Echo of the Reich

22

23 July 2012

The noise of the shot was deafening in the confined space, the concrete walls seeming to concentrate and amplify the sound. The Walther kicked in his hand, the slide instantly locking back as the spent cartridge case was ejected, the glittering brass case spinning out of the open breech to land on the concrete floor with a metallic tinkling noise.

The bound man grunted once as the copper-jacketed bullet slammed into the center of his chest, then slumped forward, killed instantly by the single shot. The front of his T-shirt turned red as blood flooded out of the entry wound. Below the chair, more blood began to pool on the floor from the ruptured vessels and ripped flesh of the exit wound that Bronson knew the bullet would have torn in his back. Behind the chair, the rubberized sheets of the movable bullet trap swung gently backward and forward, having done their job in stopping the nine-millimeter slug after it had performed its deadly task.

Bronson’s mind suddenly filled with images of Baghdad. He’d done two tours of duty in Iraq as an army officer, and had been involved in several firefights during that time. But that was a very different environment: contesting ownership of the streets of the battered city with heavily armed insurgents, clearing rebel-held houses using grenades and automatic weapons, the enemy dimly seen shapes flitting from one piece of cover to another as they fired long bursts from their Kalashnikov assault rifles. For a while, the whole city had become a single killing zone, and Bronson genuinely had no idea how many Iraqis had fallen to bullets fired from his SA-80 or his pistol. Anonymous men fighting for their country or for their leader, and dying in droves as a result. Urban warfare was perhaps the bloodiest and most unpleasant form of conflict.

But even that hadn’t left the same kind of sick feeling in his stomach that Bronson was now experiencing. He’d just carried out an execution-the cold-blooded killing of a man he’d never seen before-and he’d done it as much as anything to save his own skin. Because he was absolutely certain that if he’d refused to pull the trigger, Marcus would have carried out his threat without a second thought. The man lashed to the chair would still be dead, and Bronson would have been lying beside him.

The only sliver of comfort Bronson could take from what had just happened was that at least the man had been killed instantly by the single bullet and hadn’t suffered. And he, Bronson, was still alive, and that meant that he still had the ability to bring Marcus and his gang of thugs to justice.

“Good shot, Mr. Bronson,” Marcus said, stepping forward and holding out the plastic bag for Bronson to drop the Walther into.

Bronson handed over the weapon-again, there was nothing else he could do because of the watchful armed men in the room, and the pistol was useless to him now that it was unloaded-as he stared across at the dead man in the chair. Even as he watched, a couple of Marcus’s men stepped forward and began to release the leather straps that still held the corpse in place. Released from his bonds, the dead man tumbled untidily to the floor to lie facedown on the discolored concrete, the exit wound on his back now clearly visible.

Any vestige of hope that Bronson might have harbored that he was part of an elaborate theater, that the man’s injuries had been faked and that the cartridge was a blank, was dashed in that instant. He’d seen dead men before, and the unmistakable limpness of the body as it thudded on to the concrete floor told its own story. He was in no doubt whatsoever that he’d just committed murder.

“Who was he?”

“What?”

Bronson pointed at the figure lying on the floor. “The man I just executed for you,” he said. “I’d like to know his name.”

Marcus nodded. “Yes,” he replied, “I suppose we owe you that, at least. His name was Herman Polti, and perhaps I ought to clarify one small point. I told you that he was in contact with the Berlin police, and that was not entirely true. In fact, I should say it was wholly untrue. Polti was actually an undercover police officer, much as Georg feared you might be when you first made contact with his group.”

As Marcus’s words sank in, another wave of revulsion swept through Bronson. Police officers everywhere were accustomed to putting their lives on the line and, rightly or wrongly, killing a policeman was always considered to be one of the worst possible crimes. And arguably the worst possible way for any police officer to die was at the hand of a fellow policeman. What just happened had put Bronson beyond the pale. Way, way beyond it.

The German smiled coldly at Bronson. “So now we have you on film shooting a bound and helpless police officer, and we have a pistol with your fingerprints all over it. When we dump Polti’s body, we’ll ensure that the bullet and the cartridge case are found with it. The Walther and the film from the camera will be stored away in a safe place, but the moment you do something we don’t like, or we suspect that you might even be thinking of running off to the authorities, I’ll make sure that all the evidence is handed to the police. As of this moment, Mr. Bronson, we own you.”

And that, Bronson thought, was a pretty reasonable summary of the situation. But as he looked into the German’s cold eyes, Bronson made himself a promise. No matter what happened, someday, somehow, he would come back, find Marcus and kill him.

For a few seconds, Bronson stared at the scene in front of him. One of the men had brought in a rigid stretcher, the top covered with a plastic sheet, and he and another man were in the process of placing the body of the dead man on it. A third man was standing near the chair, a bucket of some kind of granular material, possibly sawdust, in his hand, and he was sprinkling it over the bloodstains.

Bronson looked back at Marcus. “So what happens now?” he asked.

The German looked slightly surprised at the question. “You’re one of us now,” he replied, “but there’s nothing for you to do in Germany. I have a full team here and in any case you don’t speak the language, or so I’ve been told. I’ll tell Georg that you passed our little test, and that he can trust you to do the right thing. And we both know exactly why he can trust you. Then it’s up to him to decide how best to make use of your talents in London before the Laternentrager gets there.”

Bronson’s face reflected the confusion he was feeling. “The what?” he asked. “What are you talking about?”

Marcus shook his head, and for the first time looked a little uncomfortable. “It’s just a German expression,” he replied. “Forget I said it. Now,” he continued briskly, “I’ll get one of my men to drive you back to your car. By the time you reach London I’m sure Georg will have organized some jobs for you to do.”

The German reached into his jacket pocket and took out an envelope, which he handed to Bronson. Inside were six five-hundred-euro notes.

“What’s this?” Bronson asked. “Blood money?”

“No. You’re now on our payroll, and so you can call that an advance of salary.”

Three minutes later, having retraced his steps, Bronson was back in the garage, accompanied by two of the Germans, neither of whom seemed inclined to speak to him, not that he was interested in holding a conversation. Marcus had told him that he’d be driven back to his car by one man, which had immediately suggested to Bronson the possibility of taking the initiative and overpowering him, and then somehow getting back inside the building to find the pistol and the incriminating film footage. But against two armed men, Bronson knew he wouldn’t have a chance.

In the garage, one of the men stood opposite the double metal doors and used the remote control to open them, while the other walked over to one of the BMWs, opened the driver’s door, gestured to Bronson to get in the back, and then sat down. As soon as the doors were open, to reveal the midevening gloom, he drove the car out of the garage, pausing to allow his companion to walk over to the car and sit down in the front passenger seat.

The second man waited until the car had driven out of the garage before again using the remote to close the doors. As he did so, he looked back at Bronson and gestured for him to replace the heavily tinted sunglasses over his eyes. They were clearly much more relaxed about their security now that he had been fatally compromised by Polti’s execution. They knew that he daren’t approach the authorities to inform on them-if that was his intention-because of the consequences to him personally if he did.

Bronson nodded agreement, removed the glasses from his pocket and put them on, because as before he had no other choice. But he’d already taken a long look around him as the car had pulled out of the garage. Lights were shining in various windows, and there was still enough natural light for him to get a good idea of the appearance of the property. The house looked smaller from the outside than the interior had suggested, but it was still obviously a substantial building.

The double garage doors were set in the lowest level of the structure, a few feet below ground level, and were approached by a well-tended gravel drive. These doors appeared to form the only opening to the house on that level, at least as far as Bronson could see, and it looked as if most of the lower-ground-floor area was given over to garaging, so presumably the occupants and their guests tended to arrive by car rather than on foot. Bronson guessed that there would be other entrances at ground level on the back or sides of the building, and he could see a wide veranda on the level directly above the garage, with a half-glazed door set in its center.

The property rose for two stories, probably built of brick, though the white painted walls made it impossible to be certain, under a roof that was notable for its shallow pitch and wide overhang at the eaves, clearly intended to cope with the heavy snowfalls the area experienced every winter. All the windows Bronson could see were fitted with shutters stained light brown to match the beams and trusses of the roof. It looked, in short, much like many of the other large houses he’d seen since entering Germany.

But in the few brief seconds before he’d been told to replace the sunglasses, Bronson had committed the appearance of the house to his memory, because knowing where to find the place again was now his highest priority. He had not the slightest intention of just trotting obediently back to London, as Marcus had told him to do. He believed that if he could find his way back, there was at least a chance that he could break in somehow and find what he needed.

And unlike the meeting places chosen by Georg in and around London, the house he’d just left was clearly a permanent residence for at least some of the people in the group-the room that had been used for the torture and execution of the unfortunate Polti demonstrated that clearly enough.

The last-and perhaps the most important-part of the puzzle was to find a street name or some indication of the district or town where the property was located, and Bronson hoped he would be able to do that as the car drove away, simply because he was sitting by himself in the backseat.

He had put on the sunglasses, as he’d been ordered, but as he’d done so he’d snapped off a tiny section of the plastic lens on the left-hand side, which gave him a small but usable window on the steadily darkening world outside the car.

The BMW drove slowly over the gravel and then crossed rougher ground before coming to a halt between a pair of stone gateposts. He heard the sound of an approaching vehicle-a car or small van, he guessed-which passed directly in front of the car and then continued on its way. As soon as it had passed, the BMW accelerated across the road and turned left.

Through the tiny gap that he had created in the lens of the sunglasses, Bronson tried to take note of the terrain the vehicle was passing. He had hoped he might see a street sign or something else that would positively identify the location, but the car seemed to be driving along a fairly straight but narrow country road bordered, at least on the left-hand side, by woods and without any turnings or junctions as far as he could see. That single fact would help him find the house again, but only after he’d somehow managed to identify the district where it was located, and for that a road sign, a road number, or a village name-something concrete that he could remember-was essential.

The car had picked up speed, and Bronson guessed it was traveling at fifty or sixty miles an hour as the road continued straight. Just over four minutes after turning onto the road, he felt the BMW begin to slow down, the driver shifting down two gears as he applied the brakes, and then the vehicle steered to the left at a Y-junction.

Without appearing to do so, Bronson shifted his gaze and just caught a glimpse of a small sign that presumably indicated the name of the road the car had turned into. It was too dark for him to read the entire name, but he did see-and, more important, he made sure he remembered-the first part of the word: “ Kaupt.” And he couldn’t swear to it, but he thought the second part of the name was the German word for street: stra?e or strasse.

A few seconds after it had turned onto the other road, the car drove past a group of buildings on the left-hand side. At first sight Bronson thought it might be a farm, but then changed his mind because, through his very restricted aperture, it looked more like a small estate of upmarket houses, though it could also, he supposed, have been a small industrial park. He was having to use only his peripheral vision and that, along with the fading light, made discerning anything clearly very difficult.

A few moments later, the car again slowed down almost to a crawl but continued moving in a straight line, and it was soon obvious that the BMW was joining a major road. Bronson could hear the sound of other vehicles passing in both directions in front of them before the car pulled out onto the road. The driver swung left to cross the lane handling opposite-direction traffic, and then to the left, to continue in more or less the same direction that he’d been driving before.

Then Bronson had a stroke of luck as the car drove onto a bridge that spanned either a river or a canal, most probably the latter because the waterway seemed to have a very consistent width. That was an identification feature that should help narrow his search markedly. And almost before that thought had fully registered, the car slowed again as it entered a built-up area.

Bronson vainly searched for a village name, but saw nothing useful. The road appeared to continue more or less straight, but then he felt the car enter a sweeping curve to the left and a few seconds later begin a turn to the right that was almost as sharp. Moments after that, they were back in the open countryside. He didn’t know how many villages or suburbs there were around Berlin that were near a canal and that had a main road running through them with an S-bend in the middle, but he hoped there wouldn’t be too many.

He continued trying to build a picture of the remainder of the journey, but within a few minutes of leaving the village, the car turned onto an autobahn that was, like most German main roads, devoid of unusual features. So Bronson just concentrated on making sure that what he had seen remained locked in his memory.

When the car finally turned off the autobahn, he guessed he was near his journey’s end, and a couple of minutes later the BMW drew to a halt.

“You can get out now,” the driver said, his English heavily accented.

Bronson nodded, took the sunglasses off his face and reached for the door handle. As he stepped out of the car, he recognized the station car park once again, and saw his Hyundai parked a few yards away. He didn’t look back, just strode across to his car, feeling in his pocket for the keys, and when he did finally glance behind him, he saw the BMW driving away from him toward the exit.

Bronson sat down in the driver’s seat, turned on the interior light, then reached across to open the glovebox and took out a small notebook and a pencil. He flicked through the book until he found a blank page and then swiftly wrote down the identification features that he had remembered: a straight road with woods on one side; the street name Kaupt, possibly followed by strasse or stra?e; a canal or river that ran under the road at right angles, followed by a village in which the main road followed an S-shaped path. Then, on the following page, he drew a rough sketch of the house to which he had been taken.

When he’d finished, Bronson looked over what he’d written, and added the two times that the journeys had taken. It was little enough to go on, but it was all he had, so it would have to do.

But before he even started trying to locate the house and track down Marcus, there was something else he needed to do. He was alone in Germany, without easy access to the Internet unless he visited a cyber cafe or bought a laptop computer or netbook and found somewhere offering Wi-Fi facilities and, in truth, he didn’t really know where his search should start.

What he was sure was that the word Marcus had used-it had sounded to Bronson like laterntrager — was significant for some reason, just because of the way the German had reacted when he let it slip. Perhaps it was the code name for the operation the Germans appeared to be mounting against London, or possibly even the name of a weapon they intended to use to disrupt the Olympic Games.

He shook his head. Actually, disrupting the Olympic Games was probably only a bonus as far as Marcus was concerned. When Bronson had looked into his eyes, he’d seen the pale and dispassionate stare of a true fanatic. Whatever the Germans had planned, he was quite certain that it would involve a massive loss of life, not just some attention-grabbing interruption to the Games.

Bronson shivered involuntarily. There wasn’t, at that stage, too much he could do to investigate the meaning of the word-his first priority had to be to locate the house-but he had high hopes that Angela would not only know where to look, but would be able to find out its true significance.

Always assuming, of course, that he’d heard and remembered it right.