“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.