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“You know,” said Keller, “none of this would have happened if you’d told Graham Seymour to take a hike when he came to see you in Rome. You’d be working on your Caravaggio, and I’d be drinking a glass of wine on my terrace in Corsica.”

“Any other pearls of wisdom, Christopher?”

“Just a question.”

“What’s that?”

“Who is Tariq al-Hourani?”

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In London the same video image flickered in the op centers of Thames House and Vauxhall Cross—a winking blue light moving westward across Ulster on the A6. When the light reached Castledawson, it turned south toward Cookstown. Graham Seymour sent a third text to Keller’s mobile, but this time there was no reply, a fact he reluctantly shared with Amanda Wallace across the river at Thames House.

“Where do you think they’re going?” she asked.

“If I had to guess, they’re going back to the place where this all started.”

“Bandit Country?”

“Jimmy Fagan’s farm, to be precise.”

“They can’t go in there alone.”

“I’m not sure there’s much we can do to stop them at this point.”

“At least light up Keller’s mobile so we can hear what they’re saying.”

Seymour made eye contact with one of the techs and gave the order. A moment later he heard Gabriel explaining how Eamon Quinn, in a terrorist training camp in Libya, had made the acquaintance of a man named Tariq al-Hourani. No, thought Seymour. There was no stopping them now.

78

CROSSMAGLEN, SOUTH ARMAGH

THEY STOPPED IN COOKSTOWN LONG enough to purchase an Ordnance Survey map, a tin of black shoe polish, and two heavy-duty kitchen knives before driving into the setting sun to Omagh. A light rain fell as they moved south, enough so that Keller had to keep the wipers working all the way to Castleblayney on the Republic side of the border. Just outside the town was Lough Muckno. Keller followed a ribbon of a road around the southern shore of the lake, into a valley dotted with small farmhouses. Each of the houses represented a potential tripwire. Border or no border, they were now in Bandit Country.

Finally, Keller turned the car into a dense patch of blackthorn along the banks of the Clarebane River and killed the lights and the engine. The MI6 mobile lay on the center console, aglow with unread text messages from Vauxhall Cross. Gabriel handed it to Keller and said, “It might be time to let Graham know where we are.”

“Something tells me he already knows.”

Keller dialed Seymour’s number in London. Seymour came on the line instantly.

“It’s about time,” he snapped.

“Do you see where we are?”

“By my calculation, you’re less than a kilometer from the border.”

“Any chance you can give us a little covering fire?”

“It’s already in the works.”

“I haven’t told you what we need.”

“Yes, you have. And one more thing,” said Seymour. “I’ll need a receipt for those knives. The map and the shoe polish, too.”

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By two that afternoon it had become apparent to Eamon Quinn that Billy Conway was in serious trouble. By four Quinn assumed that Conway was in British custody or, more likely, lying somewhere in the province with a bullet in his head. Surely, his death had not been a pleasant one. Before it, he would have divulged two pieces of information: the exact location of Madeline Hart and the truth about his role in the death of Elizabeth Conlin twenty-five years earlier. Quinn had no doubts as to how his old adversary would react. Keller was an SAS veteran turned professional assassin. He would come back to Jimmy Fagan’s farm. And Quinn would be waiting.

At half past four, as the sun was dropping into the hills, Quinn dispatched twelve men into the two hundred acres of the Fagan clan’s farm. Twelve veterans of the legendary South Armagh Brigade. Twelve hardened snipers with much British blood on their hands. Twelve men who wanted Christopher Keller dead as badly as Quinn did. In addition, Jimmy Fagan deployed another eight men at various spots around South Armagh to serve as scouts—including Francis McShane, who was sitting behind the wheel of a parked car outside the PSNI base in Crossmaglen.

Quinn and Fagan sat in the kitchen of the farmhouse, smoking, waiting. Quinn’s Makarov lay on the table, a suppressor screwed into the barrel. Next to it was the phone, and next to the phone lay the faded old map of what had once been the most dangerous two hundred square miles in the world. Quinn’s eyes traveled across it from east to west: JONESBOROUGH, FORKHILL, SILVERBRIDGE, CROSSMAGLEN . . . Places of glory, he thought. Places of death. Tonight he would write one more chapter in the legend.

Quinn looked down at his wristwatch, the watch that had been given to him by a man named Tariq al-Hourani, in a camp by the sea. It was seven fifteen. He removed the watch and read the inscription on the back.

No more timer failures . . .

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After blackening their faces with the shoe polish, Gabriel and Keller struck out along the bank of the Clarebane River, Keller leading the way, Gabriel a step behind. The clouds obscured the moon and stars; the smack of the rain covered their footfalls. Keller flowed like water over the land, swiftly, without a sound. Gabriel, the secret soldier of the street, did his best to emulate his friend’s movements. Keller held his weapon in both hands and at eye level. Gabriel, behind him, pointed the barrel downward and to the right.

Five minutes after leaving the car, Keller paused and with the barrel of his Glock made a straight-line gesture toward the ground. It meant they had reached the Ulster border. He turned to the north and led Gabriel across a series of pastures, each divided by hedgerows of blackthorn. The border was a few yards to their right. Once, there would have been watchtowers manned by Grenadier Guards and Hussars, but now only grain silos and barns marked the horizon. Keller, the bloodstained survivor of South Armagh’s dirtiest fighting, moved slowly, planting each step as though a mine were beneath his foot, breaching each hedgerow as if his killer waited on the other side.

After moving about a kilometer in this laborious manner, Keller led Gabriel across a rocky patch of ground between a pair of ponds. Before them rose a stand of trees, and beyond the trees was Jimmy Fagan’s farm in Northern Ireland. Keller crept forward, tree to tree, and then froze. About thirty feet away, shrouded in darkness, stood a man with an AK-47 at the ready. The gun was fitted with a carbon-fiber over-barrel suppressor, a serious weapon for a serious predator. Keller carefully removed his MI6 mobile and sent a pre-typed text message to Vauxhall Cross. Then he drew the knife from his pocket and he waited.

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Because it was a domestic matter, Graham Seymour allowed Amanda Wallace to make the actual call. It arrived at the Crossmaglen base of the PSNI at 7:27 p.m., and within a minute several units were rolling into Newry Street, lights blazing. By seven thirty Jimmy Fagan’s phone was buzzing with text messages from his scouts.

“How many units?” asked Quinn.

“Six at least, including some tactical boys.”

“Where are they headed?”

“Down the Dundalk Road.”

“The wrong way,” said Quinn.

“Not even close.”

Another text hit Fagan’s phone.

“What does it say?”

“They’re turning right on Foxfield.”

“Still the wrong way.”

“What do you think it means?”

“It means you should tell your boys to be on their toes, Jimmy.”