The English Spy (35 page)

K
ELLER PARKED THE CAR
directly opposite the house and hurried up the garden walk. The door opened to his touch; he followed the sound of voices into the kitchen. There he found Gabriel and Maggie Donahue seated at the table, each with a mug of tea before them. There was also a large stack of used bills, a few articles of male clothing, an assortment of toiletries, a photograph, and a Glock 17 firearm. The Glock was a few inches beyond Maggie Donahue’s reach. She was seated ramrod straight, with one arm lying protectively across her waist and a cigarette burning between the fingers of an uplifted hand. Keller reckoned she had been crying a few minutes earlier. Now her hard features had settled into a Belfast mask of reserve and mistrust. Gabriel was expressionless, a priest with a gun and a leather jacket. For a few seconds he seemed unaware of Keller’s presence. Then he looked up and smiled. “Mr.
Merchant,” he said cordially. “So good of you to join us. I’d like you to meet my new friend Maggie Donahue. Maggie was just telling me how Billy Conway forced her to put these things in her house.” He paused, then added, “Maggie is going to help us find Eamon Quinn.”

T
HE CORRUGATED METAL STRUCTURE AT
the center of the Fagan farm was twenty feet by forty, with bales of hay at one end and an assortment of rusted tools and implements at the other. It had been designed to Jimmy Fagan’s exacting specifications and assembled at his factory in Newry. The outer door was unusually heavy, and the raised flooring contained a well-concealed trapdoor that led to one of the largest caches of weapons and explosives in Northern Ireland. Madeline Hart knew none of this. She knew only that she was not alone; the smell of stale tobacco and cheap hotel shampoo told her so. Finally, a hand plucked the hood from her head and gently removed the duct tape from her mouth. Still, she had no sense of her surroundings, for the darkness was absolute. She sat silently for a moment, her back to the hay bales, her legs stretched before her. Then she asked, “Who’s there?”

A cigarette lighter flared, a face leaned into the flame.

“You,” whispered Madeline.

The lighter was extinguished, the darkness returned. Then a voice addressed her in Russian.

“I’m sorry,” said Madeline, “but I don’t understand you.”

“I said you must be thirsty.”

“Terribly,” replied Madeline.

A water bottle opened with a snap. Madeline placed her lips against grooves of plastic and drank.

“Thank—”

She stopped herself. She didn’t want to show a captive’s helpless gratitude toward the captor. Then she realized Katerina was a captive, too.

“Let me see your face again.”

The lighter flared a second time.

“I can’t see you clearly,” said Madeline.

Katerina moved the lighter closer to her face. “How do I look?” she asked.

“Exactly the way you looked in Lisbon.”

“How do you know about Lisbon?”

“A friend of mine was watching you from across the street. He took your picture.”

“Allon?”

Madeline said nothing.

“It’s a shame you ever met him. You’d still be living like a princess in St. Petersburg. Now you’re here.”

“Where is
here
?”

“Even I’m not sure.” Katerina extracted a cigarette from her packet and then inclined it toward Madeline. “Smoke?”

“God, no.”

“You were always the good girl, weren’t you?” Katerina
touched the end of her cigarette to the flame and allowed it to die.

“Please,” said Madeline. “I’ve been in the dark for so long.”

Katerina reignited the lighter.

“Walk around,” said Madeline. “Let me see where we are.”

Katerina moved with the lighter along the perimeter of the shed, stopping at the door.

“Try opening it.”

“It can’t be opened from the inside.”

“Try.”

Katerina leaned against the door but it didn’t budge. “Any other bright ideas?”

“I suppose we could light the hay on fire.”

“At this point,” said Katerina, “I’m sure he’d be more than happy to let us burn to death.”

“Who?”

“Eamon Quinn.”

“The Irishman?”

Katerina nodded.

“What’s he going to do?”

“First, he’s going to kill Gabriel Allon and Christopher Keller. Then he’s going to ransom me back to Moscow Center for twenty million dollars.”

“Will they pay?”

“Perhaps.” Katerina paused, then added, “Especially if the deal includes you.”

The lighter went dark. Katerina sat.

“What should I call you?” she asked.

“Madeline, of course.”

“It’s not your real name.”

“It’s the only name I have.”

“No, it isn’t. We used to call you Natalya at the camp. Don’t you remember?”

“Natalya?”

“Yes,” she said. “Little Natalya, daughter of the KGB general. So pretty. And that English accent they gave you. You were like a doll.” She was silent for a moment. “I adored you. You were all I had in that place.”

“So why did you kidnap me?”

“Actually, I was supposed to kill you. Quinn, too.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Quinn changed the plan.”

“But you would have killed me if you’d had the chance?”

“I didn’t want to,” Katerina answered after a moment. “But, yes, I suppose I would have done it.”

“Why?”

“Better me than someone else. Besides,” she added, “you betrayed your country. You defected.”

“It wasn’t my country. I didn’t belong there.”

“And here, Natalya? Do you belong here?”

“My name is Madeline.” She said nothing for a moment. “What will happen if I go back to Russia?”

“I suppose they’ll spend several months wringing every drop of knowledge out of your brain that they can.”

“And then?”

“
Vysshaya mera
.”

“The highest measure of punishment?”

“I thought you didn’t speak Russian.”

“A friend told me about that expression.”

“Where’s your friend now?”

“He’ll find me.”

“And then Quinn will kill him.” Katerina struck her lighter again. “Are you hungry?”

“Famished.”

“I think they left us some meat pies.”

“I adore meat pies.”

“God, but you’re so English.” Katerina unwrapped one of the pies and placed it carefully in Madeline’s hands.

“It would be easier if you cut away the duct tape.”

Katerina smoked contemplatively in the darkness. “How much do you remember?” she asked.

“About the camp?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing,” said Madeline. “And everything.”

“I have no photographs of myself when I was young.”

“Nor do I.”

“Do you remember what I looked like?”

“You were beautiful,” said Madeline. “I wanted to be exactly like you.”

“That’s funny,” replied Katerina, “because I wanted to be like you.”

“I was an annoying little child.”

“But you were a good girl, Natalya. And I was something else entirely.”

Katerina said nothing more. Madeline raised her bound hands and tried to eat more of the meat pie.

“Won’t you please cut away the tape?” she asked.

“I’d like to, but I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a good girl,” she said, crushing out her cigarette on the floor of the shed. “And you’ll only get in my way.”

I
T WAS A FEW MINUTES
after noon by the time Billy Conway came through the door of Tommy O’Boyle’s on Union Street. An ex-IRA man named Rory Gallagher was polishing pint glasses behind the bar.

“I was about to send out a search party,” he said.

“Long night,” answered Conway. “Longer than I expected.”

“Problems?”

“Complications.”

“More to come, I’m afraid.”

“What are you talking about?”

Gallagher glanced toward the stairs. “You have company.”

Keller’s feet were propped on Billy Conway’s desk when the office door opened with a groan. Conway stood motionless in the breach. He looked as though he had just seen a ghost. In a way, thought Keller, he had.

“Hello, Billy. Good to see you again.”

“I thought—”

“That I was dead?”

Conway said nothing. Keller rose to his feet.

“Take a walk with me, Billy. We need to talk.”

The occasion of Christopher Keller’s return to Northern Ireland had precipitated one of the largest reunions of the Provisional IRA’s South Armagh Brigade since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. In all, twelve members of the unit were at that same moment gathered around Eamon Quinn and Jimmy Fagan in the kitchen of the farmhouse in Crossmaglen. Eight of those present had served long sentences in the H-Blocks of the Maze prison, only to be freed under the terms of the peace accord. Four others had worked with Quinn in the Real IRA, including Frank Maguire, whose brother Seamus had died at the hands of Keller at Crossmaglen in 1989.

As usual at such gatherings, the air was thick with cigarette smoke. Spread across the center of the table was an Ordnance Survey map, faded and tattered along the edges, of the South Armagh region. It was the same map Fagan had used during the planning of the Warrenpoint massacre. In fact, some of his original markings and notations were still visible. Next to the map was a mobile, which at twelve fifteen pulsed with life. It was a text message from Rory Gallagher. Quinn smiled. Keller and Allon would soon be heading their way.

Keller and Billy Conway did indeed take a walk, but only as far as York Lane. It was a quiet street, no retail businesses or restaurants, just a church at one end and a row of redbrick industrial buildings at the other. Gabriel was parked in a gap in the security cameras. Keller shoved Billy Conway into the front passenger seat and climbed in back. Gabriel, staring straight ahead, calmly started the engine.

“Where’s Eamon Quinn?” he asked of Billy Conway.

“I haven’t seen Eamon Quinn in twenty-five years.”

“Wrong answer.”

Gabriel broke Conway’s nose with a lightning strike of a blow. Then he slipped the car into gear and eased away from the curb.

The Ford Escort beneath Gabriel and Keller was fitted with a satellite beacon, a fact that Amanda Wallace had neglected to mention to them. As a result, MI5 had been tracking the car all morning as it moved from Aldergrove to the safe house, and then to Stratford Gardens and York Lane. In addition, MI5 was monitoring the car’s movements with the aid of Belfast’s CCTV network. A camera on Frederick Street captured a clear shot of the man in the front passenger seat—a man who appeared to be bleeding heavily from his nose. An MI5 tech enlarged the image and fed it into one of the video display screens in the ops center at Thames House. Graham Seymour was seeing the same picture at Vauxhall Cross.

“Recognize him?” asked Amanda Wallace.

“It’s been a long time,” replied Seymour, “but I believe that’s Billy Conway.”

“
The
Billy Conway.”

“In the flesh.”

“He was one of ours, wasn’t he?”

“No,” said Seymour. “He was mine. And Keller helped to run him.”

“So why is he bleeding?”

“Maybe he was never really ours, Amanda. Maybe he was Quinn’s all along.”

Seymour watched as the car turned onto the M2 motorway and headed north. That’s the wonderful thing about our business, he thought. Our mistakes always come back to haunt us. And eventually all debts come due.