“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because it’s personal,” replied Keller. “And when it’s personal, it tends to get messy.”
“I do personal all the time.”
“Messy, too.” The shadows had reclaimed the terrace. The wind made ripples upon the surface of Keller’s blue swimming pool. “And if I do this?” he asked. “What then?”
“Graham will give you a new British identity. A job, too.” Gabriel paused, then added, “If you’re interested.”
“A job doing what?”
“Use your imagination.”
Keller frowned. “What would you do if you were me?”
“I’d take the deal.”
“And give up all this?”
“It isn’t real, Christopher.”
Beyond the rim of the valley a church bell tolled one o’clock.
“What am I going to say to the don?” asked Keller.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s personal,” replied Gabriel. “And when it’s personal, it tends to get messy.”
There was a ferry leaving for Nice at six that evening. Gabriel boarded at half past five, drank a coffee in the café, and stepped onto the observation deck to wait for Keller. By 5:45 he had not arrived. Five additional minutes passed with no sign of him. Then Gabriel glimpsed a battered Renault turning into the car park and a moment later saw Keller trotting up the ramp with an overnight bag hanging from one powerful shoulder. They stood side by side at the railing and watched the lights of Ajaccio receding into the gloom. The gentle evening wind smelled of macchia, the dense undergrowth of scrub oak, rosemary, and lavender that covered much of the island. Keller drew the air deeply into his lungs before lighting a cigarette. The breeze carried his first exhalation of smoke across Gabriel’s face.
“Must you?”
Keller said nothing.
“I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind.”
“And let you go after Quinn alone?”
“You don’t think I can handle him?”
“Did I say that?”
Keller smoked in silence for a moment.
“How did the don take it?”
“He recited many Corsican proverbs about the ingratitude of children. And then he agreed to let me go.”
The lights of the island were growing dimmer; the wind smelled only of the sea. Keller reached into his coat pocket, removed a Corsican talisman, and held it out to Gabriel.
“A gift from the signadora.”
“We don’t believe in such things.”
“I’d take it if I were you. The old woman implied it could get nasty.”
“How nasty?”
Keller made no reply. Gabriel accepted the talisman and hung it around his neck. One by one the lights of the island went dark. And then it was gone.
TECHNICALLY, THE OPERATION UPON WHICH Gabriel and Christopher Keller embarked the following day was a joint undertaking between the Office and MI6. The British role was so black, however, that only Graham Seymour knew of it. Therefore, it was the Office that saw to the travel arrangements, and the Office that rented the Škoda sedan that was waiting in the long-term parking lot at Dublin Airport. Gabriel searched the undercarriage before climbing behind the wheel. Keller slid into the passenger seat and, frowning, closed the door.
“Couldn’t they have got something better than a Škoda?”
“It’s one of Ireland’s most popular cars, which means it won’t stand out.”
“What about guns?”
“Open the glove box.”
Keller did. Inside was a Beretta 9mm, fully loaded, along with a spare magazine and a suppressor.
“Only one?”
“We’re not going to war, Christopher.”
“That’s what you think.”
Keller closed the glove box, Gabriel inserted the key into the ignition. The engine hesitated, coughed, and then finally turned over.
“Still think they should have rented a Škoda?” asked Keller.
Gabriel slipped the car into gear. “Where do we start?”
“Ballyfermot.”
“Bally where?”
Keller pointed to the exit sign and said, “Bally that way.”
The Republic of Ireland was once a land with almost no violent crime. Until the late 1960s Ireland’s national police force, the Garda Síochána, numbered just seven thousand officers, and in Dublin there were only seven squad cars. Most crime was of the petty variety: burglaries, pickpocketing, the occasional strong-armed robbery. And when there was violence involved, it was usually fueled by passion, alcohol, or a combination of the two.
That changed with the outbreak of the Troubles across the border in Northern Ireland. Desperate for money and arms to fight the British Army, the Provisional IRA began robbing banks in the south. The low-level thieves from the impoverished slums and housing estates of Dublin learned from the Provos’ tactics and began carrying out daring armed heists of their own. The Gardaí, understaffed and outmatched, were quickly overwhelmed by the twin threat of the IRA and the local crime lords. By 1970 Ireland was tranquil no more. It was a gangland where criminals and revolutionaries operated with impunity.
In 1979 two unlikely events far from Ireland’s shores sped the country’s descent into lawlessness and social chaos. The first was the Iranian revolution. The second was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Both resulted in a flood of cheap heroin onto the streets of Western European cities. The drug poured into the slums of south Dublin in 1980. A year later it ravaged the ghettos of the north side. Lives were broken, families were shattered, and crime rates soared as desperate addicts tried to feed their habits. Entire communities became dystopian wastelands where junkies shot up openly in the streets and dealers were kings.
The economic miracle of the 1990s transformed Ireland from one of Europe’s poorest countries into one of its richest, but with prosperity came an even greater appetite for narcotics, especially cocaine and Ecstasy. The old crime bosses gave way to a new breed of kingpins who waged bloody wars over turf and market share. Where once Irish mobsters used sawed-off shotguns to enforce their will, the new gangland warriors armed themselves with AK-47s and other heavy weaponry. Bullet-riddled bodies began to appear on the streets of the housing estates. According to a Garda estimate in 2012, twenty-five violent drug gangs now plied their deadly trade in Ireland. Several had established lucrative ties to foreign organized crime groups, including remnants of the Real IRA.
“I thought they were against drugs,” said Gabriel.