Northern Spy(69)

“I lived in Larne? Really?”

“Mm-hmm,” she says. “What’s wrong with Larne?”

“Nothing. It’s just, Larne.”

We will work together on creating a fake résumé for me, with fake references. “What are you qualified to do?” she asks.

“Produce political radio shows.”

“That might be difficult,” she says. “Anything else?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well. Give it a think.”

We’re being given a small stipend for our living expenses over the next few months, which is lucky, since neither of us had much in savings, and MI5 cleared Marian’s pledge account. They must have assumed that she was about to be killed, and that the funds could be used elsewhere.

I will never hear from Eamonn. He will never explain himself to me. I remember reading the MI5 site, months ago. “Building up our relationship with you is at the center of this process.” Sometimes I think that Eamonn might have argued for our lives, and been overridden by his superiors, but probably not, he probably accepted the rules. We still don’t even know who the other informer was, who they decided to sacrifice us for. The peace talks are proceeding. Most likely, Eamonn is still in Northern Ireland, still running informers.

I think often of the story he told me about meeting a source at a luxury hotel, in a straw bungalow on a jetty. I think about how close we came to something similar. And I hope that whomever she was, she saw through him sooner than I did, and got herself free.



* * *



—



One afternoon, I buy a Christmas tree from the stalls behind the church. Marian comes over to help me with the lights, unspooling them from her hands while I circle the tree.

“Do you feel guilty?” I ask her.

“No,” she says simply.

“Seamus was your friend.”

“Yes. And he was going to kill both of us.”





44


OUR MAM MOVED TO Bray in January. She still complains about the town every day, which was genuine at first, and now seems to be mostly out of guilt. She will never admit to liking it more than Andersonstown.

For the first few weeks, she worked as a cleaner, but then she answered a post from a dog-walking service. She has a picture of each dog taped on her fridge.

I’m glad she’s here for my sake, but even more for Marian’s. This has been harder on her. She can’t tell Damian and Niall that she escaped, that she is alive.

“Do you miss them?” I ask.

“Yes.”

She’s most worried about Niall, though Fenton said he’s preparing to offer him a deal, immunity in exchange for information. She told the detective to mention New York. “He’s always wanted to live there.” If he accepts, Niall will be given some money, a new start. He’s so young. This part of his life will fade, in time.

“I’m going to see them again,” she says firmly. “One day. When we’re old.”

The conflict will end eventually. An argument over pardons for IRA prisoners has slowed the peace talks, but negotiations are still inching along. What is dangerous for us now won’t be forever. Someday, a peace deal will be agreed, the IRA will dissolve, and we’ll be safe to cross the border again.



* * *



—

In March, I have the radio on while washing our breakfast dishes. The presenter starts to read the day’s headlines, a dip in the FTSE, a cabinet reshuffle. I set Finn’s bowl on the drying rack. “A senior figure in the IRA has been revealed as an MI5 informer,” she says, and I wrench the taps off to listen. “For over twenty years, Cillian Burke worked for the British government as a mole inside the IRA.”

Chills wing up both sides of my skull. “A whistleblower in the Home Office has leaked Burke’s name to the press, out of concern about his role in a number of crimes. Burke fled his home in Ardoyne, north Belfast, last night and is currently in an undisclosed location. Questions are now being asked of MI5, and if they sanctioned Burke to commit criminal acts, including bombings and multiple murders.”

I understand now why the MI5 witness refused to explain the evidence against Cillian at his trial, why they let the case against him collapse. “The greater good,” said Eamonn. He was their agent.

On the radio, a political analyst says, “Let’s not be na?ve. If you’re going to run an informer in a terror group, you’re going to be operating in a gray area, and you’re going to need to make certain sacrifices.”

Which sounds reasonable, except their sacrifices included Marian and me.

“I don’t understand,” says Marian on the phone. “Cillian bled IRA. He was the most hard-line of any of them.”

“Those might have been his instructions,” I say. His handlers might have told him, You need to be the most ruthless, you need to be the most violent, or they’ll find out about you.



* * *



—

That evening while I am giving Finn a bath, without really thinking, I reach over and turn the lock on the doorknob, so the bad men can’t get in.

That is the first sign. It’s almost nothing, except the next night I move Finn’s crib from his room to beside my bed, so I’ll hear if someone tries to take him. I think about this obsessively. When I tell Fenton, he sounds appalled. “No one’s looking for you, Tessa. The IRA thinks you’re dead.”