be enough to win any argument you’re likely to get involved in. Most people who own these guns seem to like them. And it’s cheap, so if you have to throw it away, it won’t matter.”
Bronson nodded. The fact that it was Spanish didn’t bother him. Decades earlier, Spanish pistols had been something of a joke, badly made Astras and other makes proving unreliable and sometimes as lethal to the person firing the weapon as to whoever it was pointed at. But all that had changed, and modern Spanish pistols-and, okay, the Llama was a few years old-were as good as anything available anywhere. And the Spanish also made one of the best pure combat pistols ever designed, the SPS.
The. 22 Long Rifle cartridge was a little small, certainly a lower caliber than he had hoped to find, but in the right hands it was still lethal. Bronson knew that Israeli assassination teams routinely used weapons in that caliber, because it could be silenced more effectively than full-bore weapons-meaning those of nine-millimeter caliber and above-and as long as the target was engaged with a head shot, the bullet was as deadly as anything else out there.
He looked across at Weeks. “How much?”
“For you, my friend, a century, and for that money I’ll throw in a couple of boxes of ammo as well. Bring it back, and I’ll give you sixty for it.”
Bronson hefted the weapon and racked the slide back a couple of times, checking the tension in the spring and getting the feel of the pistol. He could easily hide it in his clothing-he’d had breakfast with Weeks and walked around the streets for several minutes, and he’d never even guessed the man had the weapon in his pocket-and it was certainly cheap enough. And, he hoped, he wasn’t going to get involved in a firefight. What he needed was a weapon to get him out of trouble, to end a confrontation that he wouldn’t otherwise be able to walk away from. And for that, almost any working pistol, of any caliber, would probably be enough.
He looked across at Weeks. “I’ll take it,” he said.
Weeks nodded. “Good choice. It’s clean, as far as I know, and for that money you can ditch it if you have to and walk away.”
Bronson pulled out his wallet and handed over five twenty-pound notes, which Weeks slid into his jacket pocket before handing over the fully charged magazine.
Then Weeks gestured to the dashboard in front of Bronson. “The boxes of ammo are in there.”
Bronson opened the glovebox and looked inside. There were two boxes of twenty-two-caliber cartridges there, along with boxes for a number of other calibres, all the way up to 357 Magnum.
“That’s kind of my ready-use locker,” Weeks said. “Never know when I’ll need a box of something.”
“I’m sure,” Bronson replied.
Keeping his finger outside the trigger guard, he slid the magazine into the butt of the Llama, pulled back the slide and chambered the top round. He pulled it back again, ejecting the cartridge onto his lap, and repeated the sequence of actions until the magazine was empty and the slide locked back. Then he reloaded the magazine, replaced it in the pistol and again chambered the first cartridge, making it ready for use. He set the safety catch and slid the weapon into the pocket of his leather jacket.
“Thanks, Dickie. I hope I don’t need it, but it’s good to have it, just in case.”
“Drop you somewhere?”
Bronson glanced at his watch before replying, then nodded. “Yes, be a help if you could.”
Moments later, Weeks steered the Range Rover out of the Tesco car park and followed Bronson’s directions, heading back toward Straight Road and his second rendezvous of the day.
4
20 July 2012
The first car arrived early in the afternoon and parked inside the large underground garage that formed part of the basement of the house. Within twenty minutes, two other cars had parked beside it, and three more were standing on the graveled driveway outside the double garage doors.
The last car to arrive, a black BMW, drove quickly along the ruler-straight Rothen Road to the north of Spreenhagen, a large village to the southeast of Berlin, then slowed and made the right turn off the road, bordered on both sides by thick woodland, and down the driveway leading to the house. The driver was the sole occupant of the car, and he was a few minutes late because he’d been held up by a minor traffic accident en route.
He parked the car, nodded to the two men who were standing by the double doors, and strode quickly into the garage. As soon as he’d done so, one of the men pressed a remote control and the doors closed behind him with a metallic clatter.
Inside the property, the man walked briskly, tracing a familiar route. At the end of the corridor leading from the garage was a flight of stairs he took two at a time; then he walked down a corridor to a large formal dining room. But there was neither food nor cutlery on the long polished walnut table, around which half a dozen men in dark suits were seated.
Apart from the absence of laptops, briefcases and writing pads, it could have been a typical board meeting. It had been their rule from the first that no writing or recording materials of any sort were allowed in the room, and the room itself was swept for bugs at least once a day.
The new arrival muttered his apologies, then took the last remaining seat.
“Let us begin,” said the man at the head of the table.
He was just over fifty years old, slimly built, with fair hair, a pale complexion and light blue eyes. Apart from his height-he was well under six feet tall-he could have been cast from the classic Aryan mold, and he was clearly the dominant personality in the room. That was immediately obvious from the way the other men looked at him and had refrained even from chatting among themselves whilst they’d waited for the last member of the group to make his appearance.
“Not all of you will be aware of the progress we have made and how close we are to achieving our goal,” the man went on, his voice surprisingly deep and resonant, his German formal and grammatically correct. “ Die Neue Dammerung is on track and on time as I speak, though we do have one problem that I will address at the end of our meeting. First, and to ensure that you are all thoroughly familiar with all aspects of our operation, I would like Klaus to outline what we have achieved so far.”
The man sitting on his right, a solid-looking, dark-haired individual with craggy features, nodded and sat up straighter in his seat. He had acted as second-in-command to Marcus for the last twenty years, and was just as dedicated to ensuring the success of the operation.
“Thank you, Marcus,” he began. “I will start with a bit of history. Most of you are aware of the events that took place in Poland at the end of the last war. You will know that the SS Evacuation Kommando-which was, of course, under the command of Marcus’s grandfather-successfully retrieved the device upon which so many of the hopes and dreams of the Third Reich rested. You may also have heard that it was successfully transported to Bodo in Norway and then flown on to South America to ensure that none of the enemies of the Fatherland could take possession of it. The few scientists deemed essential to the project traveled with the device, and all other people with any significant knowledge of what we were trying to achieve were eliminated.”
Klaus Drescher looked swiftly around the table. Several heads nodded knowingly. “At that time, the regime in Argentina was sympathetic to our cause, and work was able to continue on the device without hindrance. Great strides were made both in increasing the effectiveness of Die Glocke and in the process of miniaturization, though there remained a number of significant technological hurdles to be overcome. In fact, it took over half a century before a new generation of our scientists was able to create a fully functioning and reasonably portable version of the device. That triumph was finally achieved only five years ago, and we now have six weapons concealed in secure locations here in Germany.”
He paused for a moment, and then smiled slightly.
“In fact,” he went on, “that’s not strictly true. We actually only have five weapons in storage, because the sixth one is about to be deployed, and where we position the other five devices will largely depend upon what happens after this first, live test. If we have to take further action, most of the targets are fairly obvious: Paris, Madrid and Rome, certainly, and probably Brussels as well, and that will still leave us with one weapon in reserve. And as you all know, because of our recent activities, the first weapon of our arsenal will be triggered in London.
