James Becker - Echo of the Reich

As Cross pushed his way in, the buzz of conversation didn’t stop, but it certainly diminished as most of the men-and there were no women in sight-glanced at him and his two companions. Then, apparently seeing nothing particularly threatening or of interest in the new arrivals, the faces turned away again, and muttered conversations were resumed.

Four men were just getting up from a scratched and battered circular table in the far corner of the bar, and another three men were heading that way to commandeer the seats. But Cross got there first, and just stood beside the table, staring at the approaching trio.

All three were big and bulky, their knuckles and faces scarred from past disagreements. They were clearly men used to getting their own way, and not afraid to resort to physical persuasion if other negotiating tactics failed. But it was as if they saw something in Cross’s eyes that warned them off, something that told them that the man they were looking at was more than capable of matching them blow for blow and that, whatever they started, he would be quite capable of finishing.

And as they stared at him, Cross’s two companions walked across to the table and flanked him, one standing either side of him. The conversations in the bar died away again, as the locals switched their attention to the silent tableau in their midst. After a few seconds, the biggest of the three men in front of Cross shrugged, then turned round and walked away, the other two following him.

As Cross sat down at the table, his two companions looked at each other, and one of them nodded. Then they both strode across to the bar to order a round of drinks. Pints, obviously.

“Time for introductions, I suppose,” the man who’d bought the drinks said, after taking a sip of his beer. “My name’s Charlie Williams, and my mate here’s called John Eaton. Is your name really Alex Cross?”

The third man shook his head. “No,” he said, “but I’ve got a very good reason for using an alias, so if it’s okay with you two-in fact, even if it isn’t okay with you-I’m sticking with it.”

“We can live with that. So you’re not happy about the Olympics either?”

“I don’t give a toss about the bloody Olympics. That’s just a good target. I’ve got my own reasons for doing what I do.”

“And they are…?”

“Personal, mate, that’s what they are. Let’s just say I was shat upon from a great height, just for trying to do my bloody job, and this is one way of getting some kind of payback.”

Williams nodded. “Okay. So you’ve got a grudge against authority. But we couldn’t help overhearing what that young copper said about you. Were you really targeting the hockey stadium?”

Cross took a sip of his beer and grinned at him. “To be perfectly honest with you, I had no idea what was on the other side of the fence, except that it was a part of the Olympic complex. That was good enough for me.”

“And what were you going to do once you’d broken in? That’s stadium’s finished, as far as we know.”

“The usual. Break some windows, smash up anything I could, spray a few slogans on the walls. I know I can’t do anything to stop these Games from going ahead-there’s nothing one person can do about an operation as big as this-but I wanted to hit out, do some damage.”

Cross took a swallow of his beer and then looked sharply at Williams.

“So what were you picked up for?” he asked.

Williams smiled briefly. “Much the same as you, actually,” he replied, “with one big difference. You said it yourself. There’s bugger all one man can do, but it’s completely different if you’re part of an organized group.”

“So there’s more than just the two of you?”

“Exactly. We were just a diversion, something to keep the coppers on their toes and chasing us, while the rest of our people got inside a completely different part of the site, and set to work doing some really serious damage.”

“Like what?” Cross asked.

“You’ll read about it in the papers tomorrow,” Eaton interjected. “And that’s the other thing you’ve been doing wrong. There’s no point in breaking a window or spraying a wall. They just get the glaziers in the next day and replace the glass, or use industrial cleaner to remove the paint. It’s just a nuisance-hardly slows them down at all. So what we do is target the equipment. We hit the bulldozers and the cranes and generators, all that kind of stuff. You can do a lot of damage to a diesel engine with a hammer, if you know what you’re about, and a few bags of sugar poured into a fuel tank really screws them up. That can pretty much write off an engine.”

“And why are you doing it?”

“There’s more than one reason why we’re involved.”

“Yeah?” Cross looked interested.

But Williams just shook his head and turned his attention back to his pint of beer.

“You’ll get nowhere by yourself,” Eaton said. “But you look as if you can take care of yourself, so maybe you should think about coming in with us. We could use someone like you.”

Cross shook his head. “I’m not really into organized groups, thanks all the same. I normally work alone-only myself to worry about, you see.”

“We’re not a group like that, really. We always arrive at the target site individually, and find our own way home after the event. But what we do is we meet beforehand and organize the target, and the timing, and what everyone involved is going to do. That way, we cover every aspect of the attack, and each of us can then focus on his own particular job. Last time, like Charlie said, we were the decoys. We showed ourselves, did a little bit of damage and made sure the coppers spotted us, and then we legged it, leaving our mates with a clear run.”

“And we never resist arrest,” Williams added. “That just gives them another charge to slap against you if they feel like it. Quiet and cooperative is the best way in the end.”

Cross took another sip of his drink and nodded.

“You’re probably right, but sometimes that’s easier said than done. You get treated like shit by the coppers, and all you want to do is hit back at them somehow.”

“You are, by doing what we’re doing,” Eaton said. “Because we’re organized, we’ve been running rings around the rozzers for weeks. They never know where we’re going to hit next, or when.”

“Look,” Williams said, “John’s right. We really could use you, and you’ll achieve a hell of a lot more working with us than you ever will out there by yourself. Why not give it a try? Come along on one raid. After that, if you still want to go off and do things your own way, that’s fine. Otherwise, join us.”

“Just like that?” Cross asked. “Please can I join your gang?”

“Not quite. We’re a small group, and we need to be really sure about each other because of what we’re doing, so if you do want to be part of our operation there’ll be a vote, once we’ve seen you working.”

“Like a trial period,” Eaton added. “But if you do okay, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

Just over an hour after they’d walked into the pub, the three men stepped out the door and strode off down the street. At the first junction, they went their separate ways, Williams and Eaton heading in one direction, the man calling himself Cross in the other.

He walked quickly down the street, took the first left turn that he came to, then immediately crossed the road and strode down an alleyway on the right. At the end he stopped, flattened himself into a doorway, and waited for five minutes. Nobody else came down the alleyway-in fact, he saw no one else in the street beyond.

Satisfied that no one was following him-or if they were, they were really good at their job-he continued down the street. At each corner he glanced behind him, but nobody appeared to be taking the slightest interest in him or where he was going.