Free Echo of the Reich by James Becker

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’sall 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