Echo of the Reich (17 page)

Just over two and a half hours after unlocking the doors of the Hyundai, he switched off the engine on the car deck of a P&O ferry, locked the vehicle and followed a crowd of people heading for the stairs. He’d grab a bite on the ferry, he decided, and that would set him up for the first part of the drive he had in front of him.

But at least he’d gotten out of Britain with no problems. As he’d expected, the officer behind the glass of the booth had barely even glanced at him, just scanned the passport, handed it back and then told him to carry on. And the French immigration post a few yards further on was completely deserted, as usual.

So now he was on his own. Sitting in a quiet corner of the restaurant, Bronson stared out of the window at the choppy gray waters of the English Channel and ran over the events of the last few days in his mind. What had started out as a fairly simple infiltration operation, just a matter of him identifying a group of violent vandals who’d been causing such aggravation in East London, had turned into something much darker and more dangerous. The death of the nightwatchman had been unfortunate, but probably accidental, a question of manslaughter,
not murder, and Bronson was reasonably certain that it had been Mike and some of his cronies who had attacked the man.

With hindsight, maybe Bronson should simply have given them up to the Met as soon as he’d gotten a few names and memorized their faces. But he had been seriously disturbed by the man who called himself Georg, a man who seemed as wholly out of place in the group as a piranha in a tank of goldfish. He was clearly working to a very different agenda, and Bronson knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was extremely bad news. Bronson had never been directly involved in an operation against terrorists, but he had read enough about the kind of people who moved in that world to recognize the threat, and the type.

His biggest problem had been the complete absence of any form of proof that he could offer about what Georg was planning. That, and the autocratic attitude of Inspector Davidson, of course. If Shit Rises hadn’t decided to ignore what Bronson had said and roll up the undercover operation so quickly, there would at least have been a chance that Bronson could have gone to Berlin, obtained whatever information he could, and that might have led to the capture of the entire gang before they could complete their operation.

As it was, Bronson had been abandoned—or actually rather worse than that—by the British police. He was armed only with a pistol that most people familiar with handguns would consider a joke rather than a serious weapon, and he was on his own, heading for a rendezvous
with a group of people he knew nothing about, except that he was quite certain they posed a mortal danger to London and its citizens.

It was not, on the whole, a comfortable position to be in.

22 July 2012

Klaus Drescher ended the call on his mobile phone and looked across at Wolf with a satisfied expression on his face.

“The pieces are coming together precisely as we planned it, Marcus. That was Lutz, the leader of the group from the Czech Republic. There were no problems in the substitution of the two vehicles, so now the device is on its way to London with all the correct documentation. I’ve reminded him of the importance of the timing, and he and his team will get the vehicle across to the Calais area fairly quickly, and then wait there for the optimum time to cross the Channel. Even then, they’ll still have time in hand, and will be able to park on the road between Dover and London to ensure that they arrive precisely when we want them to.”

Wolf nodded, and glanced down at the screen of the laptop computer that was open on the table in front of him.

“Excellent,” he said. “Now, before you leave, there’s one other matter you need to be aware of. I’ve received another e-mail from Georg in London. As we discussed, he’s sending this former policeman—Bronson—to see us here. He thinks he might be useful to us because of his knowledge of British police tactics and so on. I’m not convinced, but I do respect Georg’s judgment.”

“That has worried me ever since Georg mentioned it,” Drescher replied. “I gather that Bronson was an army officer before he joined the police force, and that implies that he might have a strong loyalty to his native land. If he somehow managed to find out exactly what we are intending to do, I’m convinced that he would go to the authorities.”

“Then we have to make sure that he doesn’t find out,” Wolf said. “And we also need to establish such a strong hold over him that he would find it impossible to tell anybody about us.”

“How can you do that?”

Wolf smiled, but it was the kind of smile that conveyed no amusement whatsoever, only cruel anticipation.

“I think I know a way that we can do so. In fact, I think I can provide a foolproof guarantee that he will do exactly what we tell him, when we tell him.”

“How?” Drescher asked again.

“Trust me on this, Klaus. I will brief my men here to check him at the rendezvous and ensure that he is unarmed and not wearing any kind of transmitter. You arrange for everyone else to come here tomorrow evening, to arrive no later than seven o’clock. Then we will all see what this man Bronson is like, and you will be able to
satisfy yourself that we have him entirely within our power before he leaves here.”

“And if we’re not satisfied? If your guarantee somehow fails to work?”

Wolf smiled again.

“Then the Englishman will leave this house feetfirst, and we will dump him somewhere in the forest. We’ve come too far in this operation for there to be any doubts, any doubts at all, about the final phase. If Bronson won’t join us, then he will die. It’s as simple as that.”

23 July 2012

Bronson pulled into the station car park at Rangsdorf, about twenty miles south of the center of Berlin, at twenty past six the following evening. The town was probably a good location for a rendezvous, being easy to find even for a stranger, and very close to the Berliner Ring, the city’s ring road, which offered easy access to the autobahn system. And the station car park was also a good choice, with plenty of parking spaces when Bronson arrived. He guessed that most of the vehicles belonged to local residents who commuted into Berlin; by the time of the rendezvous—seven o’clock—the area would be almost deserted.

He was right. The car park emptied around Bronson as men and women emerged from the railway station, climbed into their cars and drove away, and by six forty-five there were only a handful of vehicles left.

At six fifty, two cars—both dark-colored BMWs—drove
into the car park and stopped, one at either end, their occupants remaining inside the vehicles. Watchers, Bronson presumed, there to make sure that the meeting would be neither observed nor interrupted. It looked to him as if there were at least two men in each of the cars. He guessed they already knew he was there, because his was the only vehicle in the place with British registration plates.

Precisely at seven o’clock, another car, this one a light gray Mercedes saloon, entered the car park and stopped in a space close to Bronson’s car. For a few seconds, there was no movement from any of the new arrivals, then both front doors of the Mercedes opened. Two heavily built men got out and strode across to Bronson’s vehicle.

As they approached, Bronson climbed out and stood waiting.

The two men stopped a couple of paces away, motioned him to take a step forward, and then to lift his arms up to shoulder level. Bronson complied, and one of the men stepped behind him and expertly frisked him. Then the man opened Bronson’s jacket, checked the inside pockets and then his shirt, presumably to make sure he didn’t have a miniature microphone taped to his skin.

“I’m not wearing a wire, and I’m not armed,” Bronson said, assuming the men would speak English.

The second man nodded. “We still have to check. Nothing personal.”

Then the searcher stepped away from Bronson and nodded.

“So far, so good, Mr. Bronson. You’re in the right
place at the right time, and you seem to have followed Georg’s orders accurately. Welcome to Berlin.”

“Thanks. What now?”

“Now we take you somewhere else.” He gestured to the Mercedes. “Get in the car,” he said.

Bronson looked at the two men, now standing side by side near the car, and shrugged. He didn’t like the idea of getting into the Mercedes with two men he was quite sure were armed and extremely dangerous, but he had no option. Or, rather, the only options he had were either to go with them or to get back in his car and return to Britain and whatever uncertain welcome might be waiting for him there.

So it wasn’t really a choice. He was certain, beyond a reasonable doubt, that these men were involved in something deeply, deeply dangerous and injurious to his native land, some kind of a terrorist act, and whatever happened he was determined to stop them, or at the very least find out enough about their plans to pass on the information to somebody who
could
stop them.

“Okay,” he said, walking over to the Mercedes. “You’ll bring me back here later?” he asked.

“That depends on what happens.”

It wasn’t quite the reassurance Bronson had been hoping for, but it was too late to argue.

“In the front seat,” he was instructed.

Bronson changed direction slightly, pulled open the front passenger door of the car and sat down. One of the men took the backseat directly behind him, and the other got into the driver’s seat. The man in the back reached
over Bronson’s shoulder and handed him a pair of sunglasses with black, impenetrable wraparound lenses.

“Put these on, and make sure you keep them on.”

“No problem,” Bronson said.

With the sunglasses in place, Bronson could see almost nothing; obviously the lenses had been treated somehow to make them virtually opaque. The interior of the Mercedes was barely visible, and the view outside the windows was completely obscured.

The driver started the car and slipped it into “drive,” and moments later the vehicle began to move forward. With his eyes essentially useless, Bronson tried to use his ears to work out where the car was going, though he realized this was a fruitless exercise unless the vehicle happened to drive past some local feature that emitted a really distinctive sound. But there was one thing he could do. Although the sunglasses obscured his vision ahead, the lower part of the lenses didn’t quite touch his face, and there was a thin sliver between the glasses and his cheek that was unobstructed, and that was just wide enough for him to be able to look down and see his watch.

He noted the time: nine minutes past seven. When they finally stopped, he would at least know how long the journey had taken, and that would provide a rough search area, though, of course, the longer the drive, the larger that area would become.

Bronson remembered the route he had taken to get to the rendezvous position, and at first he believed they were retracing his steps, but when they reached the Berliner Ring they turned right not left, and from that point
on he had no idea where he was going. Judging solely by the sensation of speed in the Mercedes, he guessed that for some time the car stayed on the autobahn, but he didn’t know if they were still somewhere on the Berlin ring road or had turned off it.

Just over thirty minutes after the journey had started, he knew he’d been right, as the big saloon car slowed down virtually to a walking pace, and he caught just the briefest glimpse of the shadow of a barrier lifting ahead of the Mercedes, which meant they’d just passed through a toll booth. And because they hadn’t come to a complete stop, he guessed the car was equipped with one of the electronic devices that recorded the date, time and place where the vehicle entered and left the toll road system. That might be a helpful piece of information to identify where he was being taken, and he memorized the exact time on his watch.

After that, the vehicle drove for a further fifteen minutes or so on the normal roads, negotiating roundabouts and stopping at traffic lights, and then finally came to a halt. The noise of the engine echoed strangely as the car slowed down, and Bronson was aware of a sudden darkness outside the windows. He wondered if the Mercedes had been driven into a garage or a warehouse, or something of that sort. He glanced down again at his watch, and memorized that time as well.

The doors opened and the other occupants of the vehicle stepped out.

“We’re here,” one of them said, and tugged on Bronson’s arm to show that he should get out of the car.

As Bronson complied with the instruction, he heard a
banging sound from somewhere behind the Mercedes, and guessed that the outer doors of whatever building they were in were just being closed.

“You can take off the glasses,” he was ordered.

Bronson slipped the glasses into the breast pocket of his jacket and looked around. It wasn’t a warehouse—which he supposed made a change after his recent experiences—but a large garage, perhaps forty feet long by thirty wide, with four other vehicles parked neatly against one wall. It obviously wasn’t a public parking facility, and he guessed that it was either part of the customer parking area of a commercial garage or maybe even a garage for a company or a large private house. The floor was concrete, painted light gray, while the walls and ceiling were made of the same material but painted white. Fluorescent lights were evenly spaced across the ceiling, and provided stark illumination.

He glanced behind him and saw that one of the two BMWs from the station rendezvous had followed them into the garage and had parked directly behind the Mercedes. Two men had just climbed out of it, and one of them was aiming a remote control at a pair of wide metal doors through which the vehicles must have driven. The second door was just swinging closed. At the other end of the open space another metal door, presumably a fireproof door, was set into the wall between two of the parked cars.

“This way.”

The man opened the fire door and led the way down a short passage, again fabricated from concrete, painted white and lit by another pair of fluorescent ceiling lights.