The Accidental Spy
Page 29
What he has achieved should not be measured in FBI commendations, or MI5 medals, or in the financial rewards from the US government. It is measured, maybe, in the confidence and peace in the soul of Northern Ireland, long ravaged by sectarian violence that had gone on far longer than any possible political objective could have allowed. Ireland has been transformed since Rupert first visited with Linda Vaughan in 1992. Trendy coffee shops now line the fashionable new districts of Belfast, police patrol South Armagh, unionist ministers visit the south, unguarded. The country has peace and those who seek to destroy it have admitted defeat.
*****
I drive up to Tyrone to see Michael Gallagher, a mechanic who lost his son, Aiden, in the Omagh bombing.
Michael led the legal challenge to sue Real IRA leader Michael McKevitt.
Nobody in the world had ever successfully sued the perpetrators of a terrorist attack before and, at the time of writing, Michael and the other Omagh families are in the process of having McKevitt and the other three men declared bankrupt.
“David Rupert is the best agent there has been, it’s that simple,” Michael says. We are driving to Omagh Integrated Primary School to pick up Michael’s two grandchildren, 11-year-old Finn and 8-year-old Fara. Unlike Michael, or me, the two children attend a co-religious Catholic/Protestant school, one of many that have sprung up on both sides of the Irish border.
We drive past Claire Gallagher’s music school, where Fara and Finn had music classes. Claire was blinded for life in the Omagh bombing at age 15 and runs the largest music school in the town, teaching classical and traditional Irish music.
A Subway restaurant is just a few hundred feet up the street, and just beyond that is the memorial where the bomb exploded.
In the restaurant, over a sandwich and hot chocolate, Michael explains that the children recently met Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla.
“I met him before,” he tells the kids. “Grandpa, are you famous?” says Fara. “Ammm… Infamous is probably the word,” says Michael.
Fara breaks into an imitation of a posh British accent. “May I have some tea, please?” she says in Kensington English. Michael laughs. “That’s very good. An actress, like your mother.”
Finn says he wants to go home. They load up their clothes. Michael, one of 11 children, tells them that they had to share two rooms – one for all the boys, and one for all the girls, in a tiny house when he was growing up. “You should see their house,” he says of his grandchildren. “Even a cinema room and a games room, isn’t that right?”
“Tell David Rupert I said hello,” he says, as they pile into the car. “Maybe I’ll see him again, some day.”
I watch them drive off, past the bomb memorial, take the next left and off home.
Back in the Subway, I take a call from an Omagh councilor, Sorcha McAnespy, who is all over the news on both sides of the border after politicians from the southern political party, Fianna Fail, came to Omagh to launch her as their first ever candidate north of the border. Party bosses were furious, and fired the two politicians from their frontbench positions. They didn’t feel the north was ready yet for southern political parties.
I was hoping to meet Sorcha for coffee in the centre of Omagh but she is going up to Belfast for her daughter’s birthday.
We talk local politics – Brexit, the move of southern political parties into the north, the collapsed northern parliament. “The north is so different for my daughter and her friends. They have no idea. When I think about…” She falters. “1998… the bomb… I lost my school friend, I lost… it was…” She breaks into loud, gasping sobs. The more she tries to stop crying, the worse it gets. She makes four or five attempts to finish the sentence and yet she can’t. “We want to be known for more in this town than the bombing and yet you can’t… young people have to know.”
She is still trying to compose herself. I look around the Subway. Two women are serving teenagers from the integrated college. Shoppers walk up and down the street in front of us.
“I’m glad you are doing all of this,” she says eventually, wiping her tears. “It’s a lonely road you are following, covering all of this. Tell people what it’s like, but also that we have changed. There are new shops now, new life in the town. It had to end somewhere. It had to end with someone.”
*****
As I was finishing this book, I drove to meet David and Maureen in a small town in the American mid-west, a two-hour drive from their home.
I followed their car down a small country road past cornfields and the town’s water tank to a restaurant.
David hulks over the other diners as he sits at a booth by the window.
Maureen is as lively as ever, peppering me with questions about Ireland. I tell her the book’s fact-checker was very thorough. He wanted to know why she mentions in her diary that she lost 375 calories walking 3.5 miles as McKevitt was setting up the Iraqi arms deal, and only 225 calories walking the same distance the next day.
With glass of wine in hand, Maureen throws her head back laughing. “Jesus, I’m glad he didn’t ask about my wine consumption!”
“Sounds like a math test,” says David.
He has not contacted the FBI about our meeting – he prefers to keep them at a distance.
I look around the other booths in the diner. People come in and out – farmers, plumbers, and waitresses starting their shifts.
“I’d really love to come back to Ireland,” says David, “but not in this lifetime.”
I tell him that a senior Real IRA member asked me where he is living these days.
“Oh, I bet he did,” he says. “But it’s some Irish American, some guy trying to prove his worth to people in Belfast and Dundalk, that’s who I’ve got to worry about.”
I thank them for lunch. As they can never return to Ireland and I am rarely in the US, this is likely the last time we will ever meet.
David offers to lead me out onto the motorway, so I can find the way back to St Louis, Missouri, where I’m attending a funeral.
Their car pulls out and I follow them, one road leading into another, past more corn, farms and, over time, neon-lit box stores of American suburbia. David puts out his hand and signals for me to turn right onto the motorway to St Louis. I wave and turn, taking a last look as they drive down the motorway, their car blending in with hundreds of others. They pull left into the next lane and they are gone.
SUMMARY
Michael McKevitt, the Real IRA chief of staff, was jailed for 20 years, as a result of David Rupert’s evidence.
His evidence and proposed testament was vital in jailing three Real IRA army council members for 30 years each for attempting to co-opt Saddam Hussein as their chief sponsor.
His testimony against McKevitt went on to form the largest single piece of evidence in the Omagh victims’ lawsuit against four Real IRA bombers, the first such case in world history. Through Rupert, the court was able to directly link the Real IRA and three of the bombers to the murder of 31 people in Omagh.
His testimony also led to the Real IRA, Republican Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Prisoner Welfare Association being declared terrorist groups in the US, ending their fundraising routes.
He identified over 100 people linked to dissident republican groups, and identified the weapon and fundraising paths in the US on which they relied.
He lives in American with his wife, Maureen, and two large mastiffs.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My very special thanks to Sarah Hale, for her patience, dedication and advice, without which this book could not have been written.
Also a very special thank you to David, Maureen and Dorie for allowing me into their lives, to read hundreds of their emails, read their diaries and press them through dozens of hours of interviews.
A big thank you to my very genial agent, Peter Buckman.
Also a big thank you to Betty and Wanda Rupert and the people of Madrid and Massena, and Barbara DeVane and Sean Nordquist in Florida.
Thank you to Jo Sollis and everyone at Mirror Books.
Thanks also to Patricia Packer for writing ‘Home Is Where The Harp Is’, which offered great background to my interview with Sean Nordquist.
A major thank you to retired Chief Superintendent Diarmuid O’Sullivan and thank you to Vincent Murray, Michael Donnelly, John McDonagh, Chris and Mary Fogarty and Liz Walsh.
A huge thank you to senior sources in the PSNI, MI5, FBI and Real IRA who cannot be named. It is an odd thing to spend months chasing someone down the street and end up having a four-hour dinner with them, discovering that they are not how you imagined them. I came away with a better understanding.
Finally, a big thank you to Thomas Rice, who was very kind to me when I called to his house asking him if he was an international assassin. He is not – his identify was stolen, and he makes a very nice cup of tea.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Summary
Acknowledgements