Northern Spy by Flynn Berry

The greater good is a phrase that comes up a lot in this novel, but that isn’t as good as it sounds. Instead, the phrase is brought into service to excuse evil deeds on both sides of the conflict. The IRA deem the deaths of innocents including children acceptable “for the greater good” of the revolution. And MI5, as they infiltrate the revolutionary army, decide it’s acceptable to sacrifice certain “assets” in order to protect more important ones, while hiding their own spying.

Set during the Troubles in Belfast, the novel portrays a time when some members of the IRA are secretly meeting in peace talks with the British government. Although the author says it is set in the near future, it could easily have taken place before the Easter Accord.

Early in the story, BBC producer Tessa is stunned when she sees irrefutable proof that her sister Marion has joined the IRA. Like Tessa, the reader finds it hard to fathom why a Belfast paramedic, who sees the results of the terror up close on a daily basis, would ally herself with those who perpetrate it.

As the story proceeds, we’re drawn into a world of violence and paranoia. Along with our protagonist, we come to understand that joining the IRA is not always a voluntary act; blackmail and threats are also effective tools for recruitment.

Once in the movement, disillusioned rebels may decide to become informers. This choice has many pitfalls. Like the IRA, MI5 recruiters manipulate their sources with promises of protection and financial rewards. They too use and manipulate their assets. The promise of safe exfiltration made by a field handler may be reassuring for a nervous tout. But when things get dicey, people above his pay grade will decide which informers can be cut loose, sacrificed in service of “the greater good” of keeping the spying activities hidden, or avoiding the exposure of a more important mole. MI5 must also cope with the problem of fake defectors. Sometimes the IRA send such plants to feed them disinformation. To avoid leaks, the security services keep information from the police.

It’s a world of mazes and mirrors, bizarre and shifting loyalties. Even at the climax of the story, we see the sharp divisions within the ranks of the IRA. When asked why they set a bomb during the cease fire they themselves had declared, Seamus explains, “Well, not all of us agree…We never voted on a cease-fire.”

After her husband’s gone off with another woman, Tessa tries to enjoy a quiet life with her baby in the peaceful village she commutes to after her work days in Broadcast House in Belfast. She feels “under suspicion” because she works for the BBC. When she’s out with her mother in her old Catholic neighbourhood of Andersonstown, people consider her a sellout, asking in disgust why she works for the BBC.

For those with skin in the patriot game and those who secretly oppose them, “Some people are more unacceptable as victims than others.” The MI5 agent seems more concerned about the planned murder of an elderly aristocrat related to the royal family than he likely would be “about a police officer in Saintfield.” On the radio, an analyst openly comments that when you “run an informer in a terrorist group, you are operating in a gray area, and you’re going to need to make certain sacrifices.” For the politically minded on both sides of the conflict, the concern for individual victims is superseded by the optics angle. How will it look?

There’s no peace for Tessa. Even as she travels to work on the bus, she maintains a constant vigilance over the other passengers, tries to reassure herself there is no immediate danger. Northern Ireland is bogged down with problems: “Third generation unemployment, segregated schools, class discrimination, crumbling state housing.” None of the money flowing into the city from “film shoots and tourism, cruise ships, construction makes its way to West or East Belfast, but to the people who already have it. On top of the constant fear of violence she faces on a daily basis, her mother reminds her that her nursing baby is getting the cortisol from her stress in his milk.

The conflict is plagues with a million inconsistencies. The hard Marxist IRA man who enjoys reading Agatha Christies, the envy and admiration of comfort by the foster child the IRA turned into an operative when he stays in a fine hotel for a job, the scrupulousness honesty over the honesty bar of the sniper who is about to carry out his orders to shoot someone because he’s an English earl rather than anything he has done. The assassin draws the line at eating the hotel’s sumptuous breakfast however. Is this “a mark of respect for the victim” or are his nerves “sharper on an empty stomach?” This young man is trusted by his fellow IRA because his parents were both imprisoned during the Troubles.

In this grisly hall of mirrors, an injured person found in the wrong place daren’t trust even the ambulance attendants. Judgment clouded by envy, confusion, class resentment and propaganda about very real historic wrongs, the operatives carry on, their leaders promulgating the dangerous certainty that there is a right and a wrong side, and they are right. It’s no coincidence that this is a drinking society. After a particularly ghastly operation, it’s better to “get trolleyed” before doubts can surface about the rightness of your action.

In this story, the IRA own a hotel in the neighbourhood where Tessa grew up, and it’s now a no-go area for police. Attending her cousin’s wedding there is a nerve-wracking eye-opener. Many guests are IRA, a lot are carrying guns, and there’s a statistical likelihood that some in the crowd are informers. Thinking about the perils of being accused of something by the IRA, she is reminded of the witchcraft trials of the Middle Ages, when “your only protection was to accuse someone else.” Bitterly, she reflects the the same situation is being repeated in Northern Ireland 400 years on.

Well versed in the psychology of manipulation, the IRA recruiters target people they see as potentially useful, then start small. They befriend you, invite you to join a discussion group. Then they ask a small favour — could we use your flat for an hour? Before you know it, you’ve crossed the line into hiding explosives for them. Once involved in the conflict, there’s no way out, as shown in this telling dialogue where an IRA operative tries to explain to a loved one.

“They’re not monsters. They’re fighting the British the way you’d fight Nazis. They think they’re doing the right thing.”

“Was Elgin Street right?”

“That wasn’t us, that was loyalists.”

“I don’t care which side it was. How could you have kept going after that?”

“You don’t understand. Once you’ve done something terrible, you have to keep going, you have to win, or else the terrible thing was for nothing.”

Catholicism, thinks Tessa, helps the older generations to cope with life in the troubles, since “the whole religion is based on sin and atonement, expiation, remorse.” However, when she attempts to confess her divorce to the priest, he lays out conditions: get an annulment, or pledge yourself to a life of celibacy. Later, she wonders if it’s possible to be a terrorist and an informer at the same time, or if you’re “only ever one or the other.” Her own morass of emotion includes plenty of self-recrimination.

This story conveys a chilling realism. The IRA plan to assassinate the old man on his boat is reminiscent of the killing of Lord Mountbatten. Also realistic is the irony is that much as the Belfast Provos want to unify Ireland into a single republic, the people of the South are largely uninterested in the politics of the North.