James Becker - Echo of the Reich

Bronson sat down in the driver’s seat, turned on the interior light, then reached across to open the glovebox and took out a small notebook and a pencil. He flicked through the book until he found a blank page and then swiftly wrote down the identification features that he had remembered: a straight road with woods on one side; the street name Kaupt, possibly followed by strasse or stra?e; a canal or river that ran under the road at right angles, followed by a village in which the main road followed an S-shaped path. Then, on the following page, he drew a rough sketch of the house to which he had been taken.

When he’d finished, Bronson looked over what he’d written, and added the two times that the journeys had taken. It was little enough to go on, but it was all he had, so it would have to do.

But before he even started trying to locate the house and track down Marcus, there was something else he needed to do. He was alone in Germany, without easy access to the Internet unless he visited a cyber cafe or bought a laptop computer or netbook and found somewhere offering Wi-Fi facilities and, in truth, he didn’t really know where his search should start.

What he was sure was that the word Marcus had used-it had sounded to Bronson like laterntrager — was significant for some reason, just because of the way the German had reacted when he let it slip. Perhaps it was the code name for the operation the Germans appeared to be mounting against London, or possibly even the name of a weapon they intended to use to disrupt the Olympic Games.

He shook his head. Actually, disrupting the Olympic Games was probably only a bonus as far as Marcus was concerned. When Bronson had looked into his eyes, he’d seen the pale and dispassionate stare of a true fanatic. Whatever the Germans had planned, he was quite certain that it would involve a massive loss of life, not just some attention-grabbing interruption to the Games.

Bronson shivered involuntarily. There wasn’t, at that stage, too much he could do to investigate the meaning of the word-his first priority had to be to locate the house-but he had high hopes that Angela would not only know where to look, but would be able to find out its true significance.

Always assuming, of course, that he’d heard and remembered it right.

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.