THE SEA KING HAD SET down at JHFS Aldergrove, the Joint Helicopter Command flying station adjacent to Belfast Airport. Amanda Wallace of MI5 had arranged for a car, a five-year-old Ford Escort with faded blue paint and nearly a hundred thousand surveillance miles on the odometer. She had also opened the doors of an MI5 safe house in a Protestant section of North Belfast. Two officers from T Branch, MI5’s Irish terrorism division, were waiting inside when Gabriel and Keller arrived shortly after midnight. Neither knew Keller’s name or face, though Gabriel’s identity proved harder to conceal. They passed a sleepless night together monitoring the search for the craft that had taken Madeline Hart from the isolated cove on the northern coast of Cornwall. By six in the morning it had become clear that the boat would not be found, at least not with Madeline still on board. The British public, however, knew nothing of her abduction. Nor did it know that an SIS officer had leapt to his death from a terrace of Vauxhall Cross. The lead story on the BBC’s Breakfast program concerned the prime minister’s controversial plan to reform the National Health Service. The reaction was universally hostile.

At half past six Gabriel and Keller left the safe house and climbed into the Ford. They spent the next thirty minutes driving in circles through the northern and eastern sections of the city to make certain they were not being followed by MI5 or any other entity of British intelligence. Then, at seven o’clock, they turned onto Crumlin Road and headed into the Catholic Ardoyne. Keller parked at one end of Stratford Gardens and killed the engine. Lights burned in a few windows along the terraces, but otherwise the street was in darkness.

“How long before your friends show up?” asked Gabriel.

“It’s early,” said Keller vaguely.

“That doesn’t sound encouraging.”

“We’re in West Belfast. It’s hard to be optimistic.”

For several minutes Stratford Gardens did not stir. Keller scanned the street for evidence of trouble, but Gabriel had eyes only for the door of Number 8. It opened at 7:45 and two figures emerged, Maggie and Catherine Donahue, the wife and daughter of a man who could make a ball of fire travel a thousand feet per second. The wife and daughter of the man who had helped Tariq al-Hourani solve the problems he was having with his timers and detonators. Catherine Donahue was wearing a field hockey uniform beneath a gray coat. Her mother was wearing a tracksuit and trainers. They passed through the metal gate at the end of the garden walk and turned right, toward Ardoyne Road.

“Where’s her game?” asked Gabriel.

“Lisburn. Bus leaves at eight thirty.”

“Can’t she find her way alone?”

“They have to pass through a Protestant area to get up to Our Lady of Mercy. There’s been a lot of trouble over the years.”