The English Spy Read online

  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.”r />
  22

  WARRING STREET, BELFAST

  IT 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.

  23

  BELFAST–LISBON

  THEY 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 fou
nd 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.”