Echo of the Reich by James Becker Read Free Book Online

bushes on the side adjacent to the main road.
    “You parked here?” he asked.
    Weeks caught his glance and shook his head. “No. Too bloody confined for my liking,” he replied. “Never know what nasties somebody could have hidden away over there. I like the wide-open spaces. Like Tesco.”
    Weeks turned right into the car park and then continued walking diagonally across it, toward the exit into Bryant Avenue. With Bronson keeping pace beside him, he crossed the road and walked on into the much bigger car park that lay behind the Gallows Corner Tesco store. Standing by itself at the far side of the car park was a late-model Range Rover, a deep lustrous black in color and with heavily tinted windows, that probably cost nearly as much as Bronson earned in a year.
    “Nice motor,” Bronson said, as Weeks pressed the remote control to unlock the doors.
    “Tools of the trade, mate. All the windows are bullet-proof, and there are Kevlar panels in the doors and behind most of the bodywork. That wouldn’t stop a serious attack, but I’ve had the engine breathed on a bit and the tires are run flat, so if the shooting started, I hope I’d be able to use it to get the hell out of the way.”
    When they were still about fifty yards from the car, Weeks raised his hand to stop Bronson getting any closer.
    “Not so fast,” he said.
    “What?”
    Weeks didn’t reply, just selected another button on the larger-than-normal remote control unit. As he pressed it, the Range Rover’s engine started with a throaty roar, then settled down to a steady idle.
    “Just in case somebody managed to wire a lump of plastic into the ignition circuit,” Weeks explained. “I never sit in the thing and turn the key, not even if it’s in the garage at home.”
    Bronson stood still and stared across the car park at the vehicle. Then he glanced at Weeks and shook his head.
    “For a few minutes there I was starting to envy you your lifestyle, but if this is how you have to watch your back every day, I think I’ll stick to what I do.”
    “You get used to it,” Weeks replied shortly, and led the way over to the Range Rover.
    The two men climbed into the front seats. Weeks immediately checked the open expanse of the car park ahead of him and the view behind the vehicle visible in the rear-view mirrors. Shoppers, mainly women, some by themselves and others with children reluctantly in tow, were pushing trolleys to and fro, while cars were arriving and departing all the time. There was movement all around them, but none of it appeared in any way unusual or suspicious.
    “Looks okay to me,” Weeks said. “No sign of any of the thin blue line lurking about either.”
    “I told you, Dickie,” Bronson replied, “I’m here by myself.This isn’t a sting operation or an entrapment. Though if it was, I doubt if you’d spot any of the watchers.”
    “It’s not just your lot that I worry about. I’m in a competitive industry, and sometimes people decide that a bit of direct action might be the easiest way to make sure I don’t get the business.”
    “You make it sound almost legitimate,” Bronson remarked. “Selling guns, I mean.”
    “That’s the funny thing about the arms business. It’s one of this country’s biggest industries, and Britain sells everything from pistols to aircraft and warships to other nations, knowing bloody well that some two-bit dictator in the middle of Africa will use the weapons to make his program of genocide that bit more efficient. And the people who run the British arms industry get invited to tea at Number Ten and are given knighthoods and all the rest. But if a freelance businessman like me gets caught selling a twenty-two-caliber target pistol to someone, he’ll end up in the slammer for a few years, and so will the buyer. Makes no sense to me.”
    Bronson guessed that Weeks was treading a familiar path, though what he was saying was undeniably true—yet another demonstration of the arrant and arrogant