of State’.
***
In the summer of 1975, Mary discovered that she was pregnant. We were delighted, even more so when she came back from the hospital one day with the news that she was expecting twins. It had been confirmed by a scan and she even had a little black and white photograph showing them in her womb. I spent the next two months showing anyone who would look the little photo and felt really proud of myself. Father Duffy, our local priest, told us that ‘this is God’s way of rewarding you for past pain and suffering’. Then, a few weeks before Christmas and a month before the babies were due, Mary was admitted to hospital in severe pain. Dr Martin was in charge of her treatment and he organised some kind of injection so that the babies would stay in her womb and not be born prematurely, at which point she went into renal failure and a helicopter was placed on standby to take her to a hospital in Belfast. During the night the babies were born and immediately placed in incubators because they were very weak and gravely ill. The two little boys were christened in the morning by the visiting priest. Little William and Thomas Carlin were fighters, and Mary sat by their incubators and prayed that God would not take them from us. Sadly, they died that afternoon and left us all devastated. It was a horrific replay of how we had lost little Sharon back in England years earlier. I could not believe or comprehend that it was happening to us all over again.
In the mourning period after the boys were buried it struck me that I had been back in Derry since 1974 with little to show in terms of my new job gathering intelligence. Over the first twelve months of my new undercover career I only met with Alan three times, and I still wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing. This feeling reached frustration point by early 1977, when things appeared to quieten down in Derry. But it was only a brief hiatus of inaction for me. Alan and MI5 knew that we had a telephone in our hall and I had mentioned that the Fleming family would often ask to use it to speak to family and friends at home and abroad. My handler provided a mini tape recorder, which was slotted into the phone, and it would record the Flemings and another republican family as they talked about IRA bombs in England and how the Provisional’s economic warfare would ‘make the Brits sit up and notice us a thousand times more than any bombs exploding in the centre of Derry’.
Another handler, ‘Andy’, eventually took over Alan’s role and let it be known that the strategy of bombing economic and strategic targets – particularly in London – was the brainchild of Martin McGuinness. However, the IRA’s strategy was not solely confined to planting bombs in large English cities. By 1977, the organisation was moving into a ‘leftist/anti-capitalist’ phase when it also targeted rich industrialists and multinationals on the island of Ireland. Some were to be kidnapped, especially in the Republic, while others in the North would be assassinated. Even more than McGuinness, his partner in the axis dominating Northern Command, Gerry Adams, had fallen under the influence of ultra-leftist Trotskyite thinkers, who goaded the IRA into committing ‘anti-capitalist acts’ of terrorism. The net result was a number of squalid murders of businessmen, including the shooting dead of Jeffrey Agate, the managing director of the American multinational Du Pont, in Derry in February 1977. Du Pont wasn’t just a factory, it was a massive plant just outside Derry, spread over several acres overlooking Lough Foyle. They employed hundreds of workers, mostly Catholics, and brought in millions of pounds to the local economy. There had been a number of attacks on businessmen in the past, but the lRA’s justification for these was that they were either members of the UDR or worked with the RUC or British Army. Jeffrey Agate didn’t appear to fit any of these categories. This looked like another cock-up and I could just imagine the outcry that would follow, let alone the reaction of the RUC and the army in our area.
On the night of Jeffrey Agate’s murder I was at home when my neighbour, Colm Dorrity, appeared in my hallway with a young boy dressed only in a white shirt, black trousers and black shoes. He had no jacket and was visibly shaken, not to mention the fact that he was bitterly cold. He looked about seventeen years old. ‘Wullie,’ said Colm, ‘this wee man here is looking for your Doreen. He called at your father’s first and your father sent him over to you except he knocked on my door by mistake.’
Colm was anxious to leave so I said, ‘Okay, leave him with me.’ I showed the boy into our living room and Mary immediately rose to get him a blanket and some coffee. It soon became clear to me that this young boy must have been up to no good somewhere because he was from the Derry side and was totally lost. ‘I’m Willie and that’s Mary. What do you want me to call you?’
‘Everybody calls me Shorty.’
‘Shorty, you need to calm down and relax, you’re in safe hands now and I think you should stay here the night. We’ll get you sorted in the morning.’ Later, I got into bed and realised, ‘That wee man must have been involved in the explosion at Agate’s home and lost the team he was with.’ By the next morning, the news of Agate’s murder had reached London and across the world to the White House, given that Du Pont was American owned. On every TV and radio station north and south of the border, politicians and ordinary everyday people were demanding revenge for his murder. Ian Paisley added more fuel to the fire, threatening to bring Ulster to its knees by organising an impromptu loyalist workers’ strike.
The Peace Movement, which had marched with thousands of women in Belfast the previous year demanding an end to the war, was now talking openly of marching in Derry. The Bishop of Derry, Edward Daly, called Agate’s killers ‘cold blooded murderers with no sense of shame.’ Jimmy Carter, then President of the United States, speaking from the White House said, ‘Mr Agate’s murder was a senseless act on a businessman who represented an American Company and whose only crime was to bring employment to the city’. He added, ‘the manner of his death will only further divide communities in Northern Ireland and bring unwarranted shame on all good, decent Irish Americans.’ Trade Union representatives at the plant were planning to hold a protest strike. The only people who were silent were the IRA.
I decided to leave the house for a while and called London to let them know about my lodger. They viewed the matter with great concern and Andy agreed to fly over the next day and meet up with me in Portrush on the northern coast.
‘Well, well,’ said Andy, after I had explained everything to him, ‘this is going to be tricky. Look, Willie, you and I both know that it’s 99 per cent certain that this little shit was implicated in some way in the murder of Mr Agate. However, knowing it and proving it are two different things. Furthermore, how would you explain your house getting raided when it’s never been raided before?’
‘That’s easy,’ I replied. ‘All you need to do is arrange for every house in my block to be hit, starting with next door to me, and it will be thought that he was found by accident.’
‘Okay, and what do we do after the RUC charge you with harbouring a terrorist and implicate you in the murder? Sorry Willie, but you’re not thinking straight, so this guy gets off. While he’s under your stewardship and being monitored by the IRA, you’d better pray that the RUC don’t stumble over him or that some informer doesn’t give you away.’
After several hours discussing the matter it was decided that the information would be logged but not passed on because it could incriminate me and, worst of all, blow my cover, which London did not want. I was to get rid of Shorty as soon as possible, but only when it was safe in the eyes of the IRA. After that, Shorty could be picked up at some other time well away from me.
A week went by and we did our best for Shorty, but he was becoming a nuisance and a real pain in the arse. Deep inside he was a cocky wee shit who spent most of the time admiring himself in the mirror. He also had his fair share of drink every night and would often get very cheeky in our conversations. A few nights before he left us, he and I were having a beer and the conversation led to God and the church. He was slightly tipsy because he couldn’t really drink that much. Mary felt sorry for him no matter what he’d done, because as far as she was concerned he was some mother’s son. As a keep safe, she had bought
