Double Agent: My Secret Life Undercover in the IRA

by Kevin Fulton

  ‘Well, you’ll still be working with me,’ said Conor. ‘The thing is, if you don’t get green-booked, I won’t be able to work with you any more. It’s up to you.’

  I didn’t see any way around it. Of course, my handlers were cock-a-hoop at the prospect. ‘We’ve waited nearly seven years for this,’ said Gerry. ‘I think we should celebrate!’

  Days later, Conor told me the arrangements had been made. I already knew about the process. One night a week, for about six weeks, I would have to attend a one-to-one tutorial where I’d be taught about Irish history and politics. The whole complicated mess would be explained to me – the 1916 rebellion, Irish parliaments recognised by the IRA and Irish parliaments not recognised by the IRA – all from a rabid Republican perspective, of course. I feared I would find their historical justifications for the mindless slaughter of innocent people hard to swallow. I dreaded it.

  Up until now, I had got away with saying I wanted to join the IRA because I loved guns and bombs. That was my cover, my way of avoiding difficult ideological discussions about crushing the systems of British imperialism and fighting for a united Ireland. I might have been in character as Kevin Fulton, IRA terrorist, but for me to start spouting this stuff would require an Oscar-winning performance, which I knew I didn’t have in me. It’s one thing to join a terrorist organisation, it’s entirely another to pretend you subscribe to its aims.

  Then I learned that my tutor was to be Niall. What a relief! If ever I’d met an IRA man without a scintilla of ideology, it was Niall. He was in it for the power and the buzz, nothing else. At least I wouldn’t have to feign any political or sociological motivation with him. He was a friend. He knew I was made of the right stuff.

  I turned up for my first tutorial totally at ease.

  ‘Why do you want to join the IRA?’ said Niall, opening things up. ‘And don’t tell me it’s because you like shooting people and blowing things up!’

  ‘Because I like shooting people and blowing things up,’ I smiled.

  ‘Look, I know you’re suitable. You’re as good as in,’ said Niall, ‘but we’ve got to go through the motions.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, and we understood each other perfectly.

  As the tutorials ground on, Niall did help me come to one alarming conclusion about my new life inside the Provisional IRA. ‘You know,’ he said, his earnest tone earning my full attention, ‘all the IRA can offer you is heartache. It’s a shit life, being a volunteer. You go to prison. Your loved ones go through hell. You lose friends. You lose loved ones. All the time you’re half-expecting to be arrested, or blown up, or shot. If the army or the police or the Orangemen don’t get you, the stress will. You know I’ve had two heart attacks?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve had two heart attacks and I’m not yet thirty. I mean, are you sure you want all the grief?’

  Niall’s plaintive and touching little speech brought into sharp focus the enormity of what I was taking on. I suddenly found it hard to see a way out of this alive, or at least alive and healthy. All I ever wanted was to be a British soldier. Now I was signing up to a doctrine that made me the enemy of the British army, the RUC and the Ulster Defence Regiment. None of these organisations had the slightest idea that I was really on their side. My handlers wouldn’t be able to protect me from them.

  It was 1988 and the greatest threat to my life would now come from my own colleagues in the British army. In recent years, the SAS had seemingly adopted a shoot-to-kill policy with regard to IRA members, armed or not. (And rightly so, in my opinion.) There had been numerous occasions when they had opened fire on unarmed IRA members.

  Less than a year earlier, in May 1987, the SAS intercepted an IRA unit on its way to attack the RUC station in Loughgall, County Armagh, and shot eight of them dead. If I was there, I would have been shot dead too. How could my handlers protect me from the SAS?

  Then there was the risk from Protestant paramilitary groups, every bit as proficient in the art of slaughter as the IRA.

  To cap it all, there was the ever-present danger that the IRA would discover my role as a special agent. Now I’d been green-booked, the IRA had a licence to act as judge, jury and executioner if I was suspected of being a tout. And there were so many ways I could see this happening.

  If the security forces used my information to thwart IRA attacks, then surely it would only be a matter of time before my new IRA colleagues would conclude that I was working for the other side. As a fully fledged IRA member, sooner or later I would be ordered to pull a trigger or to plant a bomb. To refuse would blow my cover and bring instant death. What was the alternative? To kill on the IRA’s behalf would make me a terrorist and a murderer. How could my handlers protect me from this predicament?

  In short, I didn’t have just one half of the warring factions to worry about – I was taking on the whole bloody lot. And, as Niall reminded me, if they don’t get you, the heart attacks will.

  Welcome to the Provisional IRA.

  My terror at being called upon to attack my own side materialised almost immediately.

  By now, Leonard Hardy – Hardbap – had risen to the rank of OC in Newry. He started asking me about my time in Berlin with the British army. Soon he made it clear he was trying to establish the feasibility of launching terrorist attacks in Germany. He told me that the IRA had an active service unit there that had launched some successful operations in the early eighties. The Belfast hierarchy felt it was time to resume the campaign in mainland Europe. Would I be willing to discuss what I knew, in confidence, with two senior IRA men?

  How could I say no? As instructed, I waited in the lobby of a country-house hotel just outside Dublin for the two men to arrive. They were easy to spot. In his dapper cream suit, reading spectacles and pipe, the elder of the two men cut a statesman-like dash. The other man, squat and scruffy in an old parka coat, looked like a farm labourer.

  The older man immediately took charge. He was well spoken with a slight Belfast lilt. I never did find out exactly who he was. He asked me all about Berlin and the squaddies’ routine. He asked me what I thought would make a good target. I told him that the brigadier in overall command of the British forces in Berlin would be the most high profile and, ironically, the easiest target of all. I told him how the brigadier lived in an unfortified home on Herr Strasse, guarded by one solitary unarmed police officer. Across the road, the Grünewald forest offered perfect cover for a sniper.

  I had an equally good plan for an attack on British squaddies. I told them that squaddies were most vulnerable when they were on rest-and-recreation trips in the mountains. The army regularly block-booked forty soldiers into a Staatsbad resort – a superior resort that offers curative spa waters – in the spa town of Bad Reichenhall in the Bavarian Alps of southern Germany.

  The pair looked impressed. They told me I would be hearing from them.

  ‘I trust you haven’t discussed this meeting with anyone other than Mr Hardy?’ said the older man.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said, cursing myself for telling Conor about it.

  ‘Good. Let’s keep it that way. Do not discuss what went on here today with another soul.’

  A week later, Hardbap told me he had been instructed from on high to ‘wrap me in cotton wool’ until further notice. A month later, I met the two gentlemen again. One handed me £2,000 and told me to carry out reconnaissance on the brigadier’s accommodation and the spa resort for possible attacks. I was instructed which route to take and which modes of transport to use. One point they laboured repeatedly: if you think you’re being followed, abandon the mission. Once again, I was ordered not to discuss the trip with anyone other than Hardbap. I comforted myself with the knowledge that Conor and my handlers were the only other people privy to this plan.

  Andy and Gerry told me to go along with the scheme, and so, in September 1988, I took the ferry from Rosslare to Le Havre. I disembarked in France and took a complimentary bus to the train station. By the time I spotted th
e temporary passport booth that had been set up along the route, it was too late to turn back.

  The three men stationed at the booth were straight out of film noir. Each sported a trench coat, a fedora and a languid, world-weary pose. They cast cursory glances at the passports held under their noses – at least until mine was presented. After a thirty-second inspection, the studious man in the booth stamped my passport and then nodded very obviously to one of the other men. I felt like I was starring in a low-budget Cold War spy caper.

  Unnerved, I walked speedily to the bus. As I climbed aboard, a man got on right behind me. I noticed his hand on the handrail. Half of his index finger was missing. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said in a French accent, ‘I don’t mean to cause you alarm but one of the men from the passport booth is following you.’ Over his shoulder, I twigged one of the Philip Marlowe lookalikes bustling my way, his trench coat flapping in the breeze. I decided to sit at the back so I could keep an eye on him.

  Marlowe read L’Equipe all the way to the Gare du Nord station in Paris. He didn’t look round once. He did follow me off the bus, though. If these boys were trying to be covert, I remember thinking, they weren’t doing a very good job. The next stage of my journey was to catch a train from the Gare de L’Est train station in Paris to Berlin. As I walked from the Gare du Nord to the Gare de L’Est, I noticed Marlowe in pursuit. I turned a corner, my mind racing. Who the fuck is this guy? I decided to stop and turn round so that I would be waiting for Marlowe when he rounded the corner. Imagine my surprise when two people strode purposefully towards me. On seeing me standing there facing them, the pair visibly recoiled, shuffling clumsily over to a shop window. Had I not had a train to catch, I would have confronted them.

  I marched on and noticed a man in similar dress in front of me. I could have sworn there were two more watching me from a pavement café. Everywhere I looked lurked another Marlowe.

  I walked round the building a second time. As I passed the entrance, I saw a large, mysterious Citroën car with blacked-out windows and three chunky aerials jutting from the roof. The Marlowes were still in hot pursuit. I had been advised to abandon the entire mission if I spotted anything suspicious. In my book, being pursued by half a dozen men in trench coats and fedoras qualified as suspicious. I stopped at a stationery store and bought an envelope and some postage stamps. I placed my train tickets to Berlin in the envelope, sealed it, scrawled my mother-in-law’s address on the front, stuck on the stamps and plopped it into a letterbox.

  I then hailed a taxi and jumped in. ‘Take me to an airport with flights to the Irish Republic,’ I said.

  ‘Pardon?’ the driver said with more than a hint of disdain.

  ‘Take me to the fucking airport, now!’ I spat the words out and he knew I was in no mood for games.

  The two Marlowes jumped into the mysterious blacked-out Citroen and followed. When we got to Charles De Gaulle Airport, they were still on my tail. I paid the driver and walked to the Aer Lingus sales desk, the two Marlowes following diligently. The earliest available flight to Dublin was early the following morning. As I paid, I took the time to steal a really good look at my pursuers. They were tanned, well groomed and very French. What I couldn’t understand was why they were being so obvious, so blatant. As I headed to the airport hotel, I gave them a hearty wave and a smile. They just stared.

  The next morning, they were waiting for me in reception. They shadowed me all the way to the departure gate. I waved farewell again and wondered what the fuck was going on. Who were these men?

  Only Hardbap, the two men from Belfast, Conor and my handlers knew about this trip. Whoever was following me must have been in cahoots with one, some or all of these people. My handlers insisted it was nothing to do with them and I believed them. They had nothing to gain. I showed Hardbap my stamped passport, the tickets and the receipts and he seemed genuinely perplexed and perturbed, as he would have to explain the abandoned mission to IRA chiefs. He had nothing to gain.

  That left Conor. Of course, I couldn’t tell anyone that I had told Conor about my trip. I’d been green-booked and such a breach of discipline could cause me real problems. It would remain a secret between Conor and me.

  I knew I could count on Conor. We were bonded by shared secrets. It was around this time, after a few beers too many, that he revealed a dark secret to me. Conor told me he had been involved in the shooting of the three ice-cream-eating RUC officers in Market Street, Newry, when I had been on parole the previous summer.

  The dead men were Charles Allen, Peter Kilpatrick and Karl Blackbourne. Their killers were dressed as butchers, and the killings are known in Newry as the ‘butcher murders’. Conor told me he went to the front passenger side and shot one of the men. He said the young guy in the back was calling for his mum. He gave the young officer the chance to go for his gun, but he made no attempt, so Conor shot him.

  The horror didn’t end there. To add further insult to the police and the memory of their fallen colleagues, Conor left a sick calling card at the scene. Police have always believed that the unexploded grenade found in the car had been faulty. That’s why it failed to go off. The truth is much more twisted than that. Conor claimed he had deliberately tampered with the Russian hand grenade so that it wouldn’t detonate. However, he made sure it looked live and ready to go off at any second. This prevented the security forces from removing the three bodies from the scene until bomb-disposal experts could confirm that the area was safe. As a result, they lay there in full public view for hours.

  Conor said the motive was revenge. Two months earlier, an IRA man called Seamus McElwaine had been shot dead by the SAS near the Fermanagh border. His body was left lying in the open for hours because security forces said they had to make the area safe before moving in. Republicans were outraged.

  The hand-grenade stunt was a message to the security forces. It brought home to me Conor’s ruthless potential. It was also a vital connection to Conor. By letting me in on his dark secret, he had let me in to his world.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  By 1988, I felt I had made it into the inner sanctum of the IRA, albeit in a lowly capacity. I was considered the sorcerer’s apprentice – Conor’s bright new trainee in the art of bomb-making.

  Conor was the leader of a small team of volunteers in Dundalk who devoted themselves to the construction and the development of bombs. By all accounts, Conor was one of the IRA’s most skilful and prolific bomb-makers. They came to him from all over the six counties for ‘squibs’ – slang for bombs. Like a proud craftsman, he began painstakingly deconstructing his art for my benefit. He wanted me to learn the trade because, according to Conor, the IRA needed more bomb-makers.

  It was literally a dying art. Historically, bombers were supplied with devices but made their own timers, usually using second-hand clocks or watches. Mistakes were made and the cost a heavy one. Increasingly, volunteers were being killed by their own devices. In a bid to counter these costly blunders, the IRA introduced strict new rules about how bombs and timers should be made and distributed. Bombs had to be constructed properly by a recognised IRA bomb-maker. Box timers had to be professionally produced in a secret factory unit. Basically, the IRA had decided to take the DIY out of the incendiary.

  From the mid-eighties on, ready-made bombs with professionally made box timers were delivered to bombers. Box timers were designed to be idiot-proof – anyone could use one. Often, this was the only skill the actual planter of the bomb brought to the operation – you could plant a bomb and have no knowledge of its contents or its likely impact. All the actual planter of the bomb had to do was set the timer and get the hell away from there as quickly and as inconspicuously as possible.

  As a result, anyone could plant a bomb. But very few IRA men actually knew how to construct a bomb. Mixing explosives had become a highly prized secret skill within the IRA. I was about to become privy to this black art. First, I started with the simple stuff.

  Like any apprentice or trainee, I had t
o prove my dedication to my new trade by accepting the most lowly and demeaning tasks without complaint. After the hi-jinks in Germany, 1988 saw me literally getting back to the grind. I was set the task of grinding garden fertiliser pellets down to dust. Powdered fertiliser was a key component in IRA bombs, so I got grinding. The fertiliser could only be bought in the Republic – in the North, it was coated in plastic to ensure it couldn’t be ground down. One bag, costing about a fiver, was enough to take down any medium-sized building – once it had been turned into dust.

  The most effective way of turning ammonium-nitrate fertiliser into dust was to painstakingly crush the stuff, in a coffee grinder. On my trips down south to buy bags of fertiliser, I was always on the lookout for big old-fashioned coffee grinders, the Bewley’s model being the most sought after. Inevitably, coffee houses had an old grinder dumped out the back in decent working order but superseded some time since by a smaller, smarter model. Café owners were baffled by my offer to purchase their old grinders. I would spin them some tall tale about being a mature chemistry student, studying developments in coffee production, or some such rubbish. In the end, they would insist on giving the grinder to me for nothing. ‘Sure, you’re almost doing me a favour taking it away!’ Bless their naïve souls.

  When used to crush chemical matter as opposed to coffee beans, a grinder lasted a matter of days before literally grinding to a halt, the fertiliser rotting away the parts. A fresh grinder had to be found somehow. Cue a spate of armed robberies on cafés and coffee shops. Perplexed café owners told police that the thieves got away with their takings and their coffee grinder. ‘What would they want with a coffee grinder?’ they would ask in exasperation. They were always shocked to hear of its deadly alternative function.

  Once acquired, the grinder and myself were spirited to some draughty tumbledown farmhouse in a God-forsaken backwater of County Louth, and I got to work. I remember the day when I finally squeezed out enough pyrotechnic powder for a bomb. Conor arrived with his toolbox and set to work. He constructed the device in my presence, like some deranged TV chef, explaining the role and function of each component part as he went along. His passion for the minute mechanics of the device seemed to distract him from the single, terrifying reality of our handiwork – we were building a bomb that could kill and maim.