Northern Spy

by Berry, Flynn

“What, randomly?” says Marian. “Don’t be stupid. The driver could be a janitor.”

  “Then he’s a collaborator,” says Niall.

  “What if it was a republican suspect being questioned?” asks Damian.

  “He’d be taken to Musgrave.”

  “Are you sure?” asks Seamus. “You’d bet someone else’s life on it?”

  Niall’s skin reddens, and he waves a hand in front of his face. I begin to have trouble following the conversation. A sense of urgency has made them start speaking to one another in shorthand, with terms and incidents that mean nothing to me.

  Watching them, they seem no different from a unit in the Special Forces or the Royal Irish Rangers, and the decision to join them no more dramatic than the decision to enlist in any army. I try to locate the moral difference between them and, say, the Royal Air Force. The RAF has maimed and killed civilians, too. It all seems equally vacant.

  “I’ll not go down the road of Letterkenny again,” says Seamus.

  “Your man Patrick—” starts Damian.

  “If this were in March, that’d be different altogether,” says Marian.

  The four of them have spent years fitting themselves around one another. If a loyalist gunman were to burst into this bar, they would each fall into position instantly. They anticipate one another’s responses with a precision that seems from my viewpoint like clairvoyance. Niall has barely started to open his palm when, without pausing, Damian passes him the cigarettes and lighter.

  It reminds me of watching other mothers at the playground, how their babies’ cues are unintelligible to me but plain to them. Yesterday, out of the blue, a baby wailed and turned his back on his mother, and she said, “No, I’m sorry, you can’t have the whole pancake.”

  Marian will need to translate this conversation for me later, to report it to Eamonn. Then without any sign, the impasse breaks. An agreement has been reached.

  “And what about this horse place?” asks Seamus.

  “The pony club?” I say, startled at being addressed. “I have a tour on the seventh of December.”

  “Good, that’s good. Well done.”

  * * *

  —

  At home, after paying Olivia, I sit in the rocking chair by Finn’s crib. I was here when he fell asleep earlier this evening, I’ll be here when he wakes up, and he won’t know that in between I left the house and drove into west Belfast, which feels like lying to him.

  This isn’t what I should be doing. At least the gift card Eamonn gave me for signaling him only had two hundred pounds on it. Maybe that’s a sign the peace talks are progressing, that he doesn’t expect this to go on for very long.

  * * *

  —

  Can you do me a favor?” asks Damian later that week. They need kerosene. Two gallons, delivered to their safe house in west Belfast. I wonder what he would say if I answered no, that I’m at work.

  “Nicholas, is it all right if I work from home for the rest of the day?”

  He nods with a phone at his ear, on hold with the deputy first minister’s office. “Not feeling well?”

  I start to answer, but then the deputy first minister is on the line, and Nicholas is greeting her, waving goodbye at me. I feel disappointed that nothing will force me to stay in the office this afternoon.

  I’d expected informing to occur in discrete, planned segments, which I could attend to around childcare and work. I don’t know who gave me this impression, if it was Eamonn, or Marian, or myself. I’d just need to manage it, I thought, like I’d managed pumping, by doing more on either side to make up for the lost time. This had seemed challenging but not impossible.

  I understand now that is not how informing will be. Of course informing will really be like this, like going over a waterfall. I can’t pick it up and put it down. The IRA won’t wait until after I’ve finished work or fed Finn dinner to resume their activities.

  I take a bus from the office across the Westlink, the six lanes of traffic cutting west Belfast off from the rest of the city. I remember the shock, as a child, of learning that the Westlink hadn’t always been there, that people were responsible for it, for making my bus journeys to almost any point in the city so long. Which must have been partly the point, a bit of social engineering. Keep the millionaires’ houses and restaurants on one side, and us on the other.

  Once, as a teenager, I walked from our estate over the Westlink footbridge and all the way to the Malone Road. It was a damp Sunday morning in spring, and the huge houses were covered in thick wisteria, the blossoms dripping above their front doors. The houses on my estate all had gravel in their front gardens. I walked past the mansions with my headphones on, smoking a roll-up. If someone like Seamus had approached me that afternoon and said, “Do you want things to change?” I would have said yes.

  At a supermarket on the Falls Road, I lift down two jugs of kerosene, feeling the weight of the liquid sloshing against the plastic. Tonight this kerosene will be used to set a stolen car on fire. It will be splashed onto the seats and in the boot, and touched with a lighter. The windows will burst from the heat and flames will tear out of their empty spaces, enveloping the wreck.

  Niall answers the door of the safe house in a polo shirt and tracksuit bottoms. “Grand, thanks very much,” he says, like I’m dropping the kerosene off for a barbeque.

  He and Damian are robbing a taxi office in Banbridge tonight, and need the kerosene to destroy any traces of themselves. By the time the fire is put out, the car will have melted and curled in on itself. The kerosene is about the size of a jug of laundry detergent. It doesn’t look like much, like something with the power to melt an entire car. Neither does Niall, for that matter.

  He’d been playing Fifa when I arrived. We could be in his student flat. He sets down the kerosene, clearing a space on the kitchen counter among old takeaways and empty tins of Harp.

  “Is Marian here?” I ask.

  “No,” he says, “they went out.”

  “Does Marian not give out to you about this?” I ask, nodding at the dirty surfaces, the overflowing sink, the sticky floor, the cold, congealed trays of chicken tikka and lamb vindaloo.

  “Oh,” he says, “no, she does. We made a rota.”

  The rota is taped to the fridge. This week Seamus has to take out the bins, and I file this away to remember the next time he frightens me.

  “You’re on washing up,” I say, and Niall nods, looking defeated. “Here, let me help.”

  I scrape out the foil trays, and Niall squirts some dish soap onto the dirty plates in the sink. I already know that when the robbery is read out on the news tonight, it will be difficult for me to connect it to this moment. Surveillance footage might be shown of two masked figures holding guns. You’d never picture one of them, hours earlier, in his kitchen doing the washing up. They always seem to have appeared from nowhere.

  “Do you want a cup of tea?” he asks abruptly, as if someone, maybe Marian, once told him you’re meant to offer.

  “That would be lovely.”

  We keep cleaning the kitchen, talking about football and the weather. We discuss the different takeaway options in the area, and Niall complains that Seamus would have them order from the same chip shop every single night if he could. He and Marian are excited about the new Korean place in Ballymurphy.

  “I thought Damian liked to cook. Doesn’t he cook for you?” I ask.

  “He’s been too busy,” says Niall. I sprinkle some Dettol over the kitchen surface and wipe it with a cloth, pretending not to be curious about what has been occupying Damian’s time.

  “Do you get nervous before a robbery?” I ask.

  “Yes. I didn’t used to,” he says.

  “Why is that?”

  “Just getting older, probably,” he says thoughtfully, and my heart breaks at how young he seems. I want to know how they recr
uited him, what promises they made. He was raised in foster care. I wonder if that made them target him.

  We continue with our tidying. I lean over the sink, rinsing old chips and vinegar from plates.

  “Do you know what Marian wants for Christmas?” he asks. He’s planning ahead, it’s only November.

  “You could do a nice tin of hot chocolate,” I say. “Or scotch.”

  “What kind?”

  “Oh, um, Oban. Talisker.”

  He takes out his phone and carefully types the names into his notes. I turn away, drying a plate with a towel, trying to control my emotion before it makes me either cry or tell him the truth. He thinks these people are his family. Soon we’ve finished the dishes and the surfaces, and he walks me to the door.

  “Don’t tell Marian you helped me,” he says. “She’d lose the plot.”

  I think about the two cakes Marian had for her birthday last year. The one at my house, and the one on their surfing trip in Mullaghmore. I picture Marian in the dark rooms, surrounded by two completely different groups of people, leaning toward two round cakes, one pink, one yellow. She must have felt more at home with one of the groups. One of them must have felt like her true family, who love her the most, who love her wholly. All this time, I’d been so sure it was us.

  30

  Itake a bus back to the city center. It’s only two in the afternoon. I don’t need to collect Finn from day care for a few hours, so I walk down the Lisburn Road, to Marian’s street. I stop on the corner, looking down the terrace of brick houses. A pub sits at one end of her road, and the railway line lies at the far end. When her windows are open, she can hear the cooks in the pub kitchen and the trees thrashing along the railway.

  Marian has only been a few miles away. I wonder if she fantasizes about coming here to rest in her own bed, or take a bath, or drink tea on her sofa.

  She must be tempted. At the safe house, Marian is surrounded by other people, which must grate on her, not having any time to herself. She needs solitude. “A day without solitude is like a drink without ice,” she once said to me, quoting an old-fashioned book.

  Last Christmas, Marian disappeared from our aunt’s house, and I found her outside on the back step, bundled in her coat, watching icy clouds shear past the moon. “Too noisy,” she said. Though maybe she doesn’t need a break from her unit, maybe being with them is as undemanding as being alone.

  I haven’t been back to her home in months, and it has taken on a different aspect to me, like the headquarters from which she ran her two lives. Marian was both a civilian and a terrorist while living here. She hosted dinners for her friends, and prepared for operations.

  She must have been exhausted. It must have taken so much organization and energy to manage two identities. When I complained to her about being torn between work and the baby, Marian sympathized with me. She said, “It’s always hard to decide the best use of your time.” I’d thought she had no idea what she was talking about, but for years, she’d had to divide her resources, her attention.

  I try to allow for the possibility that Marian is more tired than me. There are nights when I have to work on my laptop for hours after Finn falls asleep, there are weeks when I set an alarm for 4:45 a.m. and settle at my desk for a solid stretch of work before he wakes, thinking everything’s going to be fine, everything will get done, then a few minutes later he is up, too.

  But I’ve only had Finn for eleven months. For years, Marian had to work nights both as a paramedic and with her unit. She once had to explain to Seamus that she couldn’t stay awake for three nights in a row. “Seamus doesn’t get tired,” Marian said. “He sleeps for four hours a night, like Margaret Thatcher.” Which could kill him, if his heart doesn’t.

  From the corner, I look at the front of her flat, the painted door, the curtains in the windows. I want to go inside to check on the pipes, the boiler, the mail, but the police might still have it under surveillance.

  I stop into the natural foods shop a few doors down on the Lisburn Road. Marian loves this place. She has a shelf in her kitchen of bee pollen, royal jelly, ginseng, echinacea, evening primrose. I make fun of her for it, but, then, she never gets sick, while I catch colds every winter. I fill a shopping basket with jars and vials, adding the mushroom powder, lion’s mane and ashwagandha, which she stirs into green tea every morning, and then a sealed packet of the tea itself. I’m not sure how much of this is done out of competition. I’m furious with her, but I still want her to love me best.

  * * *

  —

  Marian is late to meet me. I sit rigid in the car. There is a chance that she won’t come. That I will drive home alone, and never know what happened to her.

  I want to run through the woods to Mount Stewart, shout for someone to help me. Another twenty minutes pass, and her absence takes on the aura of an emergency. If Marian’s not here in ten minutes, I’ll contact Eamonn, and the security service will find her.

  A movement makes me look in the side mirror, and my sister is walking up the lane. It feels like crawling ashore after being caught in a riptide. I want to pat myself down, to check that my body is intact.

  “Sorry,” says Marian. “I had to drop a passport in Rostrevor.”

  “Why is your unit working so much in South Down?”

  “We’re filling a gap in the Newry brigade.”

  “Why?”

  “The police shot all of them.”

  I don’t know what to say to this, so we sit in silence for a few moments. “I brought you something.”

  “Did you?” she asks, and I wince at how pleased she sounds over such a small kindness.

  When she sees the bag from the natural foods shop, her eyes widen. She reaches into the footwell to pull it onto her lap, then opens it and stares down at the apothecary jars.

  Marian is silent. For a terrible moment, I think that she’s about to admit that she never believed in any of this, that it was part of her cover. Instead, she lets out a long sigh. She moves slowly through the bag, her face rapt, like she’s opening a Christmas stocking.

  Watching her, I understand how much she misses her independence, her routines. She doesn’t have any respite anymore. She is fully conscripted now, between the IRA and MI5.

  “Are you homesick?” I ask.

  “It was never going to last,” she says. “I’m surprised it did for that long.”

  Over the past seven years, Marian tells me, she knew that every weekend she spent visiting a gallery, or watching a film, or shopping, was time she’d stolen. The British government might have arrested her at any moment. They might have come close, on any number of occasions. She was an enemy of the state. Sometimes she added up her prospective prison time. Membership of a banned organization, firearms offenses, explosives offenses. It would depend on the judge, but she could be given multiple life sentences.

  “Not anymore,” I say. “If you’re arrested, Eamonn will get you out.”

  “Maybe,” she says. “Or maybe that would raise too much suspicion. There are plenty of informers in prison right now so their cover won’t be blown.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Marian nods. During the Troubles, she says, some informers served ten years in prison, were released, rejoined the IRA, and kept informing. I can’t believe it. I can’t think of any political cause that would make me wait out a decade in prison.

  “Would you?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says. “If it would help bring peace. But I’m used to the idea of prison, I’ve thought about it for years.”

  “You should be in prison,” I say, but without heat, like I’m trying to talk her out of it and into another solution. Marian understands this and doesn’t respond. Of course she can’t serve a life sentence.

  “What are you going to do about the flat? Do you want me to empty it?” I ask.

  “Not yet,” she
says. For now, she will keep paying the rent, the gas and electric.

  “Do you want to go back?”

  “Yes, if I can.”

  “Do you want your old job back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Marian says that her work as a paramedic blurred into her work with the IRA. She doesn’t know if she could separate the two. It often seemed like part of the same project, whether she was patrolling the city in her ambulance or with her unit. She treated enough gunshot and beating victims from the conflict that even others, with strokes or sports injuries, began to seem like victims of the war.

  She tells me that once while treating a stroke victim, she became convinced that some figures in her peripheral vision were SAS officers about to shoot her. She’d startled, dropping the oxygen mask, scaring her patient.

  “You could collect your pension,” I say. “You could let the IRA set you up with a villa in Bulgaria.”

  “Most people stay,” says Marian, ignoring my sarcasm. She says most former members, given the option, choose a room in Divis tower over a villa abroad. It makes sense. How could you leave a country after fighting a war for it? They’ve been in the thick of things for years, they don’t want to miss whatever happens next. What would they even do in Bulgaria?

  I hate to say it, but we have that in common. When I travel, even to someplace more beautiful, more civilized, a part of me is always aware of my distance from the center, the source of life. When the plane lands back in Belfast, even in spitting rain, even when the city is at its most bleak and littered, I think, Right, we’re back, let’s get into it.

  On one holiday, Tom got annoyed with me for reading the news from home, and it did seem like a failing that I couldn’t pick up a local paper and transfer my interest. I couldn’t explain how it felt like a moral duty to follow our news, like my responsibility to listen and understand. Maybe it wouldn’t in a region where the news wasn’t so volatile, where if you looked away for a minute the whole place wouldn’t slide into an abyss.