Free The New Spymasters by Stephen Grey

operations to take place effectively within the law’. The prime minister, David Cameron, recognized the gravity of the case and apologized for ‘the shocking levels of State collusion’ that de Silva detailed. 16
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    Another of the FRU’s top sources in the 1980s had the code name Melodius. His real name was Frank Hegarty and he lived on the Bogside, the Catholic enclave in Londonderry. Like Steak Knife, he was recruited by the FRU after they learned he was a man slighted. He had been sacked by Martin McGuinness as the local IRA quartermaster – essentially the man who looked after supplies of weapons and bombs. McGuinness, who was highly moralistic about sexual matters, had disapproved when Hegarty left his wife for his mistress.
    With coaching from the FRU, Hegarty began to regain the IRA’s confidence and, after a while, he resumed his former role. It was from this position that, in January 1986, he alerted the British to a large shipment of arms that had arrived from Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya and was stored in three separate hides in the Irish Republic.
    The shipment was so large, it was impossible to use the army’s usual tactic of tracking the guns through several hands before their seizure. There were too many guns to keep track of and the risk was high that some would be lost. Instead, Hegarty was removed for his safety out of Northern Ireland and resettled in Sittingbourne, Kent. Unfortunately, he left most of his family behind and he could not resist calling them repeatedly.
    According to one FRU insider, an MI5 phone tap picked up a record of Martin McGuinness, then a senior IRA commander, urging him to come home. ‘It became a famous tape. “Come back, you will be safe,” he said.’ This was echoed by the firebrand Protestant leader the Reverend Ian Paisley, who said that McGuinness had visited Hegarty’s mother. ‘He assured the mother, Rose, that if Frank came home, he could sort the matter out and all would be well,’ Paisley told the House of Commons. It was ‘a firm assurance for a mother’s heart torn about her son. She persuaded her boy to come home. A rendezvous was arranged by Mr. McGuinness.’ 17
    On 25 May, a few days after Hegarty had slipped back into Northern Ireland, his body was found dumped by the roadside. His eyes were taped and he had been shot several times. Two days later the Irish News reported, ‘Most people who knew of his disappearance were baffled by his decision to return home to Derry three weeks ago, despite knowing that the IRA suspected that he had been involved in the Sligo and Roscommon arms find.’ 18
    McGuinness has always denied any role in the killing. In fact by then, he has said, he had left the IRA. He once told the Irish Times it was incorrect that he had told anyone it was safe for Hegarty to return:
    â€˜That is not true, and the Hegarty family know that. I could articulate … exactly what happened, but if I did that it would be very hurtful and indeed very damaging to the Hegarty family,’ he said. He claimed one member of the family knew what had happened, ‘and I am not going to put that person in a predicament’. Speaking generally about his past, Mr McGuinness said people in Northern Ireland were not ‘obsessed by any of this’. He added: ‘The reality is that the past is a very, very dark place for everybody.’ 19
    In 1993, ITV’s Cook Report investigated the Hegarty murder as part of a wider look at McGuinness’s past. After the broadcast they got a phone call from a Freddie Scappaticci, the man later identified as Steak Knife. In a conversation recorded by the journalists, and not published until years later, Scappaticci said that McGuinness had both lured Hegarty home and been ‘the instrument of him being taken away and shot’. He went on, ‘He is ruthless. I can say this unequivocally. He has the