by James Becker
“You said there were a whole bunch of them waiting for you at that warehouse yesterday,” Curtis pointed out.
“I know, but then they thought they were confronting an infiltrator, an undercover cop, which is why they were there mob-handed. That’s also why they told me to drive out into the wilds of Essex, so that if they decided to beat the crap out of me, or worse, there’d be nobody around to hear, or to interfere.”
“No witnesses.”
“Exactly. You knew where I’d gone, but if they’d decided that I was a liability they could do without, I’d have been dead and buried long before you could have got a team organized and out there to find out what had happened to me.”
“So why are you sure you won’t be walking into a bullet or a knife this time?”
“Mainly the location,” Bronson replied. “The meet’s in a residential district. One of the neighbors would be bound to notice any unusual noise, so I think I’ll be safe enough.” He paused for a moment. “But if you could keep a car or two, or maybe an ARV, in the vicinity until I call you afterward, I’d appreciate it. Just in case I’ve read it completely wrong and I do need to call the cavalry.”
“No problem. Give me the address and the time.”
Bronson read from the brief notes he’d made during his earlier conversation.
“Right,” he finished, “I’ll talk to you later today, once I leave the meeting. And it might be worth checking out who owns or rents that property.”
“Already doing it,” Curtis replied.
Ten minutes before the time specified, Bronson parked his Ford in a neighboring street, checked that the Llama was secure in his pocket and fully loaded, then climbed out of the car and walked along to the address he’d been given.
He was still about twenty yards away when the door of a dark gray Vauxhall saloon car swung open in front of him and John Eaton leaned out.
“Hop in, Chris, we’re going for a ride,” he said.
Bronson stared at him for a moment.
“I thought we were meeting in that house,” he replied, pointing up the street.
Eaton shook his head. “No. Georg picked that address at random, just to provide a location where we could meet you. The meet’s a couple of miles from here.”
Bronson nodded. “Right. Well, no offense, John, but I’m not getting in the car with you, not after what happened at the warehouse. My car’s parked about a hundred yards away. I’ll go and get it, and then I’ll follow you.”
“Mike said you had to be in this car.”
“You really think I give a toss what Mike says? No way am I getting in that car. You want me at a meeting, I’ll drive there myself. If you don’t like that, I’m walking away right now.”
Eaton nodded in resignation. “Okay, if that’s the way you want it. I’ll stay here. What kind of car is it?”
“Blue Ford Focus, on a fifty-seven plate,” Bronson told him. “I’ll be no more than five minutes.”
As soon as Bronson turned the corner and knew he was out of sight of Eaton’s car, he pulled out his phone and called Curtis.
“Really quick,” he said. “Forget that address because it’s nothing to do with the group. They just picked it as a location for me to get to. I’m going to get my car and follow John Eaton to the actual site for the meeting. You’ve still got the GPS tracker on the Ford?”
“Yes, and I know that it’s working.”
“Good. Make sure you keep an eye on my position, and keep an ARV close behind me. And if I call this number but don’t say anything, it’ll be because it’s all turning to rat shit and I need help, fast.”
Bronson reached the Ford, unlocked it and dropped into the driver’s seat.
“Right. I’m in the car and about to move off. Talk to you later.”
“I hope so. I really hope so.”
13
22 July 2012
Eaton’s estimate of a couple of miles wasn’t too far out. Bronson followed about fifty yards behind the Vauxhall as Eaton threaded his way through the afternoon traffic. Their route was toward the east, through districts Bronson had never visited before, moving steadily away from the congestion of the city and deeper into the suburbs.
Eventually, Eaton turned into another small industrial estate—the group was obviously fairly consistent in its choice of rendezvous locations—and pulled up outside a unit that either had been abandoned early in the life of the estate or had simply never been used at all. It was impossible to tell which, and it really didn’t matter.
Bronson pulled the car into a parking space on the cracked concrete forecourt of the unit. Grass and stunted weeds sprouted from the cracks, evidence of the time that had passed since the unit had last been occupied, by either builders or tenants. He climbed out of the vehicle and locked the doors. The GPS tracker unit, he knew, was powered directly from the battery, and had its own independent battery pack as a backup, so now that he had finally stopped moving, he assumed Curtis would already have passed his position to the crew of the Armed Response Vehicle he hoped had been tasked to follow him. He realized there were rather a lot of assumptions in his situation, and absolutely nothing he could do about any of them.
There were already half a dozen other cars occupying slots on the unit’s forecourt, but as the commercial premises next door had a full car park, Bronson wondered if the vacant lot was simply used as an overflow car park by the people who worked there. Whatever the case, the presence of so many cars was a comfort, because that meant there had to be a number of people in the vicinity—inconvenient witnesses if the group intended to do him any harm.
The structure was typical of many small industrial units. There was a small door on the right-hand side beside a large window, perhaps intended for a receptionist, while the majority of the front of the building was occupied by a wide metal roller-shutter door, the opening big enough to allow a small truck to enter. The paint on both doors was faded white and peeling, and the window beside the office entrance was cracked in one corner. The whole building exuded an air of dereliction.
About halfway down the side wall of the building was another door, dark gray this time, already standing open, and Bronson spotted a set of keys in the lock. He took a last glance behind him, then followed Eaton inside and found himself in a short corridor with three doors—one at the end, which presumably led to the main open area of the unit, and the others on either side of the corridor, both of which obviously opened into internal offices. Bronson followed Eaton into the office on his left, and wasn’t entirely surprised to see Mike leaning against the far wall, naked hostility radiating from him, and Georg sitting quite comfortably in the only chair in the room.
Georg glanced round the empty office. “I would ask you to sit down, but the facilities here are a little limited, so I’m afraid you’ll have to stand. But this won’t take long.”
Bronson nodded, and mirrored Mike’s pose, leaning against the wall beside the door.
“You bother me, Bronson,” Georg began, “precisely because you used to be in the army and then, as we found out later, served as a police officer. The kind of people who follow that career path tend to have clear and rigid ideas about right and wrong. When John Eaton first told me about you, I was prepared to bet that you were working undercover, trying to infiltrate our organization, simply because you told him you’d been in the army. I assumed that your talk of vandalizing sites to do with the London Olympic Games was just a smokescreen, boastful bravado to hide your true purpose.”
Bronson shrugged, uncomfortably aware of the accuracy of Georg’s analysis.
“Not everyone in the army has a ‘clear and rigid’ concept of what’s right or wrong,” he replied, “and bent coppers aren’t exactly a rarity.”
“I know. And I saw the way you attacked that bulldozer. I watched the two videos—the one my man took and the one shown on Sky. It looked to me as if you were enjoying yourself, and you clearly did a good job on it, maybe even wrote it off, in fact. The way you
did that didn’t seem like you were an undercover cop trying to establish some credibility. There seemed to be real rage in what you did.”
“I still don’t trust the bastard,” Mike growled from his perch against the wall.
“Shut up,” Georg snapped, without even turning round, then turned his attention back to Bronson. “That, and the fact that you’re walking around with an unlicensed pistol in your pocket, could mean that you’re exactly who you say you are. But there’s still a nagging doubt in my mind.”
Bronson shrugged again. “That’s your problem, not mine. You don’t like me, you don’t want me around, just say the word and I’ll walk.”
He took a couple of steps forward, then turned toward the door.
“I didn’t say that,” Georg murmured. “You still have the potential to be very useful to us. You’ve only recently left the police, so you’ll know the kind of operations they’d be likely to mount against us. Information like that could be very valuable, and we’d pay well for it.”
Bronson stopped in the doorway and looked back.
“How much?”
“That depends. First, we need to be sure about you, be certain that you won’t betray us.”
“Yeah? And how do you do that?”
Georg shook his head. “I won’t. It’s not my decision. Did you bring your passport?”
Bronson nodded and produced the document from his trouser pocket.
“Good. I don’t need to see it, but you’ll need it later today.” Georg stood up and reached into his jacket.
Bronson tensed instantly, his right hand closing around the butt of the Llama. But Georg simply pulled out a thick buff envelope and tossed it across the room to him. Bronson caught it with his left hand, flicked up the flap with his thumb and glanced at the contents. Banknotes.
“There’s one hundred pounds in twenty-pound notes in that envelope, plus five hundred euros. There’s also a piece of paper with an address on it. It’s in Berlin. They’re expecting you by tomorrow evening. That should be enough for the ferry crossing, petrol, autobahn tolls and so on. If there’s any change you can keep it.”
“Hang on a minute,” Bronson said. “Why the hell am I driving halfway across Europe? And who am I meeting in Berlin?”
Georg shook his head. “Berlin is hardly ‘halfway across Europe,’ Bronson. It’s about a day and a half’s drive from the French Channel ports, about twelve hundred kilometers or seven hundred and fifty miles, that’s all.”
“And I’m meeting who, exactly?” Bronson asked again.
“My colleagues. They want to see you, and then they’ll decide if we want to involve you in what we’re doing.” Georg leaned forward, to emphasize what he was about to say. “Let me be frank, Bronson.” He flicked a glance toward Mike. “Hiring muscle is easy. We pay them well, and they do as they’re told. You’re different. You’ve got brains as well as brawn, and your background and the knowledge you have would make you invaluable to our cause, and especially at the end.”
“What do you mean, ‘at the end’?” Bronson asked.
“That doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that what we’re doing now is just a prelude to the main event. A distraction, if you like. You’ll be told exactly what we’re doing once we’re certain where your loyalties lie.”
“And how are your colleagues going to establish that?” Bronson asked again.
Georg smiled for the first time since Bronson had walked into the disused office.
“I’m sure they’ll find a way,” he replied.
14
22 July 2012
As he followed Eaton out of the office and walked down the short corridor, Bronson realized just how little he really knew about this group. They had already caused tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of damage, killing a man in the process, and that, according to Georg, was simply a “distraction.” Whatever the group’s final aim, it could be catastrophic for London, something that could rival, maybe even surpass, the carnage caused by the suicide bombers who’d struck the city on “7/7.”
And the only way he could find out what they intended was to do exactly what Georg had told him. He had to travel to Berlin and hope he’d be able to worm his way inside the group there. Handing Georg, Mike and Eaton to the police would achieve nothing useful. He had to wait until he knew far more before he could order an attack on them.
But as he reached the end of the alley between the two adjacent buildings and was about to head across the forecourt toward his parked car, he saw something he really didn’t like.
He watched an unmarked white Transit van turn into the entrance road to the industrial estate and then stop, the front of the vehicle pointing toward him. That wasn’t unusual—vehicles of that sort were ten a penny throughout the area during the working day—but the wire mesh that covered the windscreen was unusual. The only group of people who routinely operated vehicles protected in that way, Bronson knew, were the police.
Something had gone wrong. Perhaps Curtis had misunderstood what he’d said, or maybe a more senior officer had decided to take the opportunity to make an early arrest, despite what Bronson had told them. He didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. What was important was trying to retrieve the situation, because he had to get to Berlin, had to find out what the group was planning.
“John,” Bronson said urgently, just as Eaton reached the end of the alley. “Back inside.”
“What?”
“That’s a police van. It’s a raid.”
Eaton followed Bronson’s glance and nodded, then turned on his heels and swiftly retraced his steps.
“What is it?” Georg asked, as Eaton and Bronson stepped back into the office.
“There’s a van-load of coppers outside,” Eaton said urgently. “Chris spotted them.”
“You mean he bloody brought them here,” Mike shouted. “He’s a plant—I told you that.”
“If I brought them here, why the hell would I warn you?” Bronson responded. “I don’t know how they found the place. Maybe somebody in the unit next door recognized me or John and called the cops—our faces have been splashed all over the news. The how doesn’t matter. What we have to do is get out of here.”
“What will they do?” Georg asked, standing up. “How will they approach us?”
“That depends on what information they have. If they know we’re in this building, they’ll cover the exits, then use an enforcer—a battering ram—on one of the doors. Then they’ll swarm inside. If they just followed my car or John’s, then they won’t have our precise location, and they may wait where they are until they spot one of us.”
“So what do we do?”
“First we watch,” Bronson replied, and stepped out of the inner door of the office into the open central area of the building. The floor was littered with debris, mainly small items but interspersed with a few empty cardboard boxes, while fluorescent light fittings were suspended from the ceiling, most of them missing their tubes.
Bronson strode over to the front office, beside the roller-shutter door. When he tried the handle, he found that the access door was locked.
“I don’t have a key for that,” Georg said from behind him.
“No problem.”
Bronson took a step back, then kicked out hard with the sole of his right shoe. The blow connected with the internal door directly alongside the lock. The wood creaked, but didn’t give, but on the second kick, the jamb splintered with a crack, and the door crashed open. He walked straight across to the window and peered out cautiously, keeping his body out of sight behind the wall that ran between the window and the outside door.
The white van didn’t appear to have moved, and was still parked in the road, two shadowy figures faintly visible in the cab, but Bronson had no doubt there were at least half a dozen other officers sitting in the back of the vehicle waiting for the signal to disembark.
“What do we do?” Georg asked, for the second time. He sounded only mildly concerned. Mike, in contr
ast, was clearly very agitated.
“Come on, Mr. Ex-copper. Sort this out.”
“I can’t ‘sort this out,’ you idiot,” Bronson snapped. “All I can do is try to work out how the hell we get out of here.”
He turned away from the window.
“Yeah, well do that, then,” Mike snarled.
Bronson ignored the remark and looked at Georg.
“Are you known to the police?” he asked. “I mean, if you stepped out of here and walked past that van, would anyone inside it recognize you?”
Georg shook his head. “No. As far as I know, I’ve never come to the attention of the authorities here.”
“Good. That’s something.”
“They might know my face,” Mike interrupted. “There’ve been cameras at some of the places we’ve hit.”
“Brilliant,” Bronson said, irritation lacing every syllable of the word. “So there’s a good chance the three of us would be recognized.” He paused for a moment, then glanced at his three companions. “The bad news is that there are probably eight officers in that van, maybe more,” he said, “so there’s no chance of us being able to fight our way past them. But unless there are other vans or cars parked out of sight, they’ve only got one vehicle here, and that gives us a chance. John and I came in separate cars. How did you two arrive?”
“Mike drove me,” Georg replied.
“So we’ve got three cars. They can’t follow all of us, so I suggest we scatter. Get to the vehicles and just go for it.” He turned to Georg. “Have you got a key for the roller-shutter door?”
“It doesn’t need one. It’s bolted on the inside.”
“Good, that means there’s something else we can do. The police don’t know you, you said, so you go outside, get into Mike’s car and back it inside here when we open the main door. Then Mike can duck down in the back of it, or maybe get into the boot, so that he’s out of sight, and you should be able to drive right past that police van. And while you’re driving out of the estate here, the police will be looking at your car, hopefully, so they won’t be watching this place. Then John and I will get outside to our vehicles and take our chances on the road.”