“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 beautiful,” 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.”