Chapter Ten
Ten
Almost nothing happens on the streets of London without the authorities there knowing about it.
London has more cameras observing the citizenry than any city in the world, nearly one million by most estimations, and there was little that went unnoticed, but the man in the gray Donegal tweed herringbone cap leaning against the metal fence lining a path running through the middle of Cadogan Place Gardens, in the center of London’s bustling Knightsbridge district, knew all this, and he behaved accordingly.
First, TfL, Transport for London, monitors the city’s traffic and street cameras at CentreComm, formerly known as the Network Management Control Centre.
Second, the London Metropolitan Police Service piggybacks on the traffic cams and on certain private CCTV cameras, in addition to using their own security cameras, equipped with facial recognition and automatic plate number recognition technology.
The man in the cap knew it would be folly to spend his time in London actively trying to avoid all scrutiny, but still, he walked a circuitous pattern, had done so the past two days in this neighborhood, and now that he was in position here at the edge of the park, he had a pretty good idea where he could move, in any compass point, without having his face picked up by one of the eleven cameras he’d identified on the block.
Not that anyone was actively looking for him. He was a free man, unwanted, this he knew, but he was still careful with his countersurveillance measures.
He wore a raincoat; his hood was up but his beard was wet, and he seemed all but oblivious to the steady shower that had persisted since before ten a.m. It was just past eleven now, and he’d not moved from his position; he just stood there, his bones chilling in the cold rain, his eyes peering down Sloane Street at the traffic there.
He’d stayed in place so long that an incident response technician at the Met, an actual human being, had noticed him on one of his many monitors, and he’d zoomed in.
The name on the technician’s screen had read Jon Jo Sheehan; his identity set off no alarm bells, so the incident response technician soon moved on, scanning other camera angles of other areas of Knightsbridge.
But the man under the tweed cap was not Jon Jo Sheehan; he was Campbell Coyle, and Campbell Coyle’s history would have raised every single alarm bell in the United Kingdom if the tech at the Met knew the real identity of the man standing in the rain.
At 11:40 a.m. a silver Rolls-Royce Ghost appeared on Sloane Street and pulled to a stop in the middle of the road, right in front of Cadogan Place South Garden, its foliage mostly beaten back by the autumn, though a few persistent trees hung limp in the wet gray.
A large man in a gray suit climbed out of the front passenger seat, popped open a black umbrella, then opened the door behind him, and another big man, his suit dark blue, unfolded from the back passenger seat, then made a show of scanning the area as he himself opened an umbrella.
Both men were young, perhaps under thirty, and they had serious eyes as they looked around, but Coyle noted that they took no more than three or four seconds to scan all the real estate around them, and neither of them locked on him there, forty yards away inside in the garden.
The man in gray walked around and opened the other rear passenger door, and a smaller individual, a man in a blue pinstripe suit under a fashionable black raincoat, emerged and stepped into the street.
The silver luxury car rumbled off, and the pair of security men converged on their protectee and ushered him towards the sidewalk that ran alongside the garden.
The man in the center was in his mid- to late thirties; he wore a short beard carefully manicured, a fade cut above both his ears and much longer hair on top, swept back and held in place with product that made his hair shine more than that of any passerby without an umbrella walking in the steady rain.
The man’s suit was Savile Row, mostly hidden under his Cucinelli raincoat, and his cherry shoes shone with the luster the sun itself had no chance of mustering on this cold and rainy day.
The three entered the little park with the intent of crossing it to the other side; they walked along the pathway there, and Campbell Coyle pushed off the low metal fence and began walking towards them.
No one noticed him till he was ten paces away, but then it became clear to the two security men that the man in the Irish cap was moving towards their charge and he would reach them before they made it through the small exit gate of the garden.
The security man in blue, the closer of the two, switched his umbrella from his right hand to his left, as if he had a gun on his right and was readying himself to access it, and the man on the right held out his free hand, urging the stranger to stop.
Before either of the two bodyguards could speak, Coyle himself called out to the man in the center.
“I beg your pardon, sir.”
The security officer with his hand up, his face every bit as assertive-looking as his bodybuilder physique, did the talking. “ ’S’all right, mate. Keep moving, yeah?”
Coyle realized they thought he was a beggar.
In some fashion, he told himself, they were not wrong.
Coyle halted his advance at five paces, then addressed the man in the middle of the three. “Mr. Maragos, sir. I wonder if I could trouble you for just a moment of your time.”
Marcus Maragos stopped, obviously surprised that the stranger knew his name, but one of his guards began ushering him on down the path, away from the man in the simple raincoat and the hood and the tweed cap.
Maragos gave an apologetic shrug towards Coyle, and with a smile, he said, “I’m afraid I’m quite late to lunch at my club. If you know who I am, you can make an appointment with my office.” His accent was Greek, but he spoke the King’s English with perfection.
“The Special Forces Club?” Coyle said. “Right up on the other side of the garden? Could I walk with you for a wee chat? Please, sir?”
The security officer with his right hand down, perhaps near a weapon, said, “You heard the man, make an appointment.”
They passed it through the gate, onto the street, and Campbell Coyle followed along. Just as one of the guards was about to turn around and tell him to fuck off, the Northern Irishman lowered his hood; the rain pelted his craggy face and his thick beard.
“Charlie Coyle, Mr. Maragos. He was my son, sir. God keep his soul.”
Maragos stopped suddenly, let out a little gasp, then put his hand over his heart. A car turned onto Sloane Street, and his two officers ushered him back onto the pavement, clearly aware that their boss wasn’t going to move on his own.
Coyle moved with them.
Softly, Maragos said, “My God. Poor Charlie. So bloody unfortunate, that. You have my deepest condolences.”
The Greek shrugged his security men away, and then he stepped forward to the older man, reached out his hand.
Coyle took off his hat, a show of respect, and then he accepted Maragos’s handshake.
Maragos said, “I am truly so sorry for your loss. For all our losses. He was a wonderful lad. He served under me in the Legion for four years, but of course you know this.”
“Yes, sir. I know.”
Hastily, Maragos added, “I tried to go to the funeral, in that coastal village outside of Derry, I really did. But I wasn’t allowed. His wife blames me.” He looked into Coyle’s eyes now. “Maybe you do, as well.”
The older man with his hat in his hands shook his head earnestly. “Not at all, Mr. Maragos. Not at all.”
With this, the Greek’s hand went back to his heart. “That means everything. I was just devastated.” He looked to his two underlings. “We all were.”
Neither of the two security officers showed any evidence that they were, or ever had been, devastated.
Coyle fiddled with the Donegal cap a moment more. With a nervous tone in his voice, he said, “I’d…I’d just like to know what happened. Anything you could tell me. Maybe you could help me understand.”
“Certainly.” Maragos looked to his watch; Coyle recognized it as an Omega.
“Of course. Look…I’ve got to run. But call my office.
Tell Lucy I insisted that she fit you in at your convenience.
She’ll make it happen. We can have tea and I’ll tell you all I know, which, I’ll warn you now, isn’t much.
” He shook his head. “Not much at all…though I can assure you he died doing what he loved, protecting people.”
“Do you have children, Mr. Maragos?”
The question seemed to surprise the man. “Not yet. Someday, maybe. Look, again, I’m terribly sorry, but I must rush off for—”
“Certainly, sir. Just one more question.”
The man tried to hide his annoyance now, and his security men were already taking him by the arm to force an ending to this conversation. Maragos said, “Yes?”
“Charlie…when you were in the Legion together. Or after, maybe. Did he ever mention me? Did he ever say anything to you about his da?”
Now the man appeared uncomfortable. After a time, he said, “Not that I recall. No…nothing I remember about you.” He added, “I didn’t see him much when he worked for me, but when we served together, that’s been three years.
Plus, we were in Africa most of the time.
Mali and such. We were around one another, but in the Legion, there’s not a lot of time for chat about family. I’m sorry.”
Campbell Coyle saw no sense of deception on the man’s face, and this gave him all the information that he’d come for today. “Very well. I should call your office, then?”
Maragos pulled out a business card and handed it over.
“Do, yeah. I’ve a trip to the Continent planned, but Lucy will fit you in. We’ll chat about your boy. About my good friend. Again…so sorry, yeah? But I simply must run.”
“I thank you for your time.”
The men shook hands again. Coyle caught a quick glimpse of Maragos flashing angry eyes at his closest bodyguard; his annoyance that they’d allowed him to drag on this conversation was obvious, and as Campbell put his cap back on and shuffled off through the wet and gray day, the Northern Irishman knew without a doubt that he’d never get that meeting in Maragos’s office that he’d just been promised.
No matter, he told himself. The meeting would still happen; it would just happen at a time and place of Coyle’s choosing.