James Becker - Echo of the Reich

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.

Just over two and a half hours after unlocking the doors of the Hyundai, he switched off the engine on the car deck of a P amp;O ferry, locked the vehicle and followed a crowd of people heading for the stairs. He’d grab a bite on the ferry, he decided, and that would set him up for the first part of the drive he had in front of him.

But at least he’d gotten out of Britain with no problems. As he’d expected, the officer behind the glass of the booth had barely even glanced at him, just scanned the passport, handed it back and then told him to carry on. And the French immigration post a few yards further on was completely deserted, as usual.

So now he was on his own. Sitting in a quiet corner of the restaurant, Bronson stared out of the window at the choppy gray waters of the English Channel and ran over the events of the last few days in his mind. What had started out as a fairly simple infiltration operation, just a matter of him identifying a group of violent vandals who’d been causing such aggravation in East London, had turned into something much darker and more dangerous. The death of the nightwatchman had been unfortunate, but probably accidental, a question of manslaughter, not murder, and Bronson was reasonably certain that it had been Mike and some of his cronies who had attacked the man.

With hindsight, maybe Bronson should simply have given them up to the Met as soon as he’d gotten a few names and memorized their faces. But he had been seriously disturbed by the man who called himself Georg, a man who seemed as wholly out of place in the group as a piranha in a tank of goldfish. He was clearly working to a very different agenda, and Bronson knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was extremely bad news. Bronson had never been directly involved in an operation against terrorists, but he had read enough about the kind of people who moved in that world to recognize the threat, and the type.

His biggest problem had been the complete absence of any form of proof that he could offer about what Georg was planning. That, and the autocratic attitude of Inspector Davidson, of course. If Shit Rises hadn’t decided to ignore what Bronson had said and roll up the undercover operation so quickly, there would at least have been a chance that Bronson could have gone to Berlin, obtained whatever information he could, and that might have led to the capture of the entire gang before they could complete their operation.

As it was, Bronson had been abandoned-or actually rather worse than that-by the British police. He was armed only with a pistol that most people familiar with handguns would consider a joke rather than a serious weapon, and he was on his own, heading for a rendezvous with a group of people he knew nothing about, except that he was quite certain they posed a mortal danger to London and its citizens.

It was not, on the whole, a comfortable position to be in.

22 July 2012

Klaus Drescher ended the call on his mobile phone and looked across at Wolf with a satisfied expression on his face.

“The pieces are coming together precisely as we planned it, Marcus. That was Lutz, the leader of the group from the Czech Republic. There were no problems in the substitution of the two vehicles, so now the device is on its way to London with all the correct documentation. I’ve reminded him of the importance of the timing, and he and his team will get the vehicle across to the Calais area fairly quickly, and then wait there for the optimum time to cross the Channel. Even then, they’ll still have time in hand, and will be able to park on the road between Dover and London to ensure that they arrive precisely when we want them to.”