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

– they had sufficient distance from the target and he would not have heard the sounds. He told them where they should be, what they should do, and listed eventualities, and gave them one of his better smiles. The park was deserted . . . but not for long because the early joggers and dog walkers would be out soon.

Dominic said, “What you ask of us, Mr Merrick, is against all the training we have gone through.”

Babs said, “This is the tipping point, and we are supposed to have primacy.”

Dominic said, “Something we were told when our group was qualifying. The last viceroy of India was Mountbatten, a top wartime commander, huge clout, and he told his personal protection that he was going down to the bazaar in Delhi that morning, needed to calm fears as independence and separation came nearer. His officer said he should not, he would not permit it. Mountbatten pulled rank on him. The policeman said that he was not going there, final. ‘I couldn’t care, sir, whether you get assassinated or not, but I do care about my reputation when I am responsible for you . . .’ He did not go. That argument clinched it.”

They watched as Cameron Jilkes made his way across the open park.

Jonas said, “Tough on your reputation if this goes sour . . . Don’t like repeating myself. Wasting breath, but time to get the show on the road.”

Chapter 16

He jerked the lead, and the dog fell in beside him. Jonas and Vera had never owned a dog, so he had no experience of how to walk one, but this seemed a decently trained little thing.

Spring was coming. Would be earlier here than in London. The cherry blossom was not yet out at home. Ahead of him were some early flowers, and in the gardens of the bungalows the colours were starting to brighten. The sun was rising, good as gold and prompt. It was 0543. Would have been a problem, a greater problem than all of those others that queued up to attempt to frustrate him, had it been pitch dark, or had the rain not lifted.

He felt only a minimal sense of pleasure as he set off across the damp grass that had been recently cut and looked a picture. Early on he had to stop because the dog needed the moment for a break, then they were on the move again. It would be the matter of an interception . . . Easy for Jonas because the young man came slowly, each step an effort. That was merely an observation in Jonas’s mind because he had no feeling for Cameron Jilkes, was neither hostile nor sympathetic. He thought that the opponent – the correct description for a young man sitting across a chess board from him – would not have eaten hot food, had had little to drink, had likely lain up and taken cover since coming ashore on the coast at Deal, and his head would have been ringing from the denunciation meted to him when he had crawled in through the back garden and come into his old home. Obvious that it had been a pitifully bad welcome he’d faced or his mother would not have flicked switches, done the signal.

A hard all-weather path led from the housing development along the river; it cut across the grass and exited the park in a corner, opposite a leisure centre. On the far side of the path were simple, basic benches and around them the daffodils were coming to an end: Vera would have liked it here, would have settled comfortably with a book and would have had the sounds of the stream as company . . . The route that Jonas and the dog took meant, all things being equal, that he would reach the path at a point about level with the bungalows on the stream’s far side, and he would be just a few paces in front of Cameron Jilkes. He held the lead firmly in one hand, and the other went into his pocket. A few quick movements and he had successfully slipped his right wrist into one of the open cuffs, then he dropped the lead on to the dog’s back, had fastened the cuff, locked it, and had retrieved the lead. Rather self-conscious, because he did not know what language was appropriate for a dog, but he muttered something about good behaviour, and “well done”. They were walking again and the interception point seemed right. He had his right hand in his coat pocket and could feel the other open cuff, and the fastening on his right wrist was hidden by his sleeve. He did not hurry and the dog sniffed consistently but did not drag him.

He had glanced to his right, not often, but had managed to check out the appearance of Cameron Jilkes. Would have been a fine looking boy had it not been for the ravages of Syria: eyes, mouth, cheeks, posture and laboured walk, all reflecting where he had been and the cost paid. And how different, where he was now. A world away. Jonas assumed that every corner of a village or a town in Syria had been a battlefield and carried the wounds of the fighting in demolished structures, and in every oasis out in the deserts most of the trees would have been snapped off by the blast from bombs and missiles. Jonas had never been to Ireland but was an encyclopaedia on its tragedies, deaths, scars, and reckoned that in each community, at every crossroads, there had been a killing – a Paddy O’Rawe or a Billy Wilson . . .

Here, the ground where Jonas would make his move, he assumed, and smiled at the thought, that little had happened other than a Mrs Smith managing some knitting while she passed time, where a Mr Jones planned better feed for his under-performing marrows . . . those sort of pastimes. Good territory for Jonas because an opponent’s guard would be down. He noted that Cameron wore an old man’s clothing. Conventional trousers, a shirt