by James Becker
The owner of the Hyundai had helpfully left a universal phone charger in the glovebox, perhaps because he used several different phones for different purposes—a common trick employed by drug dealers—and Bronson quickly found the correct adapter for his new unit. He plugged the other end of the charging lead into the cigarette lighter socket, and left the phone switched on. Now he needed to send the text to Angela, and then lose the old unit.
He checked the map book. He still believed that the house he’d been taken to lay somewhere to the southeast of Berlin, but he guessed he was too far south. The fastest way to drive to the north would be along the autobahn he’d recently left, but he was reluctant to do that just in case there were any checks or roadblocks on it. He much preferred the freedom of choice and multiplicity of routes offered by the normal roads.
Bronson started the car again and drove straight through Klein Köris to the T-junction with route 179, where he turned left. About five miles north of the junction, he found a convenient turnout and pulled in. He reinserted the battery in his old mobile phone and switched it on.
He’d just entered the phone number of his new mobile when a thought struck him: there was something, something important, that he hadn’t asked Angela to do. After the mobile number he quickly added a few sentences: REMOVE BATTERY FROM NEW PHONE WHEN IN OR NEAR OFFICE OR FLAT. PHONE CAN BE TRACED IF BATTERY ATTACHED. ONLY SWITCH ON WHEN ABOUT TO CALL ME. ONLY CALL ME FROM CAFE OR RESTAURANT OR OTHER CROWDED LOCATION. UNDERSTAND?
He left the phone switched on for a couple of minutes while he worked out the route he was going to follow, just in case Angela replied quickly. And she did, just before Bronson was going to start the engine and drive away. Her message was just as abrupt and terse as his had been. I GET IT, she’d sent. Bronson grinned, pulled out the phone’s battery, and drove away.
Near Körbiskrug he pulled into a garage to fill the car’s fuel tank, and buy some snacks and a couple of cans of drink. While he was in the garage, he looked at some of the other items on display, and in what looked like a “special offer” section—which was probably stuff the owner was desperate to get rid of—he found exactly what he wanted. And it was cheap, too.
A mile or so further up the road he pulled into a large turnout to eat his scratch lunch before starting his search for the house in earnest. There were three other vehicles parked in the turnout, two cars and a pickup truck with an open flat-bed rear, full of bits of furniture and other stuff. Bronson pulled his car to a stop a few yards away from it, and looked at it thoughtfully, a simple plan forming in his mind.
He reached over and opened the glovebox, put the battery back in his old mobile and turned on the unit. The driver of the pickup truck was sitting in the vehicle, eating a large sandwich and chatting to his passenger. The sound of country-and-western music was faintly audible through the truck’s open windows, and neither of them seemed to be paying too much attention to their surroundings.
There were various bits of rubbish littering the floor of the Hyundai, and a bin a few feet in front of the truck—to Bronson this seemed like a good opportunity for a bit of housekeeping. He picked up most of the rubbish, got out of the car and made his way past the vehicle, watching the truck’s side mirror carefully. When he was sure that the passenger was looking away from him, at the driver, he quickly tucked the phone into the back of the pickup, sliding it under a piece of tarpaulin and out of sight. Then he strode across to the bin, dumped everything in it, and retraced his steps.
About five minutes later, the truck’s engine started, and the vehicle moved away, pausing for a second or two beside the bin so that the passenger could dispose of the remains of the early lunch the two men had been eating. Bronson watched it drive out of the turnout and cross the carriageway before accelerating away down the road, heading south.
A few minutes later Bronson finished his own lunch, started the car and drove out of the turnout, heading north toward Königs Wusterhausen. When he reached the town, his satnav guided him faultlessly through the center and steered him north, across the Berliner Ring on the L30, which would take him along the southeast bank of the V-shaped Großer Zug lake.
He’d studied the map and identified a couple of places that could be close to Marcus’s house. The first of these was a small town named Wernsdorf, which, according to the map, did have a main road running through it that followed an S-shaped path, and two roads that crossed straight and narrow stretches of water. One of these was the river, which joined two larger bodies of water, the Krossinsee and the Wernsdorfer See, and the other was the Oder-Spree-Kanal. And the final clincher was that Wernsdorf itself lay very close to both the river and the canal. In fact, it was on the banks of both and, as far as Bronson could see, that town was the best match to what he had seen from the back of the BMW as he was driven away from the house.
But when, about ten minutes after he crossed the Berliner Ring, he entered Wernsdorf, nothing that he saw seemed in any way familiar. He drove slowly through the town, and in the center continued along the L30, which swung right onto the Dorfstraße, heading for the bridge over the canal. If Wernsdorf was the town he’d been driven through, that had to be the road he’d been on, because of his recollection of the way the main road had turned in the town center.
Bronson knew for certain that he was in the wrong place when he drove across the bridge over the canal. The waterway was a lot wider than he remembered, but, more important, the structure and design of the bridge was entirely different from the picture he was carrying inside his head.
The second place he’d identified as a possible location lay due east of Wernsdorf, a small town named Spreenhagen. A short distance north of the bridge over the canal, Bronson eased the Hyundai in to the side of the road and reprogrammed the satnav. Spreenhagen was only about twenty miles away, and he didn’t think it would take him much longer than three-quarters of an hour to get there.
His rough estimate was fairly accurate, though as he got nearer the town, Bronson was concentrating only on what he could see through the windscreen. The L23 ran through the village of Latzwall and then straightened up as it approached Spreenhagen, and as soon as he saw the road junction at the end of the straight, a flood of recognition washed over him.
He hadn’t been driven down the stretch of road he was on at that moment, but he was certain that the junction with the minor road on his left was where the BMW had emerged. As he passed the junction, he caught a glimpse of the small collection of buildings that he remembered seeing the previous evening. And as he steered the car around a gentle curve at the end of the straight, Bronson saw, on the left-hand side of the road, the sign that he had spotted in yesterday’s twilight. Now, in full daylight, he could see quite clearly that it didn’t read Kauptstraße, as he’d thought, but Hauptstraße. He was definitely in the right place.
Now he knew he’d be able to find the house. What he still wasn’t entirely sure about was what he should do when he did so.
28
24 July 2012
Bronson drove over the canal—the bridge looking precisely as he remembered it—and into Spreenhagen. He didn’t need further confirmation, so as soon as he was able to do so, he turned the car around and headed back the way he’d come. Once over the canal, he eased the car to the right, down the minor road that joined the Hauptstraße. A short distance further on was another junction, where he again remembered that the BMW had slowed down to cross the carriageway. He checked for other traffic—there was none in either direction—and then continued north along the arrow-straight road that had been cut through the wood.
The trees grew densely on either side of the road, with no apparent breaks at first. But then he saw a cleared area on the right-hand side where a large building—some sort of industrial structure, he guessed—had been erected. That was obviously not what he was looking for, and he continued driving steadily down the road, a road that a sign had already told him was named Röthen.
Shortly after that buildin
g, the wood petered out on the left-hand side of the road, and fields and farmland extended out to the west. To the east of the road, the wood appeared just as dense as the other section he’d driven past, and Bronson guessed that the house he was searching for had to be somewhere on that side.
And then he saw the end of the driveway, and the gravel section of the drive running up to the garage doors. And beyond it, in the same instant, he saw the house itself, looking deceptively innocent in the sunlight, its exterior giving no hint of the horrors that had been perpetrated within.
Bronson didn’t slow down. In fact, he did little more than glance over to his right—the kind of half-curious look any passing motorist might bestow upon a large secluded house. Instead he drove on, along straight stretches of road punctuated by gentle bends, until he estimated he was at least half a mile beyond the house. Then he stopped the car, did a swift U-turn in the road and began driving back, retracing his steps.
On his right now, where the trees gave way to open farmland, the fields were bordered by hedgerows, but were apparently uncultivated, at least for the moment. On the left-hand side of the road, the same side as the house itself, Bronson could see a small copse of trees, and beyond that a stretch of open land that ran all the way to the edge of the wood. As he drove along, Bronson spotted the end of a rough and rutted track that ran along one side of a kind of thin extension of the wood. At that end, a line of trees and bushes extended from the wood toward the road, the track running beside it.
Without hesitation, he steered the car across the carriageway and onto the track, the suspension working hard to cope with the ruts and furrows. Wide and deep tire prints, presumably made by tractors or other heavy farm machinery, were visible all the way along the track, and Bronson presumed that it was a regular route used by a local farmer to get from one of his fields to another. The ground was dry and hard, and the car’s tires had little difficulty in finding enough grip to keep going.
He drove on, trying to pick the smoothest path that he could, while taking frequent glances at the line of trees beside him, so that he would know when he’d reached the boundary of the main part of the wood. Quite suddenly, the wood darkened, and he knew that he’d gotten to the right area, a good starting point for him to approach the house.
He picked a gap between two trees that was obviously wide enough to accommodate the car and stopped. Then he climbed out and stepped past the treeline, to make sure that there were no holes, boulders or other hazards lurking in there which could do serious damage to the vehicle. In fact, beyond the trees lay a small clearing, perhaps thirty feet square, which was largely open, just a few small bushes dotted here and there. More important, a line of bushy shrubs was growing on one side of the pair of trees, and Bronson knew that if he parked his car close to them, it should be invisible to anyone walking along the track.
He strode back out of the wood to the car and checked all around him. On the road below, a small motorcycle appeared, traveling quite quickly and possibly heading for one of the houses at the end of the road, its exhaust note a belligerent rasp that shattered the quiet of the early afternoon. As the sound faded, Bronson concentrated on listening, as well as looking. From somewhere out of sight, perhaps on the other side of the low hill in front of him, he could hear the noise of a tractor engine, the sound rising and falling as the vehicle maneuvered. He checked the track again, in both directions, but there was still nobody in sight. No farmers out shooting, no couples walking dogs. Nobody at all, which was just what Bronson wanted.
He climbed back into the Hyundai, turned the car and then backed it between the two trees and into the clearing, positioning it close to the shrubs that he’d noticed previously. He wanted the vehicle to be facing in the right direction to get away from the wood, just in case he had to beat a hasty retreat.
For a few moments he sat in the car, trying to decide his next move. First, he switched off the interior light. It was full daylight now, but he didn’t know how long it would take to find the house, let alone find some way of getting inside it. If he came back to the car after dark, opening the door and having the interior light coming on would be a particularly stupid way of betraying his presence. For the same reason, when he left the car, he would lock it with the key, not the remote control. The characteristic flashing of the hazard lights would act as a beacon to anybody searching for him.
He stepped out of the car and eased the door closed as quietly as he could. Sound tends to travel in the countryside, although the trees around him would help to deaden the noise. He walked around to the trunk of the car and opened it. In a plastic carrier bag was the item he’d bought earlier in the garage—a pair of compact binoculars. He slung the cord around his neck and tucked the binoculars inside his jacket, so they wouldn’t swing about. Also in the bag were two bottles of water and some chocolate bars, and he took one of each. He checked that he had his new mobile phone in his jacket pocket, with the vibrate function turned off and the ringer set to “silent.” Finally, he slid the Llama pistol into the rear waistband of his trousers, under his leather jacket. The magazine was fully charged with ten rounds of .22 Long Rifle ammunition, and he had the remainder of the box in another pocket.
That was one advantage of carrying a small-caliber pistol. He had fifty rounds with him, and was barely aware of the weight. Fifty nine-millimeter Parabellum rounds would be bulky and heavy, as would the weapon used to fire them. And at close range, in a competent pair of hands, both weapons were equally deadly, as the assassins employed by the Israeli Mossad service had demonstrated on numerous occasions.
Bronson walked across to the twin trees and looked out of the wood again, checking for anyone who might have seen him, but the track was empty. The only sound was the noise of the distant tractor, but it was still somewhere out of sight.
He had no doubt that he could get close to the house quite easily. Approaching a target premises over open ground was always difficult and sometimes impossible to achieve without being spotted, but doing the same thing through a wood or forest was comparatively straightforward. Unless they’d surrounded the house with a network of antisurveillance and counterintrusion devices, such as tripwires and infrared sensors, he should be able to get close enough to observe whatever was going on, and hopefully find his way inside without being detected.
It all depended on what he found when he got there.
Bronson shrugged his shoulders, took a final glance around the clearing, and then set off in the direction he thought the house must lie. Finding it wouldn’t be difficult; he guessed he could probably walk from one end of the wood to the other in about half an hour, and as long as he could see the sunlight through the branches of the trees, he’d have a reasonable idea about which direction he was heading. Locating the house, and finding his way back to the car, come to that, should be easy.
The ground was solid underfoot, the hard soil softened somewhat by a layer of leaf mold, which would serve to deaden the sound of his footsteps. The tree growth inside the wood was much less dense than it had appeared from the outside, a phenomenon Bronson had noticed before; quite often, the thickest growth of trees and bushes was at the very edge of a wood or forest. Somebody had told him that it was dictated by the amount of sunlight that penetrated the canopy to stimulate new growth, but he’d no idea if that was true or not.
At first, Bronson moved fairly quickly, taking care that he didn’t step on a fallen branch that could break or make any other noise that could be detected by audio sensors in his vicinity. One of the most obvious sounds that sentries are taught to listen for is the regular tramp, tramp, tramp of a walking man, so he took care to vary his stride, to ensure that his footfalls were as silent as possible, and he paused at frequent intervals just to look and listen.
After he’d penetrated about fifty yards he stopped and again checked all around him. He was looking for any sign of human presence, obviously, but also staring at the trees, checking to ensure that there were no cameras or micropho
nes visible, and at the ground, looking for tripwires. He saw nothing, and walked on, moving from tree to tree, and stopping beside each one to make a further check before proceeding.
It was slow progress, but by taking his time Bronson believed he had the best possible chance of reaching the house without being detected.
He was heading approximately southwest, and after he’d covered about a hundred yards, he saw the first signs of a break in the treeline over to his right. It looked like a clearing or perhaps a fire break, and he guessed that he’d reached the edge of the wood that surrounded the property.
Now he moved even more cautiously, checking absolutely everywhere, because if the house was protected electronically, this was where the first of the devices would probably be positioned. He’d only covered about twenty yards when he saw the unmistakable shape of a house roof almost directly in front of him, and stopped in his tracks.
For almost ten minutes, Bronson stood virtually motionless beside the trunk of a large tree, assessing the situation. He couldn’t see very much of the house itself, only a section of the rear wall, the ridge of the roof and a part of one side, but he was satisfied that it was the right building. He worked slowly and methodically, carrying out a visual search of all the trees he could see between his position and the edge of the wood where the house was standing. He let his eyes roam slowly up and down each trunk and along the principal branches, looking for the telltale sign of a camera or sensor. He was looking for anything that looked either unnaturally round or equally unnaturally square—shapes not normally found in nature.
But he saw nothing, which surprised him. He had been expecting, at the very least, a PIR detector or surveillance camera. Then he thought for a few moments and guessed the possible reason. He didn’t know what kinds of wildlife lived in this area of Germany, but he assumed that there were probably deer, maybe wild boar, and possibly even wolves and bears, any of which would have about the same heat signature as a man, and would trigger any electronic alarms they installed. It also meant that tripwires wouldn’t work, because animals that size would simply walk through them, and Marcus’s men would have to continually reset them.
