Chapter Seventeen #2
Glazebrook shook his head. “No. If the bloke that killed your countryman really was an American, then I believe it was none other than the Gray Man.”
Tully let out a little gasp.
“Of course, there’s no proof it was an American. Just because the surviving Bulgarians thought it was, how do they know an American accent? I could name twelve other men who could have done it, maybe more, including some from the UK.”
Tully nodded slowly, as if the thought had not occurred to him.
Then Sir Allen asked, “Who’s your client? What’s this all about?”
Tully took a long sip of port, so long Glazebrook made a face of bemusement. The Irishman finally said, “We’ve been friends a long time. I hope that has bought me a measure of trust from you.”
Sir Allen called for his butler to refill Tully’s glass. “Jeff? Jeff?” With an annoyed shrug, he refilled the glass himself, then said, “If I didn’t have a measure of trust for you, mate, you wouldn’t be in my home. Go on, then.”
“I want you to think back to the past as I tell you something.”
Sir Allen put the bottle back on the table between them, then gave a relaxed little chuckle. “Ah. Something from our shared history, then. Invoking ye olden days. Always gives me a bit of a chill.”
Tully hesitated.
Glazebrook prodded good-naturedly. “Well, spit it out, man.”
“Whetstone.”
Glazebrook’s smile faded, and his eyes flicked away, back to the fire. After several silent seconds, he said, “What are we doing here, Tully?”
“We’re talking about him. About Whetstone.” A pause, and then, “We’re talking about Campbell Coyle.”
Glazebrook’s arms crossed in front of his body. “We agreed ages ago, did we not, that none of that ugly business would ever come up again?”
“But it has come up again.”
“That’s a name I had gotten quite comfortable forgetting.” When Tully did not respond, Glazebrook said, “Well then, what about him?”
“He came to me.”
“He’s been quiet a long time. I assumed he was dead.”
“I can assure you he is not.”
“He came to you in Belfast?”
“Aye.”
“When?”
“This morning. The Ulster lad in Bulgaria who died? It was Campbell Coyle’s son.”
Sir Allen’s jaw dropped at this, and then he recovered and said, “Bloody hell. Never heard the lad’s name. Just knew he was young.”
Now a voice spoke behind Glazebrook, at the door between the library and the second-floor hallway. It was gravelly, low, grave.
And Irish.
“Twenty-four years old, squire.”
Glazebrook did not turn around to face the speaker there. He just looked at Tully with wide eyes. Tully, in contrast, shut his own eyes tight, then gave a little nod.
“I’m sorry, Sir Allen,” Bill Tully said. “I truly am. Knew he was on the property; didn’t know he was going to come in.”
Now Glazebrook launched to his feet, turned, and looked at the man standing there. A figure was in the room, out of the light of the fire, in a corner in front of a row of shelves of leather-bound books. He was twenty feet from the hall doorway, twenty feet from Sir Allen.
Half-hidden in the shadows, he was hard to make out. Only that he was not tall, not short. A riding cap on his head, a beard, a raincoat shining wet.
But no other features could be discerned.
With a spin back to Tully, the older man said, “What the fuck have you done, bringing him here?”
Bill Tully responded. “He promises no violence.” His voice sounded meek when he said it, as if he did not believe the words he was saying.
He added, “Sir Allen Glazebrook, Campbell Coyle. Code name Whetstone. Whetstone, Sir Allen. Code name Juggler. Former deputy director of the United Kingdom’s security service. ”
Coyle said, “How ya keepin’, squire? You’re looking quite well.”
The older man’s hands had balled into fists. “You’ve never bloody met me.”
“Television, and such, is what I mean, yeah?”
Still looking at Coyle, Glazebrook raised his voice a little to address the other Irishman in the room. “Tully…you have brought this murderer into my home?”
“I murdered for you, didn’t I?” Coyle said.
“At first,” Glazebrook replied. “Yes. And then…and then when you’d done what we asked of you…you went on killing, didn’t you?”
“Man’s gotta make a livin’. Seemed right, the only thing I was ever good at. You should know, yeah? For every bastard I put in the cold earth, you ordered the death of ten from behind your desk. Just because you kept those soft hands clean doesn’t make you the gentleman here, does it, squire?”
Glazebrook kept his eyes locked on the shadowy intruder, but he spoke to the other man in the room.
“William Tully…I’ve always quite liked you…
for an Irishman. But know this…if I die right here where I stand, I’ve got people who will know you were here.
They’ll come for you, and they will kill you. ”
“In old Billy’s defense”—Campbell Coyle spoke now from the shadows over by the bookshelves—“I was comin’ here whether or not I had a friendly intermediary along with.
You might want to thank your old colleague, because our introduction could have happened very differently, and this way seems peaceful enough so far, yeah? ”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“If you’re not afraid, why is you lookin’ at me with a face like a smacked arse? I’d say you are nothing but afraid.”
“I have my own cards to play.”
“Do you, now?”
“I’ve ten men here who will be on you before you can—”
Coyle spoke over him. “You do have ten men. That is true. But they won’t be on me.”
“Why do you say—”
“Well, for starters, Willis is at the pub with Blake, has been since nine thirty, though they’re both supposed to be on duty.
They do that a lot, by the way, because you never go outside at night when it’s cold or wet to conduct a head count, and you put Whitehead in charge, and Whitehead is afraid of them, because Whitehead is weak.
Not a leader. No longer much of a shooter.
“Patel has bronchitis; he didn’t come in tonight at all. Barton and Abbott are on duty, but they’re old and slow. I could drop them both if I gave ’em ten minutes’ warning first.
“Howe is on the grounds, yes, but he’s young, untested. He’d hesitate long enough for me to put a bullet through his wee eye.”
Coyle continued, effortlessly going down the list of Greenend Grange’s site security force.
“You sent Kirby to London to watch your girlfriend’s cat while she’s in Paris.
A bloody poor choice on your part. The cat had no history of fucking over assassins, like you do.
Anyway, I hear Kirby was SAS. Bet you’d much rather he was here now instead of in Covent Garden tending to a litter box. ”
“That leaves Powers and Khan. Don’t know much about them, but Powers is your dog handler, and I saw the Malinois in the kennel when I came over your fence, so I’m gonna assume Powers is somewhere warm and cozy on this bloody cold night.”
Glazebrook and Tully just stared at Coyle in shock at his awareness of the site security force.
“Now,” Coyle continued, “if Khan is in the next room, and he’s God’s gift to warriors, if his first name is Genghis, I mean, then I might be right fucked, I’ll admit. But I’m willin’ to roll those dice because of the sorry state of the rest of your crew. You follow me, squire?”
Glazebrook recovered faster than Tully did.
“Okay, you might have looked into my staff on hand here at Greenend Grange. That’s bloody impressive. But don’t forget, I sign a lot more than ten paychecks. I literally control armies of private soldiers, mate.”
“Yeah?” Coyle looked around the library. “I don’t see ’em. Where are they? Bloody Bangladesh? Colombia? Senegal? They’re not gonna get here to help you out before I wring your fecking neck, are they?”