by Daniel Silva
13
BALLYFERMOT, DUBLIN
THEY DROPPED THE STYROFOAM cups into a rubbish bin in the Tesco parking lot and climbed into the Škoda. This time, Keller drove; it was his turf. He eased into Ballyfermot Road and worked his way through the traffic until there were two cars separating them from the Mercedes. He drove calmly, one hand balanced atop the steering wheel, the other resting on the automatic shift. His eyes were straight ahead. Gabriel had commandeered the side-view mirror and was watching the traffic behind them.
“Well?” asked Keller.
“You’re very good, Christopher. You’re going to make a fine MI6 officer.”
“I was asking whether we’re being followed.”
“We’re not.”
Keller removed his hand from the shift and used it to extract a cigarette from his coat pocket. Gabriel tapped the black-and-yellow notice on the visor and said, “This is a no-smoking car.”
Keller lit the cigarette. Gabriel lowered his window a few inches to vent the smoke.
“They’re stopping,” he said.
“I can see that.”
The Mercedes turned into an angled parking space outside a newsagent. For a few seconds no one got out. Then Liam Walsh stepped from the rear passenger-side door and entered the shop. Keller drove about fifty meters farther along the road and parked outside a takeaway pizza parlor. He killed the lights but left the engine running.
“I suppose he needed to pick up a few things on his way home.”
“Like what?”
“A Herald,” suggested Keller.
“No one reads newspapers anymore, Christopher. Haven’t you heard?”
Keller glanced toward the pizza parlor. “Maybe you should go inside and get us a couple of slices.”
“How do I order without speaking?”
“You’ll think of something.”
“What kind of pizza do you like?”
“Go,” said Keller.
Gabriel climbed out and entered the shop. There were three people in the queue in front of him. He stood there waiting as the smell of warm cheese and yeast washed over him. Then he heard a brief burst of a car horn and, turning, saw the black Mercedes speeding off along Ballyfermot Road. He went back outside and lowered himself into the passenger seat. Keller reversed out of the space, slipped the car into drive, and accelerated slowly.
“Did he buy anything?” asked Gabriel.
“Couple of papers and a pack of Winstons.”
“How did he look when he came out?”
“Like he really didn’t need newspapers or cigarettes.”
“I assume the Garda watches him on a regular basis?”
“I certainly hope so.”
“Which means he’s used to being followed from time to time by men in unmarked sedans.”
“One would think.”
“He’s turning,” said Gabriel.
“I can see that.”
The car had turned into a bleak, unlit street of small terraced houses. No traffic, no shops, no place where two outsiders might conceal themselves. Keller pulled to the curb and doused the headlamps. A hundred meters farther down the street, the Mercedes nosed into a drive. The lights of the car went dark. Four doors opened, four men climbed out.
“Chez Walsh?” asked Gabriel.
Keller nodded.
“Married?”
“Not anymore.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Could be.”
“What about a dog?”
“You have a problem with dogs?”
Gabriel didn’t answer. Instead, he watched the four men approach the house and disappear through the front door.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“I suppose we could spend the next several days waiting for a better opportunity.”
“Or?”
“We take him now.”
“There are four of them and two of us.”
“One,” said Keller. “You’re not coming.”
“Why not?”
“Because the future chief of the Office can’t get mixed up in something like this. Besides,” Keller added, patting the bulge beneath his jacket, “we only have one gun.”
“Four against one,” said Gabriel after a moment. “Not very good odds.”
“Actually, given my history, I like my chances.”
“How do you intend to play it?”
“The same way we used to play it in Northern Ireland,” answered Keller. “Big boys’ games, big boys’ rules.”
Keller climbed out without another word and soundlessly closed the door. Gabriel swung a leg over the center console and slid behind the wheel. He flicked the wipers and glimpsed Keller walking along the street, hands in his coat pockets, shoulders tilted into the wind. He checked his BlackBerry. It was 8:27 p.m. in Dublin, 10:27 p.m. in Jerusalem. He thought of his beautiful young wife sitting alone in their apartment in Narkiss Street, and of his two unborn children resting comfortably in her womb. And here he was on a desolate street in south Dublin, a sentinel on yet another night watch, waiting for a friend to settle an old score. The rain hammered against the windscreen, the bleak street became a watery dreamscape. Gabriel flicked the wipers a second time and saw Keller pass through a sphere of yellow sodium light. And when he flicked the wipers a third time, Keller was gone.
The house was located at 48 Rossmore Road. It had a gray pebble-dash exterior, with a white-framed window on the ground floor and two more on the second. The narrow drive had space enough for a single car. Next to the drive was a gated walkway, and next to the walkway was a patch of grass bordered by a low hedgerow. It was respectable in every way, save for the man who lived there.
Like all the houses at that end of the street, Number 48 had a garden in back, beyond which spread the sporting fields of a Catholic school for boys. The entrance to the school was around the corner on Le Fanu Road. The main gate was open; there seemed to be a gathering of the parent body in the assembly hall. Keller passed through the gate unnoticed and struck out across a blacktop lined for games of every sort. And suddenly he was back at the dreary school in Surrey where his parents had banished him at the age of ten. He was the boy of whom much was expected—a good family, an excellent student, a natural leader. The older boys never touched him because they feared him. The headmaster once let him off without a beating because secretly the headmaster feared him, too.
At the edge of the blacktop was a row of dripping trees. Keller passed beneath their bare limbs and set out across the darkened sporting fields. Along their northern edge rose a wall, approximately two meters in height, covered in vines. Beyond it were the rear gardens of the houses lining Rossmore Road. Keller went to the farthest corner of the field and paced off fifty-seven steps precisely. Then, silently, he scaled the wall and dropped toward the ground on the other side. By the time his shoes struck the damp earth, he had drawn the silenced Beretta and leveled it toward the back door of the house. Lights burned within; shadows moved against the drawn curtains. Keller held the gun tightly in his hands, watching, listening. Big boys’ games, he thought. Big boys’ rules.
At ten minutes past nine o’clock, Gabriel’s BlackBerry vibrated softly. He raised it to his ear, listened, and then killed the connection. The rain had given way to a listless mist; Rossmore Road was empty of traffic and pedestrians. He drove to the house at Number 48, parked in the street, and switched off the engine. Again his BlackBerry vibrated, but this time he did not answer. Instead, he pulled on a pair of flesh-colored rubber gloves, climbed out, and opened the modest-sized trunk. Inside was a suitcase that had been left by the courier from Dublin Station. Gabriel removed it and carried it up the garden walk. The front door yielded to his touch; he stepped inside and closed it quietly behind him. Keller stood in the entrance hall, the Beretta in his hand. The air smelled of cordite and, faintly, of blood. It was a smell that was all too familiar to Gabriel. He walked past Keller without a word and entered the sitting room. A cloud of smoke hu
ng on the air. Three men, each with a neat bullet hole in the center of his forehead, a fourth with a smashed nose and a jaw that looked as if it had been dislodged with a sledgehammer. Gabriel reached down and searched the neck for a pulse. Then, after finding one, he unzipped the suitcase and went to work.
The suitcase contained three rolls of heavy-duty duct tape, a dozen disposable flex cuffs, a nylon bag capable of holding a man six feet in height, a black hood, a blue-and-white tracksuit, espadrilles, two changes of undergarments, a first aid kit, earplugs, vials of sedative, syringes, rubbing alcohol, and a copy of the Koran. The Office referred to the contents of the suitcase as a mobile detainee pack. Among veteran field agents, however, it was known as a terrorist travel kit.
After determining that Walsh was in no danger of expiration, Gabriel mummified him in duct tape. He didn’t bother with the plastic flex cuffs; in matters of art and physical restraint, he was a traditionalist by nature. As he was applying the last swaths of tape to Walsh’s mouth and eyes, the Irishman began to regain consciousness. Gabriel quieted him with a dose of the sedative. Then, with Keller’s help, he placed Walsh in the duffel bag and pulled the zipper closed.
The house had no garage, which meant they had no choice but to take Walsh out the front door, in plain view of the neighbors. Gabriel found the key to the Mercedes on the body of one of the dead men. He moved the car into the street and backed the Škoda into the drive. Keller carried Walsh outside alone and deposited him in the open trunk. Then he climbed into the passenger seat and allowed Gabriel to drive. It was for the best. In Gabriel’s experience, it was unwise to allow a man who had just killed three people to operate a motor vehicle.
“Did you turn out the lights?”
Keller nodded.
“What about the doors?”
“They’re locked.”
Keller removed the suppressor and the magazine from the Beretta and placed all three in the glove box. Gabriel turned into the street and started back toward Ballyfermot Road.
“How many rounds did you fire?” he asked.
“Three,” answered Keller.
“How long before the Garda finds those bodies?”
“It’s not the Garda we should be worried about.”
Keller flicked his cigarette into the darkness. Gabriel saw sparks explode in his rearview mirror.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Like I never left.”
“That’s the problem with revenge, Christopher. It never makes you feel better.”
“That’s true,” said Keller, lighting another cigarette. “And I’m just getting started.”
14
CLIFDEN, COUNTY GALWAY
THE COTTAGE STOOD ON DOONEN ROAD, perched atop a high rocky bluff overlooking the dark waters of Salt Lake. It had three bedrooms, a large kitchen with modern appliances, a formal dining room, a small library and study, and a cellar with walls of stone. The owner, a successful Dublin lawyer, had wanted a thousand euros for a week. Housekeeping had countered with fifteen hundred for two, and the lawyer, who rarely received offers in winter, accepted the deal. The money appeared in his bank account the next morning. It came from something called Taurus Global Entertainment, a television production company based in the Swiss city of Montreux. The lawyer was told the two men who would be staying in his cottage were Taurus executives who were coming to Ireland to work on a project that was sensitive in nature. That much, at least, was true.
The cottage was set back from Doonen Road by approximately a hundred meters. There was a flimsy aluminum gate that had to be opened and closed by hand and a gravel drive that wound its way steeply up the bluff through the gorse and the heather. On the highest point of the land stood three ancient trees bowed by the wind that blew from the North Atlantic and up the narrows of Clifden Bay. The wind was cold and without remorse. It rattled the windows of the cottage, clawed at the tiles of the roof, and prowled the rooms each time a door opened. The small terrace was uninhabitable, a no-man’s-land. Even the gulls did not stay there long.
Doonen Road was not a real road but a narrow strip of pavement, scarcely wide enough for a single car, with a ribbon of green grass down the center. Holidaymakers traveled it occasionally, but mainly it served as the back door to Clifden village. It was a young town by Irish standards, founded in 1814 by a landowner and sheriff named John d’Arcy who wished to create an island of order within the violent and lawless wilds of Connemara. D’Arcy built a castle for himself, and for the villagers a lovely town with paved streets and squares and a pair of churches with steeples that could be seen for miles. The castle was now a ruin, but the village, once virtually depopulated by the Great Famine, was among the most vibrant in the west of Ireland.
One of the men staying in the rented cottage, the smaller of the two, hiked to the village each day, usually in late morning, dressed in a dark green oilskin coat with a rucksack over his shoulder and a flat cap pulled low over his brow. He would purchase a few things at the supermarket and snare a bottle or two from Ferguson Fine Wines, Italian usually, sometimes French. And then, having acquired his provisions, he would wander past the shop windows along Main Street with the air of a man who was preoccupied by weightier matters. On one occasion he popped into the Lavelle Art Gallery to have a quick peek at the stock. The proprietor would later recall that he seemed unusually knowledgeable about paintings. His accent was hard to place. Maybe German, maybe something else. It didn’t matter; to the people of Connemara, everyone else had an accent.
On the fourth day his stroll along Main Street was more perfunctory than usual. He entered only a single shop, the newsagent, and purchased four packets of American cigarettes and a copy of the Independent. The front page was filled with the news from Dublin, where three members of the Real IRA had been found slain in a house in Ballyfermot. Another man was missing and presumed abducted. The Garda was searching for him. So, too, were elements of the Real IRA.
“Drug gangs,” muttered the man behind the counter.
“Terrible,” agreed the visitor with the accent no one could quite place.
He inserted the newspaper into his rucksack and, with some reluctance, the cigarettes. Then he hiked back to the cottage owned by the lawyer from Dublin, who, as it turned out, was deeply loathed by the full-time residents of Clifden. The other man, the one with skin like leather, was listening intently to the midday news on RTÉ.
“We’re close,” was all he said.
“When?”
“Maybe tonight.”
The smaller of the two men went onto the terrace while the other man smoked. A black storm was pushing up Clifden Bay, and the wind felt as though it were filled with shrapnel. Five minutes was all he could stand. Then he went back inside, into the smoke and the tension of the wait. He felt no shame. Even the gulls did not stay on the terrace for long.
Throughout his long career, Gabriel had had the misfortune of meeting many terrorists: Palestinian terrorists, Egyptian terrorists, Saudi terrorists, terrorists motivated by faith, terrorists motivated by loss, terrorists who had been born in the worst slums of the Arab world, terrorists who had been raised in the material comfort of the West. Oftentimes, he imagined what these men might have achieved had they chosen another path. Many were highly intelligent, and in their unforgiving eyes he saw lifesaving cures never found, software never devised, music never composed, and poems never written. Liam Walsh, however, made no such impression. Walsh was a killer without remorse or proper education who had no ambition in life other than the destruction of life and property. In his case a career in terrorism, even by the reduced standards of the diehard Irish republicans, was about the best he could have hoped for.
He was without physical fear, however, and possessed a natural obduracy that made him difficult to break. For the first forty-eight hours he was left in total isolation in the damp chill of the cellar, blindfolded, gagged, deafened by earplugs, immobilized by duct tape. He was offered no food, only water, which he refused. Kell
er saw to his bathroom needs, which were minimal given his dietary restrictions. When necessary, he addressed Walsh in the accent of a Protestant of the working classes from East Belfast. The Irishman was offered no way out of his predicament, and he did not ask for one. Having seen three of his mates killed in the blink of an eye, he seemed resigned to his fate. Like the SAS, Irish terrorists and drug gangsters played by big boys’ rules.
On the morning of the third day, maddened by thirst, he partook of a few ounces of room-temperature water. At midday he drank tea with milk and sugar, and in the evening he was given more tea and a single slice of toasted bread. It was then that Keller addressed him for the first time at any length. “You’re in a shitload of trouble, Liam,” he said in his East Belfast accent. “And the only way out is to tell me what I want to know.”
“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.”