Secret Asset by Stella Rimington Page A

is a dangerous route—but some will go on taking it, even though the peace process won’t protect them.”
    â€œThey weren’t all so high-minded,” said Liz. “Some of them worked for us for much more selfish reasons—like money. I don’t suppose anyone will ever hear from them.”
    â€œNo, you’re right. They’ll just take their grievance somewhere else.”
    â€œAnyway,” said Liz, “it’s not as though the intelligence war is over, is it? Infiltration must be easier now, for the paramilitaries. How many Catholics are there in Special Branch?”
    â€œMore than before,” said Fergus, adding cynically, “not that that’s saying much. The new recruiting guidelines call for fifty-fifty overall in the Northern Ireland Police Force. You can imagine how popular that is with some of my colleagues. But infiltration was a worry even when there were no Catholics in the Force at all; it’s just that it came from the Loyalists.
    â€œLook, like most of Special Branch, I’m a policeman first and a Protestant second. But once in a while someone gets his priorities reversed. Of course there’ve been leaks to the Loyalist paramilitaries. When it happens it does a lot of damage. But the greatest damage is the distrust it creates. The damage to the reputation of the Force, if you want to put it that way. You’re lucky not to have that problem.”
    â€œHow do you know we don’t?” said Liz. “We certainly did once. Remember Philby and Anthony Blunt?”
    But Fergus had said his say and was busy signalling to the waiter.
    After dinner, Fergus drove Liz back to the Culloden. They sat in the bar on a sofa of plush red velvet while Fergus drank a large brandy and explained what had happened to wife number three. After a while, Liz called for the bill, explaining she had an early flight back in the morning.
    â€œI don’t suppose you want help packing,” said Fergus, as they walked back out into the lobby.
    Liz laughed. “You never give up.” Then shaking hands she kissed his cheek and said goodnight, adding, “You won’t forget about O’Phelan, will you?”
    She gave a great yawn as she walked to the lift, but by the time she reached her room her eyes were sharp and alert.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    Two hours later Liz was still wide awake, sitting at the desk in her room. A glass of mineral water from the minibar sat next to her, untouched, as she looked, deep in thought, at the notes she had been writing.
    What she had written were speculations rather than facts, but they were troubling ones, set off by Fergus’s offhand mention of infiltration in the Northern Ireland Special Branch. “You’re lucky not to have that problem,” he’d said.
    But what about the mole? She wondered, not for the first time, what the IRA had expected of an infiltrator. Suppose they were posted to Counter-Terrorism, possibly even to the Northern Ireland desk. What exactly were they going to
do
?
    What
could
they do, working alone inside MI5? Well, for one thing, they could alert the IRA to the identity of informers in its midst. That’s what Philby and Blake had done in the Cold War. They could tip them off if one of their operations was blown, and warn them of impending arrests, and even more, they could reassure them when one of their operations
wasn’t
blown.
    Yet she could imagine something even more damaging. An infiltrator in the right place might be able to feed targeting information that would help the IRA mount a damaging attack. Even if they were not working on the Northern Irish terrorist target and not able directly to help their masters, they could make up false intelligence that could waste valuable resources and harm the Service’s credibility. Think of the Iraq dossier and the damage that did to the reputation of the whole of British Intelligence.
    Yet wasn’t it