The English Spy (34 page)

T
HE
S
EA
K
ING HAD SET
down at JHFS Aldergrove, the Joint Helicopter Command flying station adjacent to Belfast Airport. Amanda Wallace of MI5 had arranged for a car, a five-year-old Ford Escort with faded blue paint and nearly a hundred thousand surveillance miles on the odometer. She had also opened the doors of an MI5 safe house in a Protestant section of North Belfast. Two officers from T Branch, MI5’s Irish terrorism division, were waiting inside when Gabriel and Keller arrived shortly after midnight. Neither knew Keller’s name or face, though Gabriel’s identity proved harder to conceal. They passed a sleepless night together monitoring the search for the craft that had taken Madeline Hart from the isolated cove on the northern coast of Cornwall. By six in the morning it had become clear that the boat would not be found, at least not with Madeline still on board. The British public, however, knew nothing
of her abduction. Nor did it know that an SIS officer had leapt to his death from a terrace of Vauxhall Cross. The lead story on the BBC’s
Breakfast
program concerned the prime minister’s controversial plan to reform the National Health Service. The reaction was universally hostile.

At half past six Gabriel and Keller left the safe house and climbed into the Ford. They spent the next thirty minutes driving in circles through the northern and eastern sections of the city to make certain they were not being followed by MI5 or any other entity of British intelligence. Then, at seven o’clock, they turned onto Crumlin Road and headed into the Catholic Ardoyne. Keller parked at one end of Stratford Gardens and killed the engine. Lights burned in a few windows along the terraces, but otherwise the street was in darkness.

“How long before your friends show up?” asked Gabriel.

“It’s early,” said Keller vaguely.

“That doesn’t sound encouraging.”

“We’re in West Belfast. It’s hard to be optimistic.”

For several minutes Stratford Gardens did not stir. Keller scanned the street for evidence of trouble, but Gabriel had eyes only for the door of Number 8. It opened at 7:45 and two figures emerged, Maggie and Catherine Donahue, the wife and daughter of a man who could make a ball of fire travel a thousand feet per second. The wife and daughter of the man who had helped Tariq al-Hourani solve the problems he was having with his timers and detonators. Catherine Donahue was wearing a field hockey uniform beneath a gray coat. Her mother was wearing a tracksuit and trainers. They passed through the metal gate at the end of the garden walk and turned right, toward Ardoyne Road.

“Where’s her game?” asked Gabriel.

“Lisburn. Bus leaves at eight thirty.”

“Can’t she find her way alone?”

“They have to pass through a Protestant area to get up to Our Lady of Mercy. There’s been a lot of trouble over the years.”

“Or maybe they’re making a run for it.”

“Dressed like that?”

“Follow them,” said Gabriel.

“What if my friends show up?”

“I think I can look after myself.”

Gabriel stepped out of the car without another word. The gate of Number 8 emitted a sharp squeak as he pushed it open, but the front door yielded soundlessly. Entering, he quickly drew a gun from the small of his back—the Glock 17 that he had been given by SO1, the prime minister’s protection detail. A television blared unwatched in the sitting room; Gabriel left it on and stole up the stairs, the gun in his outstretched hands. He found both bedrooms in disarray but unoccupied. Then he went downstairs and entered the kitchen. There were a few breakfast dishes in the basin, and on the counter was a pot of tea. He took a mug from the cabinet, poured himself a cup, and sat down at the kitchen table to wait.

It took fifteen minutes for Maggie Donahue to walk her daughter to the gates of Our Lady of Mercy secondary school for girls. Her return trip was not without incident, for on the Ardoyne Road she became ensnared in a confrontation with two Protestant women from the Glenbryn housing estates who were angry that she, a Catholic, would dare to walk along a loyalist street. As a result, she was red-faced with anger when she turned into Stratford Gardens. She shoved her key into her lock and slammed the door so hard it rattled the windows of her little house. Someone on the television was complaining about the price of milk. She silenced it before coming into
the kitchen to see to the breakfast dishes. Several seconds elapsed before she noticed the man drinking tea at her table.

“Jesus Christ!” she shouted, startled.

Gabriel merely frowned, as though he did not approve of those who took the Lord’s name in vain.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” replied Gabriel calmly.

His accent puzzled her. Then a look of recognition flashed across her face.

“You’re the one who—”

“Yes,” he said, cutting her off. “I’m the one.”

“What are you doing in my house?”

“I misplaced something the last time I was here. I was hoping you might help me find it.”

“What’s that?”

“Your husband.”

She dug a mobile phone from the pocket of her tracksuit and started to dial. Gabriel leveled the Glock at her head.

“Stop,” he said.

She froze.

“Give me that phone.”

She handed it over. Gabriel looked at the screen. The number she had been attempting to dial was eight digits in length.

“The emergency number for the Police Service of Northern Ireland is one-zero-one, isn’t it?”

She was silent.

“So who are you dialing?” Greeted by more silence, Gabriel tucked the phone into his coat pocket.

“That’s mine,” she said.

“Not anymore.”

“What the hell do you want?”

“For the moment,” said Gabriel, “I’d like you to sit down.”

She glared at him, more contempt than fear. She was from the Ardoyne, thought Gabriel. She didn’t frighten easily.

“Sit,” he said again, and finally she sat.

“How did you get in here?” she asked.

“You left the front door unlocked.”

“Bullshit.”

Gabriel laid a photograph on the tabletop and turned it so she could see the image clearly. It showed her daughter standing on a street in Lisbon at the side of Eamon Quinn.

“Where did you get that?” she asked.

Gabriel lifted his gaze to the ceiling.

“From my daughter’s room?” she asked.

He nodded.

“What were you doing in there?”

“I was trying to prevent your husband from carrying out yet another act of mass murder.”

“I don’t have a husband.” She paused, then added, “Not anymore.”

“This is your husband,” said Gabriel, tapping the photograph with the barrel of the Glock. “His name is Eamon Quinn. He bombed Bishopsgate and Canary Wharf. He bombed Omagh, and he bombed Brompton Road. I found his clothing in your closet. I found his money, too. Which means you’re going to spend the rest of your life in a cage unless you tell me what I want to know.”

She stared at the photograph for a moment in silence. There was something else on her face now, thought Gabriel. It wasn’t contempt. It was shame.

“He’s not my husband,” she said finally. “My husband has been dead for more than ten years.”

“Then why is your daughter standing on a street in Lisbon with Eamon Quinn?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’ll kill me if I do.”

“Quinn?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Billy Conway.”

T
HE SMALL FARM THAT LAY
just to the west of Crossmaglen had been in the Fagan clan for generations. Its current occupant, Jimmy Fagan, had never cared much for farming, and in the late 1980s he opened a factory in Newry that manufactured aluminum doors and windows for South Armagh’s thriving building industry. His primary occupation, however, was Irish republicanism. A veteran of the IRA’s notorious South Armagh Brigade, he had participated in some of the bloodiest bombings and ambushes of the conflict, including an attack on a British patrol near Warrenpoint that left eighteen British soldiers dead. In all, the South Armagh Brigade was responsible for the deaths of 123 British military personnel and 42 officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. For a time, the small area of farms and rolling hills was the most dangerous place in the world to be a soldier—so dangerous, in fact, that the British Army was forced to abandon the roads to the IRA and
travel only by helicopter. Eventually, the South Armagh Brigade began attacking the helicopters, too. Four were brought down, including a Lynx that was hit by a mortar near Crossmaglen. Jimmy Fagan had fired the device. Eamon Quinn had designed and built it.

During the worst of the Troubles, an observation tower had loomed over the center of Crossmaglen. Now the tower was gone and in the heart of the village was a green park with a stark memorial to fallen IRA volunteers. Billy Conway dropped Quinn in front of the Cross Square Hotel; he walked around the corner to the Emerald bar on Newry Street. The colors of the Crossmaglen Rangers fluttered over the entrance. It seemed that football had replaced rebellion as the town’s primary pastime.

Quinn opened the door and went inside. Instantly, several heads swiveled toward him. The war might have been over, but in Crossmaglen suspicion of outsiders was as strong as ever. Quinn knew several of the men in the room. They, on the other hand, didn’t appear to know him. He ordered a Guinness at the bar and carried it over to the table where Jimmy Fagan sat with two other former members of the South Armagh Brigade. Fagan’s salt-and-pepper hair was cropped short, and his black eyes had been turned to slits by the passing of the years. They scrutinized Quinn carefully, with no trace of recognition.

“Can I help you, friend?” Fagan asked finally.

“Mind if I join you?”

Fagan nodded toward an empty table at the other end of the room and suggested Quinn might be more comfortable there.

“But I’d rather sit with you.”

“Take a walk, friend,” Fagan said quietly. “Otherwise, you’re going to get hurt.”

Quinn sat. The man sitting to his left seized hold of his wrist.

“Take it easy,” Quinn murmured. Then he looked at Fagan and said, “It’s me, Jimmy. It’s Eamon.”

Fagan stared hard at Quinn’s face. Then he realized the stranger seated across the table was telling the truth. “Christ,” he whispered. “What are you doing back here?”

“Business,” said Quinn.

“That would explain why the RUC is so jumpy all of a sudden.”

“They’re called the PSNI now, Jimmy. Haven’t you heard?”

“The Good Friday accords forgave many sins,” Fagan said after a moment, “but not yours. It would be better for all of us if you finished your beer and left.”

“Can’t, Jimmy.”

“Why not?”

“Business.”

Quinn drank the foam off his Guinness and looked around the room. The smell of wood polish and beer, the soft murmur of Armagh-accented voices: after all the years in hiding, all the years of selling his services to the highest bidder, he was finally home again.

“Why are you here?” Fagan asked.

“I was wondering whether you might be interested in a little action.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Money.”

“No more bombs, Eamon.”

“No,” said Quinn. “No bombs.”

“So what kind of job is it?”

“Ambush,” said Quinn. “Just like the old days.”

“Who’s the target?”

“The one who got away.”

“Keller?”

Quinn nodded. Jimmy Fagan smiled.

The farm was two hundred acres—or two hundred and forty, depending on which member of the Fagan clan you asked. It was rolling pastureland mainly, divided into smaller plots by low stone fences, some of which had been erected long before the first Protestant had set foot on the land, or so the legend went. Ireland was just over the next hill. On none of the roads was there even a suggestion of a border.

On the highest part of the land stood a two-story brick house where Fagan, a widower, lived with his two sons, both veterans of the IRA and the rejectionist Real IRA. There was a large barn of corrugated aluminum and a second structure, deep within the property, where Fagan had hidden weapons and explosives during the war. It was there, in the winter of 1989, that a younger version of Christopher Keller underwent a brutal interrogation at the hands of Eamon Quinn. Now Madeline and Katerina took Keller’s place. Quinn left enough food, water, and blankets to see them through the cold December afternoon and sealed the door with a pair of heavy padlocks. Then he walked with Billy Conway along the dirt track leading back to the main house. Conway was staring at the ground, hands shoved into the front pockets of his coat. He looked on edge. He usually did.

“How long do we have?” he asked.

“If I had to guess,” replied Quinn, “he’s already here. Allon, too.”

“Looking for me, no doubt.”

“We can only hope.”

“And if Keller asks to see me? What then?”

“You play the double game, Billy—just like you always did. Tell him they’re wasting their time looking for me in the north. Tell him you heard a rumor I’m down in the Republic.”

“What happens if he doesn’t believe me?”

“Why wouldn’t he believe you, Billy?” Quinn placed his hand on Conway’s shoulder and smiled. “You were his best agent.”