Echo of the Reich (16 page)

“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.

22 July 2012

Ten minutes after he ended the call to Bob Curtis, Bronson had watched two police cars traveling at speed down the main road through Epping, blues and twos on, following the same route as the bus he’d taken about an hour earlier. He guessed that the driver and passengers on the vehicle were about to have a fairly interesting encounter with the thin blue line.

John Eaton rang about half an hour after that, by which time Bronson had moved to an entirely different location in the town, staying off the main streets as much as possible.

“Where are you?”

Bronson had already noted the name of the street he was closest to, which was just off the main road. “Epping. North end of the town,” he said, “near the main drag. Where do you want me to be?”

“That’ll do,” Eaton replied. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Same car. Watch out for me.”

“Got it.”

Bronson waited seven minutes by his watch, then got up from the bench he was sitting on and covered the short distance to the main road. There was a fairly long and relatively straight length of road in front of him, and he reckoned he’d see the Vauxhall easily as it approached.

As it turned out, Eaton drove along the road almost by himself, a white van about fifty yards in front, and only a lone motorcyclist following behind him. The moment Bronson saw him, he stepped to the edge of the pavement, waited for the car to stop and climbed in.

Eaton pulled smoothly away from the curb.

“Any problems?” he asked.

Bronson shook his head. “Nobody took any notice of me,” he said. “Just shows the power of TV advertising. Maybe a dozen people looked right at me, but none of them recognized me.”

“Bloody good thing, too. Right, with any luck you’ll be on the road in half an hour. Georg has sorted out a car for you, and he’s got a couple of passports as well.”

“Genuine ones? Because when I get to Dover they’ll probably scan it, and a fake’ll show up immediately.”

“As far as I know they’re the real deal, but you’d better ask him yourself.”

Fifteen minutes later, Eaton pulled the Vauxhall to a stop on a concrete drive outside a very ordinary semi-detached house, a typical three-bed, two-recep, large garden, deceptively spacious, early viewing recommended, so beloved of estate agents everywhere.

It wasn’t exactly the kind of place Bronson imagined Georg using, but he supposed it was the sort of location the German would occupy briefly and then move on. Maybe it belonged to one of the members of the group, or perhaps they’d rented it for a month or so to use as a safe house.

As the two men approached the front door, painted classic suburban blue with a large brass knocker in the shape of a dolphin, it opened and Mike peered out.

“You made it, then,” he said, his tone suggesting that he, personally, would rather Bronson hadn’t gotten away, or was at the very least indifferent to his fate.

“Looks like it.”

Mike stepped back and Bronson walked in, closely followed by Eaton. There was a narrow hallway, a staircase with a wooden handrail ascending on one side, and three doors opening off it. The nearest one stood open and as he stepped forward Georg appeared and beckoned him inside.

The room was a lounge, white paintwork and magnolia walls, a settee and a couple of easy chairs in cream leather the principal furnishings. A wide-screen plasma TV dominated the far wall, a Sky box sitting on a shelf underneath it, alongside a DVD player. Below that was a gas-effect electric fire where fake flames flickered slightly, though the heating elements weren’t switched on.

“Eaton explained what happened at the industrial estate,” Georg said. “Thank you for your quick thinking, and for what you did to get the two of you past the police van.”

“It was self-interest as much as anything,” Bronson
replied. “If they’d managed to make me stop, I knew what would happen to me.”

“Well, thank you anyway. Now…” Georg turned away and picked up a couple of British passports that lay on the glass-topped coffee table in front of the fire. “Two members of the group bear a slight resemblance to you, and have agreed to loan me their passports.”

“For a fee, presumably?” Bronson asked.

Georg smiled at him. “This lot don’t do anything unless they get paid,” he said.

He handed the passports to Bronson, who opened both at the page showing the holder’s photograph and studied each in turn. Georg was quite right. Superficially, there was a resemblance, in that both men were about Bronson’s age, roughly his height and had dark hair, but in truth neither man looked very much like him.

“Would one of those do?” Georg asked, sounding slightly worried.

Bronson nodded slowly. “The checks at Dover—when they bother doing them at all—are really designed to check the validity of the passports being presented. There’s only the most superficial attempt to ensure that the person presenting the passport is the same as the man or woman whose picture is in it. So my guess is that either of these would probably do.” He looked at the two documents again, then made his decision.

“I’ll take this one,” he said. “He’s a couple of years older than I am, but I think he looks more like me than the other guy. I’ll memorize the information on that page before I get to Dover. John said you had a car for me as well.”

Georg nodded. “In fact, I have two, registered to the owners of these two passports. To keep things simple, I suggest you take the vehicle owned by”—he glanced at the name inside the passport Bronson was still holding—“Charlie Evans. It’s parked a few meters up the road. It’s a gray Hyundai. The registration number’s on the label attached to the key ring.”

Georg reached into his pocket and produced two sets of car keys, and handed one to Bronson.

“The tank’s full, and there’s a Green Card in the glovebox to cover you for driving in Europe. Charlie would appreciate the return of the car in one piece.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Georg slipped the other set of keys back into his pocket, then took a folded sheet of paper from another pocket and handed it to Bronson. “This is the rendezvous,” he said. “It’s a few kilometers south of Berlin, but it should be easy to find. You need to be there by seven tomorrow evening. Don’t have your pistol or mobile with you at the meeting, because they’ll be taken away from you. Any questions?” he asked.

Bronson shook his head. “No. I’ll get on the road.”

“One suggestion before you leave. The pictures that were broadcast on television showed you with an unshaven face and the beginnings of a beard. You might be less recognizable if you were clean-shaven. You can use the bathroom upstairs if you want to do something about it.”

“That’s a good idea.” Bronson picked up his soft bag and headed for the stairs.

He was down again in less than ten minutes, and sitting
in the front seat of the Hyundai three minutes after that.

The car was about three years old, judging by the registration plate, and it was immediately clear that Charlie Evans was a heavy smoker. The ashtray overflowed with cigarette ends, and the entire car smelled of tobacco smoke. It was the kind of rank odor that Bronson knew no amount of cleaning would ever entirely shift. He opened the two front windows as he drove away, which helped a little, and as soon as he found a quiet spot he stopped the car and dumped the contents of the ashtray on the ground.

While the car was stationary, he also checked the trunk, making sure that there was a spare wheel, jack and wheel-brace. In the glovebox, as Georg had promised, there was a Green Card insurance document and also a satnav unit. That would make things a lot easier. Bronson knew the way to Dover, having made the Channel crossing many times before, but he’d never driven anywhere in Germany.

He attached the sucker to the windscreen, plugged the charging cord into the cigarette lighter, and clipped the satnav unit into the holder. He switched on the unit and the software asked him to select the appropriate country, so it obviously had European mapping included.

Bronson nodded in satisfaction, chose the United Kingdom and settled for the Dover ferry port. He’d input the address in Germany once he reached the other side of the Channel. The female voice in the unit sounded disconcertingly like one of his teachers from years ago,
but otherwise he didn’t think he’d have any problems with the satnav.

He picked up the M25 within a few minutes, drove around it until he reached the junction with the M2 motorway signposted to Dover, and then turned east. He had no ferry ticket, of course, but he knew he could buy one for cash on arrival at the port.