The Crocodile Hunter by Gerald Seymour (english novels to improve english txt) 📗

the reaction of annoyed motorists. The Audi had left its lane and, alongside appeared a BMW 5 series, in the same green, and a guy was yammering into his sleeve. Baz had his confirmation. He went back into the middle lane and the Beamer and the Audi were left to sort themselves out.

“You want to know a bit more about what I’m thinking, Mags?”

“Tell me.”

“I’m saying to myself that we have German company. Chance is that soon we will have the Dutch doing the job. And another chance is that we’re going to have attention all the way to the Channel. That will be how it works.”

“They were too complacent, love?”

“Can’t fault that, Mags. We just potter along and they forget their procedures. Except we’re not as dumb as they’d like us to be.”

“Too right.”

What they had never talked about, had not needed to, was a future for the pair of them if they ever went into the net. Talked about the good times and what the money would bring, and where the winters could be spent and where sunshine and cheap booze could be factored in; did not talk about arrest, separation, meeting in the cells below a courtroom, being shipped off to different gaols – no conjugal visits – and big lonely stretches of time and growing old . . . and none of the money safely cached and waiting.

Baz said, “The Germans won’t go on to Dutch ground. They’ll hand over at the white line and the Dutch will take over. Bet you, if we were still on this road, heading for Zeebrugge, and looking out for them then we’d see the Dutch. Just a couple of old people aren’t we, half senile, no wits. Tell you another thing, this will be a special operation, limited access, nothing for general radio alerts. Piece of cake, Mags.”

“Go for it then, love.”

The last turning off before the frontier, Baz was holding the centre lane. The turn was sudden and the truck behind him was a whisker off a collision. He stabbed across the slow lane and on to the filter road, went on to a roundabout and was accelerating, foot down, took a left turn into a suburban street on the outskirts of Aachen, and past a school where flocks of kids were emerging, and more rights and more lefts, and Mags singing out the direction. Then south, off towards Belgium, her finger tracing roads leading into France.

“Giving them something to think about, Mags.”

“More likely thinking about whether they wet themselves, love.”

“Can’t keep the customer waiting, right?”

Tristram and Izzy were ushered in.

They were sitting around a formica-topped table littered with plastic coffee cups and cardboard plates. They had all – men, women and children – been kitted out in bland grey tracksuits and flip-flops.

The walls were bare but for an old portrait of the Queen, a framed document listing the rights of migrants taken into custody following illegal entry to the United Kingdom, and a No Smoking sign. The room had one window, but any view it might have given of the Port of Dover and harbour area, where intercepted migrants were always brought as a first call, was blocked by a lowered blind. All eyes were turned to the door and the new arrivals.

Maybe they would have expected a warm welcome to the UK, the keys to accommodation and a list of useful phone numbers for schools and employment opportunities . . . Maybe they would have expected after half an hour in this place, with escorted trips to a shabby toilet, that they would be confronted with boots and batons and scowling uniformed officers . . . Maybe they would not have anticipated the arrival of a young man and a young woman, no uniforms, wearing neutral expressions. Tristram breathed fiercely, not the emotion of the moment but the legacy of Izzy’s drive to the coast: there would be a book of speeding tickets awaiting her when she was back in Thames House. They were stared at, warily. Tristram might have revelled in the authority given him by the card he had flashed at the duty officer, and asked, demanded, that their escort peel off. There was a hesitation.

“Meaning now, not tomorrow,” from Izzy.

A stubborn response: “There are regulations and procedures, and . . .”

“Not with us, there aren’t. And, please, close the door after you.”

It started well. Names were given, and ages, and the children had started to smile, and they heard the nightmare stories about the crossing, and the force of the storm with interruptions to describe the frantic baling, and the height of the bow wave from a giant cargo ship, and where they had come from, and the reason they had fled Iran . . . All going well, and all irrelevant to Tristram and Izzy. Neither had bothered to take a note. Time to kick on.

“And what did he call himself, your saviour?”

“The chap who brought you across, what name did he give you?”

“He must have had a name . . .”

“If you try and tell us that you let a perfect stranger drive you from Bordeaux to the Channel coast, then confront people traffickers on your behalf, then you put your lives in his hands – and he had no name?”

“Saved the kid, but still had no name?”

No answers given. Heads hanging . . . Tristram and Izzy, trusted with work that was beyond their grade, bottom rung of the ladder were looking down the barrel of having to call Jonas Merrick and tell him that they had failed. First proper test run for each of them and they faced silence.

His voice rising, “I will ask you again . . . What name did he give you?”

And hers, quieter and colder, “Refuse to identify him and it will go badly.”

No reply. One of the children had started to cry, little soft sobs.

From Tristram, “Who was he? What did he say about himself?”

From Izzy, “So that we all understand what is at stake – you can be handcuffed, you can be led to a ferry, put on board, held under guard for the crossing and