Chapter 5 VIII

--When do we start then?-- he asked   

We agreed a time plan with reference milestones. He would take holidays and we will get started with the training. He would then leave his job and take a position in Cologne as soon as posible, increasing the training until the last steps of the project before going live.

 
It was late when I came back to the B&B, There was also some beer on my breath. Fortunately the owner had let me some orientation lights on the staircase, so it all went well there. All I wanted was to lay in bed but I could not indulge on that. I had to be ready, should things go bad.

 
I had a small reserve if potassium clorathe and sugar, that would allow me to make a decent smoke bomb. I used some cardboard to press in some big crackers and inserted a prepared cord. Then I checked that the door was locked and secured from the inside and I sat int he sofa with a view towards the street. On my lap I had a zip lock bag with a little money, passport and some survival items. I had used the days before to do some recce on the escape options. I hoped Diego was honest on his interest and not that he was going to knock on some police door and tell them a story. I had no reason to think so, but taking risks is stupid.

Should he have decided to talk to the police or something going south, I had a contact point with Jesús and three options: the ferry, go south and try to get to France from some of the ports I had researched or, perhaps the most desperate but perhaps the simplest, hitch-jack a boat in Grimsby and head for the Low Contries.

At 0500 I started to get ready. I had indeed dozed a little, but what can you do. I wanted to get going early as announced. I had done all the check out and payment already, because I was supposed to leave early, but I left a little earlier. I had a long train ride and I wanted to check that no one was on my tail.

I really felt like having a wider team, if just for having a little support for this kind of operations.

I pretended to be cool as a cucumber when I sat in the plane in Leeds. However, when the landing gear went up I felt quite a relief, if at all, because I could do nothing more now... I proceeded to fall soundly asleep. I woke up as the captain was announcing nice weather in Alicante. Well, I cared little about that because I went from the airport directly to the city center, from the bus station I walked a little and I went into a small cafe. A typical Spanish affair, no tourists, just locals. I got a Schweppes and asked the hostile looking fellow behind the counter about the newspaper.
 

I waited a little before downing the last bitter gulp of the tonic water, to give Jesús some leeway and then I stepped out and walked the 15 min to the train station, where I sat in the Alvia headed to Madrid.

 

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