Dead Man Running: A True Story of a Secret Agent's Escape from the IRA and MI5

by McGartland, Martin

  Before setting off for Belfast I had reread Ian Phoenix’s diaries which explained in some detail how he and other members of the Northern Ireland police counter-surveillance team were aware before I set off to Connolly House for my ill-fated meeting that I was to be interrogated by the IRA’s feared Civil Administration Team. They knew before I started out on my journey that morning in August 1991 that I was to be ‘kidnapped’ by the IRA. Phoenix’s diaries made plain that he had been made aware what was to happen to me – that I was to be ‘debriefed’ by the Civil Administration Team. I reread that sentence time and again because I had never been told that I was to be debriefed by the ruthless IRA interrogators, euphemistically entitled the Civil Administration Team. In fact, my SB handlers had encouraged me to attend that meeting after having taken advice from their senior officers. I had such faith in Felix that I agreed to attend the meeting because he said they would be watching me every step of the way with a full back-up surveillance unit in attendance.

  If I had not believed that I was to be chaperoned in this way I would never for one moment have agreed to attend that meeting with Podraig Wilson, the head of IRA discipline throughout Belfast, the man who decided who should receive a punishment beating and who should be kneecapped. I had, of course, known that if the IRA had discovered I was a Special Branch source I would be taken before the organisation’s Civil Administration Team to face questioning, deep interrogation, torture and a bullet in the back of the head.

  My handlers had never given me a single reason why I should go to Connolly House that day to see Podraig Wilson and yet they had encouraged me to attend as though I had no option. Having read Detective Superintendent Ian Phoenix’s diaries I knew that the SB and members of the all-powerful Tasking Co-ordination Group which comprised senior officers from MI5, the SAS, the Special Branch, the ‘Det’ (military specialist surveillance unit), the RUC and the British Army knew I was to face the IRA’s most ruthless interrogators. And yet no one had warned me, no one had given me a chance to back out and no one had offered or even suggested to me that I had a choice. No one had told me that I was taking the most enormous risk in going to Connolly House; no one had said that I could skip the meeting at the Sinn Fein headquarters; no one had told me that I was to face the IRA torturers and no one had suggested that I might prefer to be taken out of Belfast to a safe haven outside Northern Ireland.

  As the Sea-Cat bounced across the water I felt despondent and bitter that I had been treated so despicably after all I had tried to do to help people in Belfast. It made me feel physically sick that anyone, let alone the people I had risked my neck for, could have handed me over to the IRA knowing I faced interrogation, torture and certain death. But that had been the reality facing me. Now I wanted to expose the evil shits that could have done that to me and reveal them for what they were.

  In his diaries Phoenix had revealed that he believed that a (SB) surveillance team saw me leaving Connolly House only a short time after entering the building, and that he had been informed that later I had been observed by the surveillance team on the spot walking across the road to the Busy Bee shopping complex. Ian Phoenix then wrote; ‘The surveillance team was mistaken. The informer had been snatched from the Busy Bee car park, bound and gagged, and whisked to a flat in nearby Twinbrook. There he was guarded by two Provisionals who were waiting for the arrival of the CAT interrogators.’

  To me, it seemed extraordinary that Ian Phoenix, one of the top 25 anti-terrorist intelligence officers in Northern Ireland, should have written so inaccurately of my kidnapping. When he wrote his diaries he must have had access to the latest, most thoroughly detailed account of what really happened to me. Within weeks of leap from the window I had given a detailed account to the Special Branch of exactly what occurred. Phoenix had apparently totally ignored the SB accounts. But why? It just didn’t make sense that such a senior officer as Detective Superintendent Phoenix should have written such an inaccurate account. And it wasn’t that he didn’t care about me, treating me as some run-of-the-mill informant, for he acknowledged in his book that I was one of the Special Branch’s best spies.

  When RUC officers came to interview me about my abduction I had been told by Special Branch handlers not to say a word to the CID officers of the RUC, to tell them nothing whatsoever about what happened to me that day or the names or descriptions of the IRA men who had taken and held me. Even at the time I thought that advice was strange. I wanted those bastards caught, charged, convicted and jailed and I wondered why the hell I was being advised not to help bring them to justice. Senior Special Branch officers told me that I should simply say that I could remember nothing of the incidents immediately before, during or after my kidnap ordeal. But I had always taken the advice of the Branch throughout my career and, as a consequence, I naturally decided to take their advice on this occasion.

  All these thoughts were racing around my mind as we drew closer to Belfast. They just made me realise that I had to be fucking careful during my stay in the city, making sure I steered clear of both the IRA and any of the forces of law and order because I figured that if I was caught and held no one in Britain knew of my secret trip back to my old haunts and the powers that be, who seemingly had been happy to see me abducted and taken away for harsh interrogation, could do what they wanted with me. The thought sent a chill down my spine because I now believed their real intention was to have me killed.

  Before making the final decision to undertake the fateful trip to Belfast I had spent sleepless nights trying to determine whether everything that Mike had told me was true. I could not find a single reason why Mike should travel to the mainland and inform me of the circumstances surrounding my abduction. At first I hadn’t been convinced of the story he was telling me but the more I thought of what happened to me, the more sense it made. In fact, I could find nothing to challenge his reasoning and the very fact that it seemed I had been sacrificed made me both angry and sad. I wasn’t fearful but angry, a deep sense of injustice driving me onwards to prove that someone, either MI5, the RUC, the TCG or, heaven forbid, my friends at Special Branch, had been responsible for organising my kidnap and probable death.

  There was only one major problem. I could not work out the identity of the man MI5 feared I might accidentally betray to the IRA commanders and yet, according to Mike, I knew the man. I thought of all the likely people and then realised none of them appeared to fit the category of a vital intelligence source. Perhaps I would discover that during the time I planned to stay in Belfast.

  Throughout my years working for the Branch I had only come across one man who had openly challenged my role as a Special Branch source – and that was a Chief Inspector whose first name was John, a Special Branch officer whom I had previously never met. In October 1990 I was attending a Special Branch meeting at an SB safe house on the outskirts of Belfast which was attended by two of my handlers and three other senior Branch officers. Chief Inspector John was sitting in the room with one other officer when we arrived. Throughout the hour-long meeting the Chief Inspector seemed to spend most of the time closely watching me as he listened to our conversation. He hardly spoke a word and I was very suspicious as to why he was sitting in on the meeting.

  I knew that room in the safe house had been wired so that senior intelligence officers could listen to conversations without being seen by the informants being debriefed by their handlers. As Inspector John had nothing or very little to offer to the discussion I wondered why he was staying in the room throughout the meeting and his presence confused and worried me. His eyes hardly ever seemed to leave me, inspecting me up and down, watching my face, deliberately making sure his presence was of real importance. He was making me feel uncomfortable.

  At the end of the meeting I got up to leave as usual, intending to make my way to the back of the house where I knew a closed van was parked only inches from the back door. This was so that when I stepped from the house to the van I could not identify in which road or street or area
the meeting had taken place. But as I walked towards the door of the meeting-room Chief Inspector John moved forwards towards me, deliberately blocking my way.

  He started joking, saying, ‘Well, Marty, it’s nice to meet you after hearing so much about you.’

  I had no wish to prolong this conversation and mumbled ‘Thanks’ as I went to walk past him and out of the room.

  Inspector John suddenly said, ‘By the way, Marty,’ and I turned towards him. As I did so he pulled a hand-gun – I’m sure it was a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver – from his jacket, which took me aback. No one had ever played such a trick on me in the dozens of times I had spent in various SB safe houses around Belfast.

  In that instant I was convinced he was about to shoot me. I thought he was a madman and for some reason he was about to kill me. It was just the way he had sat there throughout the meeting, watching my every movement. I looked at his face and I realised he was smiling. ‘Fuck,’ I thought, ‘he’s not a madman after all. I’m okay.’

  ‘Here, Marty,’ he said smiling, handing me the gun, giving me the pistol grip while he held the barrel.

  I thought it was a friendly gesture; a light-hearted joke, knowing that I spent most of my life amongst IRA men. ‘Thanks,’ I said, a smile on my face as I went along with the joke, pretending to take the gun from him.

  Though I am naturally right-handed I stretched out my left hand to take the gun. He snatched it away, a look of ferocity on his face, and rushed out of the room shouting to my SB handlers who had been in the room during the meeting, ‘Come here, come quickly.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I heard Felix shout as he ran back towards the room he had just left.

  ‘He’s that gunman, Marty’s our man,’ Inspector John shouted.

  ‘What gunman?’ Felix asked, unable to grasp what the hell was going on.

  ‘You know, you know,’ screamed Inspector John, seemingly in a state of frenzy. ‘The fuckin’ PIRA one, the baby-faced left-handed one, the gunman with red hair who shot those boys in Belfast centre.’

  I recalled two appalling shootings in the centre of Belfast in 1990; two officers shot in the back of the head as they passed through security gates near the Falls Road in broad daylight and another two RUC officers, dog-handlers, who were shot dead as they sat in an unmarked van in High Street, Belfast, three months later. RUC investigations had led them to believe the same PIRA gunman had been responsible. I knew the Special Branch put a priority of tracing gunmen who shoot RUC officers in daylight in the centre of Belfast.

  ‘No, no, no,’ shouted Felix, ‘you’ve got it all wrong . . . calm down . . . for fuck’s sake calm down . . . you’re talking a load of fuckin’ nonsense . . . have you taken leave of your senses . . . I know Marty . . . I know him well . . . he’s no PIRA gunman.’

  I was surprised to hear Felix talking to a Chief Inspector in that tone of voice for the Inspector was a higher rank. I had never seen Felix in such a rage but I admired him, and was very, very happy that he was sticking up for me.

  But Inspector John kept interrupting Felix, telling him to shut up, screaming at him to listen to what he had to say. Raising his voice again, he kept shouting, ‘I know he is . . . he took my gun with his left hand . . . and his hair . . . it’s red . . . it’s like that PIRA man. Jesus, don’t you realise that we’ve been using a fuckin’ PIRA gunman as an informer?’

  As the Inspector continued to rant and rage, convinced that I was the left-handed PIRA gunman, Felix grabbed him roughly by the arm and pulled him away from the room and down the corridor, helped by other SB officers who had come running as the shouting match had raged on. Within seconds the Inspector was out of the house. I would never see him again. Felix came back into the room a couple of minutes later and apologised for what had happened.

  ‘I’m sorry, Marty, I don’t know what got into him,’ he said. ‘I honestly think the poor bastard’s cracking up. He was more like a madman than the rational, sensible RUC officer I’ve known for years.’

  I heard later that Chief Inspector John had been reprimanded by a senior SB officer and told never again to attend SB briefings with informants without permission. The extraordinary fracas had upset me more than I realised at the time. I could not believe that such a senior officer would react in that way towards me when I had been working for the SB for nearly three years. I took Felix’s advice and out it down to stress but it still seemed crazy that such a senior officer should be permitted to continue his work in that frame of mind.

  The nearer the Sea-Cat came towards Belfast the more tense I became until I saw the big office blocks and major buildings of Belfast fast approaching and then, for some unknown reason, the view gave me a sense of safety, of returning home and seeing all the old familiar haunts and faces around West Belfast. Then as I saw the armed RUC officers with their black flak jackets standing on the quay my former life came hurtling back to me, wiping the smile off my face. I wondered if I would have any difficulty disembarking because I knew the terminal was always guarded not only by RUC and SB personnel, only some of whom patrolled in uniform. I knew also that an array of security cameras were constantly watched by police inside the terminal building. I understood it was common practice for Special Branch officers to ask people to step aside to provide an ID or a current driving licence to prove their real identity. On this occasion, however, it seemed that no one, including me, was stopped and asked to produce an ID. I was confident that I would have passed any checks because the only identification I was carrying was my English driving licence in the name of Martin David Ashe, the new identity given to me on my relocation to the mainland. Indeed, I would never have thought of returning to Belfast to undertake the task I was now facing if I had not had the protection of a new name and new ID. It would have been suicidal.

  I walked off the ferry, holding the little baby once again, and handed the child to a woman who was waiting to greet her friend. I happily handed over the baby and the woman, who had a Belfast accent, thanked me. I walked to a car rental office less than ten minutes from the terminal and drove away in a nearly new red Vauxhall Vectra. I told the girl in the office that I expected to be in Northern Ireland for a few days but did not know the exact date I would return the vehicle.

  ‘That’s all right, sir,’ she replied. ‘Bring it back whenever. If you’re going to keep it more than a week though, will you phone to let us know?’

  ‘Aye, of course I will,’ I replied, ‘but I can’t see me staying more than a week.’

  I drove out of Belfast on the M2, past Antrim and on to the A6 heading towards Derry. I was driving towards a little farmhouse where I hoped and prayed an old friend of mine still lived. Peggy was a dear friend, well past 60 years of age, a woman who lived alone off the beaten track with only two cats and a few chickens for company. She was small, even petite. Her hair was grey, going on white, and her face was lined. But she had a ready smile and was the sweetest natured woman I had ever known. I had met her some years earlier, around 1990, when I was working for the SB and driving my IRA alleged ‘mates’ around Belfast trying to win their confidence. I had been driving from Derry back to Belfast when I saw Peggy standing at the side of the road by an ancient Ford Escort. She didn’t flag me down or make any sign but I guessed she was in trouble and needed help and so I drove past, stopped and walked back towards her.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

  ‘My car’s stopped,’ she said, ‘and I can’t get it going again.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘I was driving along and suddenly the engine slowed and the car began chugging along until it finally cut out and I pulled into the side. I’ve tried starting it but nothing happens,’ she said. ‘Do you know anything about cars?’

  ‘Aye, a little,’ I said. ‘I’ll take a look but I can’t promise.’

  ‘Oh don’t put yourself out,’ she said. ‘You must be far too busy.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I replied. ‘I might get it to work enough
for you to get to a garage.’

  As I opened the bonnet to see what I could do she went on, ‘Are you sure you don’t mind? You’re very kind.’

  I tried to start the engine but to no avail. After looking under the bonnet for a couple of minutes I decided to take off the distributor cap. Inside I discovered damp and presumed that was the problem. I told her it seemed the cap must have been cracked and damp had seeped in, and advised her that I might be able to get the car started but that she must immediately take the car to a garage and get it checked. In the meantime, I took a cloth from the car and dried the inside of the distributor cap, fixed it back on and turned over the engine. It sparked to life and I knew it would survive a short journey.

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said. ‘It’s not many people who stop to help old people nowadays.

  ‘Will you be all right now?’ I asked, sensing that she still seemed a little uncertain whether my mechanical skills would survive for long.