The spy master who came in fro

Byline: JASON O'TOOLE

THE tension on the streets of Belfast is palpable. The wailing sirens of the army bomb disposal unit can be heard making its way to the latest bomb scare at a shopping centre on the Crumlin Road.

Sadly, such incidents are once again all too commonplace in the North.

But if there is anyone who can keep the lid on this new campaign of Manolo Blahnik Replica terror, it is the man I have just arrived in Belfast to meet - the infamous Bobby Storey, once described in the House of Commons as the IRA's director of intelligence.

Manolo Blahnik Replica

Storey was labelled 'The Enforcer' for ensuring the ceasefire held during the peace process talks. And now, as Sinn Fein Belfast chairman, it has fallen on his broad shoulders to persuade dissident republicans too to choose the ballot box instead of the Armalite.

Security at the Sinn Fein office on the historic Falls Road is tight - but more, I suspect, because Gerry Adams is visiting than because this is Storey's own headquarters.

After a brief once-over by the security men, I'm ushered up the stairs - where I bump into Adams - and then brought into a small upstairs office. Storey, 54, is sitting at a table, with a bank of CCTV monitor screens behind him. 'I don't normally do interviews,' says Storey, who has agreed to meet me because he feels it's important that Sinn Fein gets its point across about these dissident groups.

As he rises from his chair and offers me a warm and firm handshake, I find it hard to believe that this affable and quiet-spoken giant, who towers over me at six foot and four inches, was allegedly once one of the IRA's most infamous killers.

American historian J. Bowyer Bell, author of the definitive account of the IRA ,The Secret Army, claims that Storey was a gunman 'good at his trade, without mercy, compunction, or moderation' and that he 'killed on order'. It is a description that Storey rejects out of hand. And certainly it is hard to reconcile this image with the man, now in his early 50s, sitting across the table offering me a cup of tea.

But Storey still has a tough guy image on the mean streets of Belfast.

When rioters - with supposed dissident connections - caused havoc in Ardoyne during the summer, it was Storey who was sent into the middle of this battlefield to quell the situation. He even went as far as confronting looters and taking two stolen cash registers from them, before handing them over to the police.

However, this persona is only one facet of the Manolo Blahnik Replica deeply complex man dubbed the most successful Republican spymaster since Michael Collins.

It's a reputation no doubt cemented by the allegations that this man, whom the police nicknamed Brain Surgeon, was behind the robbery of highly sensitive computer files and documents at the Belfast headquarters of the police service in Castlereagh back in 2002. The sensitive documents included the names and addresses of all of the North's Special Branch officers, their informers, and prison officers, and cost the British government more than [pounds sterling]20million to readdress the situation by re-housing all their people on the list.

It's also alleged that he was behind the [pounds sterling]26.5million juicy couture Northern Bank Raid in 2004, described as one of the biggest bank robberies in history.

'I deny being the director of intelligence in the IRA. Or the other