“I doubt if the police would listen to you. You’re tainted because of your association with me. They’d just assume I’d prompted you to tell them the same story. If you went to the newspapers they’d note down what you told them, but before they did anything else they’d talk to their friendly Media Relations Officer at the local cop shop. He’d do some checking before he gave the go-ahead to print anything, and the result would be the same: your name would be mud because of me. And if by some miracle a newspaper reporter did believe you, and thought the terrorist threat was real, the paper still wouldn’t run the story because the police would tell them not to, to avoid panic.”
“Like that strange American expression: we’re between a rock and a hard place,” Angela said. “Time’s running out because the opening ceremony is tomorrow evening. What do we do now? What can we do?”
“Two things,” Bronson replied, sounding suddenly determined. “In fact, three things. First, tomorrow you don’t go to work at the British Museum, but stay in your apartment, because I want you well out of harm’s way. I’m pretty sure the target will be the opening ceremony, but we don’t know how big or powerful the device is, and if it is some kind of a dirty bomb, the fallout could spread for a long way. In Ealing, you should be safe enough.”
“What about you? You won’t be hiding away somewhere, will you?”
“No, but that’s my job. I have to do whatever I can to stop this attack, and if I don’t have to worry about your safety, that’ll make things easier for me.”
Angela shook her head, but didn’t argue the point.
“You said there were three things, so what else will you do?”
“I’ll be making a phone call to a friend, because I’m definitely going to need help on the ground. And then I’m going undercover again.”
“Not to that same group?” Angela sounded alarmed.
“No. I mean deep undercover. I need to be able to move around the Olympic complex without anybody seeing me, or at least without taking any notice. And there’s one group of people that almost everyone ignores, who can go wherever they want without anyone bothering them.”
“Who? Policemen?”
Bronson smiled at her.
“No,” he said. “Almost the exact opposite, actually.”
47
27 July 2012
The following morning, just after five thirty, Angela drove the BMW four-by-four east out of London to pick up the M25. The plan she and Bronson had come up with was of necessity simple. She’d just dropped him off in northeast London, where the streets were still largely deserted, and was going to drive out of the city on the M11 motorway as far as Stansted Airport. There, she’d leave the BMW in the long-term car park, where a vehicle on foreign plates would be less likely to attract attention, and hire a car.
She knew it was possible, or perhaps probable, that her credit card purchases were being monitored by the police, in case she led them to Bronson, but he was miles away so it really wouldn’t matter if she was stopped and questioned at the airport. And she had all morning to complete the transaction.
In the event, nobody-neither the Avis booking clerk nor a couple of patrolling police officers bristling with weapons and body armor who were lurking nearby-took the slightest notice of her, and twenty minutes after she’d handed over her credit card, she was driving back down the M11 toward London, in a one-year-old Ford Focus.
And worrying about Bronson.
Bronson was cold and, he hoped, invisible. He certainly thought he looked the part. In a restaurant, nobody really notices waiters-they’re just members of staff who take orders, deliver plates of food and clear the tables. On the streets of London, and most other capital cities, the homeless and the beggars are the nonpeople, shapes hunched in doorways or lying on cardboard, perhaps with a plastic cup in front of them holding a few low-value coins. But for the most part, people notice them but don’t see them, averting their eyes or stepping around them. And that’s what he was counting on.
He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days-not a deliberate or planned move, just dictated by the circumstances and their movements in Germany and Poland-and his face was grubby with what looked like ingrained dirt, an effect it had taken him some time to achieve. He was wearing the oldest pair of trainers he owned, dirty and torn jeans, a hooded sweatshirt and a camouflage-pattern jacket that he thought he’d thrown out years ago. Angela had recovered all of those from Bronson’s house in the early hours of the morning, but only after they’d spent twenty minutes making absolutely sure that the property wasn’t under surveillance. He also had a battered rucksack that contained a handful of chocolate bars, cans of soft drink, a couple of sweaters, Angela’s mobile phone, which was switched off, and the silencer and spare magazines for the Walther. The pistol was in his pocket, just in case. Beside him was a grubby old sack, inside which were the two Heckler amp; Koch submachine guns and extra magazines, each wrapped up in a couple of old sweaters and a tattered blanket.
At that moment he was sitting in the doorway of a small office building about a quarter of a mile from the stadium in Stratford where the opening ceremony was due to start early that evening, and trying to decide what to do next. He was also still wondering what Marcus had planned, because the one thing that was already abundantly clear was that getting anywhere near the stadium, even as a pedestrian, was as near impossible as made no difference.
Getting close with a vehicle, and especially a vehicle big enough to carry an object even half the size of Die Glocke, was simply a nonstarter. Every street Bronson had tried to walk down was cordoned off, steel barriers placed across the entrances preventing access to any unauthorized vehicles, police officers in attendance, as they’d probably been for days. And already, despite the early hour, the whole area was starting to come alive.
There were people everywhere, walking to and fro, cameras clicking as they took photographs of each other, sometimes posing in front of the Olympic advertising slogans, information boards and illuminated displays, which listed the timetable of events. Establishing shots, Bronson supposed you could call them, for the myriad picture collections they were obviously intending to compile of the event. There was a huge buzz of excitement in the air as people realized that the time for the Games had finally come, and that the greatest sporting contest in the world was about to be held in Britain’s capital city.
Bronson had been moved on twice by regular police officers and once by a community policeman, and every time he’d kept his head down and simply complied, weaving his way through the crowds of people as he looked for another quiet spot where he could sit down and wait. The doorway of the office building he was occupying wasn’t ideal, but he knew that he needed to stay in that vicinity, so it would have to do.
He wriggled about, trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable; cardboard may have provided some insulation against the cold seeping up through the paving slabs, though he wasn’t convinced about that, but it did nothing to cushion his body.
People walked past him, none making eye contact and most stepping well away from him, to the other side of the pavement, as if being homeless was a contagious condition. Then one man didn’t. He was tall and solidly built, but very scruffily dressed. He had the air of a man looking for something. Or someone.
When he saw Bronson half-lying in the doorway, he crossed the street and walked over to stand beside him. Then he prodded the recumbent figure with the toe of one grubby sneaker.
“You look like shit,” Dickie Weeks said, looking down at him.
“That’s the general idea, Dickie,” Bronson replied. “You don’t look that sharp yourself.”
“Blending in, mate, blending in. I’m feeling charitable. Fancy a cuppa?”
“Thought you’d never bloody ask.”
Bronson climbed slowly to his feet-even the comparatively short time he’d been sitting on the pavement seemed to have driven a chilling ache through his bones-and the two men walked away down the road.
“You must know a good cafe,” Weeks said, “you being a street person and all that. Job not going so well, is it?”
“Give it a rest, Dickie,” Bronson snapped. “This is serious.”
They walked into a cafe that was little more than a glorified snack bar, Bronson attracting hostile glances from several of the men sitting there, but his bulk was obviously sufficiently intimidating to prevent anyone saying
