Dead Man Running: A True Story of a Secret Agent's Escape from the IRA and MI5 Read Online Free PDF Page B

Okay?’
     
    ‘ Okay,’ I replied.
     
    ‘ Good luck,’ said Mike. And he was gone.
     
    I watched his train gently gather speed out of the station and disappear. I turned on my heel and walked away to find my own train, wondering what the hell to do, wondering why Mike had taken the trouble to come and explain what had happened to me. What he had told me I could not take at face value and yet everything he had said made sense. I had a lot of thinking to do.
     

Chapter Three
     
    I had thought long and hard about everything Mike, my SB pal, had told me. I tried to dismiss his theories but the more I turned over the matter in my mind the more certain I became that he had been telling the truth. Everything he had said made sense, making me both worried, unsure of myself and fucking angry. I spent sleepless nights wondering what I should do and days walking through the Northumbria countryside trying to decide what action I should take. I realised that returning to Belfast, the city where I was born and raised, the city that for more than 25 years had been a battleground between Protestants and Catholics, the city where I had turned my back on the IRA and started working for the RUC Special Branch, would be a massive gamble. I knew that I might be risking my life but to me there was no choice. I was determined to discover the truth, to discover who had been responsible for putting my life at risk and whether there had been an MI5 plot to have me kidnapped and killed. The information that Mike had given me during our meeting in Birmingham had come as such a shock that I knew I could not rest until I had discovered the truth. For four years I had risked my life helping to save the lives of British soldiers, RUC officers, prison officers and members of the public and then I learn that British Intelligence had arranged my kidnap in the hope that it would lead to my murder. Sometimes as I walked alone in the beautiful Cheviot Hills or Harwood Forest outside Newcastle I struggled to imagine that those who ran British Intelligence in Belfast could have been so wicked, unprincipled and callous that they would sacrifice one of their own who had done nothing but work for them and save the lives of innocent people. Yet, seemingly they could, and they did, without blinking an eye. Those thoughts made me both angry and resentful. My thoughts returned to that day in August 1991 when the IRA sent Carol, a lovely young messenger, to call me to a meeting with Podraig Wilson, at Connolly House, the Sinn Fein headquarters in Belfast. I knew Wilson was the head of the IRA discipline, the man who decided who should be kneecapped and who should receive beatings by the IRA’s thuggish punishment squads. Before accepting the invitation to meet him, however, I had phoned my Special Branch handler Felix seeking his advice. The very thought of walking into Sinn Fein headquarters scared the hell out of me, and the fact that I had been called to see Podraig Wilson, of all people, made me feel as if I was about to receive a death sentence. ‘I’m in loads of trouble,’ I said to him, my hands shaking nervously as I clambered into Felix’s car an hour later. I had driven through a myriad of back streets for my meeting with Felix that day for I was convinced that if the IRA had called me to a meeting with Podraig Wilson they would have been keeping a 24-hour watch on my movements. I drove with one eye on the rear-view mirror and zig-zagged in and out of a number of housing estates, making sure that the IRA were not following. And yet I was still shaking like a leaf when I met Felix.
     
    ‘ Calm down,’ he reassured me, ‘ and speak slowly. What’s up?’
     
    I explained exactly what had happened and the date that had been fixed for me to meet Podraig Wilson – 10 a.m. the following day.
     
    ‘ I understand,’ he said, speaking slowly as he thought what to do. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll have to take advice on this one as to how we’re going