“And the friend who agreed to take Quinn?”

“Three guesses,” said Walsh. “First two don’t count.”

The friend was Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, ally of Russia, Cuba, and the mullahs of Tehran, thorn in the side of America. Chavez saw himself as a leader of the world’s revolutionary movement, and he operated a not-so-secret training camp for terrorists and leftist rebels on Margarita Island. Quinn soon became the star attraction. He worked with everyone from the Shining Path of Peru to Hamas and Hezbollah, sharing the deadly tricks of the trade he’d acquired during his long career matching wits with the British. Chavez, like Gaddafi before him, treated Quinn well. He gave him a villa by the sea and a diplomatic passport to travel the world. He even gave him a new face.

“Who did the work?”

“Gaddafi’s doctor.”

“The Brazilian?”

Walsh nodded. “He came to Caracas and performed the surgery in a hospital there. He gave Quinn a total reconstruction. The old pictures are useless now. Even I barely recognized him.”

“You saw him when he was in Venezuela?”

“Twice.”

“You went to the camp?”

“Never.”

“Why not?”

“I wasn’t cleared for the camp. I saw him on the mainland.”

“Keep talking, Liam.”

A year after Quinn arrived in Venezuela, a senior man from VEVAK, the Iranian intelligence service, paid a quiet visit to the island. He wasn’t there to see his allies from Hezbollah; he was there to see Quinn. The man from VEVAK stayed on the island for a week. And when he went back to Tehran, Quinn went with him.

“Why?”

“The Iranians wanted Quinn to build a weapon.”

“What kind of weapon?”

“A weapon that Hezbollah could use against Israeli tanks and armored vehicles in southern Lebanon.”

Keller looked at Gabriel, who appeared to be contemplating a crack in the ceiling. Walsh, unaware of the true identity of his small audience, was still talking.

“The Iranians set Quinn up in a weapons factory in a Tehran suburb called Lavizan. He built a version of an antitank weapon that he’d been working on for years. It created a fireball that traveled a thousand feet per second and engulfed the advancing armor in flames. Hezbollah used it against the Israelis in the summer of 2006. The Israeli tanks went up like kindling. It was like the Holocaust.”

Keller again cast a sidelong glance toward Gabriel, who was now staring directly at Liam Walsh.

“And when he finished designing the antitank weapon?” asked Keller.

“He went to Lebanon to work directly with Hezbollah.”

“What kind of work?”

“Roadside bombs, mainly.”

“And then?”

“The Iranians sent him to Yemen to work with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.”

“I didn’t know there were ties between the Iranians and al-Qaeda.”

“Whoever told you that?”

“Where is he now?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“You’re lying, Liam.”

“I’m not. I swear I don’t know where he is or who he’s working for.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Six months ago.”

“Where?”

“Spain.”

“Spain is a big country, Liam.”

“It was in the south, in Sotogrande.”

“An Irish playground.”

“It’s like Dublin with the sun turned up.”

“Where did you meet?”

“A little hotel down by the marina. Very quiet.”

“What did he want?”

“He wanted me to deliver a package.”

“What kind of package?”

“Money.”

“Who was the money for?”

“His daughter.”

“I never knew he was married.”

“Most people don’t.”

“Where’s the daughter?”

“In Belfast with her mother.”

“Keep talking, Liam.”

The combined services of British intelligence had assembled a mountain of material on the life and times of Eamon Quinn, but nowhere in their voluminous files was there any mention of a wife or a child. It was no accident, said Walsh. Quinn the operational planner had gone to great lengths to keep his family a secret. Walsh claimed to have attended the ceremony at which the two were wed, and later he helped to manage the family’s financial affairs during the years Quinn was living abroad as a superstar of international terrorism. The package Quinn gave to Walsh in the Spanish resort of Sotogrande contained one hundred thousand pounds in used bills. It was the largest single payment Quinn had ever entrusted to his old friend.

“Why so much money?” asked Keller.

“He said it would be the last payment for a while.”

“Did he say why?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t ask?”

“I knew better.”

“And you delivered the payment in full?”

“Every single pound.”

“You didn’t keep a small service charge for yourself? After all, Quinn would have never known.”

“You obviously don’t know Eamon Quinn.”

Keller asked whether Quinn had ever stolen into Belfast to see his family.

“Never.”

“And they never traveled outside the country to see him?”

“He was afraid the British would follow them. Besides,” Walsh added, “they wouldn’t have recognized him. Quinn had a new face. Quinn was someone else.”

Which returned them to the subject of Quinn’s surgically altered appearance. Gabriel and Keller had in their possession the images that the French had captured in Saint Barthélemy—a few frames of airport video, a few grainy still photos captured by storefront security cameras—but in none was Quinn’s face clearly visible. He was a mop of black hair and a beard, a man to glimpse once and quickly forget. Liam Walsh had the power to complete Quinn’s portrait, for Walsh had sat across from him six months earlier, in a Spanish hotel room.

Gabriel had produced composite sketches under challenging circumstances, but never with a witness who was blindfolded. In fact, he was quite certain it was not possible. Keller explained how the process would work. There was another man present, he said, a man who was as good with a sketchpad and a pencil as he was with his fists and a gun. This man was neither Irish nor an Ulsterman. Walsh was to describe Quinn’s appearance for him. He could look at the man’s sketchpad, but under no circumstances was he to look at his face.

“What if I look accidentally?”

“Don’t.”

Keller removed the duct tape from Walsh’s eyes. The Irishman blinked several times. Then he stared directly at the figure seated on the opposite side of the table behind a sketchpad and a box of colored pencils.

“You just violated the rules,” said Gabriel calmly.

“Do you want to know what he looks like, or not?”

Gabriel picked up a pencil. “Let’s start with his eyes.”

“They’re green,” replied Walsh. “Like yours.”

They worked without a break for the next two hours. Walsh described, Gabriel sketched, Walsh corrected, Gabriel revised. Finally, at midnight, the portrait was complete. The Brazilian plastic surgeon had done a fine job. He had given Quinn a face without character or a memorable feature. Still, it was a face Gabriel would recognize if it passed him on the street.

If Walsh was curious about the identity of the green-eyed man behind the sketchpad, he gave no sign of it. Nor did he resist when Keller covered his eyes with a blindfold of duct tape, or when Gabriel injected him with enough sedative to keep him quiet for a few hours. They zipped him unconscious into the duffel bag and wiped down every item and surface in the cottage that any of them had touched. Then they hoisted him into the trunk of the Škoda and climbed into the front seat. Keller drove. It was his turf.

The roads were empty, the rain was sporadic, a torrential downpour one minute, a blustery mist the next. Keller smoked one cigarette after the next and listened to the news on the radio. Gabriel stared out the window at the black hills and the windswept moors and bogs. In his thoughts, however, there was only Eamon Quinn. Since fleeing Ireland, Quinn had worked with some of the most dangerous men in the world. It was possible he had been acting out of conscience or political belief, but Gabriel doubted it. Surely, he thought, Quinn was past all that. He had gone the way of Carlos and Abu Nidal before him. He was a terrorist for hire, killing at the behest of powerful patrons. But who had paid for Quinn’s bullet? Who had commissioned him to kill a princess? Gabriel had a long list of potential suspects. For now, though, finding Quinn would take precedence. Liam Walsh had given them ample places to look, none more promising than a house in West Belfast. A part of Gabriel wanted to search elsewhere, for he regarded wives and children as off-limits. Quinn, however, had left them no other choice.