Echo of the Reich

8

20 July 2012

Bronson didn’t know the area at all well. He’d driven around it a couple of times and studied the relevant pages in his A to Z, but as the van pulled away he knew he had no chance of working out where it was going. If he had been driven around his old stamping ground of Tunbridge Wells, there was a good chance that he would have been able to visualize the route the vehicle was taking, and even have a decent guess at its ultimate destination. But the best he could do in the present circumstances was to time the journey.

He glanced down at his watch, the luminous hands faintly visible in the darkness of the Transit’s rear section, then shook his head as he realized he was just wasting his time. He wasn’t a kidnap victim dragged off the street and trying desperately to work out where his captors might be taking him. When the vehicle stopped, Bronson would be let out, he assumed, and he would probably find himself somewhere near one of the sites of the Olympic complex. Knowing where he was, or where he was going, was unimportant. All that mattered was what happened when he reached his destination and found out what mayhem the group had planned, and what part he was supposed to be playing in the operation.

As it turned out, the journey was quite short-about seventeen minutes by Bronson’s watch, that was all. The van’s speed dropped considerably; then it bounced a couple of times as it went over a curb, or perhaps hit some potholes. The driver reversed the vehicle, probably maneuvering it into a parking space, and brought it to a halt. The diesel engine rattled into silence, and Bronson heard both front doors of the vehicle open and then close, and a few seconds later the rear door swung wide.

“We’re here,” John Eaton said unnecessarily.

Bronson stepped down out of the Transit and looked around. Another two vans were standing near the one in which he had arrived, and he now saw that they were parked in the forecourt of a garage that had obviously closed some time ago, possibly months earlier. All three Transits were facing out into the road, presumably to enable them to drive straight off the forecourt if they needed to leave in a hurry. The curb adjacent to that part of the forecourt had not been lowered, which explained the bumps Bronson had felt just before the vehicle finally came to a halt.

The garage was located in a wide street that seemed to contain mainly commercial properties, all of which were closed at this time of the evening. There were no other vehicles or pedestrians visible.

A few feet away, Bronson saw Mike giving orders to about a dozen men, all wearing heavy boots, jeans and either jerseys or jackets. They looked a tough bunch. A large map was resting on the hood of one of the Transits, and the men clustered around Mike were all listening intently to what he was saying.

“Just hang on here,” John Eaton said. “As soon as Mike’s finished, he’ll tell you what he wants you to do.”

That didn’t take long. In a couple of minutes, most of the men dispersed, striding away purposefully in twos and threes, and Mike walked over to where Eaton and Bronson were waiting.

“You decided to come, then?” he said by way of greeting.

“Looks like it,” Bronson replied. “So what’s the plan?”

“You only need to know your part of it. I’ve decided that you can act as one of our diversions tonight. There’s a building site two streets away. It’s not one of the Olympic sites, but some of the machinery there has been used in the construction of the athletes’ village, so it’s a legitimate target. John knows where I mean. You two can get over there right now and take a look at the site. Decide what you’re going to do, but don’t start until exactly eight fifteen, so that you coordinate with the rest of what we’ll be doing tonight.”

Bronson looked at him. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

Mike shrugged. “I don’t care. According to John here, you think you’re fairly tough and you’ve been running a one-man campaign opposing the London Olympics. Personally, I’m not sure about you. So here’s your chance to prove me wrong. You do whatever you want to do, but if you want me to take you seriously, I’ll be expecting a bit more than just a few slogans painted on some wall. I want to see damage, real damage, the kind of damage that will keep their machinery out of action for weeks. There are tools in the back of the van over there. Take whatever you think you’ll need.”

Bronson nodded. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

He strode across to the vehicle that Mike had indicated and opened the rear door. Inside was a large wooden box containing a selection of hand tools and equipment, the kind of stuff you’d expect to find in a vehicle owned by a jobbing builder. There were hammers, chisels, saws, screwdrivers, crowbars and bolt-croppers, all entirely innocent within their present context, but not exactly the kind of thing most people would expect to see being carried through the streets of London in the middle of the evening.

Bronson glanced at Eaton. “You know this site,” he said. “What will we need to get inside?”

Eaton didn’t hesitate. “There’s a chain-link fence all round it that would take too long to get through, but it’s got steel gates secured with a length of chain and a padlock, so that’s how we’ll get inside. We can use the bolt-croppers to cut the chain, no problem. I don’t know what we’ll find inside the site that we could use against the stuff that’s stored there, so I suggest we take a couple of club hammers as well. You can do pretty serious damage with one of them.”

“Fine with me,” Bronson replied. He reached into the tool box, picked up a set of bolt-croppers, a large chisel and a heavy hammer, and then a pair of heavy-duty gloves, and waited while Eaton selected his own tools of choice. Eaton picked up a canvas bag, the kind sometimes carried by a carpenter or plumber, put all the tools inside it and closed the rear doors of the van.

He nodded to Mike, and then he and Bronson strode away from the garage, heading down the street toward their target.

Mike watched them go, a thoughtful expression on his face. Then he turned and walked back onto the garage forecourt, toward the two other men who were still standing there, waiting by the Transits. They were the drivers-Mike himself would drive one of the vans away from the garage when the others returned.

“You know what to do?” he asked. “And you’re sure you’ve got everything?”

The man nearest to him nodded. “Yeah, no problem. Be a piece of piss. Used one of them before, see.”

“Good. Right, you’d best get moving, then.”

The man he’d been speaking to reached into the cab of the Transit next to him and took out a small gray bag made of a soft fabric, and nodded to Mike. Then he set off down the street, following exactly the same route Bronson and Eaton had just taken.