Northern Spy

Eamonn tells her at their next meeting that a fishing boat was sunk in the Irish Sea, and Tessa correctly guesses that this was the boat containing 45 tons of gelignite, proving that Marian had been genuine in wanting to protect the peace talks all along. The sisters go to the Mournes to ski and enjoy each other’s company. The next morning, as Tessa is making breakfast, she looks up through her window to find two men in black ski masks on the other side of her garden wall.

The men keep staring at Tessa through the window, and she realizes she will not be able to run away in time. She leaves Finn inside the house and goes to meet them. They want to take her with them immediately, but she bargains with them to allow her to take Finn to Sophie, her neighbor. They make her swear not to alert Sophie to call the police, but when she meets her, she tells her to contact DI Fenton anyway. She kisses Finn goodbye and follows the two men to their car, where she is told to lie across the backseat. They cover her with a blanket and engage the child lock system, so she is unable to escape as they drive. She asks them where they are taking her, their names, and whether they will kill her. They only tell her that she is being brought in for an interview. When the car eventually stops, Tessa finds herself near a farmhouse in a remote area. The men bring her to the top floor, into a room with two mattresses, and leave her there, locked inside. Tessa promises herself she’ll find a way to return to Finn.

When the door next opens, Marian is being pushed inside. She, too, is being brought in for an interview, and she tries to get the men to let Tessa leave. She is unsuccessful, and, after settling on the bed, she tells Tessa that this farmhouse is the one they used to build bombs. The sisters try to sleep, but Tessa remains awake, wondering when MI5 might come to help them. At dawn the next day, Seamus enters the room and begins to interrogate them. Seamus believes that Tessa has leaked information because, despite the cease-fire, justice minister Rebecca Main was meant to be assassinated during one of her speeches, but someone had warned her. He naturally suspects Tessa since Main has been on her show for the BBC. Marian, however, reveals that she’s an informer to protect Tessa and goads Seamus so that he will concentrate on her and let her sister leave. Tessa also chooses to protect Marian and admits that she too is an informer. When it becomes clear that Seamus thinks they’re both guilty, Marian springs up and drives the metal clip of her hair clasp into his neck, killing him. She tells Tessa she knows he and the other men were going to kill them because they had set up plastic sheeting in the hall for their bodies. They try to escape, but two men are still there. Marian instructs them to put a brick of Semtex—an explosive—on the stove before leaving so everyone will think there had been an accident. She tells them to say Seamus, herself, and Tessa all died in the explosion, and that if they kill her and Tessa instead, no one will thank them for it. Convinced, the men let the sisters run away.

Tessa and Marian run from the farmhouse and through the neighboring pine trees. The explosion pushes them to the ground, but they have no time to waste because they are without shoes and proper clothing for the frigid temperatures and snow. They run to the main road, hiding when cars come racing by, until they come to a string of vacant houses. An elderly woman armed with a shovel finds them and takes them inside her house. When it’s clear they need medical attention, Marian convinces the elderly woman to drive them across the border to the Republic of Ireland. On the way, Tessa calls DI Fenton to confirm that he has her son and that he is safe. When he tells her Finn is with her mother, Tessa cries in relief, and Marian takes over the conversation so that they can safely cross the border without their passports. Both sisters receive care at the hospital in Monaghan, Ireland. Later, Tessa’s mother arrives with Finn, two constables, and DI Fenton.

After being transferred to a new hospital in Ireland, Tessa learns that MI5 never tried to save them from the farmhouse. They had decided to let her and Marian die, allegedly for the greater good. When the IRA issues a statement about Seamus’s death, they also include Marian and Tessa’s deaths in the announcement. Fenton tells the sisters they will be given new names and identities to be resettled outside of Northern Ireland. They are given the choice to be resettled separately, but both Tessa and Marian insist on staying together.

They are given a safehouse for a year in Dalkey, Ireland, and Tessa has informed Tom of her situation and the fact that Finn is with her in Ireland. He is furious with her and hangs up on her when she proposes that he can visit her and Finn from Belfast, echoing her initial proposal months earlier. DI Fenton checks in with the sisters, and, despite DI Fenton’s concerns over her mental health, Tessa assures him she feels jubilant at her freedom and the lack of persistent anxiety now that she lives in Dalkey.

Finn is adjusting to their new home quickly, while Tessa worries about whether the new house is a reward for killing Seamus in the end. Fenton assures her that isn’t the case over the phone and that she has earned her home after everything she’s lost for being an informer. A liaison officer visits Tessa to go over her new identity, and Tessa can’t decide what kind of job she should do now. Later, she thinks she’ll never see Eamonn again and wonders if his other informers and sources were able to understand how they, too, were only pawns to him before she did. Around Christmas, she asks Marian if she feels guilty for killing Seamus. Marian does not, as she reasons that despite being her friend, he was about to kill the two of them.

The sisters’ mother moves to Bray, a small town near Dalkey. Marian misses Damian and Niall, but she promises herself she’ll see them again one day when they’re old. Two months later, a breaking news announcement tells the world that Cillian Burke was an informant for MI5. Tessa reasons that he was most likely the agent MI5 preferred to keep safe over her and Marian, though he is now on the run from the IRA. As time passes, the effects of her kidnapping catch up with Tessa, and she struggles to reconcile herself with her new life, which is so completely different from the one she worked so hard to make in Northern Ireland. Months later, Marian decides to enroll in law school, while Tessa, after a hike in the woods with Finn, tentatively thinks about working with Wicklow Mountain Rescue to feel useful again.

When Finn is older, they visit Dunseverick in Northern Ireland because it was the model for Cair Paravel in the story Narnia, and Finn had wanted to see it. As she stares at the castle facing Scotland, she thinks about how bonfires used to be lit to signal a siege. She wants the equivalent to signal that they are finally at peace.