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

suspiciously. I watched as he drove his car away to the other side of the docks and I lost him.
     
    ‘ Don’t worry,’ I said to myself, ‘remember you’re a lucky bastard. You’ve been in worse scrapes than this and you’ve always come up smelling of roses.’ I was dying for a hot cup of tea and, before checking in, went to the cafeteria. I could smell the hot food, the sizzling bacon, the hot toast but I had this nagging suspicion that if I ate now, rather than on the boat, I would tempt fate and never make my escape. So I sat in a corner, with my back to the wall watching the entrance to the cafe, checking in case the peelers had been alerted and were searching for me. I sat there for 15 minutes, drinking the sweet, hot tea slowly, relishing every sip. After ten minutes I guessed that the coast was clear for if I had been reported to the peelers as a suspicious character they would have been there with their guns in minutes. I was clean, carrying no weapon, and if they had come for me there was nothing I could have done but gone quietly. A smile crossed my lips as I finished my cuppa, gaining in confidence every second, knowing that my luck had held. If luck had gone against me I knew that I would now be in police custody replying to questions I had no wish to answer. I checked through my pockets, searching every one, pulling out the linings to make sure that I had no incriminating evidence on me; nothing bearing my old name, address, driving licence or credit card other than my English driving licence bearing my alias, Martin Ashe. But I was taking no chances. Throughout the 48 hours I was in Northern Ireland I kept the Ashe driving licence hidden in my waistband. If I had been stopped and taken in for questioning by the peelers I had no wish for them to discover my alias. I was clean. I just had £50 in notes on me and nothing else. It was time to go. Forty-five minutes later I stood in the shadow of the ship’s funnel and looked back at Larne docks as the ferry moved out into clear water, the seabirds squawking overhead, and a wonderful relief, a sense of freedom, surged through my heart. I went down to the cafe and ordered the meal I had dreamed of in the early hours of that morning as I lay beneath the hedge. Every mouthful tasted like heaven. As I drank my second cup of hot, sweet tea that morning, however, I became more serious, more sombre, as I realised that I was almost certain that an attempt had been made by British Intelligence to have me kidnapped and murdered by the IRA.
     

Chapter Two
     
    Only a few weeks earlier, in September 1997, I had answered a call on my mobile phone, a call that would change my life, shatter my illusions and cause me nights of anxiety. I was in my flat at a secret address in England when I answered the phone and heard a voice I thought I recognised talking loudly, ‘Hello, Marty, how are you?’
     
    ‘ I’m fine,’ I said, speaking quietly, ‘but who’s that?’
     
    ‘ It’s an old friend calling you from Belfast,’ came the reply. ‘You know me from way back and I know you.’
     
    That introduction sounded ominous to me so I decided to play it cool. ‘Will you give me a name,’ I asked, ‘and stop keeping me in suspense?’
     
    ‘ You knew me as Mike,’ the man replied in a more sombre voice. ‘I used to work with your two pals Felix and Mo.’
     
    It took me a few seconds to search my memory, trying to remember someone named Mike who had worked with my two SB handlers, Felix and Mo. Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, I could see the face and the build of the man but his voice sounded younger than I expected. ‘What can I do you for?’ I asked cagily for I still wasn’t sure he was the man I recalled.
     
    ‘ It’s not what you can do for me,’ he replied, ‘it’s what I can do for you.’
     
    ‘ What do you mean?’ I asked, fascinated by his approach.
     
    ‘ I’m coming over to England soon,’ he replied. ‘Can we meet somewhere? Anywhere