“Do you, now?”
“I’ve ten men here who will be on you before you can—”
Coyle spoke over him. “Youdohave 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,andhe’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?”
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.”
“Youlot 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.”
