“I’ve been around, is all. But I’m askin’ the questions. Why did you send Charlie down to work for drug dealers in bloody Bulgaria?”
“That job in Bulgaria was a personal favor to him. I didn’t want anything more to do with your son after the last few fuckups, but he made me give him one more chance.”
“Whatcha mean by that?”
“I secured him a couple of shit gigs down there in the Balkans only after his first three protection jobs for me ended with his removal. Each time for the same reason.”
Campbell Coyle looked out the window at the quiet Notting Hill neighborhood. Softly, he spoke. “Booze.”
“Yes, booze is right.
“He got drunk in Belfast and was let go. He showed up to work hungover in Frankfurt and was sacked. And he got caught pocketing a handful of Crown Royal airplane bottles on a private jet in Canada, by the bloody protectee himself, no less, and as soon as they landed in Toronto, he was dismissed.
“You have any idea how embarrassing that was for me? The conversation I had to have? I sacked him then and there, but he did rehab, not for the first time, and he came to me and told me he had bills and he had put himself right. I told him the only job I could get him was down in Macedonia. A gambler needed a bodyguard. He took the job straightaway, did what was asked of him, but he got himself in a shoot-out during a robbery and he had to come home. He did good, saved his man, though he said his man wasn’t much worth saving.”
Coyle knew nothing about Charlie having been in Macedonia and having been in a shoot-out. But he didn’t let on to this. Instead, he said, “And then?”
“He still had bills. I told him I could get him work in Bulgaria, but that was it.”
“If he did right in Macedonia, why couldn’t you have got him a better job after?”
“Because Charlie was still Charlie; he wasn’t drinking, but he had a bad reputation, and I’ve a reputation to uphold.”
Now Campbell Coyle’s face hardened. He said, “You’ve got shite to uphold.”
“I’m an important man, Mr. Coyle.”
“I’ve met heaps of men like you. You’re nothing.”
“You know nothing about—”
Coyle sat down, leaned close to his bound prisoner. “I’ll tell you what I know, because I’ve had time to look into you. You’re a bloody fraud.
“That Rolls-Royce you run around in? It’s twenty years old, poorly maintained, and you strong-armed it from a pal whose daddy left it to him.
“Your two bodyguards in suits? They were two years infantry, low-end grunts with no executive protection training. Not even that shit school you sent my Charlie to. They were yes-men lads, unarmed, untrained.
“They were just for show. I was going to spare them—I get no pleasure in killing cattle—but then one of them came at me with a steak knife and the other went for my legs.
“They died on the floor of your kitchen, poor blokes put in a no-win situation by Marcus Maragos, and that story sounds awfully bloody familiar to me. Does it to you?”
The Greek said nothing.
“You’re not a member of the Special Forces Club here in London, but you tell your clients you are. Your primary residence is in Belfast, but you’ve let it out to rent this flat. You have lunch at Souvlaki Taverna, a little Greek place near the club, as you lobby for acceptance. You make your Zoom meetings in the car on the way, or on the street outside, being sure to show the neighborhood in the background to make it look like you’re part of a society you haven’t been accepted into.
“That Omega on your wrist. A Hong Kong knockoff. A good one. Five hundred pounds, maybe, but not the ten thousand you’d need for the real deal.
“You don’t get good contracts, but you’re trying to pass yourself off in Notting Hill society as a real player. To that end, you send every warmbody you can out into the Third World, take any job, accept any risk for your employees, earn a couple dozen pounds a day commission from the worst of them, a thousand a day for the best of them.
“You don’t run a private military corporation. You run a fucking livestock farm, and you send your cattle to the butcher to make your money.”
“Wait a minute, Coyle. I run—”
Coyle kept talking. “My Charlie probably earned you enough for a decent dinner in Soho once a week, and for you to get that, you sent him off to his death.
“You pushed Charlie off on dangerous job after dangerous job, even though you knew more than most that his head wasn’t right. He was doing everything in his power to get his mental health straightened out, but you were more interested in the commission from a fucking Bulgarian mobster.
“So don’t tell me how much you loved my son. You did fuck-all for him when he needed you.”
