Mary strides along, arms folded across her chest, lips pursed. 'Davin told you this?' Her face is set, suspicious. Eamon is not surprised. He tells her about the briefing. As he talks, he can see Mary's contempt for Davin has not diminished with the years – if anything, he thinks, it has grown. She blames Davin for Eamon's demise, believes that Eamon unfairly took the blame for the fiasco that was the Golden Boy operation. Eamon had tried to convince her that it was inevitable, that by then he did not really mind. He felt burnt-out, worn down by his years of living on his nerves. Being under cover, always on the move, like a hunted animal, had extracted a price. That he had come to believe his idée fixe, of a socialist republican island of Ireland, was just that. So when Davin came calling one day, with the wherewithal to set him up in business, as a front for money laundering, he had been relieved.
        The famous, or depending on which side you took, the infamous, Operation Golden Boy.
        In the end, Eamon missed it. Picked up at a roadblock, due to sloppy reconnaissance he was sure, although he never did discover why, despite the culprits' interrogation by Iggy Davin. Eamon got a four-year sentence in Long Kesh, where all he could do was sit and watch and await the outcome.
        The attempt by Hugh O'Neill, a sleeper in London, who had Irish parents but who passed as a Londoner, which was no surprise, given that he was born and lived there all his life, apart from holidays spent on his grandfather's small farm in Kerry. Who was nicknamed the Golden Boy because of his blond good looks. Eamon was part of the team who hatched the plot to assassinate Mrs Thatcher on the steps of Number 10 Downing Street. Back in those days, the public could still walk up the famous street and gaze at the entrance waiting for a politician to appear. Eamon had done the research, had slipped into England in disguise, and then spent time in and around London, had hung around in Downing Street; he had walked the streets, checked the escape route from Downing Street, down the steps to Horse Guards Road, timing everything. Eamon had taken Hugh to a safe house to test his suitability, his willingness to assassinate Mrs Thatcher, with the very definite possibility that he could lose his life doing it. He had attended the trials when they fired the poisoned dart fitted inside a camera on a couple of sheep, which it killed.
        They transferred the control of the operation and of Hugh to another case officer. They trained Hugh in the use the camera and sent him, one dank November morning down Whitehall and into Downing Street. There, waiting among the other tourists and press, Hugh stood on the pavement as Mrs Thatcher came out of Number 10 and approached some press photographers. Hugh aimed the camera and fired the dart. Without waiting to see if he had succeeded in killing the Prime Minister, he followed the plan, turned away immediately and made his escape. How he did so was a miracle of sorts. Raids on all the safe houses the Movement had set up followed, as the British began to roll up the escape route before Hugh left Downing Street, which convinced Davin and Eamon they had an informer. Despite Hugh's escape, the belief in the Army Council was that there was a traitor high in the ranks. The hunt for Hugh went on for months, his photograph plastered across the world's press and TV – but Hugh was away, hidden or dead. Within the Movement, Iggy Davin and the Internal Security Unit were searching for the London informer.

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