the other side of the fence, except that it was a part of the Olympic complex. That was good enough for me.”
“And what were you going to do once you’d broken in? That’s stadium’s finished, as far as we know.”
“The usual. Break some windows, smash up anything I could, spray a few slogans on the walls. I know I can’t do anything to stop these Games from going ahead-there’s nothing one person can do about an operation as big as this-but I wanted to hit out, do some damage.”
Cross took a swallow of his beer and then looked sharply at Williams.
“So what were you picked up for?” he asked.
Williams smiled briefly. “Much the same as you, actually,” he replied, “with one big difference. You said it yourself. There’s bugger all one man can do, but it’s completely different if you’re part of an organized group.”
“So there’s more than just the two of you?”
“Exactly. We were just a diversion, something to keep the coppers on their toes and chasing us, while the rest of our people got inside a completely different part of the site, and set to work doing some really serious damage.”
“Like what?” Cross asked.
“You’ll read about it in the papers tomorrow,” Eaton interjected. “And that’s the other thing you’ve been doing wrong. There’s no point in breaking a window or spraying a wall. They just get the glaziers in the next day and replace the glass, or use industrial cleaner to remove the paint. It’s just a nuisance-hardly slows them down at all. So what we do is target the equipment. We hit the bulldozers and the cranes and generators, all that kind of stuff. You can do a lot of damage to a diesel engine with a hammer, if you know what you’re about, and a few bags of sugar poured into a fuel tank really screws them up. That can pretty much write off an engine.”
“And why are you doing it?”
“There’s more than one reason why we’re involved.”
“Yeah?” Cross looked interested.
But Williams just shook his head and turned his attention back to his pint of beer.
“You’ll get nowhere by yourself,” Eaton said. “But you look as if you can take care of yourself, so maybe you should think about coming in with us. We could use someone like you.”
Cross shook his head. “I’m not really into organized groups, thanks all the same. I normally work alone-only myself to worry about, you see.”
“We’re not a group like that, really. We always arrive at the target site individually, and find our own way home after the event. But what we do is we meet beforehand and organize the target, and the timing, and what everyone involved is going to do. That way, we cover every aspect of the attack, and each of us can then focus on his own particular job. Last time, like Charlie said, we were the decoys. We showed ourselves, did a little bit of damage and made sure the coppers spotted us, and then we legged it, leaving our mates with a clear run.”
“And we never resist arrest,” Williams added. “That just gives them another charge to slap against you if they feel like it. Quiet and cooperative is the best way in the end.”
Cross took another sip of his drink and nodded.
“You’re probably right, but sometimes that’s easier said than done. You get treated like shit by the coppers, and all you want to do is hit back at them somehow.”
“You are, by doing what we’re doing,” Eaton said. “Because we’re organized, we’ve been running rings around the rozzers for weeks. They never know where we’re going to hit next, or when.”
“Look,” Williams said, “John’s right. We really could use you, and you’ll achieve a hell of a lot more working with us than you ever will out there by yourself. Why not give it a try? Come along on one raid. After that, if you still want to go off and do things your own way, that’s fine. Otherwise, join us.”
“Just like that?” Cross asked. “Please can I join your gang?”
“Not quite. We’re a small group, and we need to be really sure about each other because of what we’re doing, so if you do want to be part of our operation there’ll be a vote, once we’ve seen you working.”
“Like a trial period,” Eaton added. “But if you do okay, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
Just over an hour after they’d walked into the pub, the three men stepped out the door and strode off down the street. At the first junction, they went their separate ways, Williams and Eaton heading in one direction, the man calling himself Cross in the other.
He walked quickly down the street, took the first left turn that he came to, then immediately crossed the road and strode down an alleyway on the right. At the end he stopped, flattened himself into a doorway, and waited for five minutes. Nobody else came down the alleyway-in fact, he saw no one else in the street beyond.
Satisfied that no one was following him-or if they were, they were really good at their job-he continued down the street. At each corner he glanced behind him, but nobody appeared to be taking the slightest interest in him or where he was going.
He walked for almost twenty minutes, taking a circuitous route along unfamiliar streets and roads, but always heading toward the east, looking out for one of the landmarks that he had memorized. Finally, he saw a street name that he recognized. He again checked that nobody was behind him, did a complete circuit of a block of terraced houses to flush out anyone who might have gotten in front of him and be keeping him under surveillance, and only then headed for his objective: a small area of waste ground between two buildings.
A confusion of tire tracks close to the street suggested that the vacant ground was used for unofficial parking during the day, but at that time of night there were no vehicles on it. The back of the lot was overgrown, rough grass and a handful of stunted bushes struggling for supremacy among the detritus of urban living: a couple of abandoned shopping trolleys and a crop of plastic bags, empty bottles and cans. On the right-hand side were a handful of empty paint tins; it looked like they’d been dumped there by some builder.
He stepped over to them, checked again that he was still unobserved, then lifted up one of the tins. Under it was a tatty plastic bag, which he picked up and opened. Inside it was a pay-as-you-go mobile phone, a cheap model from an obscure manufacturer that no self-respecting thief would go anywhere near. Cross slipped the phone into his pocket and walked away.
A few hundred yards down the street, he again checked that no one was anywhere near him, then switched on the phone and accessed the contacts list. Only one number was listed, and no details were given of the identity of the recipient, who was listed solely as “A.” He pressed the appropriate key to dial the number, which rang only twice before being answered.
“Yes?”
“It’s me,” Chris Bronson said. “I think I’m in.”
3
20 July 2012
The pub sat on a fairly quiet street corner just northeast of Gallows Corner, where the A127 split off from the A12 and speared down to the southeast to intersect with what the locals called the world’s biggest car park, London’s orbital road, the M25.
Bronson had met Eaton and Williams as planned the previous evening and had arranged to meet them again that lunchtime. He parked his car-a nondescript five-year-old Ford saloon supplied by the Forest Gate police station-in a side street about a hundred yards away from the pub, facing away from the building, and on the last parking meter of a short line, where it couldn’t easily get boxed in by other vehicles. He wasn’t expecting any trouble, but it never paid to assume anything.
He was early, over two hours early, in fact, because he wanted to walk around the area a couple of times to familiarize himself with the layout of the streets, just in case he had to make a run for it. And he had another appointment in a backstreet cafe that he needed to keep first.
As far as Bronson knew, Eaton and Williams had bought his story about having a grudge against society and trying to take it out on the forthcoming Olympics. But there was always the possibility that they were smarter than they looked, and had somehow guessed that he wasn’t exactly what he seemed. And while the mobile phone tucked into his jacket pocket could call in reinforcements, Bronson knew that if he had to make the call, it would probably be too late. He could handle one or two of the group without much problem, he thought, but against half a
