Dead Man Running: A True Story of a Secret Agent's Escape from the IRA and MI5 (17 page)

Chapter Eight

A cold
autumn wind
whipping the waters off Stranraer greeted me as I drove into the town at the start of the most vital journey of my life. I had decided to leave my car in Scotland for fear that the registration number would be known to the RUC authorities in Belfast. I drove round the town for I had some time to spare before the ferry left for Belfast. I parked in a side street outside the town centre some seven’ minutes walk from the Sea-Cat terminal.

As I sat in the waiting-room I took stock of the other travellers that morning, wondering if there was anyone I knew or, more importantly, if there was anyone who might recognise me. I knew that the most favoured crossing for IRA personnel travelling to Scotland and parts of the UK was the Larne-Stranraer ferry but there were many IRA sympathisers who took the Belfast-Stranraer crossing because of the speed, giving less time for the security services to check and identify possible suspects. I had considered flying to Belfast but judged that to be an even greater risk for I knew that RUC personnel check passenger lists both on and off those flights. If there is the slightest suspicion that some wanted person is on board a photograph of him or her is taken off the CCTV and flashed to Belfast International airport where it is checked by a unit of the RUC Special Branch against the extensive photographic files they hold.

I sat in the cafe drinking a cup of tea and watching everyone like a hawk but trying not to appear too observant. Inside, my heart was thumping with anticipation and nervousness but I managed to smile, telling myself how pathetic I had become during my years living in the comparative safety of the British mainland after my time of far greater risk living in Belfast. I knew that Scottish SB officers also constantly manned the ferries, checking everyone coming and going and I guessed and hoped they had no ID of me. Then my old luck returned. As we trooped from the cafe to the boat a young woman was struggling with three small children and their luggage.

‘
Can I help you?’ I said as I moved quickly to her side, picking up one of the young toddlers.

‘
Thanks very much,’ she said, checking me from head to toe to ensure I was a genuine helper.

‘
Think nothing of it,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a couple of little ones and you can always do with an extra pair of hands.’

‘
You’re right,’ she said, ‘especially when they’re a handful like these lot are.’

‘
Going home to Belfast?’ I asked, trying to be as chatty as possible, so that any police personnel on the quayside might believe we were a family unit and ignore us.

‘
Aye,’ she replied, ‘I’ve been seeing my Ma.’

Simply walking on board holding one of the children and a piece of luggage gave me confidence, for my seizing the initiative, picking up a child as a decoy, made me realise that I hadn’t forgotten my old SB training. Once on board I wondered if I should continue to use the young mother as a cover but that was not to be. She had obviously been somewhat suspicious of my kindly act of good manners. She thanked me for my help in a dismissive manner and went to sit on her own with the children. I walked away realising that I hadn’t done such a wonderful ‘Sir Galahad’ impression as I thought.

As I sat on my own trying to look as inconspicuous as possible there was one further fear haunting me. I remembered that for months at a time the IRA would station a young sympathiser on the ferries, officially employed as cabin staff or cleaner but in reality reporting back to senior IRA commanders if anything suspicious was happening. These lads were responsible for information concerning many of the British Army troop movements, the comings and goings of the thousands of British soldiers who were, and still are, constantly on the move across the Irish Sea. But one of the reasons I chose the Sea-Cat crossing is that most of the IRA members take the big, slower ferries as do the soldiers travelling back and forth on their tours of duty. I bought a newspaper as a shield and read it slowly from cover to cover trying to make sure that I didn’t look too ridiculous.

Before setting off for Belfast I had reread Ian Phoenix’s diaries which explained in some detail how he and other members of the Northern Ireland police counter-surveillance team were aware before I set off to Connolly House for my ill-fated meeting that I was to be interrogated by the IRA’s feared Civil Administration Team. They knew before I started out on my journey that morning in August 1991 that I was to be ‘kidnapped’ by the IRA. Phoenix’s diaries made plain that he had been made aware what was to happen to me – that I was to be ‘debriefed’ by the Civil Administration Team. I reread that sentence time and again because I had never been told that I was to be debriefed by the ruthless IRA interrogators, euphemistically entitled the Civil Administration Team. In fact, my SB handlers had encouraged me to attend that meeting after having taken advice from their senior officers. I had such faith in Felix that I agreed to attend the meeting because he said they would be watching me every step of the way with a full back-up surveillance unit in attendance.

If I had not believed that I was to be chaperoned in this way I would never for one moment have agreed to attend that meeting with Podraig Wilson, the head of IRA discipline throughout Belfast, the man who decided who should receive a punishment beating and who should be kneecapped. I had, of course, known that if the IRA had discovered I was a Special Branch source I would be taken before the organisation’s Civil Administration Team to face questioning, deep interrogation, torture and a bullet in the back of the head.

My handlers had never given me a single reason why I should go to Connolly House that day to see Podraig Wilson and yet they had encouraged me to attend as though I had no option. Having read Detective Superintendent Ian Phoenix’s diaries I knew that the SB and members of the all-powerful Tasking Co-ordination Group which comprised senior officers from MI5, the SAS, the Special Branch, the ‘Det’ (military specialist surveillance unit), the RUC and the British Army knew I was to face the IRA’s most ruthless interrogators. And yet no one had warned me, no one had given me a chance to back out and no one had offered or even suggested to me that I had a choice. No one had told me that I was taking the most enormous risk in going to Connolly House; no one had said that I could skip the meeting at the Sinn Fein headquarters; no one had told me that I was to face the IRA torturers and no one had suggested that I might prefer to be taken out of Belfast to a safe haven outside Northern Ireland.

As the Sea-Cat bounced across the water I felt despondent and bitter that I had been treated so despicably after all I had tried to do to help people in Belfast. It made me feel physically sick that anyone, let alone the people I had risked my neck for, could have handed me over to the IRA knowing I faced interrogation, torture and certain death. But that had been the reality facing me. Now I wanted to expose the evil shits that could have done that to me and reveal them for what they were.

In his diaries Phoenix had revealed that he believed that a (SB) surveillance team saw me leaving Connolly House only a short time after entering the building, and that he had been informed that later I had been observed by the surveillance team on the spot walking across the road to the Busy Bee shopping complex. Ian Phoenix then wrote; ‘The surveillance team was mistaken. The informer had been snatched from the Busy Bee car park, bound and gagged, and whisked to a flat in nearby Twinbrook. There he was guarded by two Provisionals who were waiting for the arrival of the CAT interrogators.’

To me, it seemed extraordinary that Ian Phoenix, one of the top 25 anti-terrorist intelligence officers in Northern Ireland, should have written so inaccurately of my kidnapping. When he wrote his diaries he must have had access to the latest, most thoroughly detailed account of what really happened to me. Within weeks of leap from the window I had given a detailed account to the Special Branch of exactly what occurred. Phoenix had apparently totally ignored the SB accounts. But why? It just didn’t make sense that such a senior officer as Detective Superintendent Phoenix should have written such an inaccurate account. And it wasn’t that he didn’t care about me, treating me as some run-of-the-mill informant, for he acknowledged in his book that I was one of the Special Branch’s best spies.

When RUC officers came to interview me about my abduction I had been told by Special Branch handlers not to say a word to the CID officers of the RUC, to tell them nothing whatsoever about what happened to me that day or the names or descriptions of the IRA men who had taken and held me. Even at the time I thought that advice was strange. I wanted those bastards caught, charged, convicted and jailed and I wondered why the hell I was being advised not to help bring them to justice. Senior Special Branch officers told me that I should simply say that I could remember nothing of the incidents immediately before, during or after my kidnap ordeal. But I had always taken the advice of the Branch throughout my career and, as a consequence, I naturally decided to take their advice on this occasion.

All these thoughts were racing around my mind as we drew closer to Belfast. They just made me realise that I had to be fucking careful during my stay in the city, making sure I steered clear of both the IRA and any of the forces of law and order because I figured that if I was caught and held no one in Britain knew of my secret trip back to my old haunts and the powers that be, who seemingly had been happy to see me abducted and taken away for harsh interrogation, could do what they wanted with me. The thought sent a chill down my spine because I now believed their real intention was to have me killed.

Before making the final decision to undertake the fateful trip to Belfast I had spent sleepless nights trying to determine whether everything that Mike had told me was true. I could not find a single reason why Mike should travel to the mainland and inform me of the circumstances surrounding my abduction. At first I hadn’t been convinced of the story he was telling me but the more I thought of what happened to me, the more sense it made. In fact, I could find nothing to challenge his reasoning and the very fact that it seemed I had been sacrificed made me both angry and sad. I wasn’t fearful but angry, a deep sense of injustice driving me onwards to prove that someone, either MI5, the RUC, the TCG or, heaven forbid, my friends at Special Branch, had been responsible for organising my kidnap and probable death.

There was only one major problem. I could not work out the identity of the man MI5 feared I might accidentally betray to the IRA commanders and yet, according to Mike, I knew the man. I thought of all the likely people and then realised none of them appeared to fit the category of a vital intelligence source. Perhaps I would discover that during the time I planned to stay in Belfast.

Throughout my years working for the Branch I had only come across one man who had openly challenged my role as a Special Branch source – and that was a Chief Inspector whose first name was John, a Special Branch officer whom I had previously never met. In October 1990 I was attending a Special Branch meeting at an SB safe house on the outskirts of Belfast which was attended by two of my handlers and three other senior Branch officers. Chief Inspector John was sitting in the room with one other officer when we arrived. Throughout the hour-long meeting the Chief Inspector seemed to spend most of the time closely watching me as he listened to our conversation. He hardly spoke a word and I was very suspicious as to why he was sitting in on the meeting.

I knew that room in the safe house had been wired so that senior intelligence officers could listen to conversations without being seen by the informants being debriefed by their handlers. As Inspector John had nothing or very little to offer to the discussion I wondered why he was staying in the room throughout the meeting and his presence confused and worried me. His eyes hardly ever seemed to leave me, inspecting me up and down, watching my face, deliberately making sure his presence was of real importance. He was making me feel uncomfortable.

At the end of the meeting I got up to leave as usual, intending to make my way to the back of the house where I knew a closed van was parked only inches from the back door. This was so that when I stepped from the house to the van I could not identify in which road or street or area the meeting had taken place. But as I walked towards the door of the meeting-room Chief Inspector John moved forwards towards me, deliberately blocking my way.

He started joking, saying, ‘Well, Marty, it’s nice to meet you after hearing so much about you.’

I had no wish to prolong this conversation and mumbled ‘Thanks’ as I went to walk past him and out of the room.

Inspector John suddenly said, ‘By the way, Marty,’ and I turned towards him. As I did so he pulled a hand-gun – I’m sure it was a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver – from his jacket, which took me aback. No one had ever played such a trick on me in the dozens of times I had spent in various SB safe houses around Belfast.

In that instant I was convinced he was about to shoot me. I thought he was a madman and for some reason he was about to kill me. It was just the way he had sat there throughout the meeting, watching my every movement. I looked at his face and I realised he was smiling. ‘Fuck,’ I thought, ‘he’s not a madman after all. I’m okay.’