But was there a link between the events in Germany, Britain, and the thirty-two counties of Ireland and Ulster? An uncharted star around which they moved in a finely grooved orbit? A few of the lesser news outlets thought so, and before long some of the more reputable organizations came to the same conclusion. Germany’s Der Spiegel, long a beacon of investigative journalism, linked Israel to the killing of Alexei Rozanov and his security team—a link the Israeli prime minister’s office, in a rare comment on intelligence matters, flatly denied. Soon after, the Irish Times suggested a British hand in the abduction and murder of Liam Walsh, while RTÉ explored Walsh’s alleged role in the bombing of Omagh in August 1998. The Daily Mail then weighed in with a rumor-filled exclusive that the MI6 employee who had leapt to his death was in fact a spy for Russia.

The British Foreign Office denied the report unequivocally, though its credibility was called into question two days later when Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster announced a draconian set of economic and diplomatic sanctions aimed at Russia and the cabal of former KGB officers who controlled the Kremlin. His stated reason was “a pattern of Russian behavior on British soil and elsewhere.” Included in the sanctions were a freeze on the London-based assets of several pro-Kremlin oligarchs and restrictions on their travel to Britain. With great fanfare, the Russian president announced a package of retaliatory sanctions. Russian stocks plummeted on the news. The ruble sank to an all-time low against major Western currencies.

But why had the British prime minister acted so harshly? And why now? The chattering classes found his initial explanation wanting. Surely, they said, there had to be more to it than bad Russian behavior. After all, the Russians had been behaving badly for years. And so the reporters dug, and the columnists opined, and the television analysts speculated and spun theories, some plausible, others not so. A few managed to land a glancing blow on the truth, but not one would ever find the faint pencil line, partially erased, that ran from a killing by the shore of a frozen Russian lake, to the murder of a princess, to the bloodletting in the green hills of South Armagh. Nor would they link the seemingly unconnected series of events to the legendary Israeli intelligence officer who had died in the car bombing on London’s Brompton Road.