Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
Greenend Grange could be passed by on the road without a second glance, though it was an undeniably magnificent place.
The property had been in the Glazebrook family since the turn of the last century, though in both Great Wars it had been handed over to the Crown as a hospital and rehabilitation facility.
Today Sir Allen was the only Glazebrook living on the sprawling property, though ten full-time security staff inhabited outbuildings on the grounds, along with three full-time attendants: a cook, a housekeeper, and a butler.
In his seventy-first year, Sir Allen had served as an officer in MI5, British internal intelligence, for three decades, rising to the post of deputy director general before leaving government to go into the private sector.
These days he ran his own international security consulting shop, but not out of the United Kingdom because of his nation’s laws about such things.
With offices in Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Mexico City, and Jakarta, Glazebrook’s company, Advanced Dynamics Staffing Solutions, specialized in assisting foreign nations with staffing their militaries with highly trained advisors.
He offered other services, as well, but the other services he offered weren’t advertised.
Glazebrook’s wife had died of cancer three years earlier; his daughter was in her thirties, a high-profile solicitor in London, and both his sons were in their twenties, one a major in the Royal Air Force and the other a captain in the Royal Marines.
For this reason, he spent many of his evenings at home, this time of year in front of a roaring fireplace in his second-floor library, reading and enjoying a port or a whiskey.
At eight p.m., he was going through some paperwork at his desk as his butler was setting the logs in the fireplace when a surprise call came for him.
An old friend, a colleague from his past, claimed to be in the area and asked if he could drop by for a quick conversation; the tone of the ask was friendly, but Glazebrook detected a distinct sense of purpose to it that the caller did not try very hard to hide.
He also knew this man well enough to know that he didn’t just happen to be in Charlbury. He’d come from abroad for the meet, and he’d not set it up in advance.
Despite the obvious deceit in the pretense of the meeting, Sir Allen asked the man to drop by as soon as was convenient.
He was bored, to tell the truth; he had a guess or two about what the man might want from him; and most of all, Sir Allen had fought a war with this fellow, and he enjoyed a good war story or two with an old colleague.
—
The December night was particularly cold and blustery; the guard in the stone shack at the end of the drive checked the arriving car quickly with a flashlight, then let the lone man through.
He traveled up the drive and parked as instructed in the forecourt of the manor house, his headlights illuminating two heavily bundled security officers, their black rifles across their chests contrasting with the bright orange of their ski jackets.
Sixty-three-year-old William Tully turned off the engine of his rental and stepped out, took off his raincoat even though there was a smattering of precipitation blowing in the cold wind, and extended his arms.
Tully was Northern Irish, short, with dark hair and bushy eyebrows and a small face that smiled apologetically as the men wanded him and frisked him.
“Cold night, aye?” he said, just making conversation.
“Proper winter, finally, sir,” the guard on the right replied as he ran his hands through the raincoat.
His cell phone was taken from him by the other officer, placed in a Faraday cage, a lead-lined bag, and then the officer slipped it into his pocket.
“I’ll be returning this when you leave, sir. If you end up overnightin’ in one of the cottages, I’ll pop right round, give it back to you there.”
The Irishman said, “Thanks, mate, but I won’t be staying. Just here for a wee chat.”
Tully was led to the front door, where he was met by the butler, an older gentleman who took Tully’s coat and escorted him through the stately country manor towards the second-floor library.
Here, Allen Glazebrook stood at a scotch bar crafted of African rhino horns and Egyptian marble; he glowed in the light of a massive fireplace as he called across the room.
“Bill. Bloody wonderful to see you.”
“You, as well, Sir Allen.”
They met in the center of the library, shook hands warmly, but there was no embrace.
“Scotch or port?” Glazebrook said, then quickly added, “This time of night, so close to bed, I usually enjoy port.”
“A port would be lovely, thank you.”
The butler appeared, as if by magic, and poured the men healthy snifters from a decanter already open and waiting.
The pair sat in leather chairs in front of the fire; both asked after family, about the health of aged colleagues, all the usual pleasantries.
It was a polite conversation, but there existed an unspoken but also undeniable lopsided power dynamic between the two men.
Tully had been a Northern Irishman working in the Special Branch of the RUC, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a pro-loyalist force of Irish, mostly Protestant, in Northern Ireland.
Special Branch ran spies against the IRA and its offshoots for decades.
Sir Allen, on the other hand, was British, a top MI5 spook; he ran the mission against the IRA, and men like Tully in Special Branch worked for him. Not as a peer, not as a fellow countryman, but as a local confederate.
Tully had been one of Sir Allen’s top local spymasters thirty years ago. In Belfast, in Londonderry, in the little towns and villages of County Tyrone, County Antrim, County Armagh.
There had been no front lines to the war between the Unionists and the Loyalists, but men like Tully worked in the shadows, developing even more shadowy men to spy against the IRA.
Tully had done Glazebrook’s bidding for over a decade, but that had been in the nineties, primarily, and since then, Tully had served as a police commissioner in Belfast, but the two men had worked together only on rare occasions until Glazebrook went into the world of international contracting, and then the men hardly saw one another at all.
They sipped port and chatted a few minutes more, and then Glazebrook moved the conversation along. “You sounded rather urgent on the phone.”
Tully’s face darkened a little. “I did, Sir Allen, and I appreciate your willingness to meet me on such short notice.”
Off Tully’s change, Glazebrook said, “Is something wrong?”
The Irishman shook his head. “I don’t see it as such, and I hope you agree.”
“Makes two of us, then. Let’s have it, yeah?”
“Did you hear about Marcus Maragos?”
This surprised the Englishman. “A triple homicide in Notting Hill? Indeed, hard to miss that. Awful. One imagines he employed someone who was not satisfied with the terms of his contract, or he had a client unsatisfied with the quality of the work done.”
“Did you know him personally?”
“No, don’t believe I ever met him. Greek lad by birth, raised here, second-tier schooling, but made something of it, I suppose.
One of those highly motivated but poorly educated, made a good try but never was able to climb his way high enough up the ladder.
Always trying to be too big, too fast. Bypassing the steps one must make in business to build a reputation.
“As a side note, he’d been trying, of late, to get admittance into the Special Forces Club, but we blocked his way.
Can you imagine if we’d let him in and then…
this? Would have been a smudge upon our reputation, I would think.
” After a look from Tully, Glazebrook chuckled.
“I certainly had nothing to do with what happened to him, if that’s what you’re thinking. ”
The Irishman exclaimed, “Jesus Lord, no! I certainly wasn’t thinking that.”
“Well, I’ll give you my opinion on the matter.”
“Please do.”
“There are only two types of people in this world, Bill. Winners and wankers. Marcus Maragos, God rest his soul, was a bloody wanker.”
Both men laughed a little, and then Glazebrook said, “Wait. Did you have something to do with what happened to him?”
Tully did not answer the question. Instead, he said, “The Ulster boy who was killed in Bulgaria back in October. You heard about that, as well, I’m guessing.”
Glazebrook took a sip of port. “Only in passing. One of Maragos’s armed dolts, wasn’t it?”
Tully did not answer. Said, “They say the killer was a lone American.”
“I heard that, as well. Then the same American did the thing in Romania. Whoever the bloke was, he was not one of mine, by the way.”
“Any guesses who it might have been?”
Glazebrook looked at Tully quizzically. “Why are you asking? What’s your connection to this? The Ulster boy? The parents have hired you to find his killer?”
“Something along those lines. Of course, straightaway, I thought you might be the man to speak to. You remain one of the most well-connected geopolitical personalities on this earth.”
“Flattery is a crude tool, Bill, but often effective.” Glazebrook looked into the fire a moment. “You’ll only get guesses from me, you understand.”
“Certainly.”
“There are just a few Yanks who could have caused all that mayhem. A bloke code-named Lancer, he’s made a lot of news in the past few years, but I heard he got in a spot of bother and is currently imprisoned in Cuba.
There was also a bloke called Dead Eye, a CIA hitter, quite good, but I know for a fact he’s been dead some time.
Then there’s Saga, a killer for hire who worked with me for a spell but is now plying his trade on the dark web, no representation. ”
The older Englishman thought a moment more, then said, “It could have been Saga. He could have pulled it off, I mean.” Glazebrook looked back to Tully. “But it wasn’t.”
“No?”