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—The bomb is the weapon of the poor, Jim would say in defence.

Drunk one day, he said that a planter of bombs was a planter of questions. The pub had laughed. I hadn’t. The bomb doesn’t kill, it desecrates the body. It dismembers and mangles it. I’m not even sure that the soul survives.

I called Waldner on 5 November 2006. Meeting at the cemetery, at our patriot’s graveside. I had something for him, but I wanted him to reiterate his commitments. He was looking at me with interest. No arrests? Okay. We had already spoken about that. Did he promise? He promised.

—The IRA are preparing something for 11 November.

The MI5 agent paled. Without thinking, he straightened the red poppy adorning his lapel, the paper flower honouring the soldiers who died during World War I.

—What, something?

—An attack. During the ceremony.

The commemoration was set to take place at eleven o’clock. The bomb would be detonated at half-eleven, during the speech. It wouldn’t hit anyone, but its noise would drown out the event.

—Where will it be planted?

—No. I’m not giving you the unit, just the bomb.

There wasn’t much risk involved. A ruined house at the bottom of the Falls Road. Three bins hidden under rubble. Even if the IRA had lookouts, it wouldn’t intervene. We didn’t engage in combat to save material.

—You’re not taking a risk? Waldner asked me.

I was touched. I was no longer simply a victim of his blackmail, but also someone for whom he felt concern.

—Don’t you conduct routine raids on ruins?

—Day and night, smiled the Englishman.

—The IRA will just think you’ve got some damned luck.

Waldner was in a hurry to be off. He was feverish. He held out his hand to me, genuinely. The way one treats an equal.

On leaving him I felt something strange. I have never admitted it to myself, but that day, and for a few hours afterwards, I had a feeling of pride. Giving three bombs to the enemy wasn’t threatening our future. I was fighting death, and reassuring those who thought they were in charge of me.

That evening, in the pub, I forgot the traitor.

—It’s a pleasure to see you on form, Tyrone, an old friend said to me.

When I got back, Sheila and I made love, laughing.

The following day, 6 November, I went to buy her flowers and one of the rose-scented candles that a Traveller used to sell on Castle Street. On the way back, I saw Jim with Manus and Brenda, two youngsters who had joined us during the hunger strikes. Jim gave me a wink. Manus had just got his driving licence. The bomb-maker wanted to try him out for the transportation. Brenda smiled at me. After Bobby Sands’s death, she had asked me how she could be of use. The three were heading towards the hiding place. If the British had operated during the night as planned, the IRA would find nothing but their boot marks in the dust.

I took a collective taxi. I was carefree. A schoolgirl asked me if I had a light. Then if I had a cigarette. I laughed. A kid from our way, shameless, chin high and fists on her hips.

I went back up towards the house. As I passed its door, a local pub whispered something to me that I liked the sound of. I was about to go in, my hand on the brass handle, when everything boomed. A huge crash, farther down on Divis Street. The street stopped. I was stunned. A black smoke was rising behind the towers. People started running towards the fire. Black taxis made U-turns while beeping at people to get in and come to the aid of any victims. In Belfast, people don’t flee from misery, they go and help those who have been hurt.

—A fucking bomb! cursed the owner of the pub as he stepped on to the street.

I wobbled. I saw the three of them again. Jim, Manus, Brenda. The attempt they were making to appear innocent.

No arrests, Waldner had said. And that bollocks had kept his word.

Jim O’Leary, Manus Brody and Brenda Conlon died welded together. Remains of their flesh that were stuck together in the fire had to be separated. The IRA explained that the person in charge of its unit had suffered a handling error. It wasn’t true. Our headquarters knew it, but didn’t want to acknowledge the technological reversal.

I was maddened with rage. I questioned Waldner, the red-haired handler, all the bastards who thought they employed me. The RUC officer talked to me. So that I’d calm down, continue to inform for them, stop making a racket. A bomb disposal unit had gone into the house during the night with four SAS agents. They hadn’t lifted the explosives, but simply studied their detonating device. They were expecting a complex modulation system, responding to encoded impulses. What they came across was an unprotected system, a radio transmitter you’d find on any remote-controlled car. The bomb frequency was open to interfering signals.

—Mallory is too sure of himself, that’ll be his undoing, a soldier sighed.

They put the equipment back, removed all traces of their footprints and put the house under surveillance from a Divis Flats rooftop. Then they waited for the unit to go back to work before sending out their transmitter, disguised as an ice-cream van. Linked to a helicopter that was hovering overhead, it scanned a large spectrum of radio frequencies, searching for the switch that would activate the device. The operation should have taken less than an hour. Any longer and the British had decided to withdraw. Too dangerous. With those mournful chimes, ice-cream vans are always stormed by children, but this one was driving around like a silent marauder. A guy painting his fence noticed it passing twice. The third time, he went over to question the driver.

That’s when the bomb exploded, triggered by the British. A thick black smoke. Shouting. And those projectiles raining down, crushing everything they hit.

—It’s not a handler like me who decides what to do with your information, the redhead said.

—You killed three people!

—It was their bomb. Not ours.

Waldner said the same thing. He was sorry. The British services had discovered that the IRA had never intended to put the device in a car park, but to break through the doors of City Hall with a car bomb.

—That’s fucking bullshit! You’re lying!

—Your word against theirs, Meehan. If you’ll forgive me, I grant more credibility to my intelligence services than to yours. We took zero risk, that’s all.

I didn’t refuse the envelope he gave me, £150 for my taxi and the inconvenience.

I walked for a long time. I went through hostile neighbourhoods, hoping to put an end to it. I took off my jacket, rolled up my shirt sleeves. I flaunted my tattoos like someone giving the finger. The Irish flag, the Celtic cross and the figures ‘1916’ in black letters.

Nothing happened to me.

I had killed Danny. I had killed Jim and two of our children. I was no longer a traitor, I was an assassin. It was over. And there was no going back.

I have a fever. The day is taking its time to arrive. I am still waiting for that hint of light. My country makes me shiver, my land makes me ache. I no longer breathe, I drink. The beer is streaming in tears down my chest. I know they’re waiting. They will come. They are here. I will not move. I am in my father’s house. I will look them in the face, their eyes on mine, the one being shot offering forgiveness to his executioners.

My God, Mother, help me.

I am so afraid ...

EPILOGUE

Tyrone Meehan’s body was found by the Garda Síochána on Thursday, 5 April 2007, at three in the afternoon. He was lying on his belly, in the living room, in front of the fireplace. He was probably on his way back from the woods. There were branches scattered all around him. He was wearing his jacket and his scarf. His cap was on the ground.

His assassins forced the door open with a sledgehammer. He was shot three times with a 12-calibre buckshot rifle, a weapon used to hunt big game. The first blew off his left hand around the wrist, as if he’d tried to protect himself. The second hit him in the neck, taking off his right cheek and part of his shoulder. The third hit him in the abdomen.

The IRA immediately denied all responsibility for Tyrone Meehan’s death. And it was four years later, at Easter 2011, that a Republican group opposed to the peace process claimed responsibility for his ‘execution for treason’.

—He didn’t seem surprised to see us, recounted the two killers in balaclavas. He didn’t cry out, didn’t beg. He tried to run towards the bedroom, he slipped and fell. He was on the ground when we carried out the sentence.

Tyrone Meehan was buried on 14 April 2007 in Belfast City Cemetery, attended only by his family.

Today, Jack emigrated to New Zealand. He works in an Irish pub in Christchurch. And Sheila still lives at 16 Harrow Drive, Belfast.

AFTERWORD

‘A Wilderness of Mirrors’

Denis Donaldson has to be one the most famous (or should that be infamous?) spies of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. That is because of all the people in the IRA or Sinn Féin who might have been or are secretly working for the British, Denis Donaldson, a 35-year IRA veteran and a leadership loyalist of spaniel-type servility, would be at the bottom of most people’s list. And if Donaldson was a traitor then almost anyone could be. That was the message of his unmasking.

The circumstances of Donaldson’s outing as a spy in December 2005 suggest the British had thrown him to the wolves. Along with his son-in-law, he had been facing charges of involvement in a spy ring run by the IRA at the Stormont parliament during the final months of the peace-process negotiations. But the fact that the British chose to indict one of their own agents strongly suggests he was holding back vital intelligence. Bringing him to court was both an act of vengeance and a warning to others who might be tempted to follow suit. Once a traitor, always a traitor.

As the British knew full well when they charged him, the rules of evidence say that the prosecution had to share their knowledge of Donaldson with his co-accused and that included his career as a British spy. Once he was charged he was doomed. The spymaster turned traitor turned reluctant snitch was tossed into the sacrificial flames; it was the IRA’s very own wilderness of mirrors.

The delicacies and ambiguities of the peace process had, of course, shaped all this. Donaldson couldn’t be killed by the IRA because that would be a breach of the ceasefire and so instead he was exiled to a barren little cottage in the wilds of County Donegal with the hope that maybe some day he’d be allowed back. But someone wanted revenge. Four months later he was found dead inside the cottage, riddled with pellets from a shotgun, a weapon whose lack of ballistic singularity sparked a guessing game about his killers’ identity. Years later it emerged that IRA dissidents had been responsible but had stayed silent in the hope that their former comrades would get the blame.