Echo of the Reich

17

22 July 2012

Bronson didn’t immediately walk toward the pub. He’d asked Eaton to drop him some distance away because he wanted to be sure that there were no nasty surprises waiting for him in or near the building. With both his own mobile and the phone Curtis had given him disabled, he was reasonably sure that the police wouldn’t know where he was at that precise moment, and he’d never told Curtis or anyone else where he was staying.

But if there was a tracking chip in the police mobile, and the Met had been following his position over the last few days, it was possible that they could have worked out where he’d taken a room. So he wanted to be sure of the position before he opened his front door, and that meant checking that there were no surveillance units in the area. He hoped he’d be able to spot them-after all, he’d been involved in enough operations of that sort himself while he’d been in the force.

Then another thought struck him. An old trick, but it might work, or at least serve to muddy the waters a bit.

He glanced down the street. A bus was just approaching him, perhaps a hundred yards away, and there was a stop fairly close to where he was standing. He ambled across the pavement and joined the end of the short queue. While he stood there, he reinserted the battery in the police mobile, snapped on the back cover and switched it on.

When the phone played the slightly irritating melody to indicate that it was working, the elderly lady directly in front of him swung round to stare at him in a hostile manner. Bronson shrugged and smiled at her, and she turned away again.

He accessed the menu system and selected “silent” for incoming calls and texts. That suited him perfectly.

When the bus arrived, Bronson bought a ticket and then moved to the back of the vehicle, to an area where no other passengers were sitting. He sat down, then bent forward and felt under the seat. There was some kind of a mesh under the seat itself, and metal struts forming the frame. On one side was a kind of pocket formed by the base of the frame; it was just about the right size. He checked that nobody was watching, then bent forward again, slipped the phone into the space and sat back up. A cleaner or somebody would eventually find it, he supposed, and if the bus braked hard it might well fly out and clatter across the floor, but he really didn’t care what happened to it. If there was a tracking chip inside it, that would divert police resources away from where he would actually be.

He got off at the next stop and walked back in the direction the bus had come from, back toward his lodging. There was a small cafe, more accurately a greasy spoon, about two hundred yards away from the pub and on the opposite side of the road. Bronson walked inside, picked a table right beside the window, which offered a clear view down the street, and ordered a coffee and a slice of Madeira cake, which looked like the safest thing on the menu. Then he settled down to watch.

Half an hour later, he stood up and walked out. He’d seen no sign of anything that looked even slightly like a surveillance operation. In fact, the only sign of a police presence at all was a patrol car that had driven slowly down the road after he’d been sitting at his table for about ten minutes. That didn’t bother him, because he supposed the street was a part of a regular police patrol route. But he’d seen no parked vans-or none that didn’t stop, load or unload something and then drive away again-and no indication at all that the pub was the subject of anyone’s scrutiny but his own. But still Bronson was cautious. He walked past the pub on the opposite side of the road, checking everywhere as he did so, then crossed the street lower down and headed back the way he’d come. And again he saw nothing suspicious.

Then he walked steadily around to the rear entrance of the building, a part of the pub that wasn’t overlooked from any of the adjacent buildings or any possible vantage point that he could identify, opened the door and stepped inside. He walked quickly up the stairs to his room, unlocked the door and stepped inside, relocking the door behind him.

The room was untouched, as far as he could tell. It took him only about ten minutes to pack all his possessions into a soft-sided bag fitted with a long shoulder strap. Then he walked down the steps and out of the back door. He’d paid for a week in advance, so there was no need for him to see the landlord or any of his staff, and he wouldn’t have done so anyway, precisely because of the publicity he’d had. To be recognized by one of the bar staff and arrested in the pub would have comprehensively ruined his plans.

So he slipped away quietly, out of the back door and away down the street.

Epping lies at the edge of the forest of the same name, and he had no trouble finding an open area where he would easily see anyone approaching. There were a couple of wooden benches on one side, and he strode over to the nearest one and sat down.

Bronson still had two mobiles: his personal phone and the new cheapie Eaton had bought for him. He daren’t use his own phone because there was a good chance the Met would have obtained the number by now, so he took out the chip and worked it between his fingers until it cracked in two, then discarded it in a nearby rubbish bin, along with the phone itself. He’d planned to buy himself a new one anyway. Then he took the new mobile out of his pocket, checked the settings to ensure that his number wouldn’t be displayed on the recipient’s phone, and then called Angela.

He was feeling more than a little guilty. For the last month, they’d been talking about taking a holiday while the Olympic Games were being held in London, on the reasonable grounds that the capital would be hell on wheels during that period, and neither of them had the slightest interest in any form of organized sport. Angela had to work in London-she was a ceramics conservator at the British Museum-and the prospect of battling not only the regular London traffic and pedestrians but also the anticipated tens of thousands of spectators for the Games had been moderately daunting.

They’d discussed going abroad-any country would do, but France or Italy seemed to have risen to the top of the list-and just sitting in the sun by the sea and doing pretty much nothing. It was an enticing prospect, and Bronson had been on the point of making the booking when his superior had given him the bad news about his secondment to the Metropolitan Police.

Bronson and Angela had had a short and somewhat stormy marriage, and their separation and divorce had been almost entirely Bronson’s fault. The reason for their breakup had been a classic romantic novelist’s cliche, but like all cliches it was both common and fundamentally true: Bronson had actually been in love with Jackie Hampton, his best friend’s wife. Or at least, he thought he had been. But then Jackie had been killed-murdered, in fact-in Italy and since then Bronson had been doing his best to convince Angela that they should be together again. He’d also come to the conclusion that his feelings for the dead woman might have been, at least in part, simply a desire for the unattainable, though he also realized that could have just been him trying to rationalize his conflicting emotions.

Angela, quite understandably, was very cautious about committing herself again, and she had told him she intended to take things slowly this time, to wait and see what the future held for them both. Bronson was quite certain about her feelings for him-he knew that she loved him, that she had always loved him-but he was also keenly aware that she couldn’t stand the thought of being hurt again if he suddenly switched his affections elsewhere. Not that that was going to happen, Bronson was positive. So they had spent a lot of time together while she tried to come to a decision.

They had been very close over the last few months, and Bronson had already decided that it was the right time to propose to her again, although he still wasn’t sure what her answer would be. He had hoped that a holiday would help Angela clarify her thoughts, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen.

“Hi,” Bronson said, as soon as she answered.

“You’ve been on TV,” she replied immediately. “And not in a good way. What the hell’s going on, Chris?”

“I can’t explain it right now, but it’s all a part of this undercover operation they’ve shoved me into.”

That statement had the benefit of being almost true, as long as you excluded the most recent events from the explanation.

“You might even see more stuff about me over the next few days,” Bronson went on, “but none of it will necessarily be true. Now, as part of this, I’ve got to go away for a day or two.”

“Where to?”

“Germany, actually.”

“Germany? Why? I thought this operation was something to do with the Olympics?”

“It is, kind of, but it would take too long to tell you about it. I’ve got to go to a meeting in Berlin.”

Bronson paused for a moment, choosing his next words with some care.

“There’s something else,” he said. “You might be contacted by the Metropolitan Police about me, asking if you know where I am. Don’t tell them anything. Just say you haven’t seen me for several days.”

Angela snorted. “That’s not a problem, because I haven’t seen you, not for about two weeks. But why would they talk to me? Surely they know where you’re going and what you’re supposed to be doing?”

“Not all of them, no. This operation has been cleared at the highest level, but to maintain security they’re going to treat me as a wanted man, so the police in London will be looking for me. It’ll all help to establish my cover.”

That sounded almost believable, but Bronson doubted if Angela bought it for a second. And her next words proved it.

“You’re in trouble, aren’t you?” she said.

“Only a little,” Bronson replied reluctantly. “And I really can’t tell you any more at the moment. As soon as I have a better idea what’s going on, I’ll let you know.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Good,” Angela said. “I’ll hold you to that. And be careful. I worry about you.”

Bronson ended the call and then dialed the number he’d memorized: the number for Bob Curtis’s mobile.

“What?”

“Hi,” Bronson said.

“Where the hell are you? We’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“What number are you calling from?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Bronson said. “Have you got anything to tell me?”

There was silence for a moment, and when Curtis spoke again, his voice sounded almost resigned.

“I suppose you mean why did a van-load of coppers turn up at your meet?”

“Sounds like a good place to start.”

“Look, you know the way the system works. The sergeants tell the constables what to do, and the inspectors take the credit, just like any other big organization, right?”

“Yeah. Oh, and just so you know, I’m in a bus, so there’s no point in trying to triangulate where this call’s coming from.”

“I wasn’t.” Curtis sounded indignant. “Anyway, chain of command and all that, so I had to keep Shit Rises informed. After your last call, I told him what you’d said, specifically that you’d blow the whistle if you needed close support, and he decided it was a good time to roll up the group.”

“Just like that, despite what I’d said?”

“Just like that. He even called it an ‘executive decision,’ the pretentious prat. He forbade me from telling you what he’d planned, because he wanted your reaction to be natural when our blokes hit the meeting. The team used the GPS tracker to follow your car, but when they got to the site they didn’t know which building you were in, and that was why they were still waiting on the road when you drove out. I did try calling your mobile to warn you, but you never answered.”

“It was switched off,” Bronson replied. “I didn’t want it ringing when I was talking to those people and having to explain who was calling me.”

“Right,” Curtis said. “Well, you may not need to explain anything to them, but now you sure as hell need to explain things to us. Why the gun? Where did you get it? And why the hell did you fire it at those coppers?”

“Lots of questions.”

“Yeah, and I’m hoping for lots of answers. Good, solid, honest answers.”

“First, I didn’t fire it at anyone. I shot out the front tire on that van just so I could get away from the industrial estate. Nobody was in any danger, and it cemented my relationship with the group, that’s for sure.”

“That’s one point of view, certainly. Unfortunately, Shit Rises has a rather different slant on what happened. He thinks you’ve gone renegade, some kind of odd variation of Stockholm syndrome. There’s a warrant out for your arrest-a real warrant, not something intended to help build your cover-and it’s gone countrywide. With your picture plastered all over Sky News, and every copper in Britain with a copy of your photograph, you’ve got no place to hide.”

Bronson felt a cold shiver pass down his back. Despite what he’d told Eaton and Georg, he had hoped that he would have been able to continue what he was doing with official support.

“That’s bloody ridiculous, and you know it.”

“What you know and I know won’t make any difference,” Curtis replied. “Davidson has made the decision, and he’s sticking with it. He figured you’d probably call in, and I’ve been ordered to pass you the official line: you should surrender yourself and the weapon-I gather it’s only a twenty-two-caliber pistol-to any police station. The fact that you were operating undercover will be a mitigating circumstance at your trial, but I think you can be certain that your career as a police officer is over as of now.”

Bronson was silent for a few seconds, his mind racing. He tried one last appeal.

“Listen, Bob, you know as well as I do that that’s not going to happen. If I was going to turn myself in, I’d make bloody sure the weapon never saw the light of day. There are a thousand ways I could lose it-even if I chucked it into a skip you’d never find it-and any halfway competent defense barrister would be able to convince a jury that there was no proof I’d ever had possession of it, or that I was the person who fired the shot.”

“What you’ve just said is almost an admission of guilt. How do you know I’m not taping this call?”

“Taping a mobile isn’t as easy as taping a landline phone. That’s why I called you on this number. And it probably wouldn’t be admissible as evidence in a trial anyway. So are you taping it?”

“No,” Curtis conceded.

“Good. Now listen. I still think this group is just a front for something else, something much more deadly. If I can just have a few more days, I’m certain I’ll be able to find out what it is.”

“You’re back on that conspiracy theory kick, Chris, and it won’t wash. I ran it by Davidson, put the best spin on it I could. No dice. Because of what happened today he thinks you’re just trying to save your own skin by inventing some kind of a terrorist plot. Take my advice. Get rid of the pistol, yeah, that’s a good idea, but if you walk into a police station of your own free will that’ll help your case. If we find you and arrest you, that’ll be completely different.”

“You know I won’t do that.”

“I didn’t think you would, but I had to tell you. You’ll do what you have to do, I guess. Oh, I presume you’ve picked up a different mobile, which is a good idea. There’s a tracking chip on the motherboard of the one we gave you, so I suggest you lose it.”

“Gosh, I wish I’d thought of that,” Bronson said, and rang off.