The English Spy Read online

  “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.”

  73

  THE ARDOYNE, WEST BELFAST

  KELLER 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.”

  74

  CROSSMAGLEN, COUNTY ARMAGH

  THE 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 b
eautiful,” 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.”

  75

  UNION STREET, BELFAST

  IT 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.

  76

  CREGGAN FOREST, COUNTY ANTRIM

  THEY ASKED NO FURTHER QUESTIONS of Billy Conway, and he asked none of them. Blood flowed freely from his broken nose during the ride north to Larne, but by the time they reached Glenarm a crust of black had formed around the rims of his nostrils. Keller directed Gabriel inland along the Carnlough Road, then north on Killycarn. They followed it until it turned to gravel and shed its name. Then they followed it a little farther, until the last farm had fallen away and the Creggan Forest rose from the land. Keller told Gabriel to stop and kill the engine. Then he looked at Billy Conway.

  “Remember this place, Billy? We used to come up here in the old days when you had something important to tell me. We’d drive up here in that old Granada and have a few beers while we listened to the guns over at the Creggan Lodge. Remember, Billy?”

  Keller’s voice had taken on a West Belfast accent, Falls Road with a touch of Ballymurphy. Billy Conway said nothing. He was staring straight ahead. A thousand-yard stare, thought Gabriel. A dead man’s stare.

  “We always took good care of you, didn’t we, Billy? We paid you well. We protected you. But you didn’t need protection, did you, Billy? You were working for the IRA the whole time. Working for Eamon Quinn. You’re a tout, Billy. You’re a lousy fucking tout.” Keller placed the barrel of the Glock to the back of his head. “Aren’t you going to deny it, Billy?”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Not so long,” said Keller. “Isn’t that what you told me the day we renewed our friendship in Belfast? The day you found Maggie Donahue for me. The day you set me up.” Keller pressed the barrel of the gun hard against Conway’s skull. “Aren’t you going to deny it, Billy?”

  Billy Conway was silent.

  “You were always honest, Billy.”

  “You should have never come back here.”

  “Thanks to Quinn, we didn’t have much choice. Quinn led me back here. And you made sure I found the things he wanted me to find. A wife and a daughter. A pile of money. A torn tram ticket. A photograph of a Lisbon Street. Maggie Donahue wanted no part of it. She was too busy trying to survive in a shithole like the Ardoyne without a husband. But you threatened her into doing it. You told her you’d kill her if she went to the police. Her daughter, too. And she believed you, Billy, because she knows what happens to touts in West Belfast.” Keller laid the barrel of the gun along Billy Conway’s cheek. “Deny it, Billy.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to swear that you’ll never go anywhere near that woman or her child again.”

  “I swear it.”

  “Wise boy, Billy. Now get out of the car.”

  Conway sat motionless. Keller slammed the gun into his broken nose.

  “I said get out!”

  Conway pulled the latch and staggered from the car. Keller followed after him. “Start walking,” he said. “And while you’re walking, tell me where I can find Eamon Quinn.”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Sure you do, Billy. You know everything.”

  Keller shoved Conway along the track and fell in b
ehind him. From the trees of the Creggan Forest came the crack of a hunter’s twelve-gauge. Conway froze. With a jab from the barrel of the Glock, Keller prodded him forward.

  “How did Quinn get out of England?”

  “The Delaneys.”

  “Jack and Connor?”

  “Aye.”

  “He wasn’t alone, was he, Billy?”

  “He had two women with him.”

  “Where did the Delaneys drop them?”

  “Shore Road, near the castle.”

  “You were there?”

  “I picked them up.”

  “What kind of car did you have?”

  “Peugeot.”

  “Stolen, borrowed, or rented?”

  “Stolen. False plates.”

  “Quinn’s favorite.”

  Two more shotgun blasts, closer. A brace of pheasants took flight from a field. Smart birds, thought Keller.

  “Where is he, Billy? Where’s Quinn?”

  “He’s in South Armagh,” said Conway after a moment.

  “Where?”

  “Crossmaglen.”

  “Jimmy Fagan’s farm?”

  Conway nodded. “The same place we took you that night. Quinn says he wants to nail you to the Cross for your sins.”

  “We?” asked Keller.

  There was silence.

  “You were there, Billy?”

  “For part of it,” admitted Conway. “The two women are in the same building where Quinn strapped you to that chair.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I put them there myself.”

  They had reached the edge of the trees. Billy Conway stumbled to a stop.

  “Turn around, Billy. I have one more question.”

  Billy Conway stood motionless for a long moment. Then slowly he turned to face Keller.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  “I want a name, Billy—the name of the man who told Eamon Quinn that I was in love with a girl from Ballymurphy.”

  “I don’t know who did it.”

  “Sure you do, Billy. You know everything.”

  Conway said nothing.

  “His name,” said Keller, pointing the gun at Conway’s face. “Tell me his name.”