The English Spy (13 page)

I
T TOOK
B
ILLY
C
ONWAY
LESS
than thirty minutes to establish that Maggie Donahue lived at 8 Stratford Gardens with her only child, a daughter who was called Catherine, after Quinn’s sainted mother. The neighbors were unaware of the source of the child’s name, though most suspected that Maggie Donahue’s absent husband, be he dead or alive, was an IRA man of some sort, quite possibly a dissident who had rejected the tenets of the Good Friday Agreement. Such sentiments ran deep in the Ardoyne. During the worst of the Troubles, the Royal Ulster Constabulary regarded the neighborhood as a no-go area, too dangerous to patrol or even enter. More than a decade after the peace accords, it was the scene of rioting and clashes between Catholics and Protestants.

To supplement the cash payments she received from her husband, Maggie Donahue worked as a waitress in the Lobby Bar of the
Europa Hotel, the most bombed hotel in the world. That afternoon she had the misfortune of attending to the particular needs of a guest named Herr Johannes Klemp. His hotel registration card listed a Munich address, but his work—apparently it had something to do with interior design—required him to spend a great deal of time away from home. Like many frequent travelers, he was somewhat difficult to please. His lunch, it seemed, was a catastrophe. His salad was too limp, his sandwich too cold, the milk for his coffee had gone bad. Worse still, he had taken a liking to the poor creature whose job it was to make him happy. She did not find his attempts at small talk appealing. Few women did.

“Long day?” he asked as she refilled his cup with coffee.

“Just beginning.”

She smiled wearily. She had hair the color of a raven’s wing, pale skin, and large blue eyes over wide cheekbones. She had been pretty once, but her face had taken on a hard edge. He supposed Belfast had aged her. Or perhaps, he thought, it was Quinn who had ruined her looks.

“You’re from here?” he asked.

“Everyone’s from here.”

“East or West?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m just curious.”

“About what?”

“Belfast,” he said.

“Is that why you came here? Because you’re curious?”

“Work, I’m afraid. But I have the rest of the day to myself, so I thought I’d see a bit of the city.”

“Why don’t you hire a tour guide? They’re very knowledgeable.”

“I’d rather slit my wrists.”

“I know how you feel.” Her irony seemed to bounce off him like
a pebble thrown at a bullet train. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“You can take the rest of the day off and show me around the city.”

“Can’t,” was all she said.

“What time do you get off work?”

“Eight.”

“I’ll stop by for a drink and tell you about my day.”

She smiled sadly and said, “I’ll be here.”

He paid the bill in cash and headed out to Great Victoria Street, where Keller waited behind the wheel of the Škoda. Lying on the backseat, wrapped in clear cellophane, was a bouquet of flowers. The small envelope was neatly addressed
MAGGIE DONAHUE
.

“What time does she get off work?” asked Keller.

“She said eight o’clock, but she might have been trying to avoid me.”

“I told you to play nice.”

“It’s not in my DNA to be nice to the wife of a terrorist.”

“It’s possible she doesn’t know.”

“Where did her husband get a hundred thousand pounds in used bills?”

Keller had no answer.

“What about the girl?” asked Gabriel.

“She’s in class until three.”

“And then?”

“A field hockey game against Belfast Model School.”

“Protestant?”

“Mostly.”

“Should be interesting.”

Keller was silent.

“So what do we do?”

“We deliver some flowers to Eight Stratford Gardens.”

“And then?”

“We have a look inside.”

But first they decided to take a detour through Keller’s violent past. There was the old Divis Tower, where he had lived among the IRA as Michael Connelly, and the abandoned cleaning service on the Falls Road, where the same Michael Connelly had tested the household laundry of the IRA for evidence of explosives. Farther down the Road was the iron gate of Milltown Cemetery, where Elizabeth Conlin, the woman Keller had loved in secret, lay buried in a grave that Eamon Quinn had dug for her.

“You’ve never been?” asked Gabriel.

“It’s too dangerous,” said Keller, shaking his head. “The IRA keep watch over the graves.”

From Milltown they drove past the Ballymurphy housing estates to Springfield Road. Along its northern flank rose a barricade separating a Protestant enclave from a neighboring Catholic district. The first of the so-called peace lines appeared in Belfast in 1969 as a temporary solution to the city’s sectarian bloodletting. Now they were a permanent feature of its geography—indeed, their number, length, and scale had actually increased since the signing of the Good Friday accords. On Springfield Road the barricade was a transparent green fence about ten meters in height. But on Cupar Way, a particularly tense part of the Ardoyne, it was a Berlin Wall–like structure topped by razor wire. Residents on both sides had covered it in murals. One likened it to the separation fence between Israel and the West Bank.

“Does this look like peace to you?” asked Keller.

“No,” answered Gabriel. “It looks like home.”

Finally, at half past one, Keller turned into Stratford Gardens. Number 8, like its neighbors, was a two-level redbrick house with a white door and a single window on each floor. Weeds flourished in the forecourt; a green rubbish bin lay toppled by the wind. Keller pulled to the curb and switched off the engine.

“One wonders,” said Gabriel, “why Quinn decided to live in a luxury villa in Venezuela instead of here.”

“Did you get a look at the door?”

“A single lock, no deadbolt.”

“How long will it take you to unbutton it?”

“Thirty seconds,” said Gabriel. “Less than that if you let me leave those stupid flowers behind.”

“You have to take the flowers.”

“I’d rather take the gun.”

“I’ll keep the gun.”

“What happens if I run into a couple of Quinn’s friends in there?”

“Pretend to be a Catholic from West Belfast.”

“I’m not sure they’ll believe me.”

“They’d better,” said Keller. “Otherwise, you’re dead.”

“Any other helpful advice?”

“Five minutes, and not a minute more.”

Gabriel opened the door and stepped into the street. Keller swore softly. The flowers were still in the backseat.

A
SMALL
I
RISH TRICOLOR HUNG LIMPLY
from an oxidized mount in the door frame. Like the dream of a united Ireland, it was faded and tattered. Gabriel tried the latch and, as expected, found it was locked. Then he drew a thin metal tool from his pocket and, using the technique taught to him in his youth, worked it carefully in the mechanism. A few seconds was all it took for the lock to surrender. When he tried the latch a second time, it invited him to enter. He stepped inside and closed the door quietly behind him. No alarm sounded, no dog barked.

The morning post lay scattered across the bare floor. He gathered up the various envelopes, fliers, magazines, and advertising supplements and leafed quickly through them. Each was addressed to Maggie Donahue, except for a teen-oriented fashion magazine, which was addressed to her daughter. There appeared to be no private correspondence of any
sort, only the customary commercial debris that clogs mail services the world over. Gabriel pocketed a credit card bill and returned the rest to the floor. Then he entered the sitting room.

It was a small room, a few meters square, scarcely enough space for the couch, the television console, and the pair of floral matching armchairs. On the coffee table was a stack of old magazines and Belfast newspapers, along with additional post, opened and unopened. One of the items was a newsletter and fund-raising appeal from the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, the political wing of the Real IRA. Gabriel wondered whether its senders realized the addressee was the secret spouse of the group’s most accomplished maker of bombs and explosives.

He returned the letter to its envelope and the envelope to its place on the table. The walls of the room were bare except for a violent Irish seascape of flea-market quality hanging above the couch. On one of the end tables stood a framed photograph of a mother and child on the occasion of the child’s First Communion at Holy Cross Church. Gabriel could find no trace of Quinn in the child’s face. In that, if nothing else, she was fortunate.

He glanced at his wristwatch. Ninety seconds had elapsed since he had entered the house. He parted the thin curtains and peered out as a car rolled slowly past in the street. Inside were two men. They appeared to take careful note of Keller as they passed the parked Škoda. Then the car continued along Stratford Gardens and disappeared around the corner. Gabriel looked at the Škoda. The lights were still doused. Next he looked at his BlackBerry. No warning texts, no missed calls.

He released the curtain and entered the kitchen. A lipsticked coffee cup stood on the counter; dishes soaked in a pool of soapy water in the basin. He opened the refrigerator. It was packaged fare mainly, nothing green, no fruit, no beer, only a half-drunk bottle of supermarket Italian white from Tesco.

He released the door of the refrigerator and began opening and closing drawers. In one he found a blank cream-colored envelope, and in the envelope was a handwritten note from Quinn.

Deposit it in small amounts so it looks like tip money . . . Give my love to C . . .

Gabriel slipped the letter into his coat pocket next to the credit card bill and checked his watch. Two and a half minutes. He stepped from the kitchen and headed upstairs.

The car returned at 1:37. Again it cruised slowly past Number 8, but this time it stopped next to the Škoda. At first, Keller pretended not to notice. Then, indifferently, he lowered his window.

“What’re you doing here?” asked the driver in a thick West Belfast accent.

“Waiting on a friend,” replied Keller in the same dialect.

“What’s the friend’s name?”

“Maggie Donahue.”

“And you?” asked the passenger in the car.

“Gerry Campbell.”

“Where you from, Gerry Campbell?”

“Dublin.”

“And before that?”

“Derry.”

“When did you leave?”

“None of your fucking business.”

Keller was no longer smiling. Neither were the two men in the other car. The window slid up; the car moved off along the quiet street and disappeared around the corner a second time. Keller wondered how long it would take them to establish that Maggie
Donahue, the secret wife of Eamon Quinn, was at that moment working in the Lobby Bar of the Europa Hotel. Two minutes, he thought. Maybe less. He pulled out his mobile and dialed.

“The natives are starting to get restless.”

“Try giving them the flowers.”

The connection went dead. Keller started the engine and wrapped his hand around the grip of the Beretta. Then he stared into the rearview mirror and waited for the car to return.

At the top of the stairs was a pair of doors. Gabriel entered the room on the right. It was the larger of the two, though hardly a master suite. Clothing lay strewn across the floor and atop the unmade bed. The curtains were tightly drawn; there was no light other than the red digits of the alarm clock, which was set ten minutes fast. Gabriel opened the top drawer of the bedside table and illuminated its contents with the beam of his Maglite. Dried-out pens, dead batteries, an envelope containing several hundred pounds in well-used bills, another letter from Quinn. It seemed he wanted to see his daughter. There was no mention of where he was living or where a meeting might take place. Still, it suggested that Liam Walsh had been less than truthful when he claimed that Quinn had had no personal contact with his family since fleeing Ireland after the Omagh bombing.

Gabriel added the letter to his small collection of evidence and opened the closet door. He searched the clothing and found several items clearly belonging to a man. It was possible Maggie Donahue had taken a lover in her husband’s long absence. It was possible, too, that the clothing belonged to Quinn. He removed one of the items, a pair of woolen trousers, and held them to his own frame. Quinn,
he recalled, was five foot ten, not a big man but bigger than Gabriel. He searched the pockets for litter. In one he found three coins, euros, and a small blue-and-yellow ticket. It was torn, half of it missing. Gabriel could make out four numbers, 5846, but nothing more. On the back were a few centimeters of a magnetic data stripe.

Gabriel pocketed the ticket, returned the trousers to their original hanger, and entered the bathroom. In the medicine chest he found men’s razors, men’s aftershave, and men’s deodorant. Then he crossed the hall and entered the second bedroom. In cleanliness, Quinn’s daughter was the precise opposite of her mother. Her bed was smoothly made; her clothing hung neatly from the rod in her closet. Gabriel searched the drawers of her dresser. There were no drugs or cigarettes, no evidence at all of a life kept secret from her mother. Nor was there any trace of Eamon Quinn.

Gabriel checked the time. Five minutes had elapsed. He moved to the window and watched the car with two men pass slowly in the street. When it was gone, Gabriel’s BlackBerry vibrated. He lifted it to his ear and heard the voice of Christopher Keller.

“Time’s up.”

“Two more minutes.”

“We don’t have two minutes.”

Keller rang off without another word. Gabriel looked around the room. He was used to searching the premises of professionals, not teenagers. Professionals were good at hiding things, teenagers not so. They assumed all adults were dolts, and their overconfidence was usually their undoing.

Gabriel returned to the closet and searched the insides of her shoes. Next he leafed through her fashion magazines, but they produced nothing other than subscription offers and fragrance samples. Finally, he thumbed through her small collection of books. It included a history of the Troubles written by an author sympathetic to
the IRA and the cause of Irish nationalism. And it was there, wedged between two pages, that he found what he was looking for.

It was a photograph of a teenage girl and a man wearing a brimmed hat and sunglasses. They were posed on a street of faded old buildings, perhaps European, perhaps South American. The girl was Catherine Donahue. And the man at her side was her father, Eamon Quinn.

Stratford Gardens was quiet when Gabriel emerged from the house at Number 8. He slipped through the metal gate, walked over to the Škoda, and climbed into the passenger seat. Keller wound his way through the mean streets of the Catholic Ardoyne and returned to Crumlin Road. Then he made a quick right turn into Cambrai Street and eased off the throttle. Union Jacks fluttered from the lampposts. They had crossed one of Belfast’s invisible borders. They were safely back on Protestant ground.

“Did you find anything?” asked Keller finally.

“I think so.”

“What is it?”

Gabriel smiled and said, “Quinn.”