Gabriel made no reply. On the opposite side of the street, a woman with one arm and burns on her face was attempting to unlock the door of a dress shop. Gabriel supposed she was one of the wounded. There were more than two hundred that day: men, women, teenagers, small children. The politicians and the press always seemed to focus on the dead after a bombing, but the wounded were soon forgotten—the ones with scorched flesh, the ones with memories so terrible that no amount of therapy or medication could put their minds at rest. Such were the accomplishments of a man like Eamon Quinn, a man who could make a ball of fire travel one thousand feet per second.

“Well?” asked Keller.

“No,” said Gabriel. “No second thoughts.”

A red Vauxhall sedan pulled to the curb outside the café and two men climbed out. Gabriel felt a rush of blood to his face as he watched the men move off down the street. Then he stared at the car as though he were waiting for the timer in the glove box to reach zero.

“What would you have done?” he asked suddenly.

“About what?”

“If you’d known where the bomb was that day.”

“I would have tried to warn them.”

“And if the bomb were about to explode? Would you have risked your life?”

The waitress placed the check on the table before Keller could answer. Gabriel paid the bill in cash, pocketed the receipt, and followed Keller into the street. The courthouse was to the right. Keller turned left instead and led Gabriel past the brightly colored shops and storefronts, to a tower of blue-green glass rising from the pavement like a gravestone. It was the memorial for the victims of the Omagh bombing, placed on the very spot where the car had exploded. Gabriel and Keller stood there for a moment, neither man speaking, as pedestrians hurried past. Most averted their eyes. On the opposite side of the street a woman with pale hair and sunglasses lifted a smartphone to her face, as if to take a photograph. Keller quickly turned his back to her. So did Gabriel.

“What would you have done, Christopher?”

“About the bomb?”

Gabriel nodded.

“I would have done everything in my power to move the people to safety.”

“Even if you died?”

“Even if I died.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”

Gabriel was silent for a moment. Then he said quietly, “You’re going to make a fine MI6 officer, Christopher.”

“MI6 officers don’t kill terrorists and leave their bodies in the countryside.”

“No,” said Gabriel. “Only the good ones.”

He looked over his shoulder. The woman with the smartphone was gone.