James Becker - Echo of the Reich

Aiming the Walther straight at him, Bronson stood up and moved forward cautiously. In the light from the flashlight, he could see that the front of the man’s one-piece overall, somewhat similar to the ones he and Angela were wearing, was soaked in blood and, even as Bronson stepped near him, the man abruptly tumbled backward, falling limply to the floor like a marionette whose strings had suddenly been cut.

Bronson picked up the submachine gun and slung it over his shoulder, then stepped backward a couple of paces and glanced over to his right, toward the cupboard where Angela had taken refuge.

“Angela, are you okay?”

The cupboard door swung open and she peered out, her eyes moist in the dim light, her body trembling with shock.

“I just meant to frighten him,” she said. “I thought if I-”

“You did a lot more than frighten him,” Bronson said.

“I just pointed the gun at him and pulled the trigger.”

Bronson didn’t reply, just took the second flashlight from his pocket, switched it on and stepped forward to where the man lay writhing on the floor, a low moan of agony escaping his lips.

It probably wasn’t a fatal wound, especially from the low-powered. 22 pistol, but from what Bronson knew of gunshot injuries, the stomach was one of the most painful places to be shot.

“Do you speak English?” he asked, staring down at the man who’d tried to kill him.

The wounded man nodded slightly.

“A little,” he said, from between clenched teeth.

“We can get you a doctor,” Bronson said, as Angela walked across the room to stand beside him. “But first there’s something we need from you.”

The man didn’t respond, just stared upward, his eyes flickering between the two of them.

“We need information. First, did Marcus send you?”

The man seemed to be considering his answer for a few moments, then he spoke.

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s what I thought. Now, we need to know what he’s got planned for London. Is he intending to mount a terrorist attack on the city?”

Again the man stared at them, then his face contorted into a kind of smile, and he laughed shortly. Then he coughed, and a fine mist of blood shot out of his mouth and sprayed down the front of his overall. It looked to Bronson as if the bullet Angela had fired had done a lot more damage than he’d first thought.

“Well?”

The man shook his head.

“Terrorist attack, no,” he said. “Vengeance attack, yes.”

“What’s the difference?” Bronson asked. “And why ‘vengeance’?”

“Terrorist attack kills people, destroys buildings. Two, three years, is forgotten. Vengeance attack destroys city.”

Bronson felt the hairs on the back of his neck start to rise.

“But why? Why attack London?”

“For vengeance. I told you.”

“Yes, but vengeance for what?”

The man looked puzzled.

“You do not know?”

Bronson shook his head.

“For the Reich that never was. For our Fuhrer who was killed.”

“The Thousand-year Reich that lasted less than a decade?” Angela snapped. “And Hitler committed suicide. He didn’t even have the courage to face his enemies and die in combat.”

“You are a liar,” the man said simply, another cough spraying more blood over his clothing. “Our Fuhrer fought gloriously to the very end. Our Fatherland should have been victorious. There would be no Jews, polluting the nations of the world. We would have abolished homosexuals, and made sure that the Arab nations knew their place.”

Bronson glanced at Angela and shrugged. He’d been right: the group Marcus had apparently founded wasn’t neo-Nazi. It was the real thing, a dyed-in-the-wool recreation of a part of the awesome military machine that had so very nearly conquered the whole of Europe.

“That sad old Aryan dream,” Angela said. “Didn’t any of you see the irony? You were being led toward this ideal of a nation of tall, attractive, fair-haired, blue-eyed people by a short ugly man with black hair and brown eyes, who wasn’t even German. Who was also mad, by the way.”

The wounded man stared at her, then coughed again, producing still more blood.

“So your foul little group is intending to do what Hitler couldn’t manage? You’re going to try to destroy London?” Bronson asked.

“Yes.”

“With the Laternentrager?” Angela asked.

The man looked surprised, but nodded slowly.

“So what will it do?” Bronson asked. “How does it work?”

Again an expression of amusement crossed the man’s pain-ravaged face.

“You do not know?” He laughed shortly, then coughed again. “You will find out,” he said. “The whole of London will find out.”

“When?”

“When the Rings of Olympus fly over London. When the eyes of the world are staring at our symbol for the Games. When the-”

Then he gave a shudder and emitted a gasp, almost, it seemed, of surprise, and lay still, his eyes wide-open and his mouth forming a silent “O.”

“Is he…?” Angela asked.

“He’s dead, yes,” Bronson replied, checking the man’s neck for a pulse. “I think that bullet must have hit his lungs, maybe some other organs.”

Angela stared down at the corpse.

“I’ve never killed anyone before,” she said, a quaver in her voice. “I didn’t even mean to do it.”

Bronson wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said, “but I’m glad you shot him. If you hadn’t, I might be dead now and I don’t like to even think what he’d have done to you if he’d found you. As I told you, these people play for keeps.”

Angela looked away from the body, and took a step backward.

“So now what do we do?”

“I don’t think there’s much else we can learn here,” Bronson replied. “We still don’t know exactly what the Bell does, but at least we know that Marcus’s group intends to attack London with it-or maybe with a modified version of the device-so that’s where we need to go, as soon as we can.”

He searched the body, removing the dead man’s wallet, all the ammunition he was carrying and his backup weapon, a nine-millimeter Walther P99.

They took a last look round the room, the light from their flashlights reflecting off the dusty dials and controls, then stepped over the corpse and made their way back down the stone corridor, retracing their steps toward the chamber where the ventilation shaft terminated.

In the chamber, Bronson looked around for something to stand on. He could hoist Angela up to the entrance to the shaft, but he knew he couldn’t just jump or climb up to the opening himself. There was nothing in the room, but they’d found plenty of offices, equipped with chairs and desks.

“Hang on for a second,” Bronson said. “I’ll just get a chair or something.”

He left Angela standing in the doorway, walked down the corridor to the nearest office, grabbed one of the chairs and walked back. He placed it against the wall, stepped up onto it and looked along the ventilation shaft, staring toward the welcome sight of the fresh air outside.

It would feel good to be out of the mine, Bronson thought, away from the old bones and the long black shadows of evil cast by the Nazis.

But as he looked down the ventilation shaft he realized that there was one question he hadn’t asked the man who’d attacked them.

Because he’d just seen another shadow, a shadow that had nothing to do with his imagination. Somebody-or something-had just walked across in front of the opening, and that action had faintly disturbed the light shining down the shaft. It could have been an animal, perhaps, or even somebody from Ludwikowice out walking in the hills, but Bronson didn’t believe that for a moment.