Gray Vengeance by Alan McDermott Read Free Book Online Page B

they’re on to you , was the warning his instructor had given him. Stay calm, yet alert. Don’t make it look like you think you’re being followed.
    It was Spy-Shit 101, the kind of things people picked up from thriller novels and action films, but with all the other training they had had to undergo, there simply hadn’t been the chance to elaborate and go into in-depth techniques. It was assumed that Roberts and his ilk were so far down the pecking order that the security services wouldn’t give a damn about them until the brown stuff hit the swirly thing, and by then it would be far too late. Still, though, basic precautions were always prudent.
    Just before nine, he headed towards the Tube station and once again took a circuitous route before ending up in Hammersmith. He knew a good place in his old stomping ground where he could get the equipment he needed at a fair price, but he’d been told to avoid the old area. He’d given up the bedsit, and the lease had lapsed on the old office, so he had no real ties with the place. The concern was that he might meet old friends who would question his absence, and his instructions were to avoid any such communications. If he did happen to stumble across anyone he knew, he would simply tell them that he had found religion and was done with the anarchist shit.
    By lunchtime he was back in his room, with a new Acer, a Samsung phone and a sandwich, which he ate while charging the devices and reading the instructions. It took a while to get internet access, but once online he went straight to the website for the latest updates.
    Houtman had already been in and left his phone number, and Roberts added it to his contacts list before leaving his own number for the other members of the cell. He then read the first set of instructions, which told him where to find a warehouse that had some of the resources he would need in the coming days. Roberts looked it up on the internet and worked out a route, then entered vans for sale London into the search engine. He was inundated with results, and it took him an hour to find a suitable second-hand Ford Transit. The owner was asking a thousand, but Roberts thought he could argue him down to nine hundred pounds, and he called the number in the advert to arrange a viewing.
    With a meeting set up for three, he closed down the laptop and put it under his mattress, then pocketed the phone and headed back to the Tube station. It was a twenty-minute journey to Maida Vale, and when he arrived at the address he saw the twelve-year-old white van sitting forlornly in a driveway. Roberts wasn’t sure it would even start, let alone sustain him for the next few months, but the owner came out and assured him that she was a good runner, and he was selling up because his business had folded.
    It sounded credible, but Roberts wanted a second opinion, and the seller agreed to escort him to a local garage to give it the once-over.
    The van sounded fine on the way there, and the mechanic spent twenty minutes checking the electrics and engine before giving it a clean bill of health. Roberts handed over fifty pounds for the check-up, and then drove the owner home to complete the paperwork.
    Once everything was signed over, Roberts parted with nine hundred and fifty pounds and called an insurance company to get cover. The last thing he needed was to be pulled over for not having the right documentation, especially once his van was fully laden. A search of the vehicle at that point would jeopardise the entire mission, so he wasn’t inclined to cut corners.
    He paid for the insurance with the pre-paid credit card, then drove to a petrol station to fill up before heading out of the capital in search of the warehouse. He found it on an industrial estate just outside of Oxford, and after pulling up outside, he went into the small reception area.
    ‘I’m looking for a three-inch flange with a diaphragm base,’ he said, reciting the pass code he’d been given. The man