made by the camera.
He was aware that there were a rather large number of variables and uncertainties in the scenario he’d envisaged, but he was optimistic. He also knew it was probably going to be a long afternoon, so he made himself as comfortable as he could, placed the binoculars to one side, and rested his head on his crossed arms.
It was a hot day, the sun was warm on his back, and the sound of buzzing insects and birdsong was gently soporific. Ten minutes later, Bronson was sound asleep.
29
24 July 2012
A metallic clattering noise woke him, and for a few seconds Bronson had no idea where he was or what he was doing. He’d fallen asleep with his head lying across his folded arms, and his neck ached abominably. Then realization returned. Moving slowly and carefully, because the human eye is particularly well adapted to detect movement, he lifted his head to face the house.
The air was noticeably cooler, and the sun had almost set. The front of the house was now illuminated by the last of its rays, giving the wood a golden glow, and infusing the building with an appearance of benign and rustic comfort that Bronson knew was entirely illusory.
He raised the binoculars to his eyes, although he had already guessed the cause of the sound that had awakened him: the garage door was wide-open. The garage’s interior lights were still switched off but he could just make out the shapes of two men standing together on the left-hand side of the open door. The odd word of German floated into the quiet of the evening, but even if Bronson had been able to speak the language, he doubted if he could have followed their conversation, because he was simply too far away.
It looked to Bronson as if they were waiting for something, or someone-perhaps for Marcus or one of the other men to arrive, which wasn’t good news. He could have tackled one man, perhaps even two using the threat of his pistol, but it was clear that that window of opportunity had now passed. To implement his very sketchy plan, he would have needed to be standing somewhere near the garage door when it opened. Now, it would be impossible to cross the seventy or so yards of open ground between his present position and the garage without being seen.
And then he heard the sound of a car approaching, and guessed that this might be the vehicle the men were expecting. He glanced to his left and saw through the trees the irregular flickering of a set of headlights, the note of the engine changing as the car slowed down. Moments later, a vehicle turned off the road and drove down the track toward the property, its lights shining into the interior of the garage and revealing the presence of four other cars already inside.
That changed the odds considerably. Even if each car had been driven there by a single individual, that still meant there were at least four people in the house, and possibly as many as sixteen. Adding to that number the occupants of the vehicle that had just arrived, Bronson knew he could be facing up to twenty men, many of them armed if his past experience was any guide. To approach the building now would be suicidal. The best he could hope to do was wait until at least some of the men had left. Assuming, of course, that they would be leaving. He would just have to wait, and watch, and see what happened.
He’d been expecting the car to drive into the garage, and had assumed that was the reason why the two men were waiting by the open door, but then he realized that the number of cars already inside would have made maneuvering somewhat difficult. Instead, the car swung around to the left and parked on the gravel drive. Its lights were extinguished, the sound of the engine died away, and then the car doors opened.
Four men climbed out and walked around to the vehicle’s trunk. Each man reached inside and took out a bulky bag, about the size of the weekend bag that Bronson had locked in the trunk of his car; then they strode across to the door of the garage. As they did so, the interior lights flickered into life.
Two things struck him immediately, both unexpected. The first was the way that the two men waiting there were dressed. Despite the warmth of the evening, both were wearing long and heavy overcoats that came well below their knees, and apparently had on some kind of boots, because Bronson could see the glint of black- presumably leather-below their coats. The second was what they did as the four new arrivals approached. They stood rigidly to attention and nodded deferentially as the other men stepped inside the building. Whoever the guests were, they appeared to be people of some importance.
But it was the overcoats that puzzled him. Now that the sun had gone down, the evening was getting cooler, but the air was still warm, and presumably the house had a central heating system, so why were the two men dressed in that fashion? It couldn’t be because they were cold; that didn’t make sense. In fact, Bronson could only think of one possible reason for what they were wearing, and he didn’t like the idea at all.
He switched his attention back to the events unfolding in front of him. One of the men was still standing by the open door of the garage, while the other was escorting the four guests to the door at the rear of the garage, and in a few moments all five men had disappeared from view.
Bronson toyed with the idea of trying to get across to the house and into the garage while there was only one man on duty, but he guessed there was only one logical reason for the second man to remain by the open door, and that was because additional visitors were expected. Moments later, he was proved right when a second car turned into the driveway and parked near the first. Again, four men emerged from the car, collected bags and then disappeared into the garage. The only difference this time was that as soon as all four men were inside, the garage door closed behind them and the thin sliver of light visible under the door was extinguished.
Bronson lay still, the binoculars still clamped to his face, studying the building, but no lights went on anywhere in the property, and in any case, every set of shutters that was visible to him was now firmly closed.
He tried to make sense of what he’d just seen. The only reason he could think of for the two men to be clad in heavy overcoats on such a mild evening was because of what they were wearing underneath. That, together with the gleaming black leather boots they both had on, suggested a uniform of some sort, and presumably a uniform that they did not want any casual passerby to see. And that thought generated a host of different, and distinctly unpleasant, possibilities.
From the first, Bronson had assumed that Marcus and his band of men had formed a terrorist organization, and terrorist groups did not tend to wear uniforms or anything else that would enable them to be easily identified. That, in fact, was the point. Terrorists lurked in the shadows, forming their plans, delivering their weapons, and then making their escape, if at all possible, completely undetected. Wearing a uniform would never be a part of their agenda.
He still had no doubt that Marcus had planned some kind of terrorist-style atrocity against London, but now Bronson wondered if the German had formed a sort of private army. Could this gathering at the house be a meeting of the principal officers of that army, a meeting that required the attendees to wear full uniforms? That would explain not only what the two men in the garage had been wearing, but also the bags that the eight visitors had carried into the house.
And there was yet another, even darker, possibility, suggested to Bronson by those gleaming black boots. What if Marcus hadn’t created a private army? What if he had simply re-created an older one? Maybe what was happening inside the property at that very moment was a neo-Nazi revival, a re-creation of a part of one of the most evil and ruthless regimes the modern world had ever seen. The thought sent a shiver down Bronson’s spine.
One thing was now perfectly clear to him: there was no way he could get inside the property that evening. There were simply too many people in there for him even to attempt it. And if his theory about a neo-Nazi group was correct, if he was apprehended on or near the property, he had absolutely no doubt what the outcome would be. If he was lucky, they’d simply shoot him. If he was unlucky, he’d be strapped to that hideous chair in the concrete room and worked over for a day or two by some of Marcus’s men to extract whatever information they wanted, and then they’d kill him.
The one thing he wasn’t going to do, he decided, was get any closer to the house. He considered returning to his car and simply driving away, but he was loath to do that for the moment. In any case, he had no idea where he’d go or what he should do. He couldn’t simply walk away from what he’d been forced to do inside that house. He had to try somehow to retrieve both the pistol he’d used to kill the man in the chair and the film Marcus had taken
