The English Spy (14 page)

I
T COULD BE ANYONE
,” said Keller.

“It could be,” replied Gabriel. “But it isn’t. It’s Quinn.”

They were in Keller’s room at the Premiere Inn on Warring Street. It was around the corner from the Europa and far less luxurious. He had checked in as Adrien LeBlanc and had spoken French-accented English to the staff. Gabriel, during his brief journey across the drab lobby, had said nothing at all.

“Where do you suppose they are?” asked Keller, still studying the photograph.

“Good question.”

“There are no signs on the buildings or cars on the street. It’s almost as if—”

“He chose the spot with great care.”

“Maybe it’s Caracas.”

“Or maybe it’s Santiago or Buenos Aires.”

“Ever been?”

“Where?”

“Buenos Aires,” said Keller.

“Several times, actually.”

“Business or pleasure?”

“I don’t do pleasure.”

Keller smiled and looked at the photo again. “It looks a bit like the old center of Bogotá to me.”

“I’ll have to take your word on that one.”

“Or maybe it’s Madrid.”

“Maybe.”

“Let me see that ticket stub.”

Gabriel handed it over. Keller scrutinized the front side carefully. Then he turned it over and ran his finger along the portion of the magnetic stripe.

“A few years ago,” he said at last, “the don accepted a contract on a gentleman who’d stolen a great deal of money from people who don’t care to have their money stolen. The gentleman was in hiding in a city like the one in this photograph. It was an old city of faded beauty, a city of hills and streetcars.”

“What was the gentleman’s name?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Where was he hiding?”

“I’m getting to that.”

Keller was studying the front of the ticket again. “Because this gentleman had no car, he was by necessity a dedicated user of public transport. I followed him for a week before the hit, which meant that I had to be a dedicated user of public transport, too.”

“Do you recognize the ticket, Christopher?”

“I might.”

Keller picked up Gabriel’s BlackBerry, opened Google, and typed several characters into the search box. When the results appeared, he clicked one and smiled.

“Find it?” asked Gabriel.

Keller turned the BlackBerry around so Gabriel could see the screen. On it was a complete version of the ticket he had found in the home of Maggie Donahue.

“Where’s it from?” asked Gabriel.

“A city of hills and streetcars.”

“I take it you’re not referring to San Francisco.”

“No,” said Keller. “It’s Lisbon.”

“That doesn’t prove the photo was taken there,” Gabriel said after a moment.

“Agreed,” answered Keller. “But if we can prove that Catherine Donahue was there . . .”

Gabriel said nothing.

“You didn’t happen to see her passport when you were in that house, did you?”

“No such luck.”

“Then I suppose we’ll have to think of some other way to have a look at it.”

Gabriel picked up his BlackBerry and keyed in a brief message to Graham Seymour in London, requesting information on any and all foreign travel by Catherine Donahue of 8 Stratford Gardens, Belfast, Northern Ireland. One hour later, as darkness fell hard upon the city, they had their answer.

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office issued the passport on November 10, 2013. One week later she boarded a British Airways
flight in Belfast and flew to London’s Heathrow Airport where, ninety minutes later, she transferred to a second British Airways flight, bound for Lisbon. According to Portuguese immigration authorities, she remained in the country for just three days. It was her one and only foreign trip.

“None of which proves Quinn was living there at the time,” Keller pointed out.

“Why bring her to Lisbon of all places? Why not Monaco or Cannes or St. Moritz?”

“Maybe Quinn was on a budget.”

“Or maybe he keeps an apartment there, something in a charming old building in the kind of neighborhood where no one would notice a foreigner coming and going.”

“Know any places like that?”

“I’ve spent my life living in places like that.”

Keller was silent for a moment. “What now?” he asked finally.

“I suppose we could take the photo and my composite sketch to Lisbon and start knocking on doors.”

“Or?”

“We retain the services of someone who specializes in finding those who would rather not be found.”

“Any candidates?”

“Just one.”

Gabriel picked up his BlackBerry and dialed Eli Lavon.

T
HEY DECIDED TO TAKE
the long way down to Lisbon. Better to not hit town too quickly, said Gabriel. Better to take care with their travel arrangements and their tail. For the first time, Quinn was in their sights. He was no longer just a rumor. He was a man on a street, with a daughter at his side. He had flesh on his bones, blood in his veins. He could be found. And then he could be put out of his misery.

And so they left Belfast as they had entered it, quietly and under false pretenses. Monsieur LeBlanc told the clerk at the Premiere that he had a small personal crisis to attend to; Herr Klemp spun a similar tale at the Europa. Passing through the lobby he saw Maggie Donahue, secret wife of the murderer, serving a very large whiskey to an inebriated businessman. She avoided Herr Klemp’s gaze, and Herr Klemp avoided hers.

They drove to Dublin, abandoned the car at the airport, and checked into a pair of rooms at the Radisson. In the morning they ate breakfast like strangers in the hotel’s restaurant and then boarded separate flights to Paris, Gabriel on Aer Lingus, Keller on Air France. Gabriel’s flight arrived first. He collected a clean Citroën from the car park and was waiting in the arrivals lane as Keller emerged from the terminal.

They spent that night in Biarritz, where Gabriel had once taken a life in vengeance, and the next night in the Spanish city of Vitoria, where Keller, at the behest of Don Anton Orsati, had once killed a member of the Basque separatist group ETA. Gabriel could see that Keller’s ties to his old life were beginning to fray, that Keller, with each passing day, was growing more comfortable with the prospect of working for Graham Seymour at MI6. Quinn had unleashed the chain of events that had broken Keller’s bonds with England. And now, twenty-five years later, Quinn was leading Keller back home.

From Vitoria they moved on to Madrid, and from Madrid they drove to Badajoz along the Portuguese border. Keller was anxious to push on to Lisbon, but at Gabriel’s insistence they headed farther west and caught the season’s last faint rays of sun at Estoril. They stayed in separate hotels along the beach and led the separate lives of men without wives, without children, without care or responsibility. Gabriel spent several hours each day making certain they were not under surveillance. He was tempted to send a message to Chiara in Jerusalem but did not. Nor did he make contact with Eli Lavon. Lavon was one of the most experienced man-trackers in the world. In his youth he had hunted down the members of Black September, perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. Then, after leaving the Office, he had gone into private practice, tracking looted Holocaust assets and the occasional Nazi war criminal. If there were any trace of Quinn in Lisbon—a residence, an alias, another wife or child—Lavon would find it.

But when two more days passed without word, even Gabriel began to have doubts, not in Lavon’s ability but in his faith that Quinn was somehow linked to Lisbon. Perhaps Catherine Donahue had traveled to the city with friends or as part of a school trip. Perhaps the trousers Gabriel had found in Maggie Donahue’s closet had belonged to another man, as had the torn ticket for Lisbon’s streetcar system. They would have to search for him elsewhere, he thought—in Iran, or Lebanon, or Yemen, or Venezuela, or in any of the countless other places where Quinn had plied his deadly trade. Quinn was a man of the underworld. Quinn could be anywhere.

But on the third morning of their stay, Gabriel received a brief but promising message from Eli Lavon suggesting that the man in question was thought to be a frequent visitor to the city of interest. By midday Lavon was certain of it, and by late afternoon he had uncovered an address. Gabriel rang Keller at his hotel and told him they were ready to move. They left Estoril as they had entered it, quietly and under false pretenses, and headed for Lisbon.

“He calls himself Alvarez.”

“Portuguese or Spanish spelling?”

“That depends on his mood.”

Eli Lavon smiled. They were seated at a table in Café Brasileira, in the Chiado district of Lisbon. It was half past nine and the café was very crowded. No one seemed to take much notice of the two men of late middle age hunched over cups of coffee in the corner. They conversed in quiet German, one of several languages they had in common. Gabriel spoke in the Berlin accent of his mother, but Lavon’s German was decidedly Viennese. He wore a cardigan sweater beneath his crumpled tweed jacket and an ascot at his throat. His
hair was wispy and unkempt; the features of his face were bland and easily forgotten. It was one of his greatest assets. Eli Lavon appeared to be one of life’s downtrodden. In truth, he was a natural predator who could follow a highly trained intelligence officer or hardened terrorist down any street in the world without attracting a flicker of interest.

“First name?” asked Gabriel.

“Sometimes José. Other times he’s Jorge.”

“Nationality?”

“Sometimes Venezuelan, sometimes Ecuadorian.” Lavon smiled. “Are you beginning to see a pattern?”

“But he never tries to pass himself off as Portuguese?”

“He doesn’t have the language for it. Even his Spanish is on the rough side. Apparently, he has quite an accent.”

Someone at the bar must have said something funny, because a sonic boom of laughter reverberated off the checkered tile floor and died out high in the ceiling, where the chandeliers emitted a gauzy golden glow. Gabriel looked past Lavon’s shoulder and imagined that Quinn was sitting at the next table. But it wasn’t Quinn; it was Christopher Keller. He was holding a cup of coffee in his right hand. The right hand meant they were clean, the left meant trouble. Gabriel looked at Lavon again and asked about the location of Quinn’s apartment. Lavon inclined his head in the direction of the Bairro Alto.

“What’s the building like?”

Lavon made a gesture with his hand to indicate it fell somewhere between acceptable and condemnable.

“Concierge?”

“In the Bairro Alto?”

“What floor?”

“Second.”

“Can we get inside?”

“I’m surprised you’d even ask. The question is,” Lavon continued, “do we
want
to get inside?”

“Do we?”

Lavon shook his head. “When one is fortunate enough to find the pied-à-terre of a man like Eamon Quinn, one doesn’t risk throwing it away by rushing through the front door. One acquires a fixed observation post and waits patiently for the target to appear.”

“Unless there are other factors to consider.”

“Such as?”

“The possibility another bomb might explode.”

“Or that one’s wife is about to give birth to twins.”

Gabriel frowned but said nothing.

“In case you’re wondering,” said Lavon, “she’s doing well.”

“Is she angry?”

“She’s seven and a half months pregnant, and her husband is sitting in a café in Lisbon. How do you think she feels?”

“How’s her security?”

“Narkiss Street is quite possibly the safest street in all Jerusalem. Uzi keeps a security team outside the door all hours.” Lavon hesitated, then added, “But all the bodyguards in the world are no substitute for a husband.”

Gabriel made no reply.

“May I make a suggestion?”

“If you must.”

“Go back to Jerusalem for a few days. Your friend and I can keep watch on the apartment. If Quinn shows up, you’ll be the first to know.”

“If I go to Jerusalem,” replied Gabriel, “I’ll never want to leave.”

“Which is why I suggested it.” Lavon cleared his throat gently. It was a warning of an impending intimacy. “Your wife would like you to know that in one month’s time, perhaps less, you will be a father
again. She’d like you to be present for the occasion. Otherwise, your life won’t be worth living.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“She might have mentioned something about Eamon Quinn.”

“What was that?”

“Apparently, Uzi’s briefed her on the operation. Your wife doesn’t take kindly to men who blow up innocent women and children. She’d like you to find Quinn before you come home. And then,” Lavon added, “she’d like you to kill him.”

Gabriel glanced at Keller and said, “That won’t be necessary.”

“Yes,” said Lavon. “Lucky you.”

Gabriel smiled and drank some of his coffee. Lavon reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a silver thumb drive. He placed it on the table and pushed it toward Gabriel.

“As requested, the complete Office file on Tariq al-Hourani, born in Palestine during the great Arab catastrophe, shot to death in the stairwell of a Manhattan apartment building shortly before the Twin Towers came tumbling down.” Lavon paused, then added, “I believe you were there at the time. Somehow, I wasn’t invited.”

Gabriel stared at the thumb drive in silence. There were portions of the file he would not force himself to read again—for it was Tariq al-Hourani who, on a snowy January night in 1991, had planted a bomb beneath Gabriel’s car in Vienna. The explosion had killed Gabriel’s son Dani and maimed Leah, his first wife. She lived now in a psychiatric hospital atop Mount Herzl, trapped in a prison of memory and a body destroyed by fire. During a recent visit, Gabriel had told her he would soon be a father again.

“I would have thought,” said Lavon quietly, “that you knew his file by heart.”

“I do,” said Gabriel. “But I’d like to refresh my memory about one particular part of his career.”

“What’s that?”

“The time he spent in Libya.”

“You have a hunch?”

“Maybe.”

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

“I’m glad you’re here, Eli.”

Lavon stirred his coffee slowly. “That makes one of us.”

They emerged from Brasileira’s famous green door into a tiled square where Fernando Pessoa sat bronzed for all eternity, his punishment for being Portugal’s most famous poet and man of letters. A cold wind from the Tagus swirled in an amphitheater of graceful yellow buildings; a tram clattered past in the Largo Chiado. Gabriel imagined Quinn sitting in a seat in the window, Quinn of the surgically altered face and merciless heart, Quinn the prostitute of death. Lavon was heading up the slope of the hill, slowly, in the manner of a flâneur. Gabriel fell in beside him and together they wound their way through a labyrinth of darkened streets. Lavon never paused to take his bearings or consult a map. He was speaking in German about a discovery he’d made recently on a dig beneath the Old City of Jerusalem. When he wasn’t working for the Office, he served as an adjunct professor of biblical archaeology at Hebrew University. Indeed, owing to a monumental find he had made beneath the Temple Mount, Eli Lavon was regarded as Israel’s answer to Indiana Jones.

He stopped suddenly and asked, “Recognize it?”

“Recognize what?”

“This spot.” Greeted by silence, Lavon turned. “How about now?”

Gabriel turned, too. There were no lights burning anywhere in
the street. The darkness had rendered the buildings shapeless, without character or detail.

“This is where they were standing.” Lavon walked a few paces up the cobbled street. “And the person who snapped the photograph was standing here.”

“I wonder who it was.”

“It could have been someone who passed in the street.”

“Quinn doesn’t strike me as the sort who would let a complete stranger take a photo of him.”

Lavon set off again without another word and climbed higher into the district. He made several more turns, left and right, until Gabriel had lost all sense of direction. His only point of orientation was the Tagus, which appeared sporadically through gaps in the buildings, its surface shining like the scales of a fish. Finally, Lavon slowed to a stop and nodded once toward the entrance of an apartment house. It was slightly taller than most buildings in the Bairro Alto, four floors instead of three, and defaced at street level by graffiti. A shutter on the second floor hung aslant on one hinge; a flowering vine dripped from the rusted balcony. Gabriel walked over to the doorway and inspected the intercom. The nameplate for 2B was empty. He placed his thumb atop the button and the buzzer sounded clearly, as if through an open window or walls of paper. Then he placed his hand lightly upon the latch.