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.
A guy was walking along the path. Short and stocky, with short grey hair and creased eyes. His hands were empty, a satchel over his shoulder. When he saw me, he froze and waved.
— Tyrone Meehan?
I stopped at the door.
— Are you Tyrone Meehan?
— Why?
— Jeffrey Kerr, from the Donegal Sentinel.
I motioned to him not to come any closer.
— How did you find me?
— A bit of investigating, adding up…
A journalist. The beginning of the end. He was looking at the house from a distance.