perhaps I ought to clarify one small point. I told you that he was in contact with the Berlin police, and that was not entirely true. In fact, I should say it was wholly untrue. Polti was actually an undercover police officer, much as Georg feared you might be when you first made contact with his group.”
As Marcus’s words sank in, another wave of revulsion swept through Bronson. Police officers everywhere were accustomed to putting their lives on the line and, rightly or wrongly, killing a policeman was always considered to be one of the worst possible crimes. And arguably the worst possible way for any police officer to die was at the hand of a fellow policeman. What just happened had put Bronson beyond the pale. Way, way beyond it.
The German smiled coldly at Bronson. “So now we have you on film shooting a bound and helpless police officer, and we have a pistol with your fingerprints all over it. When we dump Polti’s body, we’ll ensure that the bullet and the cartridge case are found with it. The Walther and the film from the camera will be stored away in a safe place, but the moment you do something we don’t like, or we suspect that you might even be thinking of running off to the authorities, I’ll make sure that all the evidence is handed to the police. As of this moment, Mr. Bronson, we own you.”
And that, Bronson thought, was a pretty reasonable summary of the situation. But as he looked into the German’s cold eyes, Bronson made himself a promise. No matter what happened, someday, somehow, he would come back, find Marcus and kill him.
For a few seconds, Bronson stared at the scene in front of him. One of the men had brought in a rigid stretcher, the top covered with a plastic sheet, and he and another man were in the process of placing the body of the dead man on it. A third man was standing near the chair, a bucket of some kind of granular material, possibly sawdust, in his hand, and he was sprinkling it over the bloodstains.
Bronson looked back at Marcus. “So what happens now?” he asked.
The German looked slightly surprised at the question. “You’re one of us now,” he replied, “but there’s nothing for you to do in Germany. I have a full team here and in any case you don’t speak the language, or so I’ve been told. I’ll tell Georg that you passed our little test, and that he can trust you to do the right thing. And we both know exactly why he can trust you. Then it’s up to him to decide how best to make use of your talents in London before the Laternentrager gets there.”
Bronson’s face reflected the confusion he was feeling. “The what?” he asked. “What are you talking about?”
Marcus shook his head, and for the first time looked a little uncomfortable. “It’s just a German expression,” he replied. “Forget I said it. Now,” he continued briskly, “I’ll get one of my men to drive you back to your car. By the time you reach London I’m sure Georg will have organized some jobs for you to do.”
The German reached into his jacket pocket and took out an envelope, which he handed to Bronson. Inside were six five-hundred-euro notes.
“What’s this?” Bronson asked. “Blood money?”
“No. You’re now on our payroll, and so you can call that an advance of salary.”
Three minutes later, having retraced his steps, Bronson was back in the garage, accompanied by two of the Germans, neither of whom seemed inclined to speak to him, not that he was interested in holding a conversation. Marcus had told him that he’d be driven back to his car by one man, which had immediately suggested to Bronson the possibility of taking the initiative and overpowering him, and then somehow getting back inside the building to find the pistol and the incriminating film footage. But against two armed men, Bronson knew he wouldn’t have a chance.
In the garage, one of the men stood opposite the double metal doors and used the remote control to open them, while the other walked over to one of the BMWs, opened the driver’s door, gestured to Bronson to get in the back, and then sat down. As soon as the doors were open, to reveal the midevening gloom, he drove the car out of the garage, pausing to allow his companion to walk over to the car and sit down in the front passenger seat.
The second man waited until the car had driven out of the garage before again using the remote to close the doors. As he did so, he looked back at Bronson and gestured for him to replace the heavily tinted sunglasses over his eyes. They were clearly much more relaxed about their security now that he had been fatally compromised by Polti’s execution. They knew that he daren’t approach the authorities to inform on them-if that was his intention- because of the consequences to him personally if he did.
Bronson nodded agreement, removed the glasses from his pocket and put them on, because as before he had no other choice. But he’d already taken a long look around him as the car had pulled out of the garage. Lights were shining in various windows, and there was still enough natural light for him to get a good idea of the appearance of the property. The house looked smaller from the outside than the interior had suggested, but it was still obviously a substantial building.
The double garage doors were set in the lowest level of the structure, a few feet below ground level, and were approached by a well-tended gravel drive. These doors appeared to form the only opening to the house on that level, at least as far as Bronson could see, and it looked as if most of the lower-ground-floor area was given over to garaging, so presumably the occupants and their guests tended to arrive by car rather than on foot. Bronson guessed that there would be other entrances at ground level on the back or sides of the building, and he could see a wide veranda on the level directly above the garage, with a half-glazed door set in its center.
The property rose for two stories, probably built of brick, though the white painted walls made it impossible to be certain, under a roof that was notable for its shallow pitch and wide overhang at the eaves, clearly intended to cope with the heavy snowfalls the area experienced every winter. All the windows Bronson could see were fitted with shutters stained light brown to match the beams and trusses of the roof. It looked, in short, much like many of the other large houses he’d seen since entering Germany.
But in the few brief seconds before he’d been told to replace the sunglasses, Bronson had committed the appearance of the house to his memory, because knowing where to find the place again was now his highest priority. He had not the slightest intention of just trotting obediently back to London, as Marcus had told him to do. He believed that if he could find his way back, there was at least a chance that he could break in somehow and find what he needed.
And unlike the meeting places chosen by Georg in and around London, the house he’d just left was clearly a permanent residence for at least some of the people in the group-the room that had been used for the torture and execution of the unfortunate Polti demonstrated that clearly enough.
The last-and perhaps the most important-part of the puzzle was to find a street name or some indication of the district or town where the property was located, and Bronson hoped he would be able to do that as the car drove away, simply because he was sitting by himself in the backseat.
He had put on the sunglasses, as he’d been ordered, but as he’d done so he’d snapped off a tiny section of the plastic lens on the left-hand side, which gave him a small but usable window on the steadily darkening world outside the car.
The BMW drove slowly over the gravel and then crossed rougher ground before coming to a halt between a pair of stone gateposts. He heard the sound of an approaching vehicle-a car or small van, he guessed-which passed directly in front of the car and then continued on its way. As soon as it had passed, the BMW accelerated across the road and turned left.
Through the tiny gap that he had created in the lens of the sunglasses, Bronson tried to take note of the terrain the vehicle was passing. He had hoped he might see a street sign or something else that would positively identify the location, but the car seemed to be driving along a fairly straight but narrow country road bordered, at least on the left-hand side, by woods and without any turnings or junctions as far as he could see. That single fact would help him find the house again, but only after he’d somehow managed to identify the district where it was located, and for that a road sign, a road number, or a village name-something concrete that he could remember- was essential.
The car had picked up speed, and Bronson guessed it was traveling at fifty or sixty miles an hour as the road continued straight. Just over four minutes after turning onto the road, he felt the BMW begin to slow down, the driver shifting down two gears as he applied the brakes, and then the vehicle steered to the left at a Y- junction.
Without appearing to do so, Bronson shifted his gaze and just caught a glimpse of a small sign that presumably indicated the name of the road the car had turned into. It was too dark for him to read the entire name, but he did see-and, more important, he made sure he remembered-the first part of the word: “ Kaupt.” And he couldn’t swear to it, but he thought the second part of the name was the German word for street: stra?e or
