Echo of the Reich (20 page)

The double garage doors were set in the lowest level of the structure, a few feet below ground level, and were approached by a well-tended gravel drive. These doors appeared to form the only opening to the house on that level, at least as far as Bronson could see, and it looked as if most of the lower-ground-floor area was given over to garaging, so presumably the occupants and their guests tended to arrive by car rather than on foot. Bronson guessed that there would be other entrances at ground level on the back or sides of the building, and he could see a wide veranda on the level directly above the garage, with a half-glazed door set in its center.

The property rose for two stories, probably built of brick, though the white painted walls made it impossible to be certain, under a roof that was notable for its shallow pitch and wide overhang at the eaves, clearly intended to cope with the heavy snowfalls the area experienced every winter. All the windows Bronson could see were fitted with shutters stained light brown to match the beams and trusses of the roof. It looked, in short, much like many of the other large houses he’d seen since entering Germany.

But in the few brief seconds before he’d been told to replace the sunglasses, Bronson had committed the appearance of the house to his memory, because knowing where to find the place again was now his highest priority. He had not the slightest intention of just trotting obediently
back to London, as Marcus had told him to do. He believed that if he could find his way back, there was at least a chance that he could break in somehow and find what he needed.

And unlike the meeting places chosen by Georg in and around London, the house he’d just left was clearly a permanent residence for at least some of the people in the group—the room that had been used for the torture and execution of the unfortunate Polti demonstrated that clearly enough.

The last—and perhaps the most important—part of the puzzle was to find a street name or some indication of the district or town where the property was located, and Bronson hoped he would be able to do that as the car drove away, simply because he was sitting by himself in the backseat.

He had put on the sunglasses, as he’d been ordered, but as he’d done so he’d snapped off a tiny section of the plastic lens on the left-hand side, which gave him a small but usable window on the steadily darkening world outside the car.

The BMW drove slowly over the gravel and then crossed rougher ground before coming to a halt between a pair of stone gateposts. He heard the sound of an approaching vehicle—a car or small van, he guessed—which passed directly in front of the car and then continued on its way. As soon as it had passed, the BMW accelerated across the road and turned left.

Through the tiny gap that he had created in the lens of the sunglasses, Bronson tried to take note of the terrain the vehicle was passing. He had hoped he might see
a street sign or something else that would positively identify the location, but the car seemed to be driving along a fairly straight but narrow country road bordered, at least on the left-hand side, by woods and without any turnings or junctions as far as he could see. That single fact would help him find the house again, but only after he’d somehow managed to identify the district where it was located, and for that a road sign, a road number, or a village name—something concrete that he could remember—was essential.

The car had picked up speed, and Bronson guessed it was traveling at fifty or sixty miles an hour as the road continued straight. Just over four minutes after turning onto the road, he felt the BMW begin to slow down, the driver shifting down two gears as he applied the brakes, and then the vehicle steered to the left at a Y-junction.

Without appearing to do so, Bronson shifted his gaze and just caught a glimpse of a small sign that presumably indicated the name of the road the car had turned into. It was too dark for him to read the entire name, but he did see—and, more important, he made sure he remembered—the first part of the word: “
Kaupt
.” And he couldn’t swear to it, but he thought the second part of the name was the German word for street:
straße
or
strasse
.

A few seconds after it had turned onto the other road, the car drove past a group of buildings on the left-hand side. At first sight Bronson thought it might be a farm, but then changed his mind because, through his very restricted aperture, it looked more like a small estate of upmarket houses, though it could also, he supposed, have been a small industrial park. He was having to use only
his peripheral vision and that, along with the fading light, made discerning anything clearly very difficult.

A few moments later, the car again slowed down almost to a crawl but continued moving in a straight line, and it was soon obvious that the BMW was joining a major road. Bronson could hear the sound of other vehicles passing in both directions in front of them before the car pulled out onto the road. The driver swung left to cross the lane handling opposite-direction traffic, and then to the left, to continue in more or less the same direction that he’d been driving before.

Then Bronson had a stroke of luck as the car drove onto a bridge that spanned either a river or a canal, most probably the latter because the waterway seemed to have a very consistent width. That was an identification feature that should help narrow his search markedly. And almost before that thought had fully registered, the car slowed again as it entered a built-up area.

Bronson vainly searched for a village name, but saw nothing useful. The road appeared to continue more or less straight, but then he felt the car enter a sweeping curve to the left and a few seconds later begin a turn to the right that was almost as sharp. Moments after that, they were back in the open countryside. He didn’t know how many villages or suburbs there were around Berlin that were near a canal and that had a main road running through them with an S-bend in the middle, but he hoped there wouldn’t be too many.

He continued trying to build a picture of the remainder of the journey, but within a few minutes of leaving the village, the car turned onto an autobahn that was, like
most German main roads, devoid of unusual features. So Bronson just concentrated on making sure that what he had seen remained locked in his memory.

When the car finally turned off the autobahn, he guessed he was near his journey’s end, and a couple of minutes later the BMW drew to a halt.

“You can get out now,” the driver said, his English heavily accented.

Bronson nodded, took the sunglasses off his face and reached for the door handle. As he stepped out of the car, he recognized the station car park once again, and saw his Hyundai parked a few yards away. He didn’t look back, just strode across to his car, feeling in his pocket for the keys, and when he did finally glance behind him, he saw the BMW driving away from him toward the exit.

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
straße
; 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 café 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 Groß 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 Groß 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 Groß 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.