Free Echo of the Reich by James Becker Page B

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.
    But he didn’t think she’d be too happy with the idea.

7
    20 July 2012
    He got the call he was expecting at ten minutes past six, and the man who phoned him—Bronson thought it was probably John Eaton, but he couldn’t be sure—simply gave him a time and a place, and then rang off.
    Fifty minutes later, Bronson parked his Ford in one of the side streets close to the West Ham Cemetery. The street was quiet and largely deserted—parked cars occupied most of the available spaces, but very few people were visible. Lights were on in the majority of the houses that lined both sides of the road.
    He was sure that nobody had followed him to the rendezvous, but he still sat in the car for almost five minutes, checking his surroundings. Reassured, he took out the Llama pistol, dropped the magazine out of the weapon, unloaded it and then reloaded it with its maximum load of ten rounds of ammunition. He left the box of cartridges in the glovebox, because if he needed more thanten bullets he reckoned he was going to be dead anyway. Then he clicked the magazine back into place. He was very aware that semi-automatic pistols, unlike revolvers, are prone to jamming, and that the commonest reason for a stoppage is a cartridge not feeding properly into the breech from the top of the magazine. Unloading it allows the magazine spring to fully extend, and many people believe that that helps to reduce the possibility of a misfeed.
    Then he bent forward and slid the pistol under the driver’s seat of the car, because at that moment he’d had a change of heart, deciding it would not be wise to carry a weapon, not to that meeting.
    His logic was simple enough: if Eaton and his cronies were still unsure about him, it was likely that he might be searched, just in case he was wearing a wire or another type of recording device. And the last thing he wanted was for any members of the group to discover that he had a weapon. That was his ace in the hole.
    Bronson opened the door, stepped out onto the pavement and glanced around him; nothing he saw or heard gave him even the slightest twinge of concern. He took out his A to Z of London, located the street he was standing in, and where he needed to get to, which was literally just around the corner, memorized the layout of the immediate area, and slipped the book back into his pocket.
    The rendezvous was another pub, the Lamb and Flag, but this time Bronson had been instructed to wait in the car park behind the pub, rather than go into the building. He could, of course, have parked his Ford in the car park, but he was concerned about being boxed in if he did so,not to mention one of the group somehow being able to trace the Ford’s registered owner. So he’d