‘Felix,’ I said, ‘I doubt it because my man had no idea where this soldier lived. I could tell by the way he was looking around him all the time, asking me to go up and down three streets as if searching for a clue.’
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Felix said, ‘but we have to make sure. We must do everything to safeguard this man’s life. We must keep checking.’
Forty minutes later, Felix decided that we would have to call off the search and return to Castlereagh. They intended to contact the UDR to check if any of their personnel lived in any of those streets off the Holywood Road. They also intended to check their street registers of the area to discover the names and occupations of all the residents.
I heard nothing more about the mystery soldier from either my IRA contacts or Felix and forgot about the affair. At that time, I was probably making five or six separate journeys throughout Belfast and beyond every other day, ferrying IRA men around. I would listen to their conversations and I would pass on anything worthwhile to Felix. Many of the journeys, and much of the information I learned, was inconsequential, but such frequent meetings with senior IRA personnel meant that I was becoming accepted as a staunch IRA member and, hopefully, earning their trust.
In particular, I would listen to every tiny hint of a forthcoming IRA operation, whether it was planned bombings, shootings or robberies, and call Felix. I would also tell him if I heard of any planned operations that had been halted or postponed.
On the morning of 19 June, I was contacted by one of the IRA couriers and told to attend a cell meeting that afternoon. As usual I went along. But there were only three people present, instead of the usual eight or nine.
Spud said, ‘This is not a meeting Marty, we’ve got a job for you. You’re to drive Stephen and Paul on an operation.’ My heart sank and I feared the worst. I knew Paul Lynch to be one of the IRA’s top assassins, a ruthless bastard who had a reputation for the most daring attacks and a ferocious hatred of anyone who opposed the cause. Even his mates he believed he was a man without feeling.
The other man I knew as Stephen, who was also a recognised IRA gunman.
‘The car’s outside,’ Spud said. ‘It’s hot; it’s just been hijacked, so dump it immediately afterwards.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Paul and we walked to the car.
Spud had decided that Paul should make his own way to the target, as all RUC patrols would be highly suspicious of three young men driving around Belfast together. Spud realised that it would be stupid to jeopardise the operation and risk loosing three IRA men after failing to take such a simple precaution. He wanted nothing to go wrong.
‘Do you know East Belfast, Marty?’ Stephen asked as we drove away.
‘Aye.’ I replied.
‘That’s where we’re heading,’ he said. ‘A house in Nevis Avenue off Holywood Road.’
I knew then that I was driving to the home of a soldier whom they intended to shoot in cold blood. I wondered what I should do; I wondered if there was anything that I could now do to save the man’s life. As we drove along, I prayed that Felix had been able to trace the man and have him moved from the house, but he had told me nothing of the soldier since we had first checked out the area a month before.
I debated whether I should try any trick, like stalling the car or crashing it into a vehicle, as if by accident. But Stephen sitting by my side was armed with a hand-gun and I knew that if he suspected I was not playing straight, he would shoot me and walk away without a second thought.
I was already convinced that Spud was suspicious of me. It seemed most unusual to call a meeting and then surprise me by announcing that I was to accompany two of the IRA’s most notorious killers on a high-risk operation the instant I arrived. I also had no idea whether Spud would have passed on his suspicions to either Paul or Stephen.
‘Stop here,’ said Stephen, who was sitting in the passenger seat, as we turned into Nevis Avenue. ‘We’ll be back.’
Within minutes, Paul arrived in a hijacked car and parked nearby. As Stephen got out of my car and walked away I prayed to God that the soldier had been spirited away, as most men had been when I discovered that the IRA were targeting them. I knew that the Special Branch, and all the security services, did everything possible to save targeted men.
I would down the car window so that I would hear if any shots were fired. I prayed that I would hear nothing. I waited what seemed an age, but it was probably less than 60 seconds. Then I heard the shots – one, two, three, four, five – I counted them, and knew in my heart that some poor bastard had been murdered in cold blood.
My hands were shaking and I broke into a cold sweat as I rammed the car into first gear and drove towards my two IRA murderers. They appeared from the house and jumped into the car as I slowed for them. They seemed to be in black moods, and I remained silent, not wanting to know whether they had found their target, or had just fired off five shots in anger at having found the house empty.
‘Fuckin drive,’ said Paul as he climbed in the back, ‘fucking drive.’
No one said another word and I drove, not fast or furiously.
Two hundred yards down the road, Paul said, ‘Stop the car.’
I braked and stopped.
‘Dump it,’ said Paul. ‘Dump it here, then fuck off.’
Both men got out of the car and walked away. I turned off the engine and left the vehicle, walking away in the opposite direction, hoping that the two men were in black moods because they had found no one at home. But I would be mistaken.
Forty-eight hours later, the newspapers reported that a member of the 3rd Parachute Regiment had been murdered while at his fiancée’s home off the Holywood Road, Belfast. Private Tony Harrison, 21, from London, was on leave, finalising wedding plans at the home of his fiancée Tracey Gouck in Nevis Avenue, one of the roads we had checked.
Tracey had described that at about 6.30pm the previous evening, she had answered a knock at the door. One man put a gun to her head and forced her into the living room. The second gunman then fired five shots at her fiance’, hitting him in the head and body. Tracey’s widowed mother, Agnes Gouck, and a ten-year-old girl were also in the house when the killers struck.
At a meeting of my IRA cell a couple of days later, the man who had murdered Harrison described to me and others what had happened. He seemed satisfied with his evening’s work.
Paul said, ‘The cell wanted to carry out this ‘op’ in the morning with two or three of us actively involved, but I decided it would be better to carry out the job alone, dressed as a postman. I was sitting on a wall at the bottom of Nevis Avenue reading a newspaper, waiting for the soldier’s girlfriend to leave the house. I had the Magnum, cocked and ready, in the postman’s bag. I saw the girl leave her house and walk straight past me on the opposite side of the road. She turned the corner as if to walk to Holywood Road and looked straight at me; it was eyeball to eyeball.’
He went on to explain how he had walked to the house, knocked on the front door, but no young man had answered so he left and returned that evening with an accomplice.
‘It was a piece of piss,’ he said. ‘The bastard didn’t even move. As soon as he appeared in the hall, I let him have it firing into the body and the head, just to make sure.’
Later, I discovered that the man who posed as a postman had carried out a similar killing two months earlier, once again shooting a man at point-blank range. Businessman Wallace McVeigh was at work in the family’s fruit and vegetable depot at Balmoral when the killers struck.
On that occasion, the two IRA men had walked into the depot and asked for McVeigh. When he came to see the two men, one said, ‘Are you Wallace McVeigh?’
‘Yes, can I help you?’ he asked.
Without saying another word, the men pulled out their hand-guns and shot him six times at point-blank range. They then turned and walked out of the depot and into the main road where a getaway car was waiting. Later, claiming responsibility for the killing, the IRA said the
man had been killed because he was supplying the Security Forces with fruit and vegetables. McVeigh would not be the only person to die for such a tenuous reason – many businessmen would be murdered in cold blood for similar ‘activities’.
Throughout the summer of 1991, I began to suspect that my IRA cell mates were becoming suspicious. It was the way they would occasionally fall silent when I entered the room. Some would also look at me in a way they had never done before. And that worried me. I became even more concerned days later when, for the first time, they lied to me about an operation in which I had been initially involved.
In July 1991, another IRA cell with whom I had occasionally worked asked me to become involved in an operation they were planning. Their Explosives Officer (EO), a young man called Tommy, someone well known to the Special Branch, asked me to drive him to Dunmurry off the M1, south of Belfast.
On the way there, Tommy told me, ‘Marty, I plan to plant a Semtex bomb in a shop in Kingsway, Dunmurry, below what I have been told is an empty flat. I plan to put the bomb in the shop and then set off a burglar alarm by breaking a window. I will run a command wire through the back of the shop, across the garden and over a railway line where the bomb will be triggered. When the peelers come running towards the shop, we’ll let it rip’.
Together, we checked out the shop by driving past the building a few times before heading back to his house at Twinbrook, a mile or so from Dunmurry. Before we parted, Tommy had asked me to find someone who would set off the burglar alarm by breaking the window. I asked a friend of mine called Paul, who had nothing to do with the IRA, if he would carry out the job. He was happy to do so because he knew it was for the IRA.
Two days later, I drove down to Twinbrook and told Tommy I had someone who would set off the alarm. To my surprise, Tommy said, ‘Marty, the job’s been called off. The Operation’s Officer in Belfast has told me to leave it awhile; we might take a look at it sometime later.’
This news worried me. I was well aware that the IRA’s Operations Officer – always called ‘Double O’ – one of the most important officers in the entire Belfast Brigade, and had overall control of every IRA cell and their active service units. He had the power to give the go-ahead or to stop any IRA operation and, furthermore, I knew he had to give no reason why a particular operation should be halted. He would know of every IRA operation being prepared and planned and would always be notified when an operation was to go ahead. He was the man at the nerve centre of the entire IRA network. He needed to know details of every operation to prevent any possible conflicts, with perhaps two cells planning similar operations at the same time or near the same place. He would make the decision as to which operations would go ahead and which were to be delayed or called off.
At that time, the IRA’s Operations Officer was Paddy Fern, a quiet, intelligent man in his late 30s, a man of medium build with greying dark hair and a thin moustache. IRA men from different cells and squads would call at Paddy Fern’s house on the Falls Road day and night and his home would be kept under almost constant Special Branch surveillance. They knew his home was the nerve centre of IRA activity in Belfast and, as I would learn later, Special Branch would use their latest, most sophisticated listening devices to try and eavesdrop on conversations inside the house.
Because Tommy had told me his Dunmurry operation had been called off, I did not bother to inform the Branch. Three days later, on the morning news of July 8, I was shocked to hear that an 80-year-ol woman had escaped with minor injuries when an IRA booby-trap bomb demolished her flat above a shop in Kingsway, Dunmurry, as she slept in the early hours of the morning.
Two police officers, whom I knew to be the intended targets of the attack, had been slightly injured. The radio report said they had been lured to the area after a burglar alarm in an adjacent shop had been activated.
From that moment, I knew in my heart that the IRA suspected I was an agent working for the Special Branch, because I could conceive of no other logical reason why I would have been told the operation had been called off.
I debated whether to go and see Felix to ask his advice. But I knew there would be no future in that course of action. I tried to convince myself during the next few days that I had become paranoid about the whole business, that the IRA may have called off the Dunmurry bombing and then decided to put it back on again. I had no other first-hand evidence to suggest that they suspected me. I determined to continue, reminding myself to pay attention to every minute detail, watch peoples’ reaction to my presence and to see if I was still included in surveying and planning forthcoming operations.
To my surprise, two days later, my IRA cell boss Spud asked me to store two AK-47s in one of my dumps. Some months earlier, the IRA had given a woman £350 to convert her bathroom, so that AK-47s and explosives could be stored behind wooden cladding. At that time I had four dumps, dotted around different houses in the Ballymurphy area in which I kept the two AK-47s, 200 rounds of ammunition, a Magnum, a Smith & Wesson .38, two Semtex coffee-jar bombs, detonators and a 5lb block of Semtex.
I phoned the young woman who was storing the two Kalashnikovs and arranged for her to bring them to me, along with the 189 rounds of ammunition and the Browning. She brought them in a holdall having taken a taxi, handing over the weapons and ammunition to me at a restaurant car park in Andersonstown. I took them to another of my secret dumps in a house belonging to another woman. I would give the woman £20 or £30 every few weeks, hinting that the money was coming from IRA funds. In reality, I paid her from my own pocket. I also ensured, through my Special Branch handlers, that the women’s homes would never be raided.
After phoning Felix, I arranged to meet him at a spot not far from where I had stored the weapons. With one branch car in front of my vehicle and another behind, I drove to Castlereagh in the early hours of the following morning. As we left the area, I noticed more than half a dozen RUC and army Land Rovers patrolling the area. They were taking no chances.
I parked my car outside the back entrance to Castlereagh and, keeping the weapons in a holdall, lay on the back seat of Felix’s car while he drove inside. My car had to be parked outside in case any RUC men noted the number of my vehicle. Felix always stressed that the Branch would never permit RUC personnel to know anything of their business or their contacts unless they needed to be informed for a specific operation. Even then, they would only be given the most minimal information.
The weapons were taken away by a Branch expert and ‘doctored’. A tracking device was attached, so that whenever the weapons were moved, their exact whereabouts could be monitored. Felix, Ray and I played cards, and at 2.00am Felix, who never seemed to stop eating, went down to the canteen and brought back three huge fried breakfasts. Once again, Felix lived up to his reputation of being a massive and speedy eater; I had only eaten one sausage by the time Felix had cleared his plate!
I was told of a famous occasion when another officer had been so foolhardy as to try and steal one of Felix’s sausages, simply as a joke. To Felix, taking his food was not a laughing matter, and he stabbed the man’s hand with his fork, forcing him to drop the sausage. Legend had it within the Branch that no one else ever tried the same trick again.
Before we returned home some 90 minutes later, Felix radioed through to check that no Land-Rover or foot patrols were in the Ballymurphy area when I returned home. As sometimes occurred when I was involved in such late night activities I didn’t want to waken Angie or the boys so I would sleep on the sofa downstairs.
Some days later, Spud asked me to attend a cell meeting. He spoke to everyone separately, calling each of us into the room, one after the other, and gave us our instructions, while the rest of us waited in the sitting room. While we were waiting, I am certain I saw some of my cell colleagues giving me suspicious looks, but no one said anything to my face.
When I went into the kitchen, I closed the door. Spud was sitting at the table.
‘Sit down, Marty,’ he said, ‘I’ve got somethi
ng to tell you.’
I feared the worst, but Spud simply began to give me the details of the latest operation he was planning.
‘We have information from one of our good sources that there is a bar in Bangor, called Charlie Heggarty’s, which is frequented by Paras every weekend. Your job is to go and buy a car. Here’s £300 to get a vehicle we can use to park outside the pub all day, so that we’ve got a parking space for the getaway car. Make sure it’s taxed. It doesn’t matter a fuck about an MOT. Just get something clean that won’t attract attention. It’ll never be used again so £300 should be enough.’
I nodded.
He went on, ‘I’ve given the lads the jobs they must carry out. Some are to check the pub this weekend, others are arranging to hijack a car for the operation, and others are to plan the best route for our escape. If this job goes according to plan, Marty, you’ll make your name. I believe it will be one of the most successful jobs the IRA has ever pulled off. If we kill as many soldiers as I’m expecting it will be a great coup for the organisation and for all of us who have taken part. It will also be a hell of a setback for the fucking Brits.’
Before I left the room, Spud added, ‘Marty, I’m expecting at least 20 dead Paras from this one job and maybe more. The information came from one of our best sources, a taxi driver who has dropped off loads of soldiers at this bar over many weekends. The bar’s been checked out once already and every man in the place had an English accent. You could tell by looking at them they were all fucking British squaddies.’
I could see from the look on Spud’s face that this operation had gripped his imagination. He hoped to make his reputation within the organisation with this one and was excited by the prospect.
The fact that Spud had trusted me with the details of such a major operation gave me fresh confidence that perhaps all was well, that my fear of having been suspected of working for the Branch had been misplaced and that I had, stupidly, over-reacted and allowed myself to become paranoid about the whole business.
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