Echo of the Reich

48

27 July 2012

Bronson knew immediately who they were, not least because the man he knew as “Mike” was standing in the middle of the group, a satisfied smile on his face.

“You might have fooled Georg, but I had you sussed from the start,” he snarled. “You fed us a long line of bullshit, but all the time you were just another bloody copper. And now you’re going to get what’s coming to you.”

The other four men were carrying short lengths of timber, less obvious weapons than baseball bats, but just as effective in the right-or rather the wrong-hands.

But before any of them could move, a deep chuckle sounded beside Bronson as Weeks took a step forward.

“That’s the problem with some of you north London villains,” he said. “You talk too much, and you don’t think things through.”

Unhurriedly, he reached inside his jacket, extracted a Colt 1911 semi-automatic pistol, cocked the weapon and aimed it straight at Mike.

Beside him, Bronson took out the Walther and mirrored his actions.

Mike’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged. The other men had frozen in place the moment the pistols appeared.

“We don’t have time to mess with you today,” Weeks said, “so you’re quite lucky, really. Why don’t you just take your bits of carpentry away with you and do something useful with them, like build a table. But if we see you around here again, we’ll make sure you don’t bother us-or anybody else-ever again. Now get the hell out of here.”

But as the five men turned to leave, under the silent threat of the two pistols, Bronson raised his other hand.

“Hang on a minute,” he said.

The group stopped as one and turned back to him.

“It’s just a question,” Bronson said. “Do you know what’s going to happen at the opening ceremony of the Games today? What Georg has got planned, I mean?”

Mike shrugged reluctantly.

“He’s organized a massive demonstration for this evening,” he said, “right in front of the cameras. That’ll get the message out to the biggest number of people possible. Then he’ll pay us off, and that’ll be it.”

“And that’s all?”

“Yes.”

Bronson shook his head.

“He’s fooled you all. You won’t get paid. In fact, if you’re in this area, you’ll probably end up dead. He’s smuggling a massive bomb here, and he’ll trigger it during the ceremony. That’s what all this has been about, right from the start.”

“Bollocks,” Mike snapped. “Georg is an environmentalist. He’s making a stand against overdevelopment, and especially against overdevelopment for sport. He’s committed to a nonviolent approach.”

“Glad to see that you remembered the official message,” Bronson said. “But don’t forget you killed that nightwatchman. That was hardly ‘nonviolent,’ was it?”

“That was an accident. We didn’t know he had a weak heart. Apart from that, all we’ve done is smash up machines and try to disrupt things.”

“Just following Georg’s instructions?”

Mike nodded.

“What Georg has been telling you is exactly what he thought you wanted to hear,” Bronson said. “You’ve been causing trouble to suit his agenda, and to divert attention away from his real target. If he’d told you that the other part of the group, the people in Germany, were planning on blowing up half of northeast London, you wouldn’t have helped him, would you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well, welcome to the real world, Mike, because that’s his actual agenda. What you got involved with is a last gasp of Hitler’s Third Reich, if you like. Georg’s German friends have decided that the London Olympics will provide the ideal opportunity to finish off what the Nazis started with their V1 and V2 weapons. Their aim is to destroy as much of London as they possibly can.”

Mike just stared at him.

“Bollocks,” he said again. “You’re making this up.”

“Why would I bother?” Bronson asked. “I’m just giving you a reality check, and a warning about what’s going to happen.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Deadly,” Bronson replied.

Mike glanced around at his companions, all of whom looked somehow uncertain, so clearly Bronson’s words had had an effect on them.

“If you’re right,” Mike said, “if this isn’t just more bullshit, I mean, what the hell can we do about it?”

It looked as if Bronson had suddenly acquired a somewhat unexpected group of allies. But the reality, he knew, was that there was very little they could do, except keep their eyes open. So that was what he suggested.

“All we know is that the device they’re intending to position here is probably fairly bulky, and we think it’ll be arriving in a vehicle, possibly to then be unloaded and placed inside a building, just because it’s likely to need a main power supply. So keep your eyes open for anything like that.”

Bronson jotted the number of Angela’s pay-as-you-go mobile phone on a piece of paper, walked across to where Mike was standing and handed it to him.

“If you see anything, anything at all,” he said, “call me, and then call the police.”

Mike looked at him, and nodded.

“I heard the cops were looking for you-for real, I mean. Is that true?”

“Yes. Right now, I’m deep in the shit because they don’t believe that there’s any threat to the Games. That’s why I’m dressed like this.”

Mike nodded again, then turned to leave the alleyway. Then he turned back and looked at Bronson again.

“I think you ought to know,” he said, “that when Tom spotted you and your mate in that cafe, we told Georg about it. He told us to rough you up a bit, break one of your legs and leave you here. So he’s probably coming along pretty soon to finish the job. Might be useful, knowing that.”

Bronson nodded. “Thanks, Mike,” he said. “It is. Now you’d better make yourself scarce.”

As soon as the men had disappeared from view, Bronson turned back to look at Weeks, who was holstering his pistol.

“Not exactly what I expected,” Bronson said.

“What about this Georg bloke?” Weeks asked. “Think he’ll turn up here looking for you?”

“Probably,” Bronson said, “and that might be as good a lead as we’re going to get.”

He pointed further down the alley.

“There’s an open yard or something down there. If you take one of the Heckler amp; Kochs, you can cover me from in there. I’ll just lie against the wall here, and I’ll have the Walther right beside me. But don’t shoot unless you have to, because firing that MP5 will alert every copper in the area. This Walther’s silenced, so let me take care of this German bastard.”

Weeks took one of the MP5s out of the sack, checked it, took a spare magazine, and then walked away down the alley. In seconds he was out of sight, but Bronson knew he would be watching what happened from his hidden vantage point.

Bronson took the Walther pistol out of his pocket, checked it and then screwed the suppressor onto the end of the barrel. Then he lay at the edge of the alley, resting his back against the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him. He tucked the pistol almost under his right leg, where it would be immediately to hand, but at the same time invisible to anyone passing. Not that they’d seen anyone else in the alleyway-apart from Mike and his cronies-since they’d stepped into it.

He didn’t have long to wait.

About a quarter of an hour after Bronson had taken up his position, his left leg twisted awkwardly under the right, as if it was broken, two men turned into the alleyway from the adjacent road and walked steadily toward him. Recognizing them wasn’t difficult. The slight figure of Georg was quite unmistakable, and the last time Bronson had seen the taller man walking next to him was in the concrete-lined cellar at Marcus’s house outside Berlin.

“This is a surprise, Bronson,” Georg said, stopping beside him. “Got a bit of a problem walking, have you?”

Bronson didn’t reply, just looked up at him. He was actually in some pain, just because of the awkward position of his leg.

“I think you might have seen Gunther in Germany,” Georg said, gesturing to his companion. “He certainly remembers you. Quite an impressive piece of shooting, he told me.”

“Just get on with it, Georg,” Bronson snapped. “You’ve got the Laternentrager here already, I suppose, and I’m the last loose end you need to tie.”

The German nodded, reached into his pocket and took out a small semi-automatic pistol. He took his time, extracting the magazine from the butt and then replacing it before taking a compact suppressor and screwing it on to the end of the barrel. The second man already had an automatic pistol held casually in his hand, but no suppressor.

“I need to know,” Bronson said. “It is here? Is it ready to be triggered?”

Georg glanced up and down the alley, making sure that they were still unobserved, then nodded again.

“It’s not here yet,” he said, moving his pistol until it pointed at Bronson, “but it will be arriving later this morning as the final part of the operation, far too late for the authorities to do anything about it.”

“Somebody might spot it,” Bronson said. “It might never reach London.”

Georg smiled bleakly.

“That’s not going to happen. Nobody will be able to stop it, and we already know exactly where it will be positioned. We have a reserved spot, as it were, because we’ve been planning this for five years, ever since the city was chosen to host these Games, in fact. And the best bit is that we won’t be blamed for what’s going to happen. In fact, when it’s all over, people will see that we were right all along. And because of the timing, it will literally be a broadcast that the whole world will see. And now it’s time for me to do you a favor. I’m sure your leg is hurting quite badly, so I’m going to relieve your pain, permanently.”

Timing, Bronson knew, was everything. He lifted his left hand slightly, and moved his right hand until he was touching the butt of the Walther.

“Actually, it’s not really hurting at all,” he said. “And thanks for the information.”

He twisted slightly sideways, and instantly brought up the Walther to point straight at Georg.

Shock flared across the German’s face at Bronson’s totally unexpected action, but he was committed, and both men knew it. Georg squeezed the trigger of his weapon, but even as he did so, Bronson fired.

The nine-millimeter bullet from the Walther slammed into the German’s chest, knocking him backward as his pistol discharged harmlessly, the bullet ricocheting off the wall several feet away from Bronson. The reports made by the two silenced pistols would have been barely audible outside the alley.

Instantly, Bronson shifted his point of aim to the other man, who was quickly recovering from his surprise at the turn of events, and was already bringing up his own weapon to fire at Bronson. Again, there was no option. Bronson pulled the trigger a second time, the flat slap of the detonation echoing from the alley walls, but probably not audible in the street outside.

The second man tumbled backward and crashed onto his back on the stone floor of the alley.

Bronson climbed to his feet and stepped forward, but one look was all he needed to tell him that both men were dead, which absolutely wasn’t the result he’d been hoping for. If he could have taken Georg alive, he might have found out enough about the plot to take to the authorities. But obviously that wasn’t going to happen now.

Weeks stepped up beside him and looked down at the two bodies.

“Shame,” he said. “I heard him say something, but I guess it wasn’t enough.”

“Not really. All I know is that the device isn’t here yet, but it’s due to arrive this morning. I suppose that’s some help, just not very much.”

Weeks nodded back toward the yard where he’d been concealed.

“We can put them in there,” he said. “Somebody’ll find them today, I guess, but at least that’ll get them out of sight for a while.”

Bronson picked up Georg’s pistol, slipped it into his bag, and then searched the body, removing his wallet and everything else the man was carrying, while Weeks did the same thing to the other corpse.

A few minutes later, the bodies hidden out of sight in the yard, Bronson and Weeks walked out of the alley and headed toward the main road.