While much of West Belfast was unemployed and on the dole, Keller soon found work as a deliveryman for a laundry service on the Falls Road. The job allowed him to move freely through the neighborhoods and enclaves of West Belfast without suspicion and gave him access to the homes and laundry of known IRA members. It was a remarkable achievement, but no accident. The laundry was owned and operated by British intelligence.
“It was one of our most closely held operations,” said Keller. “Even the prime minister wasn’t aware of it. We had a small fleet of vans, listening equipment, and a lab in the back. We tested every piece of laundry we could get our hands on for traces of explosives. And if we got a positive hit, we put the owner and his house under surveillance.”
Gradually, Keller began forming friendships with members of the dysfunctional community around him. His IRA neighbor invited him for dinner, and once, in an IRA bar on the Falls Road, a recruiter made a not-so-subtle pass at him, which Keller politely deflected. He attended mass regularly at St. Paul’s Church—as part of his training he had learned the rituals and doctrines of Catholicism—and on a wet Sunday in Lent he met a beautiful young girl there named Elizabeth Conlin. Her father was Ronnie Conlin, an IRA field commander for Ballymurphy.
“A serious player,” said Gabriel.
“As serious as it gets.”
“You decided to pursue the relationship.”
“I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”
“You were in love with her.”
Keller nodded slowly.
“How did you see her?”
“I used to sneak into her bedroom. She would hang a violet scarf in the window if it was safe. It was a tiny pebble-dash terrace house with walls like paper. I could hear her father in the next room. It was—”
“Madness,” said Gabriel.
Keller said nothing.
“Did Graham know?”
“Of course.”
“You told him?”
“I didn’t have to. I was under constant MI5 and SAS surveillance.”
“I assume he told you to break it off.”
“In no uncertain terms.”
“What did you do?”
“I agreed,” replied Keller. “With one condition.”
“You wanted to see her one last time.”
Keller lapsed into silence. And when finally he spoke again, his voice had changed. It had taken on the elongated vowels and rough edges of working-class West Belfast. He was no longer Christopher Keller; he was Michael Connelly, the laundry deliveryman from the Falls Road who had fallen in love with the beautiful daughter of an IRA chieftain from Ballymurphy. On his last night in Ulster, he left his van on the Springfield Road and scaled the garden wall of the Conlin house. The violet scarf was hanging in its usual place, but Elizabeth’s room was darkened. Keller soundlessly raised the window, parted the gauzy curtains, and slipped inside. Instantly, he absorbed a blow to the side of his head, like the blow of an ax blade, and began to fade from consciousness. The last thing he remembered before blacking out was the face of Ronnie Conlin.
“He was speaking to me,” said Keller. “He was telling me that I was about to die.”
Keller was bound, gagged, hooded, and bundled into the boot of a car. It took him from the slums of West Belfast to a farmhouse in South Armagh. There he was taken to a barn and beaten severely. Then he was tied to a chair for interrogation and trial. Four men from the IRA’s notorious South Armagh Brigade would serve as the jury. Eamon Quinn would serve as the prosecutor, judge, and executioner. He planned to administer the sentence with a field knife he had taken from a dead British soldier. Quinn was the IRA’s best bomb maker, a master technician, but when it came to personal killing he preferred the knife.
“He told me that if I cooperated, my death would be reasonable. If I didn’t, he was going to cut me to pieces.”
“What happened?”
“I got lucky,” said Keller. “They did a lousy job with the bindings, and I cut them to pieces instead. I did it so quickly they never knew what hit them.”
“How many?”
“Two,” answered Keller. “Then I got my hands on one of their guns and shot two more.”
“What happened to Quinn?”
“Quinn wisely fled the field of battle. Quinn lived to fight another day.”
The following morning the British Army announced that four members of the South Armagh Brigade had been killed in a raid on a remote IRA safe house. The official account made no mention of a kidnapped undercover SAS officer named Christopher Keller. Nor did it mention a laundry service on the Falls Road secretly owned by British intelligence. Keller was flown back to the mainland for treatment; the laundry was quietly closed. It was a major blow to British efforts in Northern Ireland.
“And Elizabeth?” asked Gabriel.
“They found her body two days later. Her head had been shaved. Her throat was slit.”
“Who did it?”
“I heard it was Quinn,” said Keller. “Apparently, he insisted on doing it himself.”
Upon his release from the hospital, Keller returned to SAS headquarters at Hereford for rest and recovery. He took long, punishing hikes on the Brecon Beacons and trained new recruits in the art of silent killing, but it was clear to his superiors that his experiences in Belfast had changed him. Then, in August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Keller rejoined his old Sabre squadron and was deployed to the Middle East. And on the evening of January 28, 1991, while searching for Scud missile launchers in Iraq’s western desert, his unit came under attack by Coalition aircraft in a tragic case of friendly fire. Only Keller survived. Enraged, he walked off the battlefield and, disguised as an Arab, slipped across the border into Syria. From there, he hiked westward across Turkey, Greece, and Italy, until he finally washed ashore in Corsica, where he fell into the waiting arms of Don Anton Orsati.
“Did you ever look for him?”
“Quinn?”
Gabriel nodded.
“The don forbade it.”
“But that didn’t stop you, did it?”
“Let’s just say I followed his career closely. I knew he went with the Real IRA after the Good Friday peace accords, and I knew he was the one who planted that bomb in the middle of Omagh.”
“And when he fled Ireland?”
“I made polite inquiries as to his whereabouts. Impolite inquiries, too.”
“Any of them bear fruit?”
“Most definitely.”
“But you never tried to kill him?”
“No,” said Keller, shaking his head. “The don forbade it.”
“But now you’ve got your chance.”
“With the blessing of Her Majesty’s