The road from the airport through the southern suburbs of Beirut into the city centre ran through fundamentalist Hezbollah territory and was known the world over as 'Kidnap Highway.' When Brian left the airport to head up that road he had, as a shield, an armed military escort. I had a letter from Gerry Adams.

In April 1986, during the Lebanese civil war, Brian Keenan, left his home in West Beirut to walk the short distance to the American University of Beirut where he taught in the English department. He never made it. He was kidnapped by members of an Islamist militia. In the weeks and months that followed, his friends in Belfast, drawing on the support of the Irish Republician Movement, put together a plan that they hoped would result in his release. This is the story, told firsthand, of how that plan unfolded- in Ireland and in the dark and volatile belly of wartime Beirut.