"You sound as if you're a cop yourself," I said. "What exactly do you do in the ATS?"

"Subaltern O'Brien is MI-5's country desk officer for Ireland," Cosgrove said. "Quite an achievement for a woman. Wartime contingencies and all that to be sure, but still remarkable."

"So you admit you're MI-5?" I asked Cosgrove.

"Of course. We have no secrets from our American cousins."

"Anymore, that is. You lied the last time we met."

"That was then, my boy. Now we have a bigger job to do."

"OK, spill."

"Pardon me?"

"Tell me everything. Pretend I never heard of the IRA and lay it all out."

Cosgrove nodded to O'Brien, who gave him a cold response. I wondered if she was miffed at his qualified endorsement of her accomplishment. And I wondered even more what an O'Brien, man or woman, was doing working for MI-5 on Irish counterintelligence. It wasn't an Anglo-Irish name or one to be found among Ulster Protestants, those residents of the northern counties who had fought to maintain union with Great Britain. She looked and sounded Irish, which to me meant the Republic of Ireland, the entire island, united. That it meant Catholic was understood. I have plenty of Protestant friends back in Boston and in the army, so don't misunderstand. There's not anything wrong with being a Protestant. It's the pro-British, Catholic-hating Ulstermen I don't like, and they just happen to be Protestants.

"There have been a number of contacts between the IRA and the Abwehr, the German intelligence service, that commenced well before the war," she said, her hands clasped together above her knees, which were aligned perfectly. Had the nuns taught her to sit like that, ladylike and demure, all the sinful parts protected?