Before checking on to the flight Bill had pondered his pitifully few options if he did choose to run. The Republic would not be a wise option. There was nowhere in that country he could start a new life. He didn’t know who his handler was. It was someone high up obviously, but there were dozens to choose from. Going over to the Republic was the last thing Bill wanted to do anyway. What with the new relationship the Irish Government had with Britain in the fight against terrorism he would be as unsafe there as in England. He had enough money to fly to some foreign country, South America for instance, buy a car or motorbike and head into the hills, perhaps literally. But the fact that he still had access to his money indicated they did not know about him or at least were not ready to pull him in. He had gone to a cash dispenser in the airport and had drawn out the maximum he could from his bank account and two credit cards. If they did want to pull him in the first thing they would have done was block his money sources to impede his attempt to escape.

If he did decide to run the obvious location was North America. It would be the safest civilised location before settling for a shack in the middle of some godforsaken jungle or outback. But America had problems for him too.That vast country would only truly be a safe haven under the protection of one person in particular, the man who got him into all of this in the first place, but the very thought of meeting him again filled Bill with bitter resentment. Bill told himself to forget about running, for the time being at least. The powers that be did not know the identity of their RIRA spy yet and doing a runner would point the finger straight at him. It would be wise to plan to run eventually but for now he had to carry on as normal and use the time to organise it properly. He would gradually liquefy all his assets and then at the right moment quietly slip away. It would help if he knew whether or not Henri had escaped.That would aid his assessment of the situation with regard to the time he had. But then again, even if Henri had been caught, Bill doubted he would give them an accurate description of his British contact. Henri had the appearance and manner of a hardened vet, one of the old school. It would make sense, in the light of Bill’s value, that his handler employed a middle-man who was worth his salt.

Bill assessed how difficult it would be for military intelligence to track him down based on their knowledge that their spy had quite likely travelled from the UK to Paris within twenty-four hours of the meeting. A check of all the flight listings wouldn’t do them any good since he was travelling on a false passport, and that was assuming he had flown between Paris and Heathrow. As far as they knew he might have travelled by train, ferry, car or caught a flight from one of half-a-dozen locations in the UK - with the option of as many carriers - to numerous European airports prior to arriving in Paris. Their only real hope was to wait for him to rear his head again, but he wouldn’t. After the scare he had today his spying days were over. Even his handlers would have to concede that one.

He repeated the words to himself. ‘It’s over, over at last.’ He could finally justify pulling out of the game he felt he had been manipulated into like a fool from the beginning. ‘That fucking bastard of a priest,’ he spat with intensity, unaware whether he’d actually said the words aloud. He looked over at the man across the aisle, who was still looking out of the window. He made an effort to calm himself down again.

He thought about being able to live a normal existence without the constant threat and worry of life imprisonment or assassination. But there might also be a price to pay for closing shop. There were some who would be angered by it. A lot of hopes were riding on him. It all depended on what the godfathers would say and how they would react. Surely they could figure out for themselves that it was over for him.

Of course, he wouldn’t, Father fucking Kinsella! That bastard wouldn’t let Bill off the hook quite so easily. He would happily leave Bill to be squeezed dry until he was caught and fried. Kinsella would interpret Bill’s end as invaluable publicity for the cause. The press would be all over it. Bill would be touted as the most successful and highly placed IRA mole within British military intelligence in the IRA’s history. Father Kinsella would of course communicate to Bill how sorry he was, but privately he would see it as Bill’s final and greatest contribution. ‘The fanatical bastard,’ Bill uttered as his blood started to boil once again. Then he sensed the man across the aisle look at him. Bill was thinking out loud. He drained his beaker and warned himself to calm down.

Bill considered the pros and cons of playing the godfathers along. He could try the extended vacation approach, asking for a hibernation long enough to ensure his identity was safe, several years for instance. But that was not something Bill really fancied trying. It would be like a ‘buy now pay later’ deal. The fact that he would have to start up again eventually would always be hanging over his head. And Father Kinsella would not forget to wake him up again. Bill was his greatest success and he would milk the glory to the bitter end - Bill’s end. How could a priest become such a manipulative bastard? Bill wondered. And why had it taken him so long to figure it out?

Bill could feel himself getting worked up again and needed a distraction. He took the duty-free catalogue from the pouch in front of him and flicked through it.What about tonight? he thought. Should he still see Aggy?

He looked up to see a stewardess approaching and he hit her with that Irish smile of his, which automatically appeared whenever an attractive woman looked at him.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘What do I have to do to get something from this catalogue?’

‘You ask me, sir,’ she said, returning his smile.‘What would you like?’

He pointed to one of the perfume bottles on the page. ‘What’s this one like?’

‘It’s the most expensive.’

‘Then I’ll take it . . . and have one yourself.’

Her smile widened to show a set of perfect teeth. ‘It doesn’t suit me,’ she said. ‘But thanks anyway.’ Her eyes lingered on his beyond the boundaries of normal service requirements. ‘I’ll go and get that for you,’ she said and walked away.

Bill leaned into the aisle to check out her shapely calves and bottom. Life was such a wonderful thing, he thought, and he had so much to lose. It was far too optimistic to be planning a normal life just yet but Bill was a flagrant romantic and the contemplation was irresistible. Sadly even a beautiful bottom such as that could not rid him of his fears. The black light of death was searching for him, he could sense it. He had been an idiot and he hated himself for it as much as he hated that bastard. He truly was the reluctant spy. He thought back to when he got into this crazy game. It had been a long, slow, process spanning several years. The truth was it went beyond the time of the priest, all the way back to the beginning. But that’s why the priest chose him.

William Lawton had not always been his name. He was two years old when the Lawton family took him in. It was not uncommon for a Catholic baby to be adopted by a Protestant family. Children aren’t born with religious, political or racial beliefs and the Lawton family did not mind where the child came from as long as it was the Celt side of Anglo-Saxon. His legal father was a copyright lawyer, born and educated in Northern Ireland and employed by a partnership that had offices in Belfast and London.The family had houses in the centre of both cities and even though his father spent most of his time in the Belfast office his mother preferred London, not least because it meant getting out from under the marshal law that governed the Province. By the time Bill was a teenager she had become entrenched in her only true interest - and the main reason she wanted to live in London - her charity organisation. She would be out of the house from dawn till late on her never-ending quest to feed and clothe the poor children of the world, which is what led to Bill boarding at the Royal Hospital School near Ipswich at thirteen years old. The school was a grand old institution and strongly associated with the Royal Navy, enforcing upon its students traditions such as parading most Sunday mornings before church in full dress uniform, brass band and rifles included. The school was equally enthusiastic about rugby, and even though he did not make head of house or captain of the first fifteen, his two foremost ambitions at the time, Bill had to say at the end of his five years at the school that he had enjoyed every one of them. He saw his parents on average once every couple of months for the first few years and by fifteen started spending more of his half- and full-term breaks with friends or travelling. For the last two years he spent all his vacations, apart from a couple of days around Christmas, roving alone, mostly across mainland Britain and occasionally France. He preferred travelling by himself for a number of reasons: none of his friends shared his specific historical interests; he was a spontaneous sightseer, jumping on and off trains as it suited him; but most importantly, he had learned how much easier it was to meet girls when alone.

He had never ventured into the Irish Republic for no other reason than he had not developed an interest in Irish history; his trips were generally motivated by his interest in a place. He was not particularly intrigued by politics or religion but would describe himself as a Loyalist or a Protestant if pushed. He bore no ill towards Catholics and like most people his age on the mainland he did not particularly care what the Troubles in Northern Ireland were about and wanted to see the bombing and the fighting come to an end.

Bill was eighteen and on his summer holidays prior to starting university when his curiosity about his origins grew enough to motivate him to explore them - as long as the process wasn’t too time consuming. Bill was not necessarily interested in meeting his birth parents; if anything he was inspired once again by his fascination with history. His prime area of interest was eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European history, specifically the French revolution, the British industrial revolution and America’s formative years up to the First World War. He hoped his own family history would reveal itself to have played some part in those times but he was not expecting much. He had no idea how his life was to change with the discovery of his ancestors, or one in particular.

It was his father who, respectful of the young man’s inquisitiveness, furnished him with the information that set the investigation in motion. He dug up the old adoption papers, which showed Bill’s birth parents to be John and Mary Meagher. His father was not completely sure about all the facts but he believed they were both killed in a traffic accident. Bill was a competent researcher and looked forward to the challenge of uncovering more. It did not take him long to discover his parents had died on a Saturday afternoon in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. John and Mary Meagher were originally from Tipperary in the Irish Republic and had left it five years before Bill was born to move to Ulster to take over the small farm John had inherited from an uncle. When John and his wife died, the farm, which was not a particularly successful venture, was taken over by relatives who owned adjacent divisions of what was originally one large concern.

Bill’s research failed to produce a location where they were buried and so he decided to visit the farm in the hope of finding out more. It turned out the family that had taken over the farmhouse were distant cousins and they informed Bill his parents had been killed in a head-on collision with a drunk driver and that their bodies had been sent back to the Republic for burial. The cousins showed little enthusiasm in helping Bill. In fact they were down right inhospitable. They were unimpressed that Bill had come all the way from London that day and did not even invite him into the house for a cup of tea, conducting the entire conversation on the doorstep. The last thing Bill asked before leaving was if they had any photographs of his parents. They did not, and with that they closed the door on him. Bill felt embarrassed and confused by their hostility and it was only on the bus back to the family home in Belfast that it dawned on him that it was possibly because of his accent. He might have been born a Catholic, and a Meagher, but as far as they were concerned, he was now an English Protestant, kin or not.

With a month left of his holidays he decided to get this little investigation over and done with. The following day, equipped for no more than two nights on the road, he made the journey by train and bus to Southern Ireland and the village of Kumrady, several miles north-east of Limerick. On seeing the delightful setting his immediate thought was why his parents had ever wanted to leave. Enniskillen was not a patch on this place.

It was early afternoon when he arrived in the village. His plan was to have a look around the place his parents were born and raised in, find the grave in the church cemetery, utilise any spare time looking for their family homes and be on his way in time to get back to Limerick by early evening so that he could find a B&B for the night and return to Belfast the following day.

It took him a while to find the headstone, not that he had rushed in looking for it. Cemeteries fascinated him.The headstones transported one into the past, revealing the names of people who had actually lived, pure history that could pinpoint a precise day in the story of mankind. Within the confines of this one tiny cemetery, in the space of an hour or so, Bill found people who had been alive during the French revolution, the Peninsular War, the battle of Trafalgar and the Russian revolution. A high point of the day was finding two men who, it could be deduced, left the village when they were young, died somewhere in America in 1867, and were then shipped back to the place of their birth to be buried. Bill wondered how they had both come to die at the same time, and how they had enough money to pay for their bodies to be shipped all that way back to their little village.

When he did find his parents’ grave the first thing Bill tried to imagine was how they had looked to the world; the little things: how they had acted, laughed, talked, what they did with their everyday lives. Now that he was here, standing above them, the urge to know more about them grew stronger. A sadness washed over him but he couldn’t think exactly why. Perhaps it was nostalgia. He’d had pretty much everything he needed growing up and never felt deprived of anything, and he had hardly thought about them for more than a few seconds in all those years let alone missed them. For the first time in his life he felt a personal loss. He wondered how much like them he was, or which of them he was most like. His mother was twenty-three when she died, just five years older than he was now, and his father twenty-seven.

Bill leaned back on a nearby tree, lost in thought, unaware of a man approaching from behind, slowly making his way through the cemetery from gravestone to gravestone, reading each in turn. As he came around the tree he almost bumped into Bill, startling him. Bill noted the telltale white collar under the man’s tweed jacket. He was well mannered and acted most humble, as one might expect of a priest, however his appearance made him look more like a navvy; he was large, with heavy bone structure, powerful hands and a bull neck. He apologised for disturbing Bill but instead of leaving him to himself, as one might expect in a place such as a cemetery, the priest was intent on striking up a conversation. He was an American with a strong New England accent and introduced himself as Father Kinsella, on holiday from Boston and visiting relatives for a few weeks. His first question to Bill was what was an Englishman doing in an Irish graveyard.When Bill explained he was actually Irish and that his parents had come from the village the priest grew noticeably warmer towards him.At first Bill felt trapped by this friendly but overbearing character.This was a private time for him and now that it had been interrupted he wanted to beat a polite retreat at the first opportunity and be on his way. But Father Kinsella wasn’t ready to move on. He explained to Bill his fondness for reading gravestones, especially in Ireland, although the East Coast of America, specifically the central region, was particularly fascinating when it came to Irish headstones. He described how he once spent a two-month vacation following the trail of the famous 69th, an all-Irish Brigade that distinguished itself in some of the greatest battles of the American Civil War. He asked Bill if he knew that more than forty per cent of all foreign-born enlistments into the Union Army during the Civil War and about seventeen per cent of its entire strength were Irish. Bill did not. Father Kinsella knew his Irish history as well as any professor and was very passionate. He confessed that the names and dates on the headstones transported him back to times and places in America’s history and also Ireland’s often dark and troubled past. When Bill admitted he knew little of Irish history Father Kinsella did not hide his disappointment. In fact his animated expressions of horror initially amused Bill, though he had a feeling it might be unwise to show it.

‘What’s your name?’ Father Kinsella asked with an intimidating look, which once Bill got to know him, he realised was not nearly so intimidating. ‘I ask because there are very few Irish names that don’t have some history attached to them . . . Go on,’ he pushed. ‘Tell me it and I bet I’ll tell you a story about one of your ancestors that you didn’t know.’

Bill could see himself getting stuck here all day. He tried to summon the courage to tell this priest he needed to be on his way, but he had to admit there was something interesting about the man. Perhaps it was the enthusiasm he had for history and the way he animated every swell of passion with majestic movements of his hands and exaggerated facial expressions.

‘Meagher,’ Bill said. It was a conscious decision to choose Meagher and not Lawton, even though he felt a tinge of guilt. But Meagher was, after all, his rightful family name and it was no point listening to anything Father Kinsella might have to say about Lawton since it was not truly his own. Bill was not prepared for the extraordinary reaction Father Kinsella expressed when he heard the name. His mouth opened and remained in that position for a few seconds, eyes wide and staring, like a large frozen grouper.

‘Did you say Meagher?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Bill.

‘M-E-A-G-H-E-R?’ he spelled.

‘That’s right,’ Bill said, then pointed at the gravestone a few feet away. ‘That’s my mother and father’s grave.’

Father Kinsella looked at the gravestone, the sight of which only fuelled his look of astonishment. ‘By God,’ he said. ‘That’s truly amazing.’

‘Why’s that?’ Bill asked.

‘Meagher was the name of the Brigadier General who commanded the 69th Irish Brigade I was just telling you about.’

He quickly studied Bill, then his surprised expression turned into a frown. ‘Are you telling me you’re a Meagher and you don’t know anything about your family name?’

‘I only found out a few days ago,’ Bill said in his defence. ‘My parents died when I was young . . . I was adopted.’

The priest’s frown melted, but not entirely. ‘You should still know enough about Irish history to know the name Meagher,’ he said and took a closer look at the gravestone.

‘I was adopted by a family in Belfast.’

‘What’s their name?’ he asked.

‘Lawton.’

Father Kinsella looked around at him. ‘That’s not an Irish name,’ he said, almost accusingly. ‘You were adopted by an English family?’

‘Northern Irish,’ Bill said.

‘Protestants?’

‘Yes.’

Father Kinsella took another look at the gravestone.‘Well, that explains why you don’t know anything about your Irish ancestors, I suppose. I’ll forgive you for now. But by God you’d better start learning.’

‘Yes, I will. I’m sorry,’ Bill said, unsure why he felt the need to apologise, but Father Kinsella nodded, accepting it as if it should have been offered.

The priest turned to the gravestone and took a closer look in silence, and then he reached out and touched it, running his fingers slowly across the lettering with some reverence.

‘And you’ve never heard of Thomas Francis Meagher?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Bill said.

‘There should be a statue to the man. Probably will be one day. You ever been to Waterford?’

‘No.’

‘That’s where he was from. He would be, let me see . . . He’d be your great, great, great, possibly great grandfather.’

‘How could you know that?’ said Bill.

‘Know what?’

‘That that particular Meagher was an ancestor of mine?’

‘If you’re a Meagher from the county of Tipperary then you’re a descendant of the O’Meaghers of Ikerrin,’ he said. ‘Do you want to hear a little about him?’

Bill felt he already knew enough about the priest to suspect this might take a while. ‘I don’t have a lot of time,’ Bill said checking his watch.

‘To hear about your own ancestor?’ Father Kinsella said, the frown starting to reappear. ‘Where’re you staying tonight?’ he asked.

‘Limerick.’

‘How’re you getting there?’

‘Bus,’ Bill said.

‘I’ll drive you. How’s that? Save yourself some money too, and time you can spend learning something valuable.’ Before Bill could respond, Father Kinsella started to head off. ‘Come on,’ he said, and Bill followed him out of the graveyard like an obedient Labrador. Nobody had led him by his nose so easily in his life.

It was a bright, fresh day and as they crossed the stream that ran past the village on its way to Lough Derg and the River Shannon, Bill was taken back to another era. By the time they reached the rental car he was absorbed in everything the priest had to say. And it was not just history, it was Bill’s history.

The stewardess arrived with Bill’s perfume and he paid her in cash. He smiled distractedly, his thoughts elsewhere, wondering if it was as early as that first day in the cemetery that Father Kinsella decided to commandeer Bill’s life and make him a martyr for the cause.