James Becker - Echo of the Reich

“I’ve been watching the news,” she said, as the two men walked in. “A pair of thugs driving a Range Rover rammed a police car near the Olympic stadium, then got away. Know anything about that?”

“It was just a bit of a fender-bender,” Weeks replied. “Nobody got hurt. You’re looking well,” he added.

A smile flitted across Angela’s face for a period best measured in milliseconds.

“Thanks,” she said, “and so are you. So what’s going on, Chris?”

Bronson provided her with a highly edited account of what had happened in London that morning, avoiding any reference to the killing of Georg and his anonymous companion.

“Based on what we’ve found out,” he finished, “it looks like the device will be arriving this morning, but we still don’t know how it’s being transported or where it will be positioned. But it is definitely coming.”

Angela shook her head.

“I really hoped we’d got it wrong. So what can you do now? Is there any point in calling the police again?”

“Probably not,” Bronson replied. “I still don’t know what it is that they could do, even if they took me seriously. The area was swarming with police even before we had our little traffic accident, and my guess is that there are probably about double that number around Stratford by now. Granted, they’re not looking out for some kind of a nuclear device shaped like a bell, but they will have their eyes open.”

“And I suppose you two are going back?”

It was actually less a question than a simple statement, and the two men nodded in reply.

“Yes,” Bronson said, “but we need to change our clothes, so that we look different.”

“And what can you hope to achieve, just the two of you, if hundreds of police officers and the troops and everyone else can’t stop this weapon being positioned?”

“I don’t know,” Bronson replied, “but we have to try. We might see something, or hear something, that makes sense to us but which would mean nothing to anyone else.”

Angela nodded. “You have to do what you can, I know. Right, Dickie, the bathroom’s through there if you want to clean up, and if you go into the bedroom you’ll find a bunch of Chris’s clothes in the small wardrobe. You look as if you’re about the same size, so help yourself.”

“Wear smart casual, with a jacket,” Bronson instructed.

Weeks nodded, but didn’t respond. While he was out of the room, Angela made coffee for the three of them.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

“Not really,” Bronson replied, “unless you can work out how Marcus is planning on getting the Bell into the heart of the Olympic site. I told you I saw Georg today-”

“You told me less than half the story, but I really don’t want to learn any more,” she interrupted.

“Yes, point taken. The thing is, he was in no doubt at all that they’d manage to deliver the device. He was certain they’d have no trouble getting it into position. In fact, he talked about having something like a ‘reserved space,’ as if he had a ticket to the opening ceremony.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Angela said. “All access is going to be strictly controlled, for obvious reasons. The last thing London wants is a repeat of the Munich Olympics, only a hundred or a thousand times worse. Every spectator is going to be checked, and probably have to walk through a metal detector or body scanner, and the amount of vehicular traffic allowed anywhere near the stadium is going to be incredibly limited, and checked just as thoroughly. Are you sure he didn’t mean they’d already got it into position? Into a reserved space, or whatever?”

Bronson shook his head.

“That’s not what he said, and I’m certain that’s not what he meant. There’s something we’re missing here, some loophole Marcus has obviously identified and is going to exploit. I was even wondering if he had some plan to get the device onto an underground train or into a sewer somehow, but I just don’t see either of those options working, for a host of basic logistical reasons.”

Angela nodded, then leaned forward as another thought struck her.

“There’s another factor. If he’s been planning this for years, he can’t have worked out a way to beat the security system London’s put in place to safeguard the Olympics all that time ago, because it probably wasn’t even finalized until quite recently. So it must be something else, something fundamental, that we’re just not seeing.”

The door opened and Weeks appeared, wearing blue jeans and a white open-necked shirt, both garments fitting him reasonably well. He had a light jacket slung over his shoulder.

“Bathroom’s free,” he announced, then sat down and picked up his mug of coffee.

Twenty minutes later, Bronson emerged similarly dressed, his growth of stubble removed, his hair combed.

“Right,” he said, “we need to go. We’ll have a bag each, because we need somewhere to store the hardware, and a couple of sets of vests and caps I borrowed a while ago.”

“Vests?” Weeks asked.

“Yes. If we find something, we’re going to need to be able to move fast. I’ve got two sets of police baseball caps and overvests in my bag. Undercover officers use them when they need to identify themselves to the public. You just pull them on over your shirt. They aren’t Kevlar, just nylon, but those, and the caps, might help us pass for real coppers if we have to.”

“You are a real copper,” Angela pointed out.

“I was when I started this caper,” Bronson replied, “but I have no idea what I am right now. I don’t even know if they’re still paying me.”

He picked up the keys for the car Angela had hired, a nicely anonymous means of transport that wouldn’t ring the alarm bells in any police car they passed, and turned to leave.

“If you have any brain waves, give me a call on the mobile,” Bronson said. “Otherwise, I’ll see you later.”

27 July 2012

Bronson and Weeks gave up looking just after four that afternoon, having achieved absolutely nothing.

They’d driven around all the Olympic sites in Angela’s hired Ford, and seen all of the security precautions at first hand. Whole streets had been cordoned off by linked steel barriers, effectively turning the various sites into islands within the suburban environment. Police officers, many of them armed, were manning the barricades, their numbers supplemented by vast hordes of civilian staff. Troops were on the streets as well, providing an impressive extra level of security, and Bronson knew that Typhoon fighter jets had been stationed at nearby airfields, Royal Navy ships were moored in the Thames, and surface-to-air missile batteries were positioned and on alert around the city. London was protected by an impressive ring of steel, but he knew that these defenses would be completely and utterly useless if the weapon was already inside the city. And that, he thought, was the appalling reality of the situation.

Pedestrian access was rigidly controlled, and neither he nor Weeks could see any possible way that anybody without the correct ticket was going to get anywhere near the stadium. And certainly no unidentified vehicle carrying a weapon, disguised or not, would have been allowed access to the area.

They’d concentrated on the main stadium, the site of the opening ceremony, which was also where the most restrictive security precautions were in force, for obvious reasons. They’d driven around it twice, following a tortuous route through the side streets, but keeping as close to the stadium as they could. Then they’d parked the car and walked pretty much the same route. But there were no gaps in the security cordon, no places where even an agile man would be able to get through the barriers and into the stadium, and certainly no points where a vehicle could be driven through.