James Becker - Echo of the Reich

At that moment he was sitting in the doorway of a small office building about a quarter of a mile from the stadium in Stratford where the opening ceremony was due to start early that evening, and trying to decide what to do next. He was also still wondering what Marcus had planned, because the one thing that was already abundantly clear was that getting anywhere near the stadium, even as a pedestrian, was as near impossible as made no difference.

Getting close with a vehicle, and especially a vehicle big enough to carry an object even half the size of Die Glocke, was simply a nonstarter. Every street Bronson had tried to walk down was cordoned off, steel barriers placed across the entrances preventing access to any unauthorized vehicles, police officers in attendance, as they’d probably been for days. And already, despite the early hour, the whole area was starting to come alive.

There were people everywhere, walking to and fro, cameras clicking as they took photographs of each other, sometimes posing in front of the Olympic advertising slogans, information boards and illuminated displays, which listed the timetable of events. Establishing shots, Bronson supposed you could call them, for the myriad picture collections they were obviously intending to compile of the event. There was a huge buzz of excitement in the air as people realized that the time for the Games had finally come, and that the greatest sporting contest in the world was about to be held in Britain’s capital city.

Bronson had been moved on twice by regular police officers and once by a community policeman, and every time he’d kept his head down and simply complied, weaving his way through the crowds of people as he looked for another quiet spot where he could sit down and wait. The doorway of the office building he was occupying wasn’t ideal, but he knew that he needed to stay in that vicinity, so it would have to do.

He wriggled about, trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable; cardboard may have provided some insulation against the cold seeping up through the paving slabs, though he wasn’t convinced about that, but it did nothing to cushion his body.

People walked past him, none making eye contact and most stepping well away from him, to the other side of the pavement, as if being homeless was a contagious condition. Then one man didn’t. He was tall and solidly built, but very scruffily dressed. He had the air of a man looking for something. Or someone.

When he saw Bronson half-lying in the doorway, he crossed the street and walked over to stand beside him. Then he prodded the recumbent figure with the toe of one grubby sneaker.

“You look like shit,” Dickie Weeks said, looking down at him.

“That’s the general idea, Dickie,” Bronson replied. “You don’t look that sharp yourself.”

“Blending in, mate, blending in. I’m feeling charitable. Fancy a cuppa?”

“Thought you’d never bloody ask.”

Bronson climbed slowly to his feet-even the comparatively short time he’d been sitting on the pavement seemed to have driven a chilling ache through his bones-and the two men walked away down the road.

“You must know a good cafe,” Weeks said, “you being a street person and all that. Job not going so well, is it?”

“Give it a rest, Dickie,” Bronson snapped. “This is serious.”

They walked into a cafe that was little more than a glorified snack bar, Bronson attracting hostile glances from several of the men sitting there, but his bulk was obviously sufficiently intimidating to prevent anyone saying anything to him.

“Tea?” Weeks asked.

“Coffee: hot, black and strong,” Bronson replied. “And a bacon sarnie if your funds will stretch that far.”

While Weeks strode across to the counter, Bronson walked over to a table in the far corner, as far away from everyone else as possible, pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, his back to the window.

As he did so, two men at another of the tables stood up and walked out, one of them glancing across at Bronson with a disgusted expression as he reached the door.

A couple of minutes later Weeks walked over to him, carrying two chipped mugs, and sat down facing him.

Bronson wrapped his hands around the mug, relishing the warmth of the china.

“I asked for it extra strong,” Weeks said, “which means you’ve got two spoonfuls of instant in there instead of only one. Breakfast’ll be along as soon as they’ve found a pig to kill. So,” he lowered his voice slightly, “what the hell’s going on here, Chris?”

“First, thanks for that Llama. It got me out of trouble once, and saved my life as well. I’ll be keeping it.”

Weeks nodded. “I take it somebody who was walking around the place now isn’t?”

“If you mean did I use it to kill someone, the answer’s yes. Or, to be exact, I didn’t pull the trigger, because somebody else did, but there is a body out there with a traceable bullet in it. Not that anyone’s ever likely to find it.”

Weeks nodded.

“Glad it worked for you,” he said. “But that’s not why you asked me to meet you here. And it doesn’t explain why you look like you’re auditioning for a part in a low-budget zombie movie.”

“Long story,” Bronson replied, then broke off as a grossly overweight man, wearing a grayish apron decorated with an interesting and comprehensive selection of stains, only some of which appeared to be from food, waddled across to their corner and deposited two plates on the table in front of them.

“Bacon butties,” he announced, in case either man didn’t recognize the greasy offering he’d presented, then returned to his position behind the counter.

Bronson looked at the roll, butter oozing from all sides and a couple of bits of bacon sticking out of one end. He lifted off the top half of the roll, applied a liberal helping of brown sauce from the encrusted plastic bottle on the table, then picked up the roll and took a bite. It tasted wonderful.

“Right, Dickie,” he said, and outlined what had happened to him since the two men had last met.

Weeks sat in silence, listening intently and eating his way through his own bacon sandwich. His eyes widened as Bronson described the events in the Wenceslas Mine, and he even put down his mug at one point.

“Bloody hell, so Angela shot the bastard? Good for her. Hey, are you two an item again, or what?”

“More or less, I suppose, but that’s not really too important right now.”

“Sorry, you’re right. So what do you want me to do? And what happened to the MP5 that German comedian was toting?”

Bronson nodded toward the sack lying on the floor beside him.

“It’s in there,” he replied. “In fact, there are two of them, plus three Walther pistols, one of them with a proper suppressor.”

“You’re selling them?” Weeks asked, his professional interest clearly aroused.

Bronson shook his head.

“Help me sort out this mess and you can have them as a gift,” he said.

“That’s a deal. Now, you’ve told me what happened, but I still don’t know what you expect me-or you, for that matter-to do about it. All you think you know is that this bunch of German thugs will be trying to attack northeast London, probably during the Olympic opening ceremony, which, I’d like to remind you, will be starting in less than twelve hours. But you don’t know what the weapon looks like, or even what it does. It could be some kind of dirty bomb, a straight explosive device, or even-and I really hope you’re wrong about this-a pocket-sized nuke. That’s the worst-case scenario, because the yield from even a suitcase nuke like the Russians developed would be enough to flatten a large part of this area.”

“You know more about this kind of stuff than I do,” Bronson said. “What was the yield of those weapons?”