Keller looked at Gabriel, who was gazing impassively at his hands. Walsh, still blindfolded, seemed to sense the tension in the room. Outside, the wind prowled at the doors and windows of the cottage, as if searching for a point of entry.

“Where am I?” asked Walsh.

“Hell,” replied Keller.

“What do I have to do to get out?”

“Keep talking.”

“What do you want to know?”

“The details of your first operation.”

“It was 1993.”

“What month?”

“April.”

“Ulster or mainland?”

“Mainland.”

“What city?”

“The only city that matters.”

“London?”

“Yes.”

“Bishopsgate?”

Walsh nodded. Bishopsgate . . .

The truck, a Ford Iveco tipper, vanished from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, in March. They took it to a rented warehouse and painted it dark blue. Then Quinn fitted it with the bomb, a one-ton ammonium nitrate/fuel oil device that he assembled in South Armagh and smuggled into England. On the morning of April 24, Walsh drove the truck to London and parked it outside 99 Bishopsgate, an office tower occupied solely by HSBC. The blast shattered more than five hundred tons of glass, collapsed a church, and killed a news photographer. The British government responded by surrounding London’s financial district in a security cordon known as the “ring of steel.” Undeterred, the IRA returned to London in February 1996 with another truck bomb designed and assembled by Eamon Quinn. This time, the target was Canary Wharf in the Docklands. The blast was so powerful it shook windows five miles away. The prime ministers of Britain and Ireland quickly announced the resumption of peace talks. Eighteen months later, in July 1997, the IRA accepted a cease-fire. “It was,” said Liam Walsh, “a fucking disaster.”

“And when the IRA fractured later that autumn,” said Keller, “you went with McKevitt and Bernadette Sands?”

“No,” replied Walsh. “I went with Eamon Quinn.”

From the outset, Walsh continued, the Real IRA was riddled with informers reporting to MI5 and Crime and Security, a shadowy division of the Garda Síochána that operated out of unmarked offices in the Phoenix Park section of Dublin. Even so, the group managed to carry out a string of bombings, including a devastating attack on Banbridge on August 1, 1998. The bomb weighed five hundred pounds and was concealed inside a red Vauxhall Cavalier. The coded telephone warnings were imprecise—no location, no time of detonation. As a result, thirty-three people were seriously injured, including two officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Pieces of the Vauxhall were found six hundred yards away. It was, said Walsh, a preview of coming attractions.

“Omagh,” said Keller quietly.

Walsh said nothing.

“You were part of the operational team?”

Walsh nodded.

“Which car?” asked Keller. “Bomb, scout, or escape?”

“Bomb.”

“Driver or passenger?”

“I was supposed to be the driver, but there was a change at the last minute.”

“Who drove?”

Walsh hesitated, then said, “Quinn.”

“Why the change?”

“He said he was more on edge than usual before an operation. He said the driving would help calm his nerves.”