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The British had decided that we’d lose ourselves in the crowd. They knew there were demonstrations going on in Paris that 4 April 1981. We joined the noisy procession. It didn’t look like one of our marches. No children, no funeral wreaths, no soldiers, either. There were balloons, whistles, songs. Some men were wearing girls’ hats, and some women had men’s ties around their necks. I wasn’t terribly comfortable, but neither was I embarrassed. With my cap, my trousers that were too short, my tweed jacket and my padded anorak, I was simply out of place in this city.

The red-haired handler was on my left, the agent to my right. We were speaking normally, our foreign language unnoticed thanks to the din. It was sunny. My two enemies were wearing sunglasses.

—You’re not in a position to negotiate, Tyrone. But we have reviewed your requests.

It was the agent speaking.

—Nobody becomes a good agent through blackmail or coercion. Those who have been threatened crack by their second assignment. We want to establish a different relationship with you.

—We want you to benefit from it, the handler added.

—Me to benefit?

I shrugged my shoulders. A boy was playing the trumpet as he marched.

—You to benefit, yes. I’m not suggesting you’ll enjoy it, but maybe you’ll find some satisfaction.

—Your collaboration will not lead to arrests or victims. Your information will serve to save lives, not to waste more.

—Is that a promise?

The handler looked at me.

—I promise, yes.

Two laughing youths blew me a kiss. I pulled my cap down low over my eyes.

—From now on, I’ll be ‘Waldner’. This will be my code name and the only one you’ll use, the agent said.

He gave me a sidelong glance.

—Repeat.

—Waldner.

—I’m from Liverpool. I came to Belfast a few months ago. I don’t know anyone in the ghettos and nobody knows me. It’s a safeguard. My anonymity will protect you.

The crowd was getting more and more dense.

—If something happened to me, your contact would be ‘Dominik’.

—Dominik?

Waldner nodded towards the red-haired handler.

—Frankie, whose name you’re also going to forget.

I was staggered. Anaesthetized. Docile. Lost in Paris, in the middle of incomprehensible banners and bursts of laughter. I was in the process of betraying. I was a
brathadóir
. An informer. Everything was being put in place. I had imagined this moment in a silent room with grey walls and here I was surrounded by colours.

—As for you, Tyrone, you’ll be ‘Tenor’.

—Like a singer?

—Like a singer.

—Waldner and Dominik are characters from
Arabella
, the opera our wives are going to see this evening, the handler added.

—Your wife?

—I got lucky with this mission! But no, we sleep apart.

I laughed. For the first time since my false arrest. It was a genuine laugh, a sudden hiccup. The agent and the handler looked at one another. I caught that look. They were relieved. There was no doubt I was safely in their trap, a deep hole with smooth walls. There was nothing that could ever bring me back up to the surface again. They had me. I was theirs and they knew it. Waldner nudged me with his elbow. Very soon, we’d go and have a beer and talk about something else.

By the time we arrived on the esplanade in front of the Beaubourg Museum, I knew everything. I had two telephone numbers to remember. It was up to me to contact Waldner. No information over the phone, ever. I was to simply say ‘Tenor’, a code word that meant we were to meet the following day at the time of that call. There were two meeting points, one for each number. The first was a small cemetery off Clifton Road, in the north of Belfast. For a Catholic it wasn’t a very safe area, but it was quiet. The MI5 agent came up with the idea while studying my itinerary. Every July every year for the past decade, I’d been speaking at commemorations of the death of Henry Joy McCracken, a Presbyterian and founding member of the Society of United Irishmen, along with Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet. I’d travel all over Ireland to honour his memory. One year in Dublin, the next in Cork, Limerick or Belfast, in front of crowds or sparse gatherings. It didn’t matter, my duty was to see to it that younger generations heard his name, and to remind people that the founding fathers of the Irish Republic were Protestant.

The British court had offered McCracken his life if he would testify against other Irish rebels, but he had refused. It was for that he was hanged, on 17 July 1978, and later buried in Clifton Street Cemetery. I used to visit his grave regularly to talk to him. I’d go alone. I’d talk to him about Tom Williams, buried like a pauper in Crumlin prison. I told him about Danny Finley. I asked him for advice. Helped by the whispering of the wind, Henry Joy McCracken would answer me.

My presence in the cemetery wouldn’t surprise anyone. Against the wall, hidden by the corner of a house, there was a shed. That was where we would meet. A traitor, on the grave of a man who had been killed for refusing to betray.

The second meeting place was the city-centre post office. More exposed, but more anonymous. Going into a post office is not a suspicious act. The cemetery would be used for exchanging information. The post office, for handing over documents without a word.

And there would also be Paris, where I would come to breathe a little. Where I’d be safe to speak about everything and nothing.

—What does that mean, about everything and nothing?

—About politics, Waldner replied.

—About politics?

—Tips about your party, dissensions, decisions. A decoding, if you like.

—I like nothing at all about it.

He made a wee knowing gesture.

—Will it be you in Paris?

—No, you’ll see ‘Honoré’.

—Honoré?

—Our embassy is on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. And I’m sure you’re going to like this guy, the handler said to me.

In case of emergency or extreme danger, I was to go home, call and say, ‘Tenor is hoarse’, and wait to be arrested. It was also arranged that I would be taken in for questioning regularly, as were all the men from our areas. Kept for seven days, as provided for in the Special Powers Act, I’d have a chance to breathe, take stock and then be released without arousing suspicion.

Suddenly, I stiffened. In front of me, two young girls were kissing mouth to mouth. I had never seen that. Nobody was looking at them. They were in one another’s arms and they were kissing.

—It’s a gay march, smiled Waldner.

—Gay?

I looked around me. Men holding hands, girls with raised fists, unknown slogans. As she was passing, a girl stuck a pink triangle on my anorak.

—Very fetching, said the redhead.

I tore off the sticker. I wavered. And then I put it back on.

—Don’t you want to take that off, all the same? Waldner asked early that evening, as we were finishing a beer on a bar terrace.

The redhead muttered.

—We don’t give a shit.

The march had ended hours before. Both of them seemed to be bothered by the looks the sticker was attracting. So I said no. Just that, not aggressively, not defying them. I didn’t give a damn about that triangle, but it told them that I wasn’t under their thumb.

—To our wives, our girlfriends, and may they never meet one another! said Waldner, raising his glass of beer.

—To Sheila, I replied.

That evening, I joined her again in the hotel. She’d had a terrific afternoon. I told her about the two women kissing. She crossed herself, laughing. And then she made me sit down in the armchair. She went into the bathroom and came out carrying a glass of water. And she handed it to me.

15

Killybegs, Saturday, 30 December 2006

Yesterday morning, I had a visitor. A car pulled in just after the little bridge. I was at the well, getting water for the night. I heard the car reversing. I placed the bucket on the edge of the well. A door slammed. I made my way towards the cottage, walking backwards.

All these years, I’d kept Seánie’s hurley, which was now hidden behind my armchair. I had plaited a rope handle and a leather wrist strap to keep it firmly in my hand. I was smiling as I strengthened it, imagining an assassin’s surprise when faced with an eighty-year-old man brandishing a second-hand bludgeon.

I drew back, my eyes on the clearing that opened up at the bottom of my path. I could hear heavy footsteps on the road. I was frightened for the first time since arriving.

Barely ten days earlier, the IRA was interrogating me in a Dublin suburb. Opposite me were Mike O’Doyle and an old IRA counter-intelligence guy I didn’t know. I admitted I was a British agent, simply, nothing more. I had said it to the press, I was repeating it to my former brothers in arms. The rest did not concern them.

Without the peace process I would have ended up with a bullet in my neck in a dump beside the border. But the IRA had laid down its arms, and my fate was part of that commitment. They would not kill me. They had the military capability to do so, of course, but not the political means. And I wanted them to take responsibility for what might happen to me. I had decided not to flee. I would remain in my country. I wanted them to know that.

—I’m going home to Killybegs, in Donegal.

—Shut the fuck up, Meehan! shouted the older man.

—Now you know.

—We don’t want to know anything.

Too bad. They knew. I had trapped them. I was no longer their soldier, or their prisoner, and I was placing myself under their protection. If I was killed, by a Loyalist, a Brit or an armchair nationalist with his hunting rifle, everyone would accuse the IRA. Nobody would believe their denials. And that would be the end of the peace process. If the Republican movement wanted to protect its negotiations, it would have to keep me alive.

—What do I do now? I asked.

—You fend for yourself, replied the IRA.

I was astonished.

—You’re signing my death warrant, Mike O’Doyle, you know that?

They turned off the camera that was recording my interrogation.

—You should have thought of that before, Tyrone. We can’t do anything else for you.