Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
“Where is my butler?”
“Your butler has been restrained, but peacefully. In the next room. I even gave him one of his heart pills with a sip of water. He was lookin’ a little…
drawn. ’E’ll be fine, though. He’s top drawer.
I’ve stared down men half his age who shit their trousers, and he, at least, had the decency to keep it in. ”
Coyle said, “I don’t have to be danger tonight, Sir Allen. You can just think of me as an old associate.” He stepped forward, shrugged a little.
“I have cameras,” Glazebrook said now; his voice had grown feeble.
Coyle smiled. “I used the distraction of old Billy’s appearance to slither in between camera angles. I can talk you through getting your blind spots filled in when we’re done here.”
Glazebrook nodded slightly. “I suppose I’d like that very much, indeed.” His eyes went back to Tully, then back to Coyle. “Look. If we’re going to have to talk, come over here by the fire, man, I’ll throw out my old neck if I have to—”
Coyle stepped out of the shadows, into the light, and came around to Bill Tully’s side of the fireplace. He lowered himself onto the arm of a leather sofa there, and he bade Glazebrook to sit back down.
As soon as he did so, Sir Allen said, “You came to us at what? Twenty-one years old?”
“I was nineteen.”
“Two years in the Legion. Said you wanted to kill IRA men for us. Wanted to turn on your own kind.”
“I wanted to do the men who killed my da.”
“Do them all you did, lad, some after the peace accords were signed.”
“You lot signed the peace accords. I did not.”
“Quite. Then, when we had no more work for you, you turned up in the Middle East. Africa. Asia. Working for someone else.”
“Working for meself.”
“You got a taste for the killing, didn’t you?”
“Had it. Lost it. I’m not here to talk about me, or hadn’t you picked up on that?”
“What do you want?”
“You think it was the Gray Man who killed my Charlie?”
“I do.”
“Then I want every bit of information you have on the Gray Man. You give me that. Maybe you can give me some names who can lead me to him, and then I will leave, just as quietly and peacefully as I came.”
“Did you kill Maragos?”
There was no passion in the response, no reticence, either. “Aye. And I’ve more killin’ to do, but there’s no need for any of it tonight.”
The decanter of port was on the little table between Tully and Coyle.
Coyle took it, stood back up, and walked to both other men, filling their glasses, nearly to the top.
It was a faux pas to overfill a port glass, but this wasn’t Sir Allen’s chief concern at the moment.
He took a sip, and his hand quivered a little.
“You’re after the man who killed your son,” Glazebrook said. “I understand. And you have my sincere condolences. Nothing worse than a parent losing a child.”
Coyle held a moment, then said, “But?”
“But…I’m afraid I don’t respond well to threats.”
“Don’t you go disappointing me, Sir Allen.”
“Look—”
“You look,” Coyle said. “I’m going to see this through, and until I do, I will consider everyone I encounter as either a help or a hindrance in my mission. Those that help have my thanks, and my leave, and those that hinder…well, God help those that hinder.
“Now,” Coyle said, “we was talkin’ about the Gray Man.”
The older man just sighed. Then said, “He’s American.”
“Of course he’s bloody American.”
“Former CIA. A special program, then a para.”
“Still not giving me anything useful.”
“His code name with the CIA was Violator. Nobody called him the Gray Man till he went into private contract killing.”
Tully spoke up now. “See there, Coyle? Sir Allen is being helpful.”
“How’s a ten-year-old code name gonna help me find him? Tell me why you think it was him and not this other knob you mentioned?”
“Lancer?”
“Not the one in prison in Havana. The other. The Saga.”
“Just Saga. If I were a betting man, I’d say Violator was the one who did the thing in Bulgaria, then again in Romania in October, then the thing in Russia last month.”
Tully looked dumbstruck. “Russia? What thing in Russia?”
“The prison raid in Russia. He was there.”
Coyle let out a surprised chuckle. “Meaning…what?”
“Yarovoy. The Russians think the Gray Man was already in-country, on the inside, helping with his escape. That’s all I know.”
“Why was the Gray Man in Bulgaria, then?”
Glazebrook shrugged. “I didn’t know he was. Might have something to do with his actions in Russia.”
“I need more.”
“There is no more to be had from me tonight. I can make some calls. I will do that for you. My nation owes you for what you did back a million years ago.”
Tully raised a hand. “There you go, Whetstone. Sir Allen promised to look into—”
“What if I don’t believe him?” Coyle said. “I’m supposed to leave now and wait on my phone to ring?”
Tully was adamant, and he was scared. “Now, look here. Sir Allen is shooting you straight. If he says—”
Now Glazebrook interrupted. “You’re calling me a liar? You’ve slipped into my home like a pest, threatened to wring my neck, and called me a liar?”
Coyle said, “Oh, I know you’re a liar.”
Before anyone could speak, Coyle said, “The men you sent me after in Ulster, when I was just a lad. When I was trying to right the wrongs done to my da. Two of them were involved in my father’s death.
But the others? That was simple score settling with you lot.
You tricked me, cooked up bogus proof. I figured it out decades ago.
You two lied to me. Had me kill men, women, old touts who’d pissed you off over the years.
They’d nothing to do with me, never did me any wrong, and I put a bullet or two in all of them. ”
Tully said, “I don’t know what you’re—”
“Fuck off, Tully. Glazebrook is a shite, but he’s British. You’re a bloody Irishman, turning on your own.”
“You turned on your own,” Tully said, his voice quivering in fear.
“I turned on those who killed my da. Family is everything, don’t you agree?”
Tully didn’t know what to say. He hesitated, thinking of a response.
But he never said another word. In a sudden movement, Coyle’s left hand came out of his coat, his arm extended towards Tully, a gun with a silencer at the end of it.
It barked once, loud in the library, but quiet enough that the sound wouldn’t travel all the way outside.
Tully fell back into his chair. His arm knocked his glass of port off the table; it crashed on the hardwood floor.
The wheezing of a sucking chest wound came right after. Glazebrook launched to his feet in terror, but when the gun was pointed towards him, waving him back into his seat, he slowly sat back down, his eyes bounding between the wounded Irishman and the armed man.
Between victim and perpetrator.
Bill Tully was still alive. Gasping shallowly in the chair, a hole in his chest. Blood trickled from his mouth.
His eyes were wide from shock; the firelight flickered in their wetness.
Campbell Coyle remained standing in front of the fireplace; his shadow danced across the room with the flames, but his body stayed ramrod still.
Sir Allen began to speak, but Coyle cut him off before a single word came out.
“I’m not fucking about, Glazebrook. Don’t look so upset. You never gave a toss about Tully, any more than me. You are one of those Brits who thinks he’s superior to us Irishmen.”
“Of…of course not.”
Bill Tully slumped forward in the chair, crumpled to the floor. A gurgling came from the heap.
“Why did you do that?” the older man asked.
“I needed him to get in to you. I didn’t need him after. He quickly became useless. You see? I want to be certain that you understand this, so that you realize the very second you have nothing left to offer me, your life means fuck-all.”
With a little smile, he said, “I won’t kill you unless you’re useless.”
The gurgling stopped. A last breath of air came from the Northern Irishman lying in front of the fireplace.
It went deathly quiet in the room for a bit, and then Glazebrook said, “You made your point. I’m willing to be of service as long as you need me. Longer even, I suppose.”
It was a slight joke. British humor, Coyle assumed, though the stakes were too high for it at the moment.
“Right, then,” Coyle said. “Who would know about the operation in Russia that the Gray Man was on?”
“CIA. They say they have nothing to do with the Gray Man, but they were definitely involved in that.”
“Who ran that raid for the CIA?”
“Matthew Hanley was on the ground in Ukraine, working with the Ukrainians and the Russian partisans. That might mean he was involved with the Gray Man, who was on the ground inside Russia on the same operation.”
“Who is Matthew Hanley?”
“He used to be their director for operations. He was ousted, but last I heard, he was still at the Agency.”
“Where do I find him?”
“I don’t know.”
Coyle was about to raise the pistol again, but Glazebrook held a finger up. “I know. I have the answer.”
“Enlighten me.”
“I can get you work in America.”
The Irishman made a face. “Why do people keep saying that? You know what I want, mate, and it’s not a bloody job.”
“It is, Whetstone. It is, because the people doing the hiring know everything about what’s going on inside the American intelligence community.
It’s an insider threat. I don’t know who or how, but the what I have sussed out.
Whoever they are, they’re connected with the CIA, or at least some facet of the intelligence community.
They’ve come to me, through intermediaries, to try to get hard assets for a series of jobs on U.S.
soil. I don’t know what jobs, exactly, but the work is all there, in America.
The men I offered up were good, yet they were still rejected.
They are looking for the cream of the crop. ”
“But—”
“Hear me out,” Glazebrook continued. “I just drop the name Whetstone, they will know what you’ve done. Who you were. They will bring you into their fold. Once you are in with them, you will have resources.”
“What kind of—”
“They can get you to Hanley, at least. Maybe even the Gray Man himself.” Quickly, he added, “But if you kill me…you won’t get connected to the right people, and you won’t get the information you seek.”
The older Englishman smiled a little, then looked at Tully’s body on the floor, and the smile went away. “I will make calls tonight. I will get you into the U.S. I have the means to—”
Coyle said, “I will leave you, Sir Allen. I will leave you to clean up this mess.” He waved his gun at Tully’s body in a heap.
He said, “Because I’m not worried about a double cross from you.
What I know about what happened twenty-five years ago…
what I can prove…I talk and you go away forever.
As do many still in MI5.” He thought a moment.
“Hell, the service itself would be in jeopardy for some of the dirty work we did together.”
Sir Allen paled even more now, as if the thought of having old secrets revealed was even more threatening than the killer now on the loose in his home. Defensively, he said, “You’d go away yourself if you talked.”
“Do I seem to you like a man at all concerned about his own self-preservation?”
A pause. The fire crackled. A last wisp of smoke rose from the silencer on the end of Coyle’s pistol.
Coyle said, “You have twenty-four hours to get me hired in America. If these blokes there don’t have the ability to get me to the Gray Man, I am going to suss it out straightaway, and I will talk and I will talk and I will not stop talking until the British intelligence services hang by the bollocks for the dirty shit you feckers did to a lot of innocent people. ”
Coyle got the impression Glazebrook wanted to take issue with something he’d said, but the old man held his tongue.
Instead, Sir Allen said, “Give me a way to contact you. I will tell my contact in America that he has the world-famous Whetstone on the way to do his dirty work. And I will hold up my end of the bargain here. You do not need to go to the press.”
Coyle nodded, then said, “Stand up and turn around.”
“What? Why?”
“Calm down. I’m going to tie you up so you don’t call your jackals before I leave.
” As Glazebrook turned, Coyle said, “Thought I’d be killing at least a half dozen tonight, maybe more.
I was certain Tully and yourself wouldn’t live through the night.
So…good on you, squire, you’ve made yourself useful. ”
When Sir Allen’s hands were tight behind his back, fixed with plastic restraints, Coyle tapped him on the shoulder with the pistol’s silencer, leaned into his ear from behind, and said, “Keep it up. Keep producing. I’ll call you this time tomorrow.
“When I kill the Gray Man, you will know that you, and the precious intelligence service you served, are both safe.
“Until that day,” Coyle added, “go very carefully with everything you do.”
He sat the old man back in the leather chair, putting him right in front of the body on the floor by the fire. As he turned towards the door, Coyle said, “Twenty-five years ago, I was your tool.
“Now, ya fecker…yer mine.”
The Irishman became a shadowy figure again when out of the firelight, and then he melted off down the hall.