“Who are you?” asked Walsh through the pain of his broken jaw.

“That depends entirely on you,” replied Keller. “If you talk to me, I’ll be your best friend in the world. If you don’t, you’re going to end up like your three friends.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Omagh,” was all Keller said.

On the morning of the fourth day, Keller removed the plugs from Walsh’s ears and the gag from his mouth and elaborated on the situation in which the Irishman now found himself. Keller claimed to be a member of a small Protestant vigilante group seeking justice for the victims of republican terrorism. He suggested it had ties to the Ulster Volunteer Force, the loyalist paramilitary group that had killed at least five hundred people, mainly Roman Catholic civilians, during the worst of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The UVF accepted a cease-fire in 1994, but its murals, with their images of armed masked men, still adorned walls in Protestant neighborhoods and towns in Ulster. Many of the murals bore the same slogan: “Prepared for peace, ready for war.” The same could have been said for Keller.

“I’m looking for the one who built the bomb,” he explained. “You know the bomb I’m talking about, Liam. The bomb that killed twenty-nine innocent people in Omagh. You were there that day. You were in the car with him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You were there, Liam,” Keller repeated. “And you were in contact with him after the movement went to shit. He came down here to Dublin. You looked after him until it got too hot.”

“It’s not true. None of it’s true.”

“He’s back in circulation, Liam. Tell me where I can find him.”

Walsh said nothing for a moment. “And if I tell you?” he asked finally.

“You’ll spend some time in captivity, a long time, but you’ll live.”

“Bullshit,” spat Walsh.

“We’re not interested in you, Liam,” answered Keller calmly. “Only him. Tell us where we can find him, and we’ll let you live. Play dumb, and I’m going to kill you. And it won’t be with a nice neat bullet to the head. It’ll hurt, Liam. It’ll hurt badly.”

That afternoon a storm laid siege to the length and breadth of Connemara. Gabriel sat by the fire reading from a volume of Fitzgerald while Keller drove the windblown countryside looking for unusual Garda activity. Liam Walsh remained in isolation in the cellar, bound, gagged, blinded, deafened. He was given no liquid or food. By that evening he was so weakened by hunger and dehydration that Keller almost had to carry him to the toilet.

“How long?” asked Gabriel over dinner.

“We’re close,” said Keller.

“That’s what you said earlier.”

Keller was silent.

“Is there anything we can do to hurry things along? I’d like to be out of here before the Garda come knocking on the door.”

“Or the Real IRA,” added Keller.

“Well?”

“He’s immune to pain at this point.”

“What about water?”

“Water’s always good.”

“Does he know?”

“He knows.”

“Do you need help?”

“No,” said Keller, rising. “It’s personal.”

When Keller was gone, Gabriel went onto the terrace and stood in the ball-bearing rain. Five minutes was all it took. Even a hard man like Liam Walsh couldn’t stand the water for long.

15

THAMES HOUSE, LONDON

EACH FRIDAY EVENING, usually at six o’clock but sometimes a bit later if London or the wider world were in crisis, Graham Seymour had drinks with Amanda Wallace, the director-general of MI5. It was, without doubt, his least favorite appointment of the week. Wallace was Seymour’s former boss. They had entered MI5 the same year and had risen through the ranks along parallel tracks, Seymour in the counterterrorism department, Wallace in counterespionage. In the end it was Amanda who had won the race to the DG’s suite. But now, quite unexpectedly and in the twilight of his career, Seymour had been handed the biggest prize of all. Amanda hated him for it, for he was now London’s most powerful spy. Quietly, she worked to undermine him at every turn.

Like Seymour, Amanda Wallace had espionage in her DNA. Her mother had toiled in the file rooms of MI5’s Registry during the war, and upon graduation from Cambridge, Amanda had considered no career other than intelligence. Their common lineage should have made them allies. Instead, Amanda had instantly cast Seymour in the role of rival. He was the handsome scoundrel to whom success came too easily, and she was the awkward, rather shy girl who would run him off his feet. They had known each other thirty years and together had reached the twin peaks of British intelligence, and yet the basic dynamics of their relationship had never changed.

On the previous Friday, Amanda had come to Vauxhall Cross, which meant that under the rules of their relationship it was Seymour’s turn to travel. He saw it as no imposition; he always liked going back to Thames House. His official Jaguar was cleared into the underground car park at 5:55 p.m., and two minutes later Amanda’s elevator deposited him on the uppermost floor. The main corridor was as quiet as a night ward. Seymour supposed the senior staff were mixing with the troops at one of the building’s two private bars. As always, he stopped to have a look inside his old office. Miles Kent, his successor as deputy, was staring blankly into his computer terminal. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in a week.

“How is she?” asked Seymour warily.

“Fit to be tied. But you’d better hurry,” Kent added. “Mustn’t keep the queen bee waiting.”

Seymour continued along the corridor to the DG’s suite. A member of Amanda’s all-male staff greeted him in the anteroom and showed him immediately into her large office. She was standing contemplatively in a window overlooking the Houses of Parliament. Turning, she consulted her wristwatch. Amanda valued punctuality above all other attributes.

“Graham,” she said evenly, as though she were reading his name from one of the dense briefing books her staff always prepared before an important meeting. Then she gave an efficient smile. It looked as though she had taught herself the gesture by practicing in front of a mirror. “So good of you to come.”

A drinks tray had been left on Amanda’s long, gleaming conference table. She prepared a gin and tonic for Seymour and for herself a bone-dry martini with olives and cocktail onions. She prided herself on her ability to hold her liquor, a skill that, in her opinion, was obligatory for a spy. It was one of her few endearing qualities.

“Cheers,” said Seymour, raising his glass a fraction of an inch, but again Amanda only smiled. The BBC played silently on a large flat-panel television. A senior officer of the Garda Síochána was standing outside a small house in Ballyfermot where three men, all members of a Real IRA drug gang, had been found dead.

“Rather nasty,” said Amanda.

“A turf war, apparently,” murmured Seymour over the rim of his glass.

“Our friends in the Garda have their doubts about that.”

“What have they got?”

“Nothing, actually, which is why they’re concerned. The phones usually light up with chatter after a big gangland assassination, but not this time. And then,” she added, “there’s the manner in which they were killed. Usually, these mobsters hose down the entire room with automatic-weapons fire. But whoever did this was very precise. Three shots, three dead bodies. The Garda are convinced they’re dealing with professionals.”

“Do they have any idea where Liam Walsh is?”

“They’re operating under the assumption he’s somewhere in the Republic, but they haven’t a clue where.” She looked at Seymour and raised an eyebrow. “He’s not strapped to a chair in some MI6 safe house, is he, Graham?”

“No such luck.”

Seymour looked at the television. The BBC had moved on to the next story. Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster was in Washington for a meeting with the American president. It had not gone as well as he had hoped. Britain was not terribly in vogue in Washington at the moment, at least not at the White House.