“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 afterfamily, 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 missthat. 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 thinkingthat.”
“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.”
