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

up the Old Dover Road to the police station and report our meeting? Or is that not necessary?”

He stared straight ahead. Spoke from the side of his mouth. The man’s head was bent forward the better to hear him and he smelled fresh toothpaste, imagined it a necessary part of the modern cleric’s presentation. He said he had made errors and deeply regretted the shame and the pain he had inflicted on those good enough to love him . . . That he planned to go to his home that evening, after the beauty of the evensong service, spend time with his mother, make his peace with her, then go to the police station in the morning . . . Lied fluently.

“Seems satisfactory. I think I can live with that.”

And would ask for his mother’s forgiveness.

“I hope you’ve left the hate behind . . . Please, Cameron, give my best regards to her, a fine and decent lady . . . What time will you be at the police station?”

He named the hour, and hung his head, a gesture of his sincerity.

“That is sensible and intelligent. I wish you well.”

Cammy heard the priest leave his seat. He did not have to turn because he walked to the front, moving slowly, with the aid of a stick, along the length of the pews where visitors sat for evensong. He thought he had lied with conviction. As he had lied to his mother “Just popping out, Mum” and had not come back. As he had lied to the interrogators who were paranoid about informers and had questioned him at the jihadi recruitment camp, told them of his devotion to their cause . . . Cammy had no doubt that the priest would honour their agreement and would not go to the police station before noon. By then he would be far away, heading for his target, working into position for his last attack.

“It is about priorities, Jonas.”

He did not reply. Had requested a meeting with the AssDepDG, had heard the clatter of his heavy shoes in the corridor and the internal echo as the outer door opened into the work area, empty still.

“I had priority ‘problems’ before, a couple of hours back. Now I have priority ‘difficulties’, and each hour it is harder. We have diminishing resources, as you know, and I have put our maximum effort into the places where we have the maximum danger.”

Jonas shrugged.

“You have identified the returnee that you believe crossed the Channel this morning?”

Jonas pointed at the picture that carried, in his own handwriting, the initials of Cameron Jilkes.

“And he comes from Canterbury, and may return there, but you do not consider him to be the type that will renounce his immediate past? Want to ‘start again’, accept that the interlude is over? You don’t predict that?”

Jonas shook his head. He was reading his screen, absorbing the young people’s report of their interview with the retired school teacher. They were now on their way to meet with a choirmaster, retired. He had the intelligence report from the Gulf, and had a call in to a Special Forces veteran, a decorated sergeant. Jonas prided himself on being honest. He did not believe that he should milk short-term opportunity, nor ever gild a threat to get it higher up a ladder of concern. Priorities demanded truths.

“I cannot instruct resources to send a full surveillance team to Canterbury, Jonas. Simply, I do not have those numbers. Your colleagues were sent to Hull to meet a courier returning from the Continent. The courier, and his wife, are carrying – to our best knowledge – an RPG-7 launcher and a number of the bloody things it propels. Capable of penetrating buildings. Effective at well over a quarter of a mile. That is why we have scrambled from here. Except . . .”

Jonas waited to be told. He raised an eyebrow, but his own pitch was all that concerned him.

“It is – and I am sure you know this as well as I do – a devastating weapon. It is being shipped here from the Balkans. From a family on hard times. Most of those unfortunates who endured their civil war would have followed the old Irish advice ‘kept a pike in the thatch’. A pike, or a rifle, or an anti-tank missile launcher. Kept it in the event of hostilities flaring again, or kept it for when the family finances faced a rainy day, and they could flog it off. It came from near Mostar. The Croats tracked it, then the Slovenians and then the Austrians. We were very happy with the degree of cooperation extended. The couriers are a couple from the East Midlands, pensioners, looking for a bonanza payday. Pushed into a pick-up at a fuel station outside Cologne, so we were reliant on our esteemed German colleagues . . . God and do those beggars not delight in extolling their virtues . . .”

Jonas felt old, old and weary. He blinked but did not turn to face the AssDepDG. Would have been, for his superior, therapeutic to have a chance of bouncing his frustrations – and fears – onto another’s shoulders.

“They lost the vehicle on its way to Zeebrugge. They lost it, Jonas. Fucking lost it. The Germans lost it. We think they showed out and then the old boy at the wheel did some basic procedures and dumped them. It would be nice to report that the Germans then put out a Europe-wide alert, but they sat on their hands. I anticipate that we’ll get a string of mealy-mouthed excuses, not their fucking fault. So, I have kept the team from here as a flying column. When, or if, we hear of this weapon on the move, I can divert them. But, what if they are able to change vehicles and arrive at another ferry with a different set of wheels? What if they are well enough organised to have a second set of travel documents? What if . . .? That is where I am, Jonas.”

He stared at the two faces on his wall: the one of Cameron Jilkes, and the one that