Echo of the Reich

by James Becker

  He pressed a couple of buttons experimentally, just to do something, but to no avail.

  At fourteen seconds to go, a figure in army uniform climbed into the truck through the rear door.

  Weeks covered him with his MP5, but the man ignored him and strode forward.

  “Russell. Bomb disposal,” he announced. “What have you got?”

  “Do you speak German?” Bronson demanded.

  “A little, yes.”

  “Good. There’s twelve seconds to go and the control panel’s unlocked.”

  The army officer stepped over to the control panel and looked down at it, his lips moving silently as he rapidly scanned the illuminated labels.

  “Right,” he said, and pressed two buttons simultaneously. “That should be the abort,” he said.

  Then he frowned, because the counter was still unwinding and a message had popped up in an alphanumeric display.

  “It’s asking for the abort code,” Russell said. “Do you have it?”

  Bronson and Weeks just stared at him.

  “I said: do you have the code?” Russell repeated.

  “No,” Bronson replied.

  Russell’s face seemed to age five years in an instant.

  “Then we’re buggered,” he said.

  55

  27 July 2012

  The three of them stared at the timer in horrified fascination as it counted down to zero.

  Then a new message appeared in the display.

  “That says that the actuating sequence has begun,” Russell said, in a small voice.

  Bronson strode across to the viewing pane in the steel partition and looked into the other compartment.

  The Bell was in motion, the outer shell beginning to rotate slowly, a faint whine just audible through the steel wall.

  “It’s started,” Bronson said.

  “Did Marcus tell you what it did?” Weeks asked.

  Bronson nodded, but then, as a pale violet light suddenly became visible in the viewing port, the color deepening with each passing moment, a sudden thought struck him.

  “Lateral thinking,” he exclaimed. “After two minutes, that thing becomes self-sustaining. We’ve got to cut the power to it right now.”

  “But we haven’t got any bolt-croppers,” Weeks pointed out, “and the cables are under the floor.”

  “I know,” Bronson said, seizing his MP5, “so we have to hit the generators. Blow their fuel tanks. Stop them operating.”

  “That’s bloody brilliant.”

  Russell ran for the door as Bronson and Weeks aimed their Heckler & Koch submachine guns at the fuel tanks of two of the petrol-driven generators.

  The interior of the truck echoed to the sound of machine-gun fire as the two men, standing side by side, opened up with their weapons, firing short bursts. The bullets ripped through the two fuel tanks, sending petrol flying through the air, the fuel splashing down onto the hot engines below. In moments, the petrol ignited with a heavy “whump” and that end of the truck turned into hell on earth, blazing fuel igniting everything flammable.

  The heat was intense, and the oxygen was being sucked out of the air Bronson and Weeks were breathing. They needed to get out. But the third generator was still running, still supplying power to the nightmare device inside the locked compartment, and both men turned their weapons on it.

  As they did so, both the other generators died, the fuel in their carburettors exhausted. Again, fuel spewed everywhere as the third fuel tank ruptured, but the blaze ensured that it was ignited immediately. Maybe that tank held more than the others, or there were other supplies of fuel there they hadn’t spotted, but for whatever reason the third petrol explosion was both louder and more powerful than the other two, blowing Bronson and Weeks off their feet.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Bronson said, helping Weeks stand up again.

  They staggered to the rear doors of the truck and jumped down to the ground, both blackened and barely recognizable as human beings. And at that moment something else—perhaps another can of petrol—blew up in the truck behind them with a deep booming sound.

  All around the vehicle, police officers and firemen were assembling, the latter preparing their firefighting equipment, though it was already clear that little inside the truck would survive the blaze.

  Then there was a scream from inside the truck, and Marcus, his clothes sodden with blood, flames licking around his limbs, stood framed in the rear doorway, silhouetted against the blaze like some devilish creature from the pit, his pistol in his hand as he looked for a target.

  Bronson and Weeks acted as one, swinging round and aiming their MP5s at him. The four shots sounded like two as they simultaneously each fired two rounds.

  Marcus tumbled backward into the flames, the pistol falling from his hand to land on the ground outside the truck. And he didn’t move at all as the raging fire began to consume his body.

  “Christ, I thought he was dead,” Weeks said.

  “Well, he is now,” Bronson replied.

  “Do you think we stopped it in time?”

  “I have no idea, but I suppose we’ll soon find out.”

  Bronson glanced around him at the circle of faces that surrounded them.

  “I think it’s time we made ourselves scarce,” he said. “At least I’ve got an excuse for wandering about carrying a submachine gun, but you should definitely get the hell away from here.”

  Weeks nodded, then walked over to Bronson and pulled a couple of clear plastic evidence bags from one of the pockets on the other man’s utility belt. He strode over to the blazing truck, picked up the pistol Marcus had dropped and slipped it into one of the bags. Then he made his way back to Bronson, a somewhat bemused smile on his face.

  “Give me the other pistol,” Weeks said. “Might as well try to pick up some stock while I’m here. And carrying these two weapons will give me an excuse to get out of here.”

  Bronson grinned at him, pulled the Walther he’d taken off the German out of his belt and handed it over. Then he felt inside his trouser pocket, took out the keys for the hire car and gave them to Weeks as well.

  “You’ve got a bloody cheek, Dickie, but actually that might work. Whatever happens, give me a call and I’ll do what I can.”

  Weeks walked briskly away from the truck, a police officer on a mission, and the circle of people parted silently to let him through.

  Bronson smiled at his retreating figure, then turned back to stare again at the burning truck. Then he was conscious of a couple of people approaching him, and swung round to meet them. Neither Bob Curtis nor Detective Inspector Davidson looked particularly pleased to see him.

  56

  9 August 2012

  “Sit down, Chris.”

  Bronson took a seat in front of the superintendent’s desk and waited.

  “You’re fully recovered, I hope. Smoke inhalation can be dangerous, and I can see that your hair and eyebrows suffered a bit.”

  Bronson nodded.

  “I’m fine, sir, really. And the checks for radiation sickness came back negative as well.”

  “Good. Now, there’s good news and bad news, like there usually is. The good news is that the boffins have finally finished picking over what was left of that burned-out lorry in the Olympic Park. Your instinct was right. Because you managed to stop the generators delivering a current to the Bell only a few seconds after it was activated, the two contrarotating cylinders never reached a sufficiently high speed to start a sustained reaction.”

  The superintendent paused and glanced down at the notes on his desk.

  “Now, I don’t pretend to understand the science behind it, but it seems that when it was originally constructed—when the Nazis built Die Glocke, I mean—it was intended to act as a kind of nuclear reactor, to transmute thorium into uranium or possibly uranium into plutonium, as part of the German atom bomb project. And we now know a bit more about what’s happened since then. The Met police arrested half a dozen other German
s who were clearly involved with this plot and a couple of them have been quite forthcoming. According to them, at the end of the last war, the Nazis managed to fly the original Bell, and the most important scientists involved in the project, out to South America. It looks as if Marcus Wolf’s grandfather was the officer in charge of that evacuation, and he and a bunch of other renegade Nazis, who were certain that Hitler had been right all along, decided they’d use the Bell to take revenge on the rest of Europe. The problem they had was that it took them a lot longer, decades longer in fact, to produce a fully functioning and miniaturized version of the weapon.

  “And they also changed the way it worked from the original. Marcus Wolf’s Bell was only ever intended to produce radiation. Massive amounts of lethal radiation. If you hadn’t stopped it, I have been assured by the scientists who’ve looked at it, a circular area covering over one hundred square miles would have been so badly contaminated that nothing would be able to live there for a minimum of fifty years. The estimates of the immediate death toll don’t run into the thousands. They run into the tens of thousands, possibly even higher, and an incalculable number of people would have suffered from cancers and other diseases caused by radiation sickness of various sorts.

  “It was an outstanding piece of work, and I’m only sorry that Detective Inspector Davidson—I’m sorry, I mean the former Detective Inspector Davidson—was so dismissive of the information that you provided to him and his officers. He’s already been suspended and will probably be dismissed from the force, and there will be a commendation for you in the near future, I imagine. The other evidence that has emerged from this operation is that Marcus Wolf—which does actually appear to be his real name—was a very professional operator. As well as the technical expertise he and his men showed in the construction of this nasty weapon, he had even managed to arrange for Israel to take the blame. I fully accept your view that Wolf was a Nazi, in the proper sense of that word, and he genuinely believed that the Jews were responsible for most of the ills of the world. What we think he was hoping for was a backlash against the state of Israel once his plot had succeeded.

  “What he’d done was prepare forged documentation that would apparently show that the device had been developed and positioned by a radical Egyptian terrorist group, but which would, on closer examination, prove to have been the work of rogue elements within the Israeli Mossad secret service. It was, if you like, a forgery within a forgery. But thanks to the information you’ve provided, identifying the real culprits has not proved difficult.”

  The superintendent paused and smiled at Bronson.

  “And the bad news, sir?”

  “There have been a number of questions raised about the weapons you and your companion were seen to be carrying, and later using, in the Olympic Park. You’ve also failed to identify your companion. Your statement that he was a former army colleague presently seconded to the Special Air Service, and that he supplied the weapons you used, appears to be without foundation. Or at least, the army has so far failed to identify anyone who meets those criteria.”

  For a few seconds, the superintendent simply stared at Bronson. Then he nodded and continued.

  “We will be taking the pragmatic view here, Chris. Because you managed to foil this plot, no action will be taken over any perceived firearms offenses that you and your companion may seem to be guilty of. As I’m your superior officer, all inquiries into this matter will eventually arrive on my desk, and I am prepared to provide evidence that the weapons were issued to you by the Kent Police, and that your companion was an undercover officer employed by this force who can’t be identified for security reasons.”

  Bronson breathed a sigh of relief. Because of what had happened, he hadn’t expected to encounter any problems over his somewhat unorthodox handling of the situation, but it was good to have this confirmed.

  There was only one other matter that was gnawing at his conscience. Two days after the incidents in the Olympic Park, he and Weeks had traveled by car to Berlin, used the keys Bronson had removed from Marcus’s body in the truck, and thoroughly searched the German’s house. One of the keys had opened a safe in a bedroom, hidden inside a wardrobe that contained only Nazi uniforms. Inside that safe they’d found several hundred thousand euros, which they’d split between them as unofficial payment for the job they’d done in London, a Walther pistol and a DVD.

  Bronson had played the first few seconds of the DVD to make sure it was the correct one, then removed it and the pistol. On the way back across the Channel on the ferry, he’d cut the DVD into a dozen pieces and tossed them all over the side rail, and then dropped the component parts of the Walther into the sea, one at a time.

  But that still left the killing of the undercover police officer to be addressed.

  “And the other matter, sir?” Bronson asked.

  “Ah, yes. That’s caused a bit of confusion, actually, but the Berlin police were very helpful. They still don’t know why we needed to know about an undercover police officer named Herman Polti, but they did check their records for us. And that’s a puzzle, really, because not only could they find no trace of an undercover officer by that name, but they also could find no serving police officer anywhere in the Berlin force called Herman Polti. So I don’t know where you got your information from, but it appears to be completely inaccurate.”

  The superintendent paused again, and looked speculatively across the desk at Bronson.

  “They did do a wider check, though, and the name cropped up on one of their databases. A week or so ago, shortly after you went undercover in London, actually, the body of a man named Herman Polti was found in woodland on the eastern outskirts of Berlin. He’d been shot in the chest, and the corpse showed unmistakable signs of having been brutally tortured.”

  Bronson sat forward in his chair, hanging on every word.

  “But he wasn’t a policeman. Quite the reverse, in fact. Now that we’ve managed to identify Marcus Wolf as the ringleader of this plot, we’ve also been able to trace many of his associates. Herman Polti was one of those associates, and he was also wanted by the Berlin police in connection with at least two robberies and three murders. He was, in short, a career criminal who seemed to have thrown his lot in with Wolf. Who killed him, and who tortured him, are two mysteries that we may never solve. It’s possible that someone from his past life caught up with him to exact revenge, or perhaps Marcus Wolf discovered he was playing both sides against the middle and had him executed. We don’t know, and frankly we don’t care.”

  Bronson didn’t even realize he had been holding his breath until he exhaled.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said, getting to his feet, “for everything.”

  The superintendent smiled.

  “Actually, I think it’s the other way round,” he said. “I don’t care what you’re working on now, just clear your desk and take some leave. You’ve earned it. I don’t want to see you back here for at least two weeks. If Angela’s still speaking to you, take her somewhere hot. Just not the Berlin area. It’s possible some of Marcus Wolf’s friends might still be on the loose, and I’d hate you to meet up with them.”

  Bronson nodded.

  “I hadn’t planned to go back to Germany for some time,” he said. “Maybe never. There’s something about that country that I don’t like. Probably just too many echoes of the past.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Olympic Myths

  There are a lot of misconceptions about the Olympics in general, and about the 1936 Berlin Olympics in particular.

  One myth that has endured to this day is that Adolf Hitler deliberately snubbed the hugely successful black American athlete Jesse Owens. In fact, no such thing occurred. All the evidence suggests that Hitler actually admired Owens, and that the feeling was mutual. In reality, Hitler was told by Count Henri de Baillet-Latour, the then president of the International Olympic Committee, that as the Führer was a guest at the Games, he would have to either congratulate all of the winner
s or none of them. Hitler’s schedule—he was, after all, running Germany at the time—did not permit him to attend every event, and so after the first day he congratulated none of the athletes, white or black.

  This myth was perpetrated long after the Olympics were over by, among other people, Jesse Owens himself, and it wasn’t until 1965, almost thirty years after the Berlin Olympics, that Owens finally admitted in an interview that there was no truth in the story whatsoever. Owens had become a popular public speaker in the interim, and had told and retold the story of the alleged snub simply because, as he put it in his own words: “Those stories are what people like to hear, so you tell them.”

  Right from the start, the Berlin Games were mired in both controversy and myth. During the opening ceremony, the British team’s military-style “eyes right” as they strode past Adolf Hitler in the viewing stand was watched in stony silence by the German spectators, and the refusal by the American team to lower their flag as they passed the Führer was greeted with whistles and catcalls of disapproval by the German crowd.

  In fact, it was touch and go whether the Americans would send a team at all: in 1935 the Amateur Athletic Union of America voted to participate in the event by the slimmest possible margin of 58 votes to 56.

  When the German team, five hundred strong and wearing white military-style uniforms, marched into the stadium at the end of the parade, there was no doubting the feelings of the spectators. After greeting the German competitors with a roar that seemed almost to shake the very fabric of the stadium, the crowd burst into an impromptu rendition of the chorus of Deutschland Über Alles, the German national anthem.

  When the parade was complete, Hitler made one of his briefest speeches ever—just a single sentence to officially open the Games—and then a recording of a special greeting from Baron Pierre De Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, was played over the public address system. When that was complete, twenty thousand homing pigeons were released, all except one returning to their owners. That single dissenting bird took up residence in the stadium and was seen on a daily basis throughout the Games.