Echo of the Reich

by James Becker

  “Again, news to me,” Angela said. “How come you remembered all this?”

  “I’ve got a retentive memory, and all the misunderstandings fascinated me. And there’s something else,” Bronson went on. “Bearing in mind what we’ve managed to discover, there’s an odd link between the nineteen thirty-six Games and what’s happening now.”

  “What?”

  “There was a bell at the Berlin Olympics as well. It was another Nazi innovation, a bell that was supposed to sound to summon the youth of the world. It weighed over thirty thousand pounds, carried the usual mix of symbols, including the Olympic Rings and the German eagle, and was positioned in a bell tower at the western end of the Olympic stadium, a tower almost two hundred and fifty feet tall that could be seen from most of Berlin.”

  “Is it still there?”

  “Yes, but it’s pretty battered. The tower was set on fire after Berlin eventually fell, and a couple of years after the end of the war it was demolished by British engineers. The bell tumbled down from the top and hit the ground so hard that it cracked. A few years later it was used for target practice to assess the effectiveness of antitank ammunition, and today it’s down at ground level outside the stadium, slowly rusting away.”

  Angela nodded. “And now we have to stop a different kind of Nazi bell from sounding,” she said.

  “That’s a very good way of putting it,” Bronson replied.

  Then he lapsed into silence as the enormity of the task facing them began to sink in.

  The only thing they knew for sure was that the target was going to be the London Olympic Games, but they had no idea how Marcus and his men intended to deliver the weapon, how big it was or what was needed to trigger it. They now knew the approximate dimensions of the original Bell, the one that had been tested and developed in the Wenceslas Mine, but it was reasonable to assume that, if some group of renegade Nazi scientists had been working on the device since the end of the Second World War, the overall miniaturization of electronic components would have allowed them to greatly reduce its size, and instead of trying to find something the size of a small car, like the original Bell, a modern version of the device might fit inside a suitcase, and be considerably more difficult to locate.

  The old cliché of trying to find a needle in a haystack barely began to hint at the degree of difficulty facing them, and a sudden wave of despair flooded through Bronson.

  Moments later, he realized that Angela’s thoughts must have been running along a very similar track.

  “Chris, we don’t have any option. There’s no time left. We have to involve the authorities, the London police or somebody,” she said. “There’s no way the two of us are going to be able to find this thing, and even if we did, I don’t know how we could possibly stop it. You’ve told me about Marcus, and it’s pretty obvious he’s a driven man, not to mention completely ruthless. The fact that he sent those two men to the Wenceslas Mine to kill us is proof enough of that.”

  Bronson nodded, his hands involuntarily clenching the rim of the BMW’s steering wheel.

  “I know. All we’ve managed to do so far is discover the bare outline of this plot, literally at the eleventh hour, and it’s obviously just the culmination of a long process that he’s been planning for years. He must have devised a way of getting this weapon into one of the Olympic venues, or very close beside it, and I’m still certain that he intends to trigger it tomorrow, during the opening ceremony. The problem is that I don’t think I’ll be able to convince anyone in the Met that I’m doing anything other than trying to avoid my own arrest.

  “I mean, who in their right mind would believe that we’ve uncovered a plot by a group of reborn Nazis to take revenge on Britain for the destruction of the Third Reich by using a weapon that was developed in the Second World War and looks like a bell and might even be a small nuclear device?”

  “I don’t know how we’re going to do it, Chris,” Angela said. “Just the two of us, against whatever organization Marcus has put in place, and with you being hunted by the British police at the same time. And all we know—all we think we know, to be exact—is the time of the attack and the target. And even that’s a pretty big place.”

  46

  26 July 2012

  The telephone call to the Metropolitan Police went pretty much as Bronson had expected. He’d turned off the motorway and stopped the BMW in a quiet Kent village to use a public pay phone, and got through to Bob Curtis almost immediately. But as soon as Curtis realized who he was talking to, his voice changed.

  “Right, Bronson,” he said—the use of Christian names now seemed to be off the menu—“I’m taping this call and as soon as we’ve got your location from the computer, Davidson will be sending out the cavalry. You are so deep in the shit that you’re going to need a scaffold tower to climb out of it. What the hell have you been doing?”

  “And good afternoon to you, too, Bob. I reckon the trace will take no more than three minutes, but I’ll be off the line in less than two. You don’t need to talk, just listen, because this is serious.”

  With one eye on the second hand of his wristwatch, Bronson told Curtis what he’d discovered in Berlin and at the Wenceslas Mine, and what he believed the German terrorist group intended to do at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

  “And you’ve got proof of this, obviously,” Curtis said, when Bronson finished, “otherwise you wouldn’t be wasting my time telling me.”

  “Of course I can’t prove it,” Bronson snapped. “What are you expecting? A signed note from Marcus—and I’ve found out who he is, by the way, or at least where he lives—saying that he intends to blow up half of northeast London?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s all too little, too late, and far too bloody vague. Sounds to me like you’ve been reading too many thrillers, my friend, and you’re trying to create a smokescreen you can hide behind. The best thing you can do is stand right where you are until the patrol car gets to you, and then come in quietly.”

  “That comes from Davidson, doesn’t it?” Bronson asked. “He’s not going to listen to anything I say, is he?”

  “You got that right.”

  “Okay, then, Bob. I’ve got a piece of advice for you. You’ve been taping this call, so I suggest you make a copy of that tape and stick it away in a safe place somewhere, so that when northeast London goes up in flames you can tell the official inquiry that I gave you fair warning. That way, at least you can save your own skin, even if Davidson fries for it.”

  For a moment, Curtis didn’t reply.

  “You’re that certain?” he finally asked.

  “I’m that certain,” Bronson replied, and hung up the phone.

  As he drove out of the village on one of the minor roads, heading more or less west toward London, Bronson spotted a Volvo police car traveling in the opposite direction along the main road, at speed, lights flashing.

  “That’ll be the cavalry,” he remarked to Angela. “I don’t think Bob Curtis believed a word I said to him. I was right: we’re on our own.”

  “Suppose I called the police?” Angela asked. “Or even the newspapers?”

  “I doubt if the police would listen to you. You’re tainted because of your association with me. They’d just assume I’d prompted you to tell them the same story. If you went to the newspapers they’d note down what you told them, but before they did anything else they’d talk to their friendly Media Relations Officer at the local cop shop. He’d do some checking before he gave the go-ahead to print anything, and the result would be the same: your name would be mud because of me. And if by some miracle a newspaper reporter did believe you, and thought the terrorist threat was real, the paper still wouldn’t run the story because the police would tell them not to, to avoid panic.”

  “Like that strange American expression: we’re between a rock and a hard place,” Angela said. “Time’s running out because the opening ceremony is tomorrow evening. What do we do now? What can we
do?”

  “Two things,” Bronson replied, sounding suddenly determined. “In fact, three things. First, tomorrow you don’t go to work at the British Museum, but stay in your apartment, because I want you well out of harm’s way. I’m pretty sure the target will be the opening ceremony, but we don’t know how big or powerful the device is, and if it is some kind of a dirty bomb, the fallout could spread for a long way. In Ealing, you should be safe enough.”

  “What about you? You won’t be hiding away somewhere, will you?”

  “No, but that’s my job. I have to do whatever I can to stop this attack, and if I don’t have to worry about your safety, that’ll make things easier for me.”

  Angela shook her head, but didn’t argue the point.

  “You said there were three things, so what else will you do?”

  “I’ll be making a phone call to a friend, because I’m definitely going to need help on the ground. And then I’m going undercover again.”

  “Not to that same group?” Angela sounded alarmed.

  “No. I mean deep undercover. I need to be able to move around the Olympic complex without anybody seeing me, or at least without taking any notice. And there’s one group of people that almost everyone ignores, who can go wherever they want without anyone bothering them.”

  “Who? Policemen?”

  Bronson smiled at her.

  “No,” he said. “Almost the exact opposite, actually.”

  47

  27 July 2012

  The following morning, just after five thirty, Angela drove the BMW four-by-four east out of London to pick up the M25. The plan she and Bronson had come up with was of necessity simple. She’d just dropped him off in northeast London, where the streets were still largely deserted, and was going to drive out of the city on the M11 motorway as far as Stansted Airport. There, she’d leave the BMW in the long-term car park, where a vehicle on foreign plates would be less likely to attract attention, and hire a car.

  She knew it was possible, or perhaps probable, that her credit card purchases were being monitored by the police, in case she led them to Bronson, but he was miles away so it really wouldn’t matter if she was stopped and questioned at the airport. And she had all morning to complete the transaction.

  In the event, nobody—neither the Avis booking clerk nor a couple of patrolling police officers bristling with weapons and body armor who were lurking nearby—took the slightest notice of her, and twenty minutes after she’d handed over her credit card, she was driving back down the M11 toward London, in a one-year-old Ford Focus.

  And worrying about Bronson.

  Bronson was cold and, he hoped, invisible. He certainly thought he looked the part. In a restaurant, nobody really notices waiters—they’re just members of staff who take orders, deliver plates of food and clear the tables. On the streets of London, and most other capital cities, the homeless and the beggars are the nonpeople, shapes hunched in doorways or lying on cardboard, perhaps with a plastic cup in front of them holding a few low-value coins. But for the most part, people notice them but don’t see them, averting their eyes or stepping around them. And that’s what he was counting on.

  He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days—not a deliberate or planned move, just dictated by the circumstances and their movements in Germany and Poland—and his face was grubby with what looked like ingrained dirt, an effect it had taken him some time to achieve. He was wearing the oldest pair of trainers he owned, dirty and torn jeans, a hooded sweatshirt and a camouflage-pattern jacket that he thought he’d thrown out years ago. Angela had recovered all of those from Bronson’s house in the early hours of the morning, but only after they’d spent twenty minutes making absolutely sure that the property wasn’t under surveillance. He also had a battered rucksack that contained a handful of chocolate bars, cans of soft drink, a couple of sweaters, Angela’s mobile phone, which was switched off, and the silencer and spare magazines for the Walther. The pistol was in his pocket, just in case. Beside him was a grubby old sack, inside which were the two Heckler & Koch submachine guns and extra magazines, each wrapped up in a couple of old sweaters and a tattered blanket.

  At that moment he was sitting in the doorway of a small office building about a quarter of a mile from the stadium in Stratford where the opening ceremony was due to start early that evening, and trying to decide what to do next. He was also still wondering what Marcus had planned, because the one thing that was already abundantly clear was that getting anywhere near the stadium, even as a pedestrian, was as near impossible as made no difference.

  Getting close with a vehicle, and especially a vehicle big enough to carry an object even half the size of Die Glocke, was simply a nonstarter. Every street Bronson had tried to walk down was cordoned off, steel barriers placed across the entrances preventing access to any unauthorized vehicles, police officers in attendance, as they’d probably been for days. And already, despite the early hour, the whole area was starting to come alive.

  There were people everywhere, walking to and fro, cameras clicking as they took photographs of each other, sometimes posing in front of the Olympic advertising slogans, information boards and illuminated displays, which listed the timetable of events. Establishing shots, Bronson supposed you could call them, for the myriad picture collections they were obviously intending to compile of the event. There was a huge buzz of excitement in the air as people realized that the time for the Games had finally come, and that the greatest sporting contest in the world was about to be held in Britain’s capital city.

  Bronson had been moved on twice by regular police officers and once by a community policeman, and every time he’d kept his head down and simply complied, weaving his way through the crowds of people as he looked for another quiet spot where he could sit down and wait. The doorway of the office building he was occupying wasn’t ideal, but he knew that he needed to stay in that vicinity, so it would have to do.

  He wriggled about, trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable; cardboard may have provided some insulation against the cold seeping up through the paving slabs, though he wasn’t convinced about that, but it did nothing to cushion his body.

  People walked past him, none making eye contact and most stepping well away from him, to the other side of the pavement, as if being homeless was a contagious condition. Then one man didn’t. He was tall and solidly built, but very scruffily dressed. He had the air of a man looking for something. Or someone.

  When he saw Bronson half-lying in the doorway, he crossed the street and walked over to stand beside him. Then he prodded the recumbent figure with the toe of one grubby sneaker.

  “You look like shit,” Dickie Weeks said, looking down at him.

  “That’s the general idea, Dickie,” Bronson replied. “You don’t look that sharp yourself.”

  “Blending in, mate, blending in. I’m feeling charitable. Fancy a cuppa?”

  “Thought you’d never bloody ask.”

  Bronson climbed slowly to his feet—even the comparatively short time he’d been sitting on the pavement seemed to have driven a chilling ache through his bones—and the two men walked away down the road.

  “You must know a good café,” Weeks said, “you being a street person and all that. Job not going so well, is it?”

  “Give it a rest, Dickie,” Bronson snapped. “This is serious.”

  They walked into a café that was little more than a glorified snack bar, Bronson attracting hostile glances from several of the men sitting there, but his bulk was obviously sufficiently intimidating to prevent anyone saying anything to him.

  “Tea?” Weeks asked.

  “Coffee: hot, black and strong,” Bronson replied. “And a bacon sarnie if your funds will stretch that far.”

  While Weeks strode across to the counter, Bronson walked over to a table in the far corner, as far away from everyone else as possible, pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, his back to the window.

  As he did so, two men at another of the t
ables stood up and walked out, one of them glancing across at Bronson with a disgusted expression as he reached the door.

  A couple of minutes later Weeks walked over to him, carrying two chipped mugs, and sat down facing him.

  Bronson wrapped his hands around the mug, relishing the warmth of the china.

  “I asked for it extra strong,” Weeks said, “which means you’ve got two spoonfuls of instant in there instead of only one. Breakfast’ll be along as soon as they’ve found a pig to kill. So,” he lowered his voice slightly, “what the hell’s going on here, Chris?”

  “First, thanks for that Llama. It got me out of trouble once, and saved my life as well. I’ll be keeping it.”

  Weeks nodded. “I take it somebody who was walking around the place now isn’t?”

  “If you mean did I use it to kill someone, the answer’s yes. Or, to be exact, I didn’t pull the trigger, because somebody else did, but there is a body out there with a traceable bullet in it. Not that anyone’s ever likely to find it.”

  Weeks nodded.

  “Glad it worked for you,” he said. “But that’s not why you asked me to meet you here. And it doesn’t explain why you look like you’re auditioning for a part in a low-budget zombie movie.”

  “Long story,” Bronson replied, then broke off as a grossly overweight man, wearing a grayish apron decorated with an interesting and comprehensive selection of stains, only some of which appeared to be from food, waddled across to their corner and deposited two plates on the table in front of them.

  “Bacon butties,” he announced, in case either man didn’t recognize the greasy offering he’d presented, then returned to his position behind the counter.