‘Do you know what they plan to do?’ Felix asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The preferred plan is to shoot them,’ I told him, ‘or, because the Sierra isn’t armoured, they were thinking of throwing a Semtex coffee-jar bomb at the car instead. That would certainly kill them both.’
‘Yes, it certainly would,’ Felix said. ‘Go on.’
‘But I will have to tell Spud, my commander, that when I checked out the restaurant there were no police at the restaurant and no Ford Sierra. Because of their growing suspicions, they won’t believe me and will send someone else to check. If the police never turn up again, my story will be seen to be true, no matter how often they check. I’m not saying they won’t suspect me, but it should help me.’
‘I agree,’ said Felix, ‘good idea.’
Once again I returned to my IRA boss and told him the bad news – no blue Ford Sierra had turned up at the restaurant. At first he seemed somewhat annoyed, but told me he would be sending someone else to check the following week. That pleased me because it would prove I was telling the truth and, hopefully, would arouse no suspicion. I would hear no more of that particular operation and hoped it would help to rebuild my credibility within my cell. On the odd occasion, black humour would surface during an IRA operation, but not very often.
Once, though, I had been asked to target an RUC man who frequently visited his brother’s house in Ballysillan, North Belfast.
Having reported the operation to Castlereagh, the Special Branch went to see the man who lived at the house to warn him of a possible IRA threat. They were somewhat surprised when they discovered that the man who lived at the address was a vicar. They asked him who the car belonged to, and the Vicar told them that his brother was an RUC officer.
The Special Branch officers said they would warn the Vicar’s brother now they knew his identity.
‘No, no,’ said the Vicar. ‘Leave it to me. I will give a press conference telling the IRA not to target me because I am a man of God. I will go on television and make an appeal through the newspapers revealing who I am. Don’t worry. God will ensure we are safe.’
The Special Branch officers told the Vicar in no uncertain terms that he must do absolutely nothing of the sort; he must tell no one of their visit to his house because someone else would get hurt, if not killed, if he uttered a word about their visit.
‘My God, I wouldn’t want that on my conscience,’ he protested. ‘But I believe God will protect all of us.’
The officers made the Vicar sit down and listen very carefully to what they had to say.
‘Listen, and take note,’ one explained. ‘One of our agents has risked his life saving your brother’s life. You must do nothing and say nothing to anyone, otherwise this young man will be shot dead by the IRA.’
At that, the Vicar looked surprised and began to shake.
‘Do you understand?’ they asked. ‘Are you sure you understand?’
‘May God forgive me,’ he said. ‘Now I understand everything. I will say nothing and do nothing. I will say a prayer for him, instead. Will that be all right?’
‘That would be fine,’ one said, ‘I’m sure the young man would appreciate that.’
Having been told of the Vicar’s reaction by the Branch officers, I watched every TV news bulletin during the following few days, fearful that the Vicar would blurt everything out, despite the fact that he had been warned to keep quiet. Thank God he never did. Later, we would have a laugh at the Vicar’s naivete. But such humour would be scarce.
Some IRA plans seemed downright foolhardy to me. One such example would be the attempted assassination of an RUC Divisional Commander who lived in a large bungalow in Hillsbororugh, south of Lisburn.
I was told to pick up Paul Lynch, a young though highly dangerous IRA gunman with a baby face and a reputation for being both a crack shot and a ruthless killer. I was to drive him to Hillsborough to check out the vicinity around the Commander’s home.
I dropped him at the end of the road, which had a number of expensive, detached homes and returned 15 minutes later to pick him up.
On the way back to Belfast, Lynch told me, ‘That job’s a gift, Marty, an absolute gift from God. Just now I was in the man’s back garden and no one could see me from the house. I’ve worked out exactly how I will deal with him. I plan to lie in wait for him in his garden, and when he comes to the patio doors leading from the sitting room to the garden, I’ll just knock him off, give him the whole magazine from an AK-47. Easy as ABC.’
I couldn’t believe that it would be that easy for an IRA gunman to kill a Divisional Commander. I was convinced that they would have better security than Lynch was suggesting. To me it sounded like a mad idea.
As we drove back, he continued to chat about his operation.
‘Marty,’ he remarked, ‘that bastard’s already as good as dead.’
The following day I informed Felix. His attitude was as positive as always. ‘I must inform the Commander to ensure his safety.’
Within 24 hours, the Commander and his family were moved to a safe house and eventually relocated to another. I realised that once again I had taken a risk, making yet another set of IRA men suspicious of me. But I also realised that another man’s life had been saved.
I was beginning to believe that I would never survive the career I had accidentally become involved in, working as an agent between the two hardest organisations imaginable. Sometimes Felix and I would discuss my situation.
I never forgot the words Felix said to me during one of our chats, words which sounded like a warning that I should heed. ‘Marty,’ he said, ‘I’m going to tell you something.’
We were sitting in the back of the van chatting about the IRA and their punishment squads.
He went on, ‘Listen carefully to what I have to say. If the IRA ever make the connection between you and us, you know exactly what will happen if you ever admit you ever had dealings with us.’
‘I know,’ I said, not wanting to think too hard about the awesome consequences.
‘If those people ever get you,’ he continued, ‘they will try every trick in the book to get you to admit that you’re an agent, working for the Branch. If you’re not giving them the replies they want to hear, they will turn very nasty and they will torture you with atrocities that you and I could never imagine. They’re bad bastards, Marty.’ He paused. ‘You have to be very, very good and totally determined to cope with their interrogation. If you deny ever working for us and keep telling them the same story, I will guarantee that you will eventually walk out of there. It may not be the next day or the next week, but one day you will walk out.’
‘But I will also promise you, that if you admit for one second that you ever worked for us, you will never see daylight again.’
I respected Felix for telling me that. I felt he was the most honest man I had ever met in my short life. As I walked away from that chat, I knew that the only reason I was continuing such a risky job, day in, day out, was because I trusted the man who, in effect, was my boss, but who had become almost family and certainly my closest friend.
I also realised at the same time that Felix’s bosses wouldn’t care a damn about me, whether I lived or whether I died. While Agent Carol was proving useful to them, providing intelligence to help the RUC and the politicians in their battle against the IRA, saving the odd policeman’s life, then I was useful to them. I also realised that once the IRA had rumbled me, I would be of no further use and I feared they might wash their hands of me, leaving me to my fate. Events would later confirm my worst fears.
I also began to wonder if it ever came to the crunch, whether Felix would put my life first, and refuse to obey orders that his RUC bosses could give him, orders that could perhaps lead to my arrest by the Provisional’s, a searching interrogation, torture and almost certain death. I trusted Felix implicitly and hoped he would never have to make such a decision. One day, Spud told me to go and watch an RUC man who, every day, rode his moped t
o work at Queen Street Police Station in the centre of Belfast. He would park the scooter outside a Heel Bar, 20 yards from the police station and walk, still wearing his crash helmet, into the RUC base.
The IRA planned to use two gunmen to shoot him on a busy street corner, a few hundred yards from the RUC base, as he arrived for work. I notified the Special Branch and the man was ordered to stop riding the moped. Whether on purpose, or by accident, it was fortunate that the officer never removed his crash hat until he had walked into the building, so the IRA had no idea what he looked like.
I waited for some reaction from Spud or my other cell members, but none came. This worried me, because if there was no reaction to an operation in which I had been involved, and which had subsequently collapsed, and no one made any comment to me, I feared I might have been placed under suspicion. In IRA language that meant they thought I could be a traitor, working for the hated Special Branch. I re-doubled my attention to detail, determined not to put a foot wrong. I had always taken care to make sure I was never followed, by foot, motorbike or car, but now I took greater precautions than ever.
Now, whenever meetings were planned with Felix and Mo, I would make a deliberate detour, check out whether I was being followed and, only then, would I make my way to the rendezvous. Another evasive tactic would be to use the housing estates to lose anyone trying to tail me. I would drive slowly into an estate, and when I rounded a corner I would accelerate hard and race out of the estate via another exit and on to the main road. I checked continually, but never saw anyone following me. I began to relax again.
I knew that the Special Branch sometimes followed me to check that I wasn’t being tailed by the IRA. They would produce photographs of me taken all over Belfast and throw the pictures down on the desk for me to examine. Throughout the years I worked for them, I could never remember anyone ever taking my picture while I was racing around the city. Some of the photographs were even taken in republican strongholds, where anyone seen taking photographs would have been questioned, if not instantly taken away and beaten up, before being closely interrogated. And some of the photographs were close-ups, as though taken only a few feet away!
I made me realise that if the Branch could secretly tail me with such ease without me ever realising it, then so could the IRA.
The man the IRA planted on the Larne-Stranraer ferry discovered another wonderful target – an RUC minibus which was parked each day near the ferry. The unmarked bus was used to transport RUC officers from the nearby police station to the harbour whenever a ferry docked. It would be their job to monitor cars and foot passengers, looking out for possible IRA suspects.
Their man had checked the minibus and I was sent with another cell member to survey the possibility of an attack and report back to Spud at the next meeting. We saw at least six RUC men clamber in and out of the minibus whenever a ferry docked. It was decided that a semtex booby-trap bomb should be planted with a mercury tilt-switch under the vehicle. I realised that such a powerful bomb would completely destroy the entire minibus, killing everyone inside and probably seriously injuring bystanders within a 20 yard radius.
As soon as I returned home, I dropped off the other IRA man and pressed the secret switch on my radio. An hour later, I explained to Felix that the IRA man on the ferry had discovered another ideal target and I had checked it out that night.
Felix discussed my plan to prevent the bombing and keep my involvement secret. We decided that the minibus should not suddenly disappear, because that would arouse suspicion. So it was decided that the Larne RUC would be advised to make sure the minibus would never be left unattended in future. Felix believed that not even the wildest IRA active service unit would try to plant a bomb with an officer sitting in the driver’s seat.
As a result, the operation was called off with no suspicion that I had been responsible for another debacle. The plan was not forgotten, however, for in September 1993, Rosena Brown and two new recruits, Paul ‘Bun’ McCullogh, 30, and Stephen Canning, 21, were each jailed for 20 years, having been found guilty of conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to cause an explosion and having a Semtex bomb with intent. Their car had been stopped as they headed towards the Larne Harbour to carry out an attack on an RUC minibus.
Another reckless raid planned by our cell was to hurl two coffee-jar bombs, packed with Semtex, into an office of the Protestant Ulster Defence Association (UDA) on the Shankill Road in the heart of loyalist Belfast. The IRA had received intelligence that the offices were allegedly used for meetings by loyalist paramilitary squads.
Spud told us that two IRA bombers would be dropped off by car about 20 yards from the building, and the driver would remain in the getaway car with the engine running. The two men, the coffee jars concealed under their jackets, would hurl the jars into the first-floor offices and make their escape.
I was not directly involved in the operation in any way but I heard of its planning. I immediately called Felix, believing the attack would take place within the next 48 hours, and told him everything I knew during a three-minute call from a phone box. I had hardly left the phone box when I heard the DMSUs (Divisional Mobile Support Unit) racing towards the area, where they threw up road blocks and checkpoints, stopping and examining every vehicle coming from republican parts of the city towards the shankill.
Once again the operation was postponed but would not be forgotten.
Eighteen months later, in October 1993, nine innocent people and an IRA bomber, Thomas Begley, were killed when Begley walked into the fish shop below the UDA offices and put down a bomb. It exploded immediately, wrecking the building and killing those queuing for their fish. One IRA operation which I helped thwart gave me great satisfaction. A middle-aged RUC patrol officer, who worked in the New Barnsley police station near my home, had been targeted. Most days he would take his wife to work in Belfast City Centre, and the IRA planned to shoot him as he drove off after dropping his wife. To the IRA he was an easy target. To me he was simply ‘Bumper’, a small, rather fat policeman with a large moustache, who was easy-going and friendly to everyone he met, both on and off duty.
I heard of this so-called ‘easy target’ and told the Branch. To me, targeting policemen like Bumper was totally unfair and unwarranted. I asked Felix to make sure he was OK. I had also discovered that the IRA weren’t sure of his exact address. Ironically, when I told Felix of the planned murder he was also outraged, as Bumper was also a colleague and friend of his.
There would be numerous other operations, some of which I would be involved with, others that I simply heard about through IRA intelligence or my cell. Only once, throughout my four-year career as an Intelligence Agent with the RUC, did I ever fail to save someone’s life after I had become inextricably involved. And I would never forget that night.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I WAS SIITING AT HOME, LISTENING INTENTLY TO THE RADIO with Angie and my two boys on the evening of Wednesday, 19 June 1991, when I first heard the news.
The male newsreader said, ‘Reports are coming in of a man having been shot dead in the Holywood Road area of East Belfast. It is thought he could be a member of the security forces.’
In that instance, I knew that I had been caught in the trap I had always feared since I began working for both the Special Branch and the IRA. I had known about the plot to kill a soldier in that part of East Belfast from the very beginning and circumstances had forced me to play a role in his murder.
As I listened to the news I felt sick and left the room unable to hear any more, asking myself how I could have done anything else to save the poor man’s life. I blamed myself for his murder, and yet, I believe, there was nothing I could have done to save him. But I would never forget. The horror of his death would never leave me, nor the nightmares that followed.
I knew the dead man had to be the person I’d heard was to be a possible IRA target four weeks earlier. The first I heard of the intended victim was one day in May when an IRA man I knew as Jimmy asked me, as a
favour, to drive him over to East Belfast.
During the drive, Jimmy explained, ‘I’m watching for a soldier who gets a bus on the Holywood Road. I think he must live in one of the streets nearby.’
Jimmy told me, ‘The IRA want me to go and shoot him as he’s standing at the bus stop, and I’ve told them to fuck off because that would be a stupid idea, bloody suicidal. So I want to go and take a look to try and find where he lives so that we can shoot him in his home.’
After checking the bus stop we drove into Nevis Avenue off Holywood Road, looking for the target. We then drove into Irwin Drive and I kept looking at Jimmy to see if I could tell if he had any real idea where the soldier lived. But I had to do this surreptitiously, so that Jimmy didn’t think I was keeping an eye on him.
I had to bear in mind that some elements in the IRA might now be suspecting that I was indeed a British agent, and this could have been a way of testing my commitment to the cause. I came to the conclusion that Jimmy had no real idea where the soldier lived and had been on a scouting exercise, either hoping that something would turn up, or perhaps noting my reactions. After passing the bus stop again we left the area and drove back to West Belfast.
After dropping Jimmy, I found an inconspicuous phone box and called Felix. I told him exactly what had happened.
‘I think I had better take a look,’ he said.
‘Fine,’ I said, ‘when do you want to go?’
‘Meet me in 45 minutes at the usual place.’
Felix and a new side-kick, a tall, athletic man in his 40s called Ray, picked me up.
‘Marty,’ Felix said, as he usually did on these occasions, ‘tell us exactly what happened.’
I told them everything that had happened since picking up Jimmy a couple of hours earlier. We drove to Holywood Road and retraced the exact route I had taken with Jimmy. The two men took notes of the bus stop and the names of the surrounding streets.
Felix said, ‘We must check this out. Because you’re not directly involved with this case it is possible it could happen at any time, even tonight.’
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