by James Becker
“What did you do in the army?” Mike asked. “Ever use explosives, anything like that?”
Bronson shook his head. “I was infantry, not a sapper. I know about weapons and grenades, and I did some work with explosives for a while. Give me some plastic and a detonator and I can blow a hole in something, but I’m not a fully qualified demolition specialist.”
“Pity.”
“Why?” Bronson asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a stash of C4 or Semtex?”
He watched the faces of the other men closely. If this group had access to plastic explosives, that made them infinitely more dangerous than Davidson and Curtis had expected. The detective sergeant had told Bronson that the activities of the group were a nuisance, and that the death of the nightwatchman was more likely to have been manslaughter rather than deliberate murder. But if they possessed high-grade military explosives like C4—Composition Four—then he knew they were looking at serious terrorists. Perhaps that was what Curtis had been hinting at when he’d said there were fears that the group posed a more serious threat than simple vandalism. Suddenly, Bronson was even more thankful that he had bought the little Llama pistol from Dickie Weeks.
Mike took his time before he replied.
“Might have,” he said finally. “We’ve got contacts, people who can get us what we need. And we’ve only just started.”
Those words sent a chill through Bronson.
“Listen,” he said, “I don’t mind painting slogans on walls and smashing up a few machines, but if you’re serious about having access to plastic explosives, that’s a whole new ball game. When I was in the army, I saw the damage that just a few ounces of explosive could do to a vehicle or even to a building. If you go that route, you’ll lose any public support you’ve got, and when the police come after you—which they will—they won’t be carrying truncheons. They’ll have Heckler & Koch MP5s and they’ll be happy to use them. That’s a dangerous game you’re playing.”
Mike looked at him for a few seconds, then smiled slowly.
“So you can talk,” he said, in a tone of mild surprise. “I didn’t say we had explosives. I didn’t even say we could get explosives. I just said we had contacts who could get us what we need. I’ve no idea if we’ll end up trying to bring down one of the buildings in the Olympic village using a few lumps of plastic—that won’t be our decision—but if we do go that route, it’s good that you know something about demolition.”
Eaton looked from Bronson to Mike and back again.
“I told you that we could use you, Alex. I just didn’t guess you knew anything about explosives.”
“Hang on a minute,” Bronson said. “I haven’t said anything about joining your group, and after what he”—he pointed at Mike—“has just said, I really don’t think I want to. Sounds to me like you’re getting into dark and dangerous territory.” Bronson switched his attention from Eaton back to Mike. “And what did you mean when you said that if you used explosives it wouldn’t be your decision? If you don’t decide things like that, just who is pulling your strings?”
Mike grinned at him. “We’re just a small part of a much bigger group, and they call the shots.”
“And they are…?” Bronson demanded.
Mike shook his head firmly. “You’ve just walked in off the street,” he said, “and we still know sod all about you, so there’s no chance of me saying anything else. You could be an undercover cop for all I know.”
“Do I look like a bloody cop?” Bronson demanded, feeling the first faint stirrings of unease. Did they know something about him? Had he said something to blow his cover?
“No, but you wouldn’t, would you? That’s what it means to go undercover. You try to blend in with your targets.” Mike took a step forward, moved closer to Bronson and stared straight into his face. “I don’t trust you,” he said, “and I don’t think I’m going to like you. The only reason we’re here at all is that John reckoned you might be useful. In my book, there’s only one way to find out whether he’s right. Either you piss off out of it right now or you do something to prove who you are. We’re doing a job tonight, and you can tag along, if you want to. If you do, you’d better do exactly what we tell you, how we tell you, when we tell you. If you do okay, then we’ll think about letting you work with us. If you don’t, well”—he smiled unpleasantly—“let’s just say you won’t be seeing any of us ever again. In fact, you might not see anybody ever again.”
It was hardly a veiled threat.
“And if I don’t want to play your games?” Bronson asked.
“Like I said, you just turn around and walk away and hope that none of us see you again.”
For a few seconds the two men stared at each other in silence, the tension in the air almost palpable.
Finally Bronson nodded, because he had absolutely no option if he was to stand any chance of penetrating the group.
“Okay, Mike,” he said, “you’ve talked me into it. I’ll play your game. Where and when do I meet you?”
Mike shook his head. “It’s not quite that easy. We’ll be ready to roll at about seven, so John’ll call you at around six. He’ll give you the rendezvous position and tell you what we want you to do. After that, we’ll see what happens. If you do turn up, we’ll be watching you.”
He reached for his glass, drained the remainder of his beer, nodded to Eaton and then strode out of the pub, his bulky companion—who’d said not a single word the entire time—following behind him.
Bronson watched them leave, then glanced back at Eaton. What he’d learned from the man called Mike was both interesting and disturbing, but in reality he wasn’t really that much closer to finding out what was going on. Everything depended upon him being accepted by these people, and on him then being able to identify the ringleaders.
“You didn’t tell me your lot was part of a bigger group,” he said.
Eaton shrugged. “You didn’t ask,” he replied, “and I don’t think it really matters. We act pretty much by ourselves, but they just pay the bills. And us,” he added.
“You mean they pay you?” That was a wrinkle that Bronson hadn’t expected.
Eaton grinned at him. “You might be in this because you’re running some kind of one-man crusade against the Olympics, but most of us are involved because there’s money to be made.”
“How much money?” Bronson asked. He didn’t think displaying a little avarice was a bad thing.
Eaton’s smile grew broader. “You’ll find that out a bit later on, if Mike and the others decide you can join us.”
Bronson finished his drink. “You’ll call me, right?”
Eaton nodded. “Yeah. Just make sure you can get back to the right area within about an hour. That time of the evening, the traffic can be a bitch.”
6
20 July 2012
Getting back to his car took over half an hour, partly because it was parked some distance away, but mainly because Bronson wanted to ensure that nobody was dogging his footsteps. But he knew he couldn’t just run straight evasion tactics because that would immediately alert anybody who was following him to what he was trying to do. And if he really was just an angry citizen who objected to the Olympic Games being held in London, there would be no obvious reason for him to worry about being followed.
So he spent some time browsing in a bookshop, staying near the door so that he could look out into the street, and another few minutes sitting at a round metal table outside a small café where he drank a cup of coffee that he frankly didn’t need, or even like very much. Then he did a bit of window shopping. And he saw absolutely nobody who took the slightest interest in him or what he was doing. So either they weren’t following him—which was very good news—or they were following him and they were really good at it, which was obviously extremely bad news.
When he reached the car he took a final look around him, then unlocked it, climbed into the driver’s seat and drove away, keeping one eye on his mirrors. He maneuvered the vehi
cle through the side streets until he reached a junction with the A127, the Southend Arterial Road. He turned left and followed that route until he reached the junction with the M25, where he turned right and headed south toward the river.
Again, Bronson watched his mirrors very carefully, and wound the speed up to a little more than eighty-five miles an hour, just to see if anyone would try to keep up with him. Then he slowed right down before the next junction and swung the Ford east into the Lakeside shopping center at Thurrock. There were car parks everywhere, all fairly full, but he had no difficulty in finding a space at the southern end of the trading estate outside the IKEA store. There his blue Ford was just one more anonymous car. Bronson sat for a few moments in the driving seat of the Ford, looking around him. As before, nobody seemed to be taking any interest in him. And then another car—a dark green Vauxhall with two passengers—pulled up a couple of spaces behind him. Two men got out and started walking directly toward his vehicle.
Bronson tensed and wrapped the fingers of his right hand around the butt of the little Llama pistol as they drew nearer. But when they reached his car, they simply continued walking, heading toward the store entrance.
Only when they’d vanished from sight did he relax, take out his mobile phone and press the speed-dial button for the number—another mobile phone—that he wanted. Curtis answered almost immediately.
“It’s me,” Bronson said. For obvious security reasons, just in case the group they were trying to infiltrate had obtained scanners or other ways of hacking into either of the mobile phones, it had been agreed that neither man would ever mention their respective names. The previous year the newspapers had featured little other than phone-hacking stories.
Both men knew that hacking a mobile was far more difficult than most of the papers had made out. Many of the reported hacks had not only occurred several years earlier, when mobile network security was much less efficient than it was today, but most had also involved attacks on a user’s voice mail messaging system, and now the commonest way of communicating apart from simply making a call was to use text, and that was far more difficult to break into. Nevertheless, they were determined not to take any chances.
“How’d it go?” Curtis asked.
“I think you could say that I’m on probation. They’re doing some kind of operation this evening, and they’ve invited me along. But they’re cautious. I don’t know where it is, or exactly what time it’s going to be starting. John Eaton will call me on my mobile at six and tell me where to go, and I have to be within about an hour’s drive of the site. But I’ve got no idea when the action will kick off. I’d have thought they’ll probably wait until dark.”
“What are you going to do? Turn up, or do you want out now? If you call me as soon as you’ve been given the rendezvous, we could bust in and grab the lot of them.”
Bronson shook his head as he replied. “I’d love to walk away from this, but I don’t think that would work,” he said. “All I’ve been told is that I’ll need to rendezvous somewhere, presumably close to the site, at seven this evening. What I don’t know is whether I’ll be meeting the rest of the group there, or just one or two of those I’ve already seen. If I was a betting man, I’d say they were still suspicious of me, and the rendezvous position that I’ll be given will be nowhere near where the rest of them will be assembling. So if you do send in a team of officers instead of me, you’ll be lucky to grab one or two of them.”
“And that will spook the rest and blow your cover completely,” Curtis finished for him.
“Exactly. And one of them—he was introduced to me as Mike, no second name and I’ve no idea if that’s really any part of his name—actually said to me that I could be an undercover cop trying to penetrate their operation. I think I talked him out of the idea, but that’s still a bit worrying.”
There was a short silence while Curtis digested this unwelcome piece of information. “You sure about that? I mean, do you think he was being serious, or was it just a kind of throwaway remark?”
“I don’t know. But if I’m going to get inside this group, I can’t see any alternative to my turning up tonight.”
“Well, just be careful, that’s all. And if it looks as if it’s all turning to rat shit, get the hell out of there and call for backup. I’ll make sure there are a few extra patrol cars and a couple of ARVs in the general area from about eight o’clock onwards, so if you do blow the whistle, we can have officers with you in just a few minutes.”
That was some comfort, but Bronson knew that a lot could happen to him between the time he raised the alarm and the first car arriving.
“Thanks,” Bronson said. “I hope it won’t come to that.”
“Right,” Curtis said briskly. “I’ll brief Shit Rises on your progress so far. Anything else you need to tell me?”
“Yes, three things. First, if what John Eaton told me at lunchtime today is correct, then this group working in London is just a small part of a much bigger organization. But before you ask, I’ve got no idea what it is, where it’s based, or what its agenda is. I got the feeling that we’re not just talking about another bunch of low-lifes doing malicious damage in Edinburgh or Cardiff or somewhere. I think this other organization is directing the London group, telling it what targets to hit and when to hit them, which suggests a high degree of control. That’s interesting, maybe even surprising, though I don’t know much about this kind of criminal activity.
“The second point’s related to that one. According to Eaton, the superior group, for want of a better expression, actually pays this London mob to carry out their attacks. They’re acting as mercenaries, or maybe even paid employees, of this other lot.”
“That’s a new one, no mistake,” Curtis said. “I don’t think we’ve ever met that before. I’ll pass it on. A couple of years ago we found a group of vandals—nothing very violent, mainly daubing slogans on buildings, that kind of thing—who had all paid into a fund so that if any of them were caught and fined, the fund would pay it. That was unusual enough, but I’ve never encountered what you might call vandals for hire before. And the third thing?”
“This is what worries me most of all. They were quizzing me about what I’d done in the past, and I told them I spent a few years in the army. The first question they asked me was if I knew anything about explosives, and they hinted that they had access to plastic explosives, through this other group.”
“Shit,” Curtis muttered. “That’s all we need.”
“‘Shit” is an understatement. Most terrorist groups—and I think we have to consider them as terrorists rather than vandals—have to manufacture their own explosives. They use something like potassium chlorate or ammonium nitrate, which is a major constituent of most fertilizers, and mix it with a fuel like diesel oil. It can produce a hell of a bang—”
“You don’t have to remind me,” Curtis interrupted. “I was in Docklands when the IRA Canary Wharf bomb exploded back in ’ninety-six. That was a fertilizer bomb, and when it went off you could hear the bang over most of East London.”
“I remember it, too. Most of the estimates suggested it was about a half-ton device, about eleven hundred pounds, and I think it did about ninety million pounds’ worth of damage and killed a couple of people. But military-grade plastic explosive is about five times more powerful than a fertilizer bomb.”
“So do you think these comedians could get their hands on plastic explosive?”
“I’ve no idea. The trouble is that C4 and Semtex—that’s the civilian equivalent, if you like, used in quarries and so forth—are readily available if you know where to look, and especially in Europe. There are supposed to be literally tons of Semtex unaccounted for, so if these people can locate a source, I suppose they could get some into Britain.”
Curtis grunted. “This is sounding a bloody sight worse every time you open your mouth,” he said. “And you know how urgent this is. We’ve got a matter of days to get it sorted. But you’re right. You have to
meet these people tonight and try to find out as much as you can about them. But the moment you get any definitive information about their identities or where we can find them, and especially if you get a firm lead on this plastic explosive, you blow the whistle and get out. Understood?”
“You’ve got it,” Bronson agreed, and ended the call.
He sat in thought for a couple of minutes, then took a different mobile phone from the glovebox, inserted the battery and dialed another number, one he knew from memory.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Angela; it’s me.”
“I’ve been trying to call you, but your mobile is permanently switched off. Where are you?”
“Sorry, it’s a long story. The short version is that I’ve had to go undercover, and that means no phone calls to anyone who could identify me. I’m taking a risk calling you now, but I wanted to tell you what was going on.”
“I thought you were just going up to London to be an extra body in the run-up to the Olympics.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Bronson replied, “but I was completely wrong. I can’t go into any detail, but it does actually have something to do with the Games. Anyway, I’m stuck with it for the moment, but with any luck I might be finished in a few days, maybe a week at the most, because the timescale’s really tight.”
“I suppose this means that I won’t be seeing you for a while?”
“Not until this is over, no.”
Angela was silent for a few moments, then Bronson heard a deep sigh.
“Well, just be careful,” she said, then rang off.
Bronson switched off the mobile and removed the battery, replacing the unit in the glovebox.
He didn’t like to think what his former wife would say if she knew he was sitting in a car with a loaded—and completely illegal—pistol in his pocket, waiting to be summoned by a gang of putative terrorists to join them in engaging in some serious vandalism in London.