Dead Man Running: A True Story of a Secret Agent's Escape from the IRA and MI5 (6 page)

A couple of days later I passed all this detail to Felix as he debriefed me. He also told me what the likely consequences would be if ever I was picked up by the RUC, detained, questioned and then freed. ‘A special IRA security team is assigned to every IRA man freed from custody,’ he told me. ‘It’s their task to follow him, night and day, for the first few days following his release, taking note of where he goes, whom he meets, what he does. A couple of days later he is told to report for questioning. The man goes as ordered to an IRA safe house. Inside is total darkness, no lights whatsoever. The man is taken to a room and told to sit down while men in balaclavas question him, asking him a hundred questions about his time inside, details of the police questioning and the answers he gave. The man is made to feel like a leper, a traitor. They question him harder than the CID ever did. If they think he’s talked or betrayed the cause, then he’s fucking had it. And if they think he’s been turned and become an informant they will beat the shit out of him, torture him and whatever. And before they’ve finished with him, they will have discovered every tiny piece of information that he gave about members and IRA operations. If he ever admits to being turned, then he’s fucked – just a bullet in the back of the head’ All of these thoughts raced through my head, and the more I thought of the IRA operations I had succeeded in ruining the more I felt a chill running down my spine. I decided to try and cheer myself up but it was difficult. The more the minutes ticked by the more I thought I was nearing the time when questions would be asked by the Civil Administration Team and I wondered if I had the guts to deny them. I knew only too well that a number of other informants had been arrested by PIRA, questioned and tortured, but I didn’t know any who hadn’t ended up taking a terrible beating as well as a bullet in the back of the head. I knew that in these circumstances the IRA always demanded a confession to deter others from working for the RUC. But while these two stooges and their underling stood guard over me I recalled some of the successes when we had thwarted the IRA. One of the most successful operations began as I was driving Davy Adams across Belfast. He asked me if I would become involved in a major operation being planned by an IRA active service unit, in which they hoped to trigger a massive bomb beside the main road leading from the Larne ferry terminal. The IRA had discovered that every other week a convoy of 15 British Army trucks would cross from Scotland to Larne bringing supplies to the troops stationed in the Province. More importantly, the IRA had learned that the last two army trucks leaving the ferry on arrival at Larne were usually full of British soldiers. To the IRA this was the perfect target, a spectacular massacre which would shake the British Army to its core. An IRA intelligence unit had managed to plant one of their young volunteers, a lad named Martin, on the ferry, working as a ship’s hand. I met Martin outside a cafe in the centre of Larne and he gave me the details of the fortnightly crossings of the army supply vehicles. He also told me that the RUC, responsible for checking security at the ferry port, would drive a van to the port and leave it unattended while they checked the ferries arriving at Larne. The following Saturday I drove down to Larne again and counted 15 British army trucks leaving the ferry. The last two were indeed full of soldiers. Having reported back to Davy Adams I was sent to discuss the operation with a highly experienced IRA explosives officer named Tony. This man had a formidable reputation and he would be responsible for many of the huge IRA bombs that devastated the centre of Belfast during the late 1980s. After explaining the mission to him, and the roadway leading from the ferry, he decided to visit the area with me to see how best to plan the bombing. On the way into Larne Tony noticed a lay-by on the main road used by the British convoys. ‘This is brilliant, fucking fabulous,’ Tony said enthusiastically rubbing his hands together. ‘If we can’t stiff at least a dozen Brits in this operation we’re real wankers.’ After passing the lay-by a second time Tony said he planned to park a caravan packed with explosives in the lay-by and run a command wire from a vantage point from which to trigger the bomb. He also wanted to ensure that the bomber would be able to make a quick and safe getaway. We circled round again so that Tony could check the best place from which to trigger the bomb. As we drove back to Belfast Tony went on chatting to himself; ‘To carry out this job we need 1,000lbs of mix [home-made explosives made from fertiliser], enough to blow at least one of those lorries off the road. But this is a chance in a lifetime so I think we’ll up the mix to 1,500lbs. That should really blast the fuck out of the last two vehicles. If both those trucks are full of soldiers, hardly any will get out alive. Marty, an opportunity like this only comes about once and you have to get it right.’ The following day I reported all to Felix and Mo, two of my handlers, and they took the information with some alarm. I could hardly recall them looking so serious. ‘If Tony’s involved that means this is a serious job,’ said Felix. ‘He is one of the IRA’s top bomb makers; he’s organised some of their most spectacular bombings.’ I urged Felix and Mo to keep the information secret because very few people knew of the bomb plot and if anyone became suspicious I would be one of the first to be suspected of leaking the intelligence. They agreed to my request and decided, in an effort to protect my identity, to speak directly to army intelligence and tell them of the bomb plot, urging them to stop using the Stranraer-Larne ferry and find another way of transporting men and supplies across the Irish Sea. Not knowing what was happening, I was on tenterhooks wondering if the Branch would accidentally leak the bomb plot. Weeks passed and I heard nothing so I decided to call on Tony to see how the bomb plot was going. As I walked into his garden, Tony said, ‘Hey, Marty, did you hear about the Larne job?’ My heart leapt. ‘No, why?’ I asked, trying to keep cool. ‘It seems the bastard were only using the Larne ferry for a short while, because they don’t go there anymore. We had the gear all ready, the mix prepared and packed in a caravan. As usual, before the operation we took one last look on Saturday afternoon and there were no army trucks to be seen. I don’t think they’ve used the port since.’ ‘Fuck,’ I replied, ‘from what the lad told me it seemed the convoy was a regular event.’ ‘I was devastated when I heard there were no more trucks,’ Tony said, looking particularly miserable. ‘I thought that job was too good to be true.’ As I lay on the sofa, bound hand and foot, I knew how guilty I was in the eyes of the IRA and I knew exactly what that would mean if I ever confessed to working for the Branch. Even the thought of what would happen made me turn cold. I shivered and yet I was hot as hell under a blanket on a hot August day. I realised I had to face whatever was coming to me and do all in my power to come out alive at the end of the ordeal. But the thought of saving the lives of those two truck-loads of soldiers actually brought a smile to my lips though I knew they would never know that the young man responsible for saving their lives was now facing torture and almost certain death. By now it was 5.30 p.m. and I wondered how much longer I would have to wait until confronted by the IRA Civil Administration Team. Suddenly I realised that I had to go to the toilet. I was bursting and I knew they wouldn’t want me peeing all over the sofa. I asked the young lad to untie my hands so I could go to the toilet. As I hopped into the bathroom I noticed the bath, full to the brim of crystal-clear water. I knew exactly what that meant and my stomach churned and my mouth turned dry as fear gripped me. I knew that one of the IRA’s favourite tortures was putting a man’s head underwater and keeping it there until the poor bloke was barely conscious. Then they would bring him out, gasping for breath, question him again and then force his head back into the bath, keeping the ritual of torture going until the man passed out completely or gave them the confession they demanded.

I knew as I looked at the bathwater that if I did not escape from the flat I would be face with the water torture and, probably, many others just as horrific. I doubted whether I would have the courage or the mental willpower to withstand such treatment and such interrogation, to keep denying that I had ever worked for the Branch or provided any information to the RUC. I knew that the interrogation unit would arrive at any minute and I also feared that by the time they had finished with me they would either have a confession or I would be dead. The thought frightened the shit out of me. I told myself that if I stayed in that flat, death was a near certainty and I convinced myself, in my terror, that I would be unable to take the beatings, the cigarette burns or the water torture without confessing. I knew that the moment I confessed I would be taken out of the flat, bundled into a car, taken somewhere outside Belfast and unceremoniously shot in the back of the head. Then a great idea struck me – I made my monstrous plan. I looked at the sitting-room window wondering exactly how far I was from the ground. I had no idea what was below the window – concrete, grass, parked cars, trees or shrubs. Suddenly, it didn’t seem to matter. Here was a possible avenue of escape. At that moment I preferred to take the odds of leaping through the window rather than face the IRA’s bully boys. I glanced into the kitchen and saw the three of them talking quietly amongst themselves. ‘This is your only chance, Marty,’ I said to myself. ‘Go for it, go for it, go for it.’ My feet were still bound together so I hopped out of the bathroom, across the hallway and into the sitting-room, not daring to look into the kitchen. Ten feet in front of me was the window and I hopped faster and faster, frightened that the yobbos might twig what was happening and stop me leaping out of the window. When I was within a couple of feet of the closed window I leapt as high as I could hurling myself head-first through the window pane. I don’t even remember hitting the glass ... Those memories seemed like only yesterday so fresh were the details. I had somehow survived, spending a month semi-conscious in hospital, before being taken out of Belfast and flown to the mainland to a new home and a new life. I knew that one day I would return to Belfast to discover the truth about what had happened to me; to find out once and for all who had betrayed me and why. There had to be a good reason for MI5 to arrange a kidnap and orchestrate my death at the hands of the IRA. But that trip to Northern Ireland would have to wait. Other events and circumstances were arising almost weekly in Newcastle-upon-Tyne where I now lived, worrying events seemingly set up to make me feel insecure and vulnerable. I felt that I was being harried and chased by the authorities including the Northumbria Police, the local Special Branch and the Crown Prosecution Service. I wondered if I was being paranoid but realised that was not the case because there was no arguing that the authorities did appear to be conspiring against me. Before returning to Belfast I had first to sort out my problems in England and try to determine if everything that had been going wrong in my life in England had anything to do with my abduction in Belfast.

Chapter Four

I didn’t regain consciousness completely for four weeks after my leap from the third-floor flat where I had been held prisoner. And yet for some unknown reason I thought for months afterwards that I had only been unconscious a matter of 48 hours. No matter – when I came round, the pain was real enough. I had sustained some serious injuries. My left arm had been nearly severed at the shoulder as the glass from the window cut through the sinew and muscle. I was also suffering from lacerations to the head, a fractured jaw and broken teeth. The severe bruising to the head had caused deep concussion and doctors at Musgrave Park Hospital, a military hospital, told me that I must have landed head-first on the ground. They told me I was lucky to be alive, kidding me that I must have a skull made of rubber to have survived such an impact from a height of 40 feet. However, when I felt pain in my arm or my fractured jaw, or dizziness in my head, it simply reminded me that the pain was nothing compared to what the IRA torturers would have inflicted. By October 1991 I had fully recovered and left the Province with an armed Special Branch escort, taking the sea route from Larne to Scotland. We took the train to Newcastle and I was handed over to Northumbria Police Special Branch officers. I had been provided with a new identity – Martin Ashe – a bank account, passport and driving licence in my new name as well as a new social security number. I was also promised a small flat which would be rented for me until all my papers had been sorted by the RUC and a decision taken as to my needs. I was driven to my new home in Wallsend not far from the famous Swan Hunter shipyards. What I didn’t know was that Wallsend was then considered to be one of the poorest districts in the north-east of Britain, where unemployment was high, crime was rife and life hard. The price of property was amongst the cheapest in mainland Britain. Nothing was mentioned about a job or money for a business. I was given no advice except to keep my head down. The two-bedroom flat was dingy, dirty and disgusting. I looked around the cramped dwelling on the ground floor of the 19
^th
-century house amazed that anyone should be asked to live in such awful conditions. The wallpaper was dirty and torn, the bathroom had slugs on the walls, the bath and wash basin were dirty and stained; the carpets were stained and smelly; the curtains were little or more than rags; the furniture was too dirty to sit on, the bed looked more than 30 years old. There was no heat save for a small gas fire in the sitting-room. To me it seemed the flat hadn’t been lived in for years or decorated for a generation.

That night, as I lay in bed waiting for sleep, I thought of Angie and the kids and fought back the tears. A feeling of desolation and loneliness gripped me and I wondered what the hell I had done to end up living alone in such awful surroundings. The following day I went out to buy a few things for the house, hoping to make it more homely and bearable to live in. I bought mugs and some cutlery, plates, a new teapot and saucepans to cook with. I didn’t feel like using any of the dishes or cutlery that were in the flat because they were cracked, chipped and old. I was missing Angie and the kids desperately and I thought that if I made the house more habitable, more pleasant to live in then I might be able to persuade Angie to bring the boys over to Tyneside so that we could live together as a family once again. I feared for Angie, wondering if the IRA bastards might haul her to one of their meetings, occasions when a number of IRA thugs question and cross-question someone, trying to confuse them so that they end up telling them everything they want to know. I had witnessed such meetings before, grown men reduced to rambling, babbling figures unable to think or speak straight for fear of what might happen to them. These wretched wrecks usually ended up telling their IRA inquisitors everything they wanted to know whether it was the truth or not. In that way the IRA would not only discover facts and information they could use on future occasions when questioning others who lived in Republican West Belfast, those tens of thousands of Catholics who allegedly lived under their protection but who, in reality, lived in abject fear of the strict discipline imposed on innocent people by the so-called Irish Republican Army. I wanted to call Angie every night to tell her how much I missed her, to apologise for leaving her alone with the kids, for involving her in the mess that my life had become since working as an agent for the Special Branch way back in 1987. Very occasionally I did call her, though I knew I was taking a risk. We would weep together during those phone calls for we loved each other and needed each other. Angie had shown remarkable bravery in those months that I had been recovering, understanding that she could not, must not, see me for fear that she might be later picked up and questioned by the IRA. She had no fear for herself but only for Martin and Podraig, frightened that her young sons might be left without a father or a mother. Angie, in fact, had known nothing, absolutely nothing, of my life as an agent for British Intelligence working inside the IRA’s intelligence wing, providing information to the Special Branch. There were two main reasons why I told Angie nothing of my undercover work; one was the fact that if she knew nothing she couldn’t tell anyone anything; the other the fact that she would have thoroughly disapproved and persuaded me to stop working for the British. In our infrequent telephone calls I would beg Angie to bring the kids to England, to escape the politics, as well as the bombs and bullets of Belfast. I urged her to come to England for the safety of living in peace on the mainland where I would be able to care for and protect her and the boys in a way I could not while they continued to live in Northern Ireland. For her part Angie was torn between leaving her family with whom she was very close, her friends, whom she relied on for support, understanding and sympathy, and living in England, a strange country she had never even visited, in a town she didn’t know, surrounded by total strangers. ‘Can you understand the Geordie slang?’ she asked one night during a phone call. ‘Not to begin with,’ I told her, ‘but the people who live here are really kind, the salt of the earth.’ ‘But I’m told strangers can’t understand what they’re saying,’ she said, sounding worried. ‘It’s not that bad; you’ll get used to the accent,’ I told her, trying to bolster her confidence, encouraging her to take the great leap, leave Belfast and come live with me in Newcastle. After three weeks Angie phoned and suddenly asked, ‘Would I come across on the ferry?’ My heart leapt and I could hardly contain myself, suddenly chatting 16 to the dozen as I felt the excitement buzz through my body. ‘You’ll come then?’ I asked, expectation in my voice. ‘If you really want me to.’ She replied. ‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘I’ve wanted you to come over here from the moment I arrived.’ ‘Promise?’ she asked, sounding demure. ‘I’d cross my heart and hope to die,’ I replied. ‘Sort everything out,’ I told her, ‘but remember, tell no one except your Ma. No one must know that you’re coming over here because the IRA might somehow come to hear of it and you know what that means. They might tail you all the way to this house, just to get at me.’ ‘Don’t worry,’ she assured me. ‘No one will know I’m planning on joining you until after I’ve left.’ ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Keep it that way. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’ I put the phone down and punched the air, overcome with happiness at the thought of having Angie and the boys with me once again. Seconds later I redialled her number in Belfast. ‘I suddenly had a panic attack,’ I told her, ‘thinking you might not come. You promise, don’t you?’ ‘Marty,’ she said, sounding so sensible for a 20-year old, ‘I’ve told you I’m coming and I will.’ ‘Promise?’ I asked’ ‘On my mother’s life,’ she replied. ‘Oh Angie, that sounds great,’ I said. ‘You’re a wonderful girl and I love you to pieces.’ One week after arriving in Wallsend I decided it was time to get fit again. I had had no exercise since my leap from the flat in August and I was feeling dreadfully unfit. So I bought a pair of trainers and a track suit and each evening I would run two to three miles along the road by the perimeter wall of the famous Swan Hunter shipyards. One night in late October I went out as usual and had run my normal three miles around the streets when I suddenly became aware that someone was behind me, running, keeping in step with me. I turned and saw the shadow of a man about one hundred yards behind me but closing fast. I was shattered from my running but somehow found the extra strength to increase my pace. It was no use. This man was gaining fast and he was only yards from me when I reached my front door. I knew, I simply knew the man was an IRA killer. I fumbled with the front door key, trying to remain calm as my nerves took over. I convinced myself that if I didn’t get into my house within seconds I would hear the blast of a hand-gun and I would be done for. Eventually, I managed to open the door and this man put his foot in the door to stop me shutting him out. We tussled back and forth but I did notice that I had not given him time to get out his gun. Suddenly I had an idea and pulled the door towards me knocking him off balance. In the second he needed to regain his balance I slammed shut the door, locked it and then ran like hell through the flat, out of the back door into the yard. I shinned as fast as possible over the back wall and, without thinking, ran round to the front of the house. The stranger was still standing at my front door, banging on it with his fist. I crept up behind him, grabbed him by the shoulders, spun him round and hit him in the stomach, making him fall forward. ‘What the fuck do you want?’ I shouted in anger ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, gasping for breath. I pushed him against the wall of the house, held him by the throat and demanded a proper answer to my question. ‘What the fuck were you chasing me for?’ I asked him again angrily.‘I was after you,’ he said. ‘What were you after me for?’ I asked, unable to fathom what on earth the man was trying to explain. ‘You kicked in my car the other night,’ he said. ‘I did what?’ I asked indignantly, wondering if this was a ploy to get me to relax. I still believed he was probably an IRA thug waiting for the chance to grab his hand-gun. I continued to hold him, making sure he couldn’t make a grab for his gun. ‘You kicked my car in the other night,’ he said again. ‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, but I kicked no car,’ I told him. He appeared to be looking at me more closely. Suddenly the man said, ‘I think I may be wrong. I don’t think it was you kicking my car; the kids were much younger.’ I let go of the man and he stood by the wall, continuing to apologise. ‘I think I’ve made a mistake,’ he said. ‘I think you have,’ I told him.