'Tis the season of moral murkiness again. The collapse of the Stormontgate trial, and the subsequent exposure of Denis Donaldson as a British agent, put full in our face what we normally only see out of a corner of an eye: the means that kept most of us safe in our beds at night, and perhaps led to the peace process. Because of this reality pharisaism has to be kept in check. Moral ambiguity rules okay.

The twilight world of blandishment, entrapment and threat; the double agent's land of mirrors and misleading appearances; the seedy excitement and fear; the sleepless presences in the night; the intimacy and collusion between agent and handler; the Great Game played by clever, cynical men (and perhaps a few women): all of this conjures up the world of the spy novel, of Le Carré, Deighton and Greene, but has been played out for real in Northern Ireland.

Action in the real world always creates moral issues and there are important moral issues here. For society, the contamination of the present by the past; we create a poisoned land polluted by paranoia and suspicion. For those who have 'played' the 'game': To whom do I belong? Who do I serve? There is the danger of losing your soul. There is a human cost of living in this world. The best writers of spy fiction have reflected on all this. Ted Allbeury, who had served as a secret agent in the Second World War and the Cold War, in his novel No Place to Hide tells of a state killer having second thoughts. At the end of the novel the protagonist is asked, 'Tell me what you have to do?' He simply replies, 'We have to live our lives so that we are never tempted to do anyone any harm'.

We are likely to get little clear light on what actually happened in the twilight world of double agents in Northern Ireland. In normal democratic societies the world of the spy is kept to the margin so that it can only be seen out of the corner of an eye (or in fiction). In Northern Ireland it is time for this to happen too. All of us, not only the spy, need to come in from the cold.

David Stevens

To comment on this or any other p.s. articles, please visit our p.s. weblog...

Kingdom Come…more than words is a joint initiative of Evangelical Alliance and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. It runs from 30th January - 2nd February 2006. For further details visit: http://www.kingdomcomeireland.com/home.html

Interdenominational Divine Healing Ministries invites you to a Day of Prayer for our Land at St. Anne's Cathedral, Belfast on Saturday, 28 January from 10am to 4pm. The theme will be: What does our country need at this time?