by Kevin Fulton
He hung up and I suddenly realised a terrifying truth. I now needed Andy and Gerry more than they needed me. They were the only people on the planet who knew the truth about my life. They were the only people on the planet with whom I could truly be myself. With everyone else – my wife, my parents, my best friends – I had to remember my lines. I had to be careful not to slip up. I had to live the lie. Without Andy and Gerry, the past five years – all the risks, all the sacrifices – meant nothing. I relied on them for money. I relied on them for making my decisions for me. I would rely on them if it all went wrong.
They had been in charge of my life for so long now that I felt incapable of surviving without them. My life was literally in their hands.
And I liked it like that.
CHAPTER FOUR
I got out of prison in November 1986 and immediately sought a meeting with my handlers. After a year in limbo, I needed certainties in my life. I was desperate to know whether or not my arrangement with military intelligence still stood. A year is a long time, particularly when you haven’t even heard from your employers. By now, I had a criminal record and was officially suspected of IRA membership. Alternative career prospects – previously rare – now seemed non-existent. I couldn’t think of any other legal way to make a living.
Andy and Gerry greeted me like a long-lost brother. They assured me that our working relationship had never ceased and handed me a lump sum to that effect. They apologised for not making contact, insisting it was simply too dangerous. They said they had been keeping tabs on my progress courtesy of ‘contacts’ within the prison, and that I’d played a blinder! After a year of uncertainty, this was exactly what I needed to hear.
Andy and Gerry were particularly excited about my burgeoning friendship with Conor. They told me not to bother any more with my previous contacts and the Newry corner boys. Conor was my dream ticket. He was my key into the IRA. Conor was also my ticket back to El Paso.
The next day, I took up an invitation to visit him at his new home in Dundalk. My fear of Dundalk and its desperadoes held sway no more. Prison had given me credibility. I had passed a crucial test: I had served my time; I had named no names; I was in the club. There would be no shakedowns this time, especially as I had found out that my former tormentor-in-chief in Dundalk had been discharged from the IRA in disgrace. According to the whispers in prison, during a particularly raucous Republican piss-up in Dundalk, he was accused of getting in trouble with another IRA man’s wife. The woman’s husband said, if the IRA didn’t boot him out, he’d shoot him. Despite his status as officer commanding in Dundalk, the man was exiled to Dublin. I was returning to Dundalk on my own terms, as the honoured guest of a leading IRA figure.
Conor was sharing a house on Thomas Street with Niall who, though still in his twenties, had exhibited sufficient bloodlust to be regarded as something of an IRA legend. Conor told me Niall was on the run for murder – again. In his short but spectacular IRA career, Niall – who had close relatives in the highest echelons of the Provos – had stiffed anything from four to ten people, depending on which local bar-room estimate you cared to believe. I had no doubt that four was leaning on the conservative side. I also had no doubt that Conor had been knee-deep in the mortar attack on Newry RUC station. And so I shared my evening drinking and having the craic with a pair of killers.
It was my way of saying thanks to Conor for all he had done. He had proven himself a good friend while I’d been inside. It was a friendship I needed so I chose not to dwell on Conor’s motivation for taking me under his wing. At least not yet. Conor was my friend, Niall was my friend. That led to introductions to some of the Provisional IRA’s major players in Dundalk. I met Leonard Hardy, or Hardbap as he was known, a Belfast Provo wanted for questioning for a whole range of bombing offences. His common-law wife was Donna Maguire, who would later be arrested for terrorist offences on the continent. I met James Morgan, who had served time for possession of explosives in 1984. I met Tony Hughes, who survived being shot in the neck during an SAS ambush and was on the run. I met Dermot Finucane, also on the run after escaping from the Maze Prison in Belfast. A few years later, his brother Pat, a solicitor, would be shot dead in front of his wife and children by, it is now generally thought, Loyalists colluding with the British army’s Force Research Unit.
I quickly picked up on two general trends amongst these men. The first: Belfast Provos thought that anyone from outside Belfast was a bit thick. The second: all these men suspected each other of being a tout. Paranoia ruled supreme. I’m sure they suspected me too, but it didn’t matter. With Conor vouching for me, I was becoming one of them. I was on my way.
My handlers agreed, and by now they had worked out a way to further enhance my ‘usefulness’ to Conor and to the IRA in Dundalk.
‘We need to get you back to work,’ said Andy, ‘and we’ve thought of just the thing.’
Gerry took up the thread. ‘We’ve thought of the perfect job for you. Or at least the perfect job for you as far as Conor and the IRA might be concerned. Flexible hours, good money, lots of freedom of movement.’
‘So?’ I said expectantly.
‘We want you to buy an ice-cream van,’ said Andy.
‘Right,’ I smiled, waiting for some sort of punch line.
‘We’re serious,’ said Gerry. ‘It’ll work really well. Trust us.’
For the life of me, I couldn’t see how Kevin Fulton flogging lollies out of a van window would tilt the balance of the Dirty War in our favour, but they were insistent. They had sourced an ice-cream van for sale, asking price £1500. I thought the least British intelligence could do was pay for it, but no.
‘You’ll have to borrow the money from the credit union,’ said Andy, ‘in case the IRA starts asking questions.’ A credit union is a co-operative bank owned and run by its members. For someone with my chequered employment history, it was the only way to secure a low-interest loan.
‘Why would the IRA start asking questions about an ice-cream van?’ I asked.
I soon found out why. Above the van’s windscreen was a compartment containing a fluorescent sign in the shape of an ice-cream cone. By the time Andy and Gerry had finished their handiwork, the compartment also contained a hidden video camera, operated by a remote-control panel tucked under the window hatch.
In the back of the van, under a fixed Formica cover, they had discovered a secret compartment. Clearly, the previous Mr Whippy had indulged in a little cross-border smuggling. Andy and Gerry suggested I show this secret compartment to Conor at the first opportunity. In the meantime, they would set about securing me a special trading licence so I could sell ice cream north and south of the border.
I quickly realised that acquiring this licence was a tactical masterstroke. Conor immediately spotted the opportunities. Within days, I was running ‘coms’ for him, to and fro across the border. A ‘com’ is an important IRA communication, written in microscopic handwriting on a single Rizla cigarette paper. It is then wrapped in cling film and rolled into a tiny ball. Despite the march of technology – or perhaps because of it – coms were still the preferred method of communication between IRA units of command. For one thing, it’s secure – you can easily tell if a com has been opened and resealed. In the event of a raid or an arrest, a com can be swallowed in an instant; and, if need be, it can be covertly transferred to a third party – preferably someone of the opposite sex – by a kiss on the lips!
My handlers decided against intercepting these messages. In their view, winning Conor’s total trust was my priority. If transporting the coms was a test, I passed it with honours, and the nature of my hidden carriage soon became much more substantial.
I remember the hot summer morning in 1987 when Conor handed me a weighty package, wrapped in thick brown paper and gaffer tape. He asked me to deliver it to a garage in Newry. He watched as I secreted the package into the van’s hidden compartment and set off. I stopped two miles short of the border, clambered into the back, yanked up t
he Formica partition, took out the mystery parcel and gently peeled back the wrapping. It was a battery pack. I suspected it was designed for one thing only – to detonate a bomb. By transporting this battery pack to its destination, I dreaded that I might be playing an active and vital role in an IRA bomb plot – a plot that would most likely cause injury and/or death. I was committed to it now – failing to make the delivery would leave me vulnerable – so I followed Conor’s instructions to the letter.
However, this latest advancement in my IRA career opened my eyes to the moral dilemma at the root of my new life. The following Wednesday, I challenged my handlers about the morality of moving tools of death for a terrorist organisation. Did we really want to be assisting the IRA in its murderous activities? They were pragmatic – if I didn’t smuggle the battery pack up north, somebody else would. At least when I made the delivery, they knew exactly where it was going.
They assured me that my information was helping the security forces second-guess bombings and shootings. As such, my work was saving lives. That made me feel about ten feet tall – until I considered the potential consequences. Usually, there were only three parties privy to my smuggling activities – Conor, the recipient of the delivery and me.
‘Supposing you act on some of my information and stop a bombing or a shooting. Won’t it be obvious that the information must have come from me?’ I asked them.
‘We’d never, ever leave you exposed like that,’ said Gerry. ‘Your position within the IRA is more important to us than anything else.’
‘More important than saving the lives of civilians?’ I asked. ‘Are you saying you’d let a member of the public die rather than compromise my position?’
‘I could never admit to something like that,’ Gerry said, shifting awkwardly. ‘Let’s just say we judge every operation on its merits. Clearly, if they’re planning a massive bomb that’s going to kill a lot of innocent people, then we’d have to do something to stop it. That’s when we’d pull you out.’
It was harder than ever to see the angles. I decided I had no choice but to trust Andy and Gerry. They had the intelligence, the resources and the experience necessary to see the angles. My life depended on it.
By now, in my capacity as Conor’s courier, I was getting involved in what Andy and Gerry would call Grade One activity. My next special delivery was a revolver that Conor wanted delivered to First Avenue in Newry. He asked me if I was feeling bold enough to risk smuggling a gun over the border.
‘Only too happy to oblige,’ I replied cockily, and Conor applauded my steely nerve.
‘You’ve got balls, I’ll say that for ya,’ he said.
How was he to know that I had nothing to fear? I waltzed through unchecked, and that night, as instructed, I hid the revolver in a hedgerow near the home of IRA man Sean Mathers. I would soon get to know Sean Mathers, and put him behind bars.
Throughout 1987, I crossed the border unchallenged, with bags of fertiliser, guns, shotgun cartridges, bullets and battery packs. There was hardly any time left to sell ice cream. When I did get round to it, I was pleasantly surprised by just how profitable an enterprise it was. So profitable that my sudden arrival raised the ire of other ice-cream sellers.
On one particular day, I was handing a brace of 99s to a young kid in a village when a rival ice-cream seller neglected to knock on the side entrance door of the van before stomping in. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he shouted.
He lumbered towards me until his face was an inch from mine. ‘Get the fuck off our patch and stay off,’ he said. I could tell he meant it. There would be no more 99s sold that night. He needn’t have bothered. I was going to leave anyway.
That night, I dropped in on Conor and told him about my hostile reception.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Conor. ‘I’ll sort that out for you.’
A few days later, Conor told me I’d be having no more trouble from this particular person. Apparently, two IRA men had called at their home for a ‘chat’. After that, they didn’t so much as cast a glance in my direction. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I enjoyed calling in such protection. I didn’t see why they should have a divine right to be the sole purveyors of ice cream in my local area, and I wasn’t about to be intimidated off my own streets.
My triumph spurred me on. I expanded my operations all over the North and as far south as Dublin. To boost my income, I hired pitches at major events like rock concerts, football matches and agricultural shows. My decision to sell ice cream at an air show presented me with my first real scare as a double agent.
I had paid for a pitch at the Aldergrove Air Show in Belfast. I made the mistake of mentioning this to Conor, whose eyes lit up. A few days later, he pulled me to one side and said, ‘Would you take a bomb in?’
‘What? Where?’
‘Into the air show at Aldergrove?’
I tried not to look horrified. I just about managed to squeeze out an ‘I’ll think about it’.
First chance I got, I rang my handlers, who were similarly knocked sideways by the plan.
‘You must put him off,’ said Andy.
‘How?’ I said.
‘Tell him it’s too dangerous.’
Conor, though, had already planned it all out. I would smuggle a Semtex bomb into the show in my secret compartment. I would then wait for the coded signal to pass the device over to an IRA operative. Conor had even worked out what this coded signal would be. A man would come up and ask for a ‘slider’, which is a block of ice cream between two wafers. Now, of course, I didn’t sell sliders, I only sold cones, so this would be how I would know. I would pass the bomb over, get out of the van and walk away as swiftly as possible. The plan seemed preposterous. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘Supposing someone else comes up and asks for a slider?’ I said to Conor. ‘They’d be in for a fucking shock, wouldn’t they?’
‘You’ll know the man all right,’ said Conor. ‘Look, it’s too good an opportunity to miss. Imagine if we blow up an army chopper or an army plane! Think about the publicity!’
I hadn’t been asked to do anything of this magnitude before. I had to appear willing. Maybe it was another test. And so, as the date of the air show approached, Conor got more excited and I got less sleep.
I demanded some guarantees from my handlers. Surely if Conor insisted on proceeding with this plan, they’d have to pull me out.
They seemed unmoved by my predicament. ‘Tell him the security will be too tight,’ said Andy. ‘Tell him whatever you have to tell him, just make sure he doesn’t go ahead with this plan!’
Eventually, I plucked up the courage to express my disquiet to Conor about his ambitious plot. ‘I was on the phone to one of the guys in the office at the air show yesterday,’ I started, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. ‘He’s a helpful young fella. Anyways, he happened to mention that the army plans to search every vehicle going in. I think it’s too risky.’
Conor took a deep breath before deciding how to react. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ said Conor, just like that. ‘It’s too risky.’ And that was that. As quickly as it had flashed into his mind, his elaborate plans for an atrocity were dissolved. Perhaps it was a test after all. Had I passed?
A week later, I drove my ice-cream van into the Aldergrove Air Show and located my pitch. It was tucked away in a rear corner of the field – useless for selling ice cream, but the best possible position to carry out a bomb attack. Pitched right next to me were six Ulster Defence Regiment recruitment tents. Nobody searched me or my van going in. I didn’t mention any of this to my tutor-in-terror, Conor.
By mid-1987, Conor and I were inseparable, and with good reason. Conor couldn’t drive, and so I became a sort of unofficial chauffeur. He had very little money and no source of income, so I let him help me out on my ice-cream rounds in the Republic, and I secured him odd jobs, decorating for friends and relatives. For much of 1987, army intelligence was putting food on Conor’s table, courtesy of me.
A new directive had been issued by IRA leadership: anybody working for the IRA, in any capacity, had to be ‘green-booked’. The Green Book was the official IRA constitution and code of practice. Once you were green-booked, you became subject to the IRA’s own ‘rules’. From the IRA’s perspective, there was sound logic behind this directive. Under the rules of the Green Book, suspected informants or double agents could be investigated, tried and executed by the IRA’s internal security. The leadership assumed that this homicidal proviso would deter any would-be informants from infiltrating the IRA.
Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t in a desperate hurry to be green-booked. I didn’t fancy subscribing to the IRA’s concept of justice – a kangaroo court followed by one behind the ear. However, that wasn’t my major concern. After all, I knew they’d kill me if they found out who I was working for – green-booked or not.
My gravest concern was that I would become a servant to the IRA and its leadership. I would be an IRA subject. I would have to follow orders from faceless, nameless IRA chiefs, unquestioningly. I liked the current arrangement, dealing exclusively with Conor. Take the Aldergrove Air Show incident. Had I been ordered from on high to smuggle a bomb in, how could I have refused without inviting the attentions of internal security? At least with Conor I was dealing with a friend. I could appeal to his common sense. I could protect myself.
I told Conor I liked just dealing with him. ‘I’m not sure I trust anyone else in the organisation yet,’ I said.