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

to make a goal. Cammy saw that, and saw also that there were new tyre marks beside their vehicle, and saw also that there were cigarette ends there, extinguished, but recent . . . With his life he would have trusted Stanislau and Mikki and Tomas, Dwayne and Pieter, and Ulrike: had given them all his trust . . . He stared at the butts, let them see him looking at them. The glances between themselves betrayed guilt. He tore off bread from the loaf and broke clear an untidy corner of cheese.

The psychologist was kicked on his ankle by his wife.

“What is your commitment to us?”

“The commitment is convenience. I brought you here.”

“We had a contact name, number, to help us go across.”

Cammy said quietly, mouth full, “I do not. You do. I would look to go with you.”

Did they know now that he was a fighter going home? Know that or think him a criminal? Whether a fighter or a criminal, did they consider what violence he may have done? On who . . .? He thought them decent people . . .

The psychologist blinked, breathed hard, prepared for confession. “We had a contact, we met a man. He came with associates.”

“You should have waited until I was back.”

The teacher said, “We did not know you were coming back.”

The psychologist said, “We had a number and we called it.”

“The man came?”

“Came with hard men,” the teacher said.

They were decent people and had no defence. Regarded them as innocents, felt no particular loyalty, would help them each step of the way as long as the journey helped him, Cammy Jilkes.

Cammy asked, “What deal did you do?”

The men took turns to answer. “You have to understand that it was difficult to bring money from Iran.”

“Most of everything we had remains there.”

“We could not tell friends or relatives that we planned to leave.”

“We brought some jewels but have left our homes behind, everything in them. Just locked the doors and put the keys in the garbage.”

“There was a cat, we all loved the cat. We put food out and it had a hatch at the back to go through. When it finished the food it might have gone to a neighbour, might have gone feral, might have been run over in the street. We left it, try not to think about it.”

“My wife’s mother, we left her. We could not tell her. She has no sense of preservation. We left her as they left the cat.”

“Left those students I was still permitted to teach.”

“Left the patients they allowed me to treat – there was never a better time nor a worse time. We have little money left, maybe enough and maybe not. Everybody we meet takes our money . . . I apologise. You do not.”

“We doubted your kindness, thought you had left us. For that, I apologise.”

In the last months, before the final break-out from Barghuz, Cammy and his brothers had been with columns of refugees, all on the move to the next location billed as that of the “final stand”, or the destination for the martyrs. Women, children, supposed fighters with their nerves shredded by the bombing, the wounded who hobbled along with the slowest. But the brothers were a fighting unit, an élite, and were supposed to hold up the advance of the Syrian infantry or plug a perimeter gap when there was a chance the Kurds would break through. They did not waste their time worrying about the prospects of the girls who had come from Europe, and did not help them or their kids. He had no responsibility to these people, the Iranian Christians, and yet . . . The cheese was finished, and the bread.

Cammy asked, “The man who came here, how much did he want?”

“He is a Chechen.”

“Is that important?”

“The Chechens have a reputation.”

“What is the reputation?” Cammy could have answered his own question. He had not fought, himself, under the instructions of al-Sistani the fighter from Chechnya who was known for his brutality, for his cruelty, for using more deluded kids as martyr material than any other commander. “How much did he ask for?”

The silence hung. The psychologist turned away and the teacher hung his head and the two women fidgeted but stayed silent. It was the youngest of the kids, bored with football who gazed back at Cammy and his jaw quivered, then came the blurting reply.

“They asked for four thousand dollars for each of us, four thousand American dollars. That is from the sale of each piece of jewellery my mother has, and our friends, and their mothers. It is gold and rings and necklaces. It is everything. If they take twenty-four thousand dollars then we have only the clothes we stand in when we reach the far side. They say they have the boat, that we can go, and that is the price and they say they will not argue on the price. It is a fixed price. We cannot go back. We can only go forward . . . Are you the same as us?”

Cammy put out his hand. The kid did not flinch. He let his palm rest on the kid’s head, then worked his fingers into the hair, tugged at it. He said he was the same, said he too could only go forward. He said that he would talk with the Chechen man, and with his associates. There was a little ripple of applause, touching almost. He climbed into the vehicle, sat in the driver’s seat and pulled his cap down, closed his eyes, and would try to sleep. He had no money, could not pay for his own place in a boat. Sometimes the wind brought surges of sand up over the dune and on to the windscreen; he could hear the sea and thought it had become angrier.

“Hell of a good guy, your Jonas, brave as a cornered she-cat. Not that I’ve ever met him, but we talk on the phone. Working for him, you’re lucky. I’m to give you a crash course: who they are, why they are coming back, what we have