Echo of the Reich

23

23 July 2012

“Chris! I’ve been worried sick. Where the hell are you? Your phone’s been switched off for days.”

“That’s a bit of an exaggeration,” Bronson replied. “I’m just using a different mobile; that’s why you couldn’t call me.”

“Well, why didn’t you give me the number? So where are you now? Berlin?”

“Yes,” Bronson replied. “I’m still in Germany, and I’m in trouble.”

“And you need my help.” It was a statement, not a question. “Do you want me to fly out there?”

“No. Or not yet, at least. Everything’s a bit confused here at the moment.” As he said the words, Bronson knew how lame that sounded, and just how big an understatement it was. But he had enough to contend with in Berlin without having to worry about Angela as well. The last thing he wanted was for her to get involved with Marcus and his gang of German thugs.

“So what can I do?”

“I just need you to do some research for me. The leader of the gang I’m trying to infiltrate used a German word that seems to be important. I’ve no idea what the word means, or even if I’ve remembered it correctly, but I’m sure it’s something to do with this plot, because he talked about sending whoever, or whatever, this word means to London. And then he seemed to realize that he’d said too much.”

“Okay. Go ahead then. What was the word?”

“I think it was Laterntrager.” He spelled the word to her, or what he guessed was the spelling.

“It sounds German, I’ll give you that,” Angela replied, “but I don’t recognize it. Of course, that’s probably because I don’t speak German, but luckily I know somebody who does. Have you tried looking in a dictionary?”

“I don’t have a dictionary. Could you please just see what you can find out, and I’ll call you again in the morning. Don’t try to call me on this number, because I don’t know where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing. In fact, I’ll probably have the phone switched off most of the time.”

“Okay. Leave it with me. And, Chris,” she added, “whatever you’re doing over there, just be careful, will you?”

“I’ll do my best,” Bronson said, then ended the call.

For a minute or so he sat in silence, his mind racing, then he came to a decision. He had no idea how seriously the British police were trying to trace him, but it was conceivable that they might have put an intercept on Angela’s home and work telephone numbers, and on her mobile, just in case he called her.

They wouldn’t know that Bronson was the person ringing Angela, but they might well guess it was him because she was being called from an unregistered British pay-as-you-go mobile phone located in Germany. That would probably be enough for them to request the assistance of the German police in finding out the identity and location of her caller. And Bronson was keenly aware that as long as a mobile phone was switched on, its position could be determined by finding out which radio masts it was in contact with.

It wasn’t worth taking the chance. He unclipped the back panel of the mobile, took out the battery and put all three pieces of the phone in the car’s glovebox. And, just in case he was right and the German police had been contacted by somebody in the Met, he started the car, drove out of the car park and back through Rangsdorf to the main road. There, he turned right and headed south until he reached a smaller settlement named Gro? Machnow, where he took the first major junction on the left, following a road sign that directed him toward Mittenwalde. He had no particular destination in mind, and was working on the reasonable basis that if he didn’t know where he was going, it would be extremely difficult for anyone else to predict his route.

The countryside was dominated by rich agricultural land, fields and patches of woodland extending on both sides of the road. A short distance outside Gro? Machnow, the road-he knew he was driving along the Mittenwalder Strasse-bisected a wood where there were pull-offs on both sides of the road. He’d seen almost no traffic since he drove out of Gro? Machnow, and could see no other cars parked in the wood. It was probably as good a place to stop as anywhere else he’d seen.

Bronson swung the car right, bouncing off the tarmac and on to the hard-packed earth of one of the turnoffs, and tucked the Hyundai behind a group of shrubs, where it would be virtually invisible from the road. He opened the two front windows, then switched off the engine and for a few moments just sat and listened. The only sound he could hear was birdsong-the evening equivalent of the dawn chorus-and the buzz of insects. He knew he would hear any approaching vehicles easily enough, and the chances of him being spotted were extremely slim. And even if somebody did see him, sitting there in the car, he wasn’t actually doing anything illegal. Unless they found the Llama pistol under his seat, that is.

Bronson opened up the map book of Germany that he’d purchased en route from Calais to Berlin, and began studying the area to the southeast of the city, the area where he guessed the house was located. The problem, he saw immediately, was that there were a lot of waterways-rivers, canals and lakes-around Berlin. He remembered reading in a German tourist brochure on the cross-Channel ferry that the area was known to be marshy from the very earliest days of the settlement, and that the word “berl,” which formed the first part of the city’s name, actually meant “swamp” in some archaic European language. The terrain shown on the map to the southeast of Berlin was splashed with blue, and the rivers and canals were crossed at frequent intervals by roads, almost always at right angles. In many cases settlements had sprung up near the junction of the road and the waterway-rendering two of Bronson’s remembered identifying features essentially useless.

And there was a further irritation because the map book was intended for motorists and so most of the roads were identified by numbers, not by names, and he could see no sign of a road named Kauptstrasse anywhere in the area. He knew he would need to buy more detailed maps, more like the British Ordnance Survey sheets, to find what he was looking for.

The only other option was the satnav unit, but before he could ask it to find Kauptstrasse, he had to be able to identify the town, village or district in which the road was located. He switched on the unit anyway, waited until it had locked onto the satellites, then selected Berlin as the city and typed in Kauptstrasse, but the result was more or less what he’d expected: the unit couldn’t locate it, simply because the road wasn’t in Berlin itself, but in some suburb or outlying village.

He glanced at his watch. It was already after nine, and Bronson was hungry and thirsty, but also physically exhausted and emotionally drained, wrung out by the events of the evening. He needed food and drink, and then somewhere to stay for the night.

But for now he needed to get some sleep.