree, first class honours and a heap of plaudits. You have to appreciate the way in which a young man of humble education will respond when his life is being pulled apart by quite unimaginable stresses. It is not a matter of intellect, just common sense. I was averse to classrooms and lecture halls, and came into the Security Service at a lowly grade, very much at the bottom of the bucket. I don’t need a string of letters after my name but I need a good nose. I return to my proposition, the need to recognise an opponent’s mistake . . . by the by, he is an ‘opponent’, not a scumbag, not an ‘enemy’, is not somone I chuck names and obscenities at. He is an opponent and my job is to observe the mistakes he – or she, and they have lively members of the fairer sex – will assuredly make. They make mistakes, all