It took fifteen minutes for Maggie Donahue to walk her daughter to the gates of Our Lady of Mercy secondary school for girls. Her return trip was not without incident, for on the Ardoyne Road she became ensnared in a confrontation with two Protestant women from the Glenbryn housing estates who were angry that she, a Catholic, would dare to walk along a loyalist street. As a result, she was red-faced with anger when she turned into Stratford Gardens. She shoved her key into her lock and slammed the door so hard it rattled the windows of her little house. Someone on the television was complaining about the price of milk. She silenced it before coming into the kitchen to see to the breakfast dishes. Several seconds elapsed before she noticed the man drinking tea at her table.
“Jesus Christ!” she shouted, startled.
Gabriel merely frowned, as though he did not approve of those who took the Lord’s name in vain.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” replied Gabriel calmly.
His accent puzzled her. Then a look of recognition flashed across her face.
“You’re the one who—”
“Yes,” he said, cutting her off. “I’m the one.”
“What are you doing in my house?”
“I misplaced something the last time I was here. I was hoping you might help me find it.”
“What’s that?”
“Your husband.”
She dug a mobile phone from the pocket of her tracksuit and started to dial. Gabriel leveled the Glock at her head.
“Stop,” he said.
She froze.
“Give me that phone.”
She handed it over. Gabriel looked at the screen. The number she had been attempting to dial was eight digits in length.
“The emergency number for the Police Service of Northern Ireland is one-zero-one, isn’t it?”
She was silent.
“So who are you dialing?” Greeted by more silence, Gabriel tucked the phone into his coat pocket.
“That’s mine,” she said.
“Not anymore.”
“What the hell do you want?”
“For the moment,” said Gabriel, “I’d like you to sit down.”
She glared at him, more contempt than fear. She was from the Ardoyne, thought Gabriel. She didn’t frighten easily.
“Sit,” he said again, and finally she sat.
“How did you get in here?” she asked.
“You left the front door unlocked.”
“Bullshit.”
Gabriel laid a photograph on the tabletop and turned it so she could see the image clearly. It showed her daughter standing on a street in Lisbon at the side of Eamon Quinn.
“Where did you get that?” she asked.
Gabriel lifted his gaze to the ceiling.
“From my daughter’s room?” she asked.
He nodded.
“What were you doing in there?”
“I was trying to prevent your husband from carrying out yet another act of mass murder.”
“I don’t have a husband.” She paused, then added, “Not anymore.”
“This is your husband,” said Gabriel, tapping the photograph with the barrel of the Glock. “His name is Eamon Quinn. He bombed Bishopsgate and Canary Wharf. He bombed Omagh, and he bombed Brompton Road. I found his clothing in your closet. I found his money, too. Which means you’re going to spend the rest of your life in a cage unless you tell me what I want to know.”
She stared at the photograph for a moment in silence. There was something else on her face now, thought Gabriel. It wasn’t contempt. It was shame.
“He’s not my husband,” she said finally. “My husband has been dead for more than ten years.”
“Then why is your daughter standing on a street in Lisbon with Eamon Quinn?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’ll kill me if I do.”
“Quinn?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Billy Conway.”
72
CROSSMAGLEN, COUNTY ARMAGH
THE SMALL FARM THAT LAY just to the west of Crossmaglen had been in the Fagan clan for generations. Its current occupant, Jimmy Fagan, had never cared much for farming, and in the late 1980s he opened a factory in Newry that manufactured aluminum doors and windows for South Armagh’s thriving building industry. His primary occupation, however, was Irish republicanism. A veteran of the IRA’s notorious South Armagh Brigade, he had participated in some of the bloodiest bombings and ambushes of the conflict, including an attack on a British patrol near Warrenpoint that left eighteen British soldiers dead. In all, the South Armagh Brigade was responsible for the deaths of 123 British military personnel and 42 officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. For a time, the small area of farms and rolling hills was the most dangerous place in the world to be a soldier—so dangerous, in fact, that the British Army was forced to abandon the roads to the IRA and travel only by helicopter. Eventually, the South Armagh Brigade began attacking the helicopters, too. Four were brought down, including a Lynx that was hit by a mortar near Crossmaglen. Jimmy Fagan had fired the device. Eamon Quinn had designed and built it.
During the worst of the Troubles, an observation tower had loomed over the center of Crossmaglen. Now the tower was gone and in the heart of the village was a green park with a stark memorial to fallen IRA volunteers. Billy Conway dropped Quinn in front of the Cross Square Hotel; he walked around the corner to the Emerald bar on Newry Street. The colors of the Crossmaglen Rangers fluttered over the entrance. It seemed that football had replaced rebellion as the town’s primary pastime.
Quinn opened the door and went inside. Instantly, several heads swiveled toward him. The war might have been over, but in Crossmaglen suspicion of outsiders was as strong as ever. Quinn knew several of the men in the room. They, on the other hand, didn’t appear to know him. He ordered a Guinness at the bar and carried it over to the table where Jimmy Fagan sat with two other former members of the South Armagh Brigade. Fagan’s salt-and-pepper hair was cropped short, and his black eyes had been turned to slits by the passing of the years. They scrutinized Quinn carefully, with no trace of recognition.
“Can I help you, friend?” Fagan asked finally.
“Mind if I join you?”
Fagan nodded toward an empty table at the other end of the room and suggested Quinn might be more comfortable there.
“But I’d rather sit with you.”
“Take a walk, friend,” Fagan said quietly. “Otherwise, you’re going to get hurt.”
Quinn sat. The man sitting to his left seized hold of his wrist.
“Take it easy,” Quinn murmured. Then he looked at Fagan and said, “It’s me, Jimmy. It’s Eamon.”
Fagan stared hard at Quinn’s face. Then he realized the stranger seated across the table was telling the truth. “Christ,” he whispered. “What are you doing back here?”
“Business,” said Quinn.
“That would explain why the RUC is so jumpy all of a sudden.”
“They’re called the PSNI now, Jimmy. Haven’t you heard?”
“The Good Friday accords forgave many sins,” Fagan said after a moment, “but not yours. It would be better for all of us if you finished your beer and left.”
“Can’t, Jimmy.”
“Why not?”
“Business.”
Quinn drank the foam off his Guinness and looked around the room. The smell of wood polish and beer, the soft murmur of Armagh-accented voices: after all the years in hiding, all the years of selling his services to the highest bidder, he was finally home again.
“Why are you here?” Fagan asked.
“I was wondering whether you might be interested in a little action.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Money.”
“No more bombs, Eamon.”
“No,” said Quinn. “No bombs.”
“So what kind of job is it?”
“Ambush,” said Quinn. “Just like the old days.”
“Who’s the target?”
“The one who got away.”