absolutely no consequence. It was simply a convenient tool, a device to guarantee Bronson’s loyalty, because the film of the execution would be all the proof that any jury, in any country, would need to convict him of cold-blooded murder.
“And if I refuse?” Bronson asked.
Marcus shrugged. “That’s entirely up to you,” he said, “but if you don’t do the job, I or one of my men will do it, and then you’ll replace that man in the chair.”
The German’s eyes betrayed no emotion whatsoever as he stared levelly at Bronson, the expression on his face unchanged. Despite the man’s meek and mild appearance-he was one of the most physically unthreatening people he had ever met-at that moment, Bronson knew that he was in the presence of sheer, calculating and unremitting evil.
Bronson also knew that there was only one thing he could do in the circumstances. He was hopelessly outgunned and outnumbered, and he had absolutely no doubt that if he failed to carry out Marcus’s instructions, he would be dead within minutes. He had killed before, in the heat and confusion of a fight, and in self-defense, which he’d always thought was justifiable, or at the very least excusable. But that was a lifetime away from the cold and clinical execution of another human being.
Bronson dropped his gaze from Marcus’s face and looked around the concrete chamber. Eight men stared back at him, their expressions ranging from simply neutral to overtly hostile. Three of the men, he noticed for the first time, carried pistols in their right hands, and he had no doubt whatsoever that, at the first sign of any aggressive move on his part against Marcus or any of his other men, he would find himself looking down the barrels of multiple weapons.
As far as he could see, there was only one way that he could get out of that chamber alive without killing the bound man, and it all depended upon what Marcus did next. If he handed Bronson a full magazine for the Walther- he thought the weapon had a maximum capacity of fifteen rounds, much like the Browning with which he was much more familiar-and then stayed within reach, there was just a chance. Bronson would have to insert the magazine and cock the pistol, grab Marcus and stick the gun to his head, and then use him as a human shield to get out of the house. It was a plan born of desperation, but it was the only one he had.
“So what do you want me to do with this?” he asked, taking the pistol out of the bag and hefting it in his hand. “Beat him to death with it?”
“Nothing so crude,” Marcus said. He reached into his right-hand jacket pocket and produced a pistol magazine, also inside a clear plastic bag, the black shape unmistakable. He took a couple of steps backward and then lobbed the bag to Bronson, who caught it easily in his left hand.
“As you can see, Mr. Bronson, there’s only one round in it, so you’ve got just one shot, and just one chance.”
Bronson had been outmaneuvered, and he knew it. Marcus was now about ten feet away, and the silent men lining the chamber like grim sentinels would be able to cut him down before he could cover even half that distance. Two more had now produced pistols, and they were all aiming their weapons at him. He opened the bag, removed the magazine and slid it into the butt of the Walther, racked the slide back and then let it go to chamber the single round he’d been given, then glanced back at Marcus.
“Suppose I miss?” he asked.
“You’re ex-army and a former policeman, and it’s quite obvious from the way you’re handling the pistol that you’ve had weapons training. If you miss, we’ll assume it was deliberate. And if you do miss, the man in the chair will still die, and so will you.” Marcus made an impatient gesture. “The camera’s running-in fact, it’s been running ever since you walked into this room-so get on with it.”
Bronson looked over to his right, toward the camera, and noticed the tiny red light illuminated on the front of it, showing that it was operating.
“So you’ve also recorded our conversation,” he said, “including you forcing me to do this?”
Marcus smiled again. “Yes,” he replied, “but that won’t matter. My men will cut out those bits and produce a disk containing the edited highlights, as they say in the vacuous world of the media. Any more questions?”
Bronson shook his head. He was fresh out of options. There was only one thing that he could do.
Without even appearing to aim, he swung the pistol up toward the seated man and squeezed the trigger.
22
23 July 2012
The noise of the shot was deafening in the confined space, the concrete walls seeming to concentrate and amplify the sound. The Walther kicked in his hand, the slide instantly locking back as the spent cartridge case was ejected, the glittering brass case spinning out of the open breech to land on the concrete floor with a metallic tinkling noise.
The bound man grunted once as the copper-jacketed bullet slammed into the center of his chest, then slumped forward, killed instantly by the single shot. The front of his T-shirt turned red as blood flooded out of the entry wound. Below the chair, more blood began to pool on the floor from the ruptured vessels and ripped flesh of the exit wound that Bronson knew the bullet would have torn in his back. Behind the chair, the rubberized sheets of the movable bullet trap swung gently backward and forward, having done their job in stopping the nine-millimeter slug after it had performed its deadly task.
Bronson’s mind suddenly filled with images of Baghdad. He’d done two tours of duty in Iraq as an army officer, and had been involved in several firefights during that time. But that was a very different environment: contesting ownership of the streets of the battered city with heavily armed insurgents, clearing rebel-held houses using grenades and automatic weapons, the enemy dimly seen shapes flitting from one piece of cover to another as they fired long bursts from their Kalashnikov assault rifles. For a while, the whole city had become a single killing zone, and Bronson genuinely had no idea how many Iraqis had fallen to bullets fired from his SA-80 or his pistol. Anonymous men fighting for their country or for their leader, and dying in droves as a result. Urban warfare was perhaps the bloodiest and most unpleasant form of conflict.
But even that hadn’t left the same kind of sick feeling in his stomach that Bronson was now experiencing. He’d just carried out an execution-the cold-blooded killing of a man he’d never seen before-and he’d done it as much as anything to save his own skin. Because he was absolutely certain that if he’d refused to pull the trigger, Marcus would have carried out his threat without a second thought. The man lashed to the chair would still be dead, and Bronson would have been lying beside him.
The only sliver of comfort Bronson could take from what had just happened was that at least the man had been killed instantly by the single bullet and hadn’t suffered. And he, Bronson, was still alive, and that meant that he still had the ability to bring Marcus and his gang of thugs to justice.
“Good shot, Mr. Bronson,” Marcus said, stepping forward and holding out the plastic bag for Bronson to drop the Walther into.
Bronson handed over the weapon-again, there was nothing else he could do because of the watchful armed men in the room, and the pistol was useless to him now that it was unloaded-as he stared across at the dead man in the chair. Even as he watched, a couple of Marcus’s men stepped forward and began to release the leather straps that still held the corpse in place. Released from his bonds, the dead man tumbled untidily to the floor to lie facedown on the discolored concrete, the exit wound on his back now clearly visible.
Any vestige of hope that Bronson might have harbored that he was part of an elaborate theater, that the man’s injuries had been faked and that the cartridge was a blank, was dashed in that instant. He’d seen dead men before, and the unmistakable limpness of the body as it thudded on to the concrete floor told its own story. He was in no doubt whatsoever that he’d just committed murder.
“Who was he?”
“What?”
Bronson pointed at the figure lying on the floor. “The man I just executed for you,” he said. “I’d like to know his name.”
Marcus nodded. “Yes,” he replied, “I suppose we owe you that, at least. His name was Herman Polti, and
