The next afternoon, I pass through the security turnstile at the office and turn onto Kildare Street, walking through the city center to the river. The Liffey looks greasy and gray today as I cross above it on the footbridge. Over Dublin, the light is flat and muddy, the sort of stark light that picks out the marks on skin, so all the faces coming toward me on the bridge look wrecked in one way or another, and I’m sure mine does, too.
I have on a striped shirtdress and flat mules, ordinary work clothes, clothes that Eamonn would be hard-pressed to read any sort of intention into. Almost no makeup, either, like if I turn up in lipstick he will know I’ve been put up to this. I’ve already seen how the security service treats its regular informers, I can’t even imagine how they’d punish someone attempting to turn one of their own.
I walk across the northside and into a residential part of Stoneybatter. The address Eamonn gave me is a new-build house, plaster with PVC windows, and two wheelie bins in its front area. The whole road is lined with neat, anonymous houses. Anyone who can afford one of them will be working long hours, which must mean no one will be hanging around here during the middle of the day, keeping an eye on their neighbors.
Eamonn would never tell me where he met his other informers. I’ve always wondered about MI5’s safe houses, picturing everything from tower blocks to country mansions, but of course they’re on a road like this, the sort you might catch sight of from a bus or taxi and immediately forget. I turn my head slowly, taking in the road, and the curiosity sees off my nerves well enough to get me up the two stairs to the front door and ringing the bell.
Eamonn opens the door. He has on a denim shirt and dark canvas trousers, like roughly half the men his age in Dublin. Before yesterday, I’d only ever seen him on the beach in Ardglass, in jogging gear, never in ordinary clothes, and these suit him better.
Stepping past him into the house, I notice that Eamonn smells the same. Months ago, someone walked past me on the street and I caught that same warm scent, like cedar. I whipped my head around, certain it was him.
He closes the door behind me and leads me into a front room with flat-pack furniture and a vintage cycling poster. “Did you get here safely?” asks Eamonn.
“It’s been three years,” I say. “Can you be more specific? How far back do you want me to go?”
“I meant, were you followed?”
“No.” My nerves feel like caffeine poisoning, like drinking black coffee on an empty stomach. I drop onto an armchair, looking around the room. “Nice set dressing,” I say. “The poster’s a good touch.”
Eamonn smiles. “Want a coffee?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say, and watch him in the open kitchen down the hall, pressing a capsule into the machine, waiting while it brews. He returns with two small white cups balanced on saucers.
“Was it hard to get away from work?” he asks, and I shake my head.
“No, I’m working on copy for the weekend supplement. I can finish it tonight.” Yesterday, under the railway bridge, being near Eamonn sent sensation flushing through me, but now my body barely seems to exist. I can’t taste the coffee at all, I might as well be drinking water. Right now, I’m only mind, breaking down the words leaving his mouth, turning over what he’s saying and what might come next.
“Do you like working at the newspaper?”
“Ah, here. I think we’re beyond all that carry-on now, don’t you? You don’t need to pretend to be interested anymore.”
Eamonn sets his cup down on the saucer, like he needs to focus on the movement, nearly tipping over the coffee. I can’t tell if he’s genuinely nervous or pretending to be, for some reason. I breathe in, trying to remember everything Marian and I worked out for me to say. “Why did you contact me?” he asks.
“Because I might need your help,” I say. I force myself not to touch the cut on my mouth, or the bruises on my legs. Eamonn can’t know the truth, he can’t know that Royce sent me here to meet him. Luckily the cut on my bottom lip is almost healed, and the bruises on my legs have already faded. Some of them were deep enough to leave behind bumps of scar tissue under the skin, like ropes. “Did you know Niall O’Faolain is in prison?” I ask.
He takes another sip of coffee. “Yes.”
“Marian has been sending him money.”
Eamonn’s brows lift. “Why?”
“Niall was like her younger brother. He grew up in care, he has no family. Marian feels responsible for him. She thinks she could have gotten him to leave the IRA back then, if she’d tried harder.”
“Does anyone else know about this?”
“I don’t think so. But the police will find out, won’t they?”
“Depends. How has she been sending the money?”
“Cash, with no note or letter. She always sends it from different post boxes in the city center. And she wears gloves, so no fingerprints.”
Eamonn says, “Does she know what Niall’s been spending the money on?”
“Books and food, she thinks.”
“Is she sure about that?” he asks. “Because depending on what he’s using the money for, she could be up on charges of funding terrorism.”
“But then you’d have a word with the prosecutor, right? And the charges would be dropped.”
Eamonn shakes his head. “Her immunity from prosecution isn’t a blanket agreement, covering all crimes. Marian wasn’t working with us when she sent him the money, she did that on her own.”
Part of me is disappointed at how easily Eamonn is taking the bait. If he had any decency, he’d be offering to help Marian without asking for something in return, and that’s not where we’re heading.
“Has Marian spoken with Niall since leaving the North?”
“No,” I say. “She has different priorities now. She’s working for the air-ambulance service, she’s married, she has a baby. She’s not still wrapped up in the conflict.”
Quietly, Eamonn says, “Funding terrorism has a minimum prison sentence of six years.”
“Right, okay,” I say, and I don’t need to fake the indignation in my voice. “Then let’s hope no one finds out, since you won’t be helping us.”
I rise from my chair, and Eamonn stays seated, watching me. I start toward the door, and he says, “Look, there is one thing we can do.” I fold my arms over my chest, waiting. “Marian can ask to visit Niall in prison.”
“Catch yourself on. Why would she do that?”
He says, “If Marian gets information from Niall for us, then we can say she was working with us all along, and sending the cash was to warm him up. She’ll be protected.”
I shake my head. “We’ve spent three years in hiding, and you want her to toss that away?”
“Where is Niall serving his sentence?”
“Castlerea.”
“So all the way out in Roscommon. Medium security. What was he arrested for?”
“A cashpoint robbery in Dundalk,” I say, and Eamonn nods. He says, “Castlerea’s small. I doubt another IRA prisoner is in there. And visitors can ask for individual rooms if there are any safety concerns.”
“Even if no one else sees her, what about Niall? What if he decides to tell someone?”
“You said that Marian was like his family. Would he do that to her?”
“I can’t believe you’d ask this,” I say, which is true enough. “Do you’ve no shame, Eamonn? How do you sleep at night?”
“I don’t much, to be honest,” he says, and fair enough, his face does look weary.
“Why can’t you talk to Niall yourself? Why do you always make other people take the risk?”
“What exactly do you think I’ve been doing here for the past five years? Do you think I’ve been safe all this time?” he says. Five years, then. Eamonn has been in Belfast for five years, which I didn’t know before. It’s small, but it’s not nothing.
“Castlerea’s two hours from Dublin. Marian doesn’t need to tell Niall her address, or her new name. Visiting him wouldn’t exactly narrow down her location. You should give her the option,” he says, and I let out a bitter laugh.
“Every time I give Marian an option, she wrecks my life.”
“I thought you’d forgiven her,” says Eamonn.
“So did I.”
Eamonn listens with his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. Earlier, when I came inside the house, Eamonn stepped forward and lifted his hands slightly, like he was about to hug me, then thought better of it.
I knew I was attracted to Eamonn before, but I’d assumed the way things ended three years ago would have doused any chemistry, that my mind would override any attraction. Apparently that’s not how it works. A large part of me doesn’t trust Eamonn, and another large part wants him to sit closer to me.
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Let’s slow down,” says Eamonn. “Tell me about Niall.”
“Do your own research.”
“Right, correct me if I’m wrong on this,” he says. “Niall’s younger, and he joined the IRA when he was a teenager. Mostly he did their driving on the robberies.” I wait, listening. Marian said Niall was a good dancer, she said he could have become a professional, if any adult in his life had the cop-on to notice.
“You met Niall on five separate occasions, and you were terrified of Seamus but never of him. You thought Niall seemed sweet.”
“This isn’t a game, Eamonn. You don’t get points for your memory,” I say, which Eamonn ignores.
“Since Niall was a driver, he could have been moved anywhere in the IRA, after their active-service unit broke apart with Seamus’s death and Marian’s disappearance. He could have been a driver for the army council,” says Eamonn. “When he was arrested, Niall didn’t turn state’s evidence, clearly. He kept his mouth shut, which means all his links in the organization are intact.”
I pull my focus tighter, since this is the weak part of the plan, the creaking stair that I have to force myself not to rush over. This next part has to go perfectly, not a single mistake. Eamonn has to agree to meet with me instead of Marian. “My sister won’t speak to you,” I say. “She hates you.”
“What, more than you do?” asks Eamonn gently.
“You didn’t turn me into a murderer,” I say. “Marian killed Seamus at the farmhouse because you’d left us to die.”
“Tessa—”
“We were raised Catholic, Eamonn. She thinks she should go to hell for killing him,” I say, which is not true. As far as I can tell, Marian feels guilty about everything in her life except Seamus. “She’ll never agree to work for you again.”
“Then we can’t help her,” says Eamonn. “Try asking her to visit Niall in prison. And she doesn’t have to meet me, she can pass along any information to you.”
I don’t answer. Now that I’ve offered him the idea, Eamonn needs to talk me into it. I have to act reluctant, which isn’t so hard. I can think of a dozen reasons this is a horrible idea.
“You’re asking me to risk my life.”
“How many locks are on your front door?” he asks. “Three? Four? But it’s only been three years, so you remember what it’s like to feel safe,” he says, and I picture pushing Finn in his pram, the sunshine pouring down on us, not looking over my shoulder, just walking.
“You’re right, I do remember feeling safe. It was before I met you.”
“You want the conflict to end, Tessa.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” I snap. Parts of this conversation are fake on my end, and parts must be fake on his end, glittering, artificial shards, but surging under and around those shards is something real, a strong, dark tide.
“That’s exactly what Seamus would want you to say. He’d be delighted to hear it.” Eamonn rubs at his jaw. “The last time we met in Ardglass,” he says, “the IRA had just called a ceasefire. Do you remember? You were walking on air.”
“What good did it do? We’re right back where we started.”
“We’re not,” says Eamonn, his voice steady.
“You can’t have me believing we’re on the edge of a peace deal, not again.”
“We’re not where we started anyway,” says Eamonn, but I don’t believe him. I know, in my bones, that the conflict won’t end in my lifetime. We’re all trapped in it, caught in lockstep.
He says, “You knew, back then, the ceasefire was down to the work you’d done, and Marian, and all the other informers.”
“This isn’t my job, Eamonn. You’re the one who signed up for it. Because, what, you’d watched too many films? You thought it’d be exciting? An interesting life?”
“Come here to me, Tessa. You know that I was born in Northern Ireland,” he says. “My childhood was a lot like yours.”
“Are you saying you joined the security service because you were traumatized? Even if that’s true, which I doubt, we’re not the same. I’ve a son.”
“And you’re all right with Finn growing up in a house with extra locks on the door?”
“Don’t you dare. My son feels free as a fucking bird, I make sure of that.”
Eamonn’s eyes are intent on mine, and for a moment I forget about Royce, I forget that this is staged, I forget my actual reason for being here, like somehow the conversation has spat us out onto some vast, icy plain.
“What happened, Eamonn?” I ask. “When you were a kid.”
“I can’t tell you the specifics, but you can imagine, can’t you?” he says, and I don’t think he’s lying. I can imagine it, of course I can. A shooting, or a stabbing, or a bomb.
Eamonn says, “If you don’t think the conflict’s going to end anytime soon, that’s all the more reason for Marian to get her situation sorted.”
“Get herself backed up by you again, you mean,” I say, and Eamonn nods. And there we are. There’s our plan, with Eamonn thinking it was his idea. I close my eyes, like the reality of the situation is just now coming home to me.
“Well, look, I hope your team are delighted, Eamonn. Is this like a freebie, is it? Digging the two of us back out of the rubbish heap you threw us on.”
Eamonn breathes hard down his nose. I realize that I’ve never seen him angry before, not once. He says, “I was there, Tessa. I was outside the farmhouse.”
“You’re lying.”
“I was outside the farmhouse with twelve special-forces soldiers. They were ready to storm the building.”
“No. I would’ve seen them.”
“It was an SAS unit, Tessa. It’s their job not to be seen.”
“If that’s true, then why didn’t you send them in?”
“A siege would have been dangerous,” he says. I shake my head, even though I’d had the same thought at the time, running through the positions, the crossfire. I remember huddling on the mattress, thinking that if there were a siege, we’d be killed.
“It was already dangerous.”
“We thought Seamus was bluffing. Marian had been interviewed by the IRA before and released, I was confident she knew what to do. But then the two of you were taking off across the field, and I was about to send our men in when the building went up. We were ordered to stand down.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He says, “The river behind the farmhouse was frozen solid, do you remember? I was running across it when the farmhouse exploded.”
I picture Eamonn standing on the frozen river, watching the debris raining down, while on the other side of the farmhouse I was sprinting, tearing away across the field, the snow scalding my bare feet.
“Then why didn’t you come and find me afterward? Why didn’t you send me a message?”
“We don’t contact informers once they’ve left, for their own safety,” he says. “I did ask to visit you, but the request was denied. My supervisor said it was an unjustifiable risk for you.”
“Right.”
Eamonn lifts his gaze toward the ceiling. Slowly, he says, “I made thirty-six requests to see you.”
I blink at him. He says, “Are you not going to ask the question, Tessa? Are you not going to even ask?”
“What question?”
“How do you think I saw your signal? I’ve been checking the balance on that card every day for the past three years.”