Fifty Dead Men Walking

by McGartland, Martin

  I would no longer use Dean’s name during phone conversations because he believed the time had come for us to both operate under aliases. From now on I would always refer to him as ‘Felix’, and he would always refer to me during phone calls by my new code name ‘Carol’. He told me always to use his new name ‘Felix’ so that I would not make a mistake if emergencies arose. At first, it seemed odd using the new names but after a few days I became used to it.

  ‘Well done,’ Felix said, ‘leave it to us.’

  I told him that I intended to check out the Major’s house that night and report back to Davy Adams the following day.

  I drove in my car, which was still fitted with the tracker device, to the Cregagh address and, though lights were on in the house, I could see no sign of the motorbike. It was possible that his bike could have been kept in a shed at the back of the house which was just visible from the road, but it would have been too risky to check that night without arousing suspicion. I considered it highly likely that the Major might hear me as I made my way to the shed to check its contents.

  I reported back to Davy Adams and he told me to continue surveillance of the house. He also gave me £30 in cash as petrol allowance. During the next few days, I checked the Cregagh house on a number of occasions but never saw the motorbike. Then, on afternoon I saw a man riding a powerful motorbike along the street where the Major lived. I took the registration number and gave all the details to Davy. He told me later that I had indeed targeted the right man.

  A few days after that, Davy said he would arrange a meeting for me with another IRA member, one of their gunmen, who would be taking over the operation. We met under cover of darkness at the Bull Ring shops on the Ballymurhy Estate.

  The gunman, clean-shaven with fair hair, was nearly six feet tall, with a strong muscular body and in his mid-20s. He took me to a nearby house where we met a third IRA man, a skinny, scruffy-looking fellow who hardly said a word throughout the 20-minute meeting.

  ‘Have you looked at this job, Marty?’ the fair-haired man asked.

  ‘Aye,’ I replied, ‘I’ve been keeping the place under surveillance for more than a week.’

  ‘What’s your thoughts about it?’

  I told him that I had checked out the house on many occasions but had only seen the man once, as he was riding his bike along the street.

  ‘Would it easy for us to get to get away if we arranged a car?’

  I told him straight, ‘No chance, there’s too many RUC in the area.’

  In fact, I knew it would have been easy for an IRA squad to shoot the man in the street, and make their escape, but I had to play for time. I knew there was a possibility that if I gave the go-ahead, those two hit men might go out that night to shoot the Major. I knew I had to warn Felix if the man’s life was to be saved.

  After several minutes, I gathered that the gunman had decided not to risk an attack on the Major near his home, but to hijack a car and wait for him to pull up at some convenient traffic lights. One man would drive the car while the other would hide under a blanket in the back seat, an AK-47 at the ready. When the driver decided that the moment was right, he would tell the gunman, who would sit up and spray the Major on his motorcycle with a full magazine.

  Within 30 minutes of leaving the house, I phoned Felix and told him of the IRA’s plan to assassinate the Major. I also told him I had no idea when the IRA gunman planned to strike.

  Later, I was informed that the targeted man was indeed a UDR Major who worked in the Tyrone area. As a result of the information I passed to the SB, the man’s life had been saved. That made me feel good and inspired me to continue working for the IRA so that I could continue to pass intelligence material to the Special Branch. I also realised that I felt a buzz of adrenalin, an excitement, now that I had succeeded in infiltrating the IRA’s intelligence unit and dealt with their top men, at the same time as working with the Special Branch.

  It may seem unbelievable, but at that time the thought that I might have been taking extraordinary risks hardly ever crossed my mind. To me, it had become a job that I had to carry out. So I did it.

  Davy Adams would not be the only person who briefed me. My pal, Harry Fitzsimmons, would also occasionally ask me to carry out intelligence work, checking on someone the IRA planned to target.

  One day, Davy told me they were interested in a UDR man who worked in the Antrim UDR base, drove a silver Nissan Sunny hatchback and lived in Springfarm, and Antrim housing estate a short drive from the base. They planned to put a booby-trap bomb – known in the IRA as a ‘charge’ – under his car. At one stage, I was asked to check out the man, but before being given the go-ahead I was moved to another job. Fortunately, I had discovered sufficient details about the man for the Special Branch to be able to identify him. Sometime later, Felix told me that the RUC had managed to identify the office concerned and immediately moved him to a new address.

  On another occasion, An IRA man was driving his wife along Tennant Street off the Protestant Shankill Road when he saw a silver Mark IV Ford Escort pull out of the RUC station, drive into the Shankill and park outside the TSB. The IRA’s Commanding Officer told him to make checks during the following few days but the man never appeared. They decided to make another check at the same time as the original sighting, about 2.30 on a Friday afternoon.

  Around 2.30pm the following Friday, the same man appeared in his Escort, drove to the TSB and parked for about ten minutes before returning to Tennant Street RUC base. The IRA man noted that when the RUC man returned to his car, he neglected to check under his vehicle to see whether a booby trap had been planted. One of the golden rules that every RUC man was encouraged to carry out was to check under his vehicle for bombs, each and every time he got into a vehicle.

  I was detailed to drive the IRA man, who had been tasked to plant the charge, to the bank so that he could make one last check of the location. The plan was to carry out the bombing the following Friday. I notified the SB and they warned the RUC man of the danger. The next Friday, the IRA active service unit was driven to the bank, armed with a 1.5lb Semtex magnet bomb, enough to severely damage the car, killing the occupants and probably injuring any passers-by. But to their annoyance, the Ford Escort never appeared.

  I would sometimes pass on information that I happened to hear whenever I was with other IRA men from other active service units, perhaps in a bar, a club, or maybe travelling together in a vehicle. At first, IRA members were reticent to talk in front of me because they weren’t sure of my background and whether I could be trusted. But the more they saw me hanging around with men they could trust, and the fact that Davy Adams himself wanted me as part of his intelligence unit, helped tremendously to give me the credibility I needed to infiltrate the very heart of the IRA network.

  The IRA had worked the ‘cell system’ for years so that members only knew for certain that those in their cell were trusted IRA men. In this way, of course, if one member of a cell was arrested he could only reveal details of his own cell and no other. That kept to a minimum the possibility of agents infiltrating the network and gaining information across the whole hierarchy of the organisation.

  However, having been brought into the organisation as part of the intelligence wing, I came into contact with numerous IRA men from many different cells. And because of my role, they automatically came to trust me in a very short time. By accident, I had fallen into a most privileged position of trust which provided me with an extraordinary range of contacts, all involved in carrying out the IRA’s dirty work. As a result, they would often speak in my presence of planned targets, murders, bombings and future operations before final decisions had been made. More importantly, it provided the Special Branch with a remarkable early-warning system.

  Sometimes, I would take the opportunity, with one or two other IRA members, to practise shooting with carious types of weapons; AK-47s, 9mm hand-guns and Smith & Wesson .38 Specials. After dark, we would place scouts at street corners and fire th
e weapons at targets on a blank wall on an estate where we knew we were safe from RUC and Army patrols. I realised that practising with live ammunition with known IRA members would further help to guarantee my reputation as a staunch IRA man. Within a few months of officially joining the organisation, my credibility as a trusted member had been secured.

  Such close relationships with so many different IRA cells would pay dividends throughout the years I was working inside the IRA. On one occasion, a chance remark saved the lives of two RUC men who were on foot patrol in Upper Antrim Road, near Glengormly, North Belfast. I was in a house waiting to see someone and I overheard two IRA men discussing the operation. They had been watching the spot for some time and believed it would be an ideal location for a bomb attached to a command wire, blowing up the RUC men with little or no danger of being caught. They also had a secure escape route.

  I phoned Felix and warned him of the planned attack, although I had no idea at that time when the attack was due to take place. The RUC stopped patrolling the area for a few weeks but then restarted foot patrols. One evening, I heard on the radio that a bomb had gone off at the location I had targeted.

  On another occasion, Harry Fitzsimmons and other IRA men were planning to execute a 26-year-old Protestant, Lee Samuel Livingstone, who lived over the peace line not far from my mother’s home. They believed he was responsible, among others, for a rocket and gun attack on the Sinn Fein Centre in the republican Ardoyne.

  The plan was for an IRA active service unit to attack his house one night, break in and shoot him in his bed. I informed the SB and the man was alerted and advised to move house. However, the IRA has a long memory and two years later another IRA unit decided to ambush Livingstone as he walked to work. By luck and incompetence on the part of the Ballymurphy IRA, Livingstone escaped and, to make matters worse, the two gunmen were seen and identified by passers-by. They were arrested, charged and sentenced to long jail terms.

  But my daily routine wasn’t totally dominated by my double life. My first son, Martin, was born on Sunday, 4 February 1990, in Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital. Angie was wonderfully happy and young Martin helped to cement our relationship.

  But the fact that Angie was now spending most of the time at home with young Martin meant that she would meet those IRA members who would call at my house for a meeting or just a chat. At first, of course, she believed that the young men who were dropping by for a cup of coffee were just friends, but Angie was nobody’s fool. A few weeks after Martin’s birth Angie realised that I had become a member of the IRA for she had recognised some of the visitors as members of the organisation.

  When I had first met Angela, she had been very supportive towards the IRA and told me on a few occasions that she had considered becoming a member. After she became pregnant, however, her views changed and she did not like the thought of her partner risking his freedom and maybe his life by joining the organisation. At no time, however, did Angie ever have the slightest idea that I was also working with the Special Branch.

  One evening, when I called to see Davy Adams, he signalled me to follow him into the garden.

  ‘Marty,’ he said, ‘I want you to come and meet someone, a good friend of mine.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Gilley,’ he replied.

  I had not the slightest idea who Gilley was, but I was happy to go along, curious as to his identity and, more importantly, why Davy Adams would want me to meet him.

  I drove Davy to Lenadoon Estate in Suffolk, and parked the car in a little car park reserved for the residents of the nearby houses. We walked through a couple of streets, down a back lane and Davy stopped by a gate. He looked around him before putting his hand inside the gate, flicking open the latch and walking into the back yard of a terraced house.

  A young woman with a baby opened the door and motioned for us to come into the kitchen. Then a man in his 30s, whom I recognised as Brian Gillen, one of the IRA’s top commanders, walked into the room. The two men immediately began speaking in Gealic and, although I did not speak a word of the language, I could tell they were both fluent.

  After a few seconds chat, Gillen introduced himself to me and we shook hands. ‘I’m Brian,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘How are you doing?’ I asked, not sure how I should address him.

  Davy said, ‘This is Marty, the man I’ve been telling you about. He’s a good lad. I wanted you to meet him because I was thinking of him for the new job that’s coming up.’

  This was news to me. No mention had been made to me of any new role or new job.

  Gillen looked at me and said, ‘Hey, Marty, I hope you’re not working for the fucking Branch.’

  Somehow, I reacted so quickly I surprised myself. ‘For fuck sake, are you mad? I exclaimed.

  The two burst out laughing and I joined in the joke, hoping that I didn’t laugh too nervously. The immediate danger had been averted, but I’m sure I must’ve flushed red.

  Ten minutes later, Davy and I left the house and returned to our car using the same route. I dropped Davy at his house and immediately went to see Jimmy and Steve, two IRA members with whom I had become friendly over the previous few months.

  ‘Do you know who I’ve just met, Jimmy?’ I said to my mate.

  ‘Don’t tell me, the Prime Minister,’ he said and roared with laughter at his joke.

  ‘Brian Gillen,’ I said, wondering what their reaction would be.

  ‘Fuck, you mean Carrot Head,’ he said. ‘What the hell were you doing with him?’

  ‘Why do you call him Carrot Head?’ I asked naively.

  ‘Because of his bright red hair, of course.’

  I had come to visit my two mates to find out more about Brian Gillen. I knew a little about him because Felix had mentioned his name on a number of occasions and shown me photographs. But I had no idea just how important he was in the IRA hierarchy.

  In the hope of gaining more information, I asked, ‘Why did Davy Adams want me to drive to the other side of Belfast just to meet him?’

  ‘Do you know what Gillen does?’ Stevie asked.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘Should I?’

  ‘Gillen is to be the new head of the Belfast Brigade, one of the most important people in the whole organisation,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Shit, I didn’t realise that. I thought Spud was still the boss.’

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘Spud’s been given the boot. He’s no longer the top man, but he’s still operating.’

  ‘What the fuck happened?’ I asked.

  I knew, of course, that both Stevie, an experienced IRA gunman, and Jimmy, known throughout IRA circles as a ruthless bomber, would know exactly what had happened to Spud and the reasons why.

  Stevie said, ‘He got the boot for misusing IRA funds.’

  Later, I asked Davy Adams the same question about Spud. He told me, ‘It’s true; Spud did get demoted. I heard within the IRA that Spud had stolen IRA money.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Davy replied, ‘he never stole any money. Basically, Spud’s a good lad and a very dedicated volunteer. He was simply using the IRA’s funds too liberally. Activists were asking him for £200 for an operation and he would give them £250 instead. He was just being too generous with the funds and his bosses thought he was behaving in a reckless way. That’s the reason he was demoted. If he had stolen the money, he would have been for the high jump.’

  The following day I spoke to Felix and told him about my meeting with Brian Gillen and the news of his promotion. He seemed excited by the news and, meeting top IRA men like Adams and Gillen and bringing Special Branch such valuable information. Changes at the top of the IRA were of extreme importance to the Special Branch and the other government secret services like MI5. He explained to me that Gillen had been jailed for ten years back in the 1970s, having been convicted of being a member of a bombing team and possessing explosives and a gun.

  I continued to work with Davy Ada
ms and after a few weeks he encouraged me to meet him at least once a day, not necessarily to discuss new operations but simply to chat to him. He also enjoyed telling me something of the history of the IRA and the gallant deeds former heroes carried out both before and after World War II. He would also talk to me about his wife and kids, but what impressed me most was the amount of attention he paid to his appearance, always immaculate in well-pressed trousers, a smart shirt and, often, a fancy waistcoat. His beard was always neatly trimmed, his hair perfectly combed. Usually, before leaving the house, he would stand in front of the mirror and preen himself, checking his hair and his beard, his clothes and his shoes.

  ‘How do I look, Marty?’ he would say as he looked at himself in the mirror. Before I could reply he would continue, ‘Good; isn’t this the business; don’t I look nice tonight, Marty?’ as he showed me a new shirt or new pair of trousers. Some IRA members called him ‘Swallow-the-Piano’ because his white teeth looked so perfectly even and brushed – he would smile frequently, revealing his teeth, snow-white in contrast to his full black beard, so that one could easily understand how he had earned his nickname.

  In many ways, I respected Davy Adams. He was a true IRA man, absolutely dedicated to the cause. And I always found him scrupulously honest. Although he would always have several hundred pounds of IRA money at his home at any one time, he would be meticulous in dividing his own money from IRA funds. Indeed, he would make me smile whenever he told me how he was saving his dole money so that he could buy a new shirt the following week. Sometimes he would ask me to loan him £20 for a few days and I would happily do so. And, as soon as he had any money, he would repay me.

  Sunday, however, would always be sacrosanct for Davy Adams. He would reserve every Sunday for his friends and his mates, and not necessarily IRA members. On a number of occasions, he invited me, but the fact that I didn’t drink and would quickly become bored sitting around pubs and clubs while others drank meant that I didn’t often go along.