They couldn't have been more obvious if they'd tried. In fact, they were so amateur I wondered if they were doing it to scare us. I didn't care: it was good news either way.
I leant towards the driver. 'Tell you what, mate, if we pass a newsagent, could you pull over?'
He stopped almost immediately outside a Spar. I nudged Dom. 'I'm getting a paper, mate. You coming in?'
I didn't bother to look at the Seat as it passed. Dom was soon up alongside me. 'What's happening?'
'We've got a tail.' We walked into the shop and I pulled a copy of An Phoblacht, the Sinn Fein weekly, from the rack. The front page was one big picture of Gerry Adams walking out of a polling station under the headline 'Ready for Government'. I waved it at Dom as I headed for the counter. 'I've been in this a few times myself. Not by name, of course.'
He wasn't sure if I was joking. 'How do you know?'
'We'll soon confirm if they pick us up again. Don't worry, it's a good thing.'
The green Seat soon slipped in behind us once more, and stayed glued to our rear bumper all the way to Wood Quay. As we got out, they moved slowly past us and I made sure they knew I'd pinged them. The driver wore a black nylon bomber jacket, his passenger a green one. Both had dark, very short hair, just one above a crew-cut.
They'd made the wrong choice with the people-carrier: they looked seriously out of place in it. It was a vehicle for mothers with baby chairs and screaming kids off to football practice, not two hard-looking mass murderers packing out the front. But I knew why they needed it. They planned to pack out the back with the two of us.
Dom paid off our cab and it nosed out into the traffic. We walked up to the steps. 'Fuck me, mate, they're either Loyalists or Aryan Brotherhood – not that there's a shitload of difference.'
Concern was etched all over Dom's face. 'Why did you give them the eye?'
'We want to flush out the Yes Man, and we've got no time for finesse. I want him to know that we know he's on to us, so he realizes the clock's ticking.'
We reached the main entrance to the council offices and I tapped Dom's shoulder with the rolled-up paper. 'The Yes Man will be racking his brains trying to work out what we're up to. But he won't leave things to chance indefinitely. As soon as he sees we're alone, and it's quiet, he'll come for us. There's a good chance it will be tonight – so we've got to be ready for them.'
We pushed our way through the glass doors.
'Why do you call him the Yes Man?'
'Because it's the only word he ever wants to hear.'
We were in the foyer of a grey, four-storey 1980s concrete and glass building. The reception area was a sea of disabled access and no-smoking signs and earnest, probation-officer-type faces. Big posters celebrated the fact that Dublin kids were painting for Africa and that the council were friends of clean air, leading the way in bio-fuels and zero emissions. I felt healthier just standing there.
I read the paper while Dom did his stuff at the desk to a very smiley woman who was on the brink of asking for his autograph. Armed with little laminated passes, we took the stairs to McNaughten's office on the first floor.
'Keep quiet once you've done the introductions and I start waffling, OK? He won't say much.'
A prim, middle-aged woman in a red cardigan sat at her desk outside the room we were aiming for. There was something almost regal about her, even though she'd spent most of her life working in a corridor.
Dom greeted her warmly, and it was all going very well. She'd been expecting us; she ushered us straight in.
The furniture was functional and the windows double-glazed. Pictures along the wall showed Connor shaking hands with Gerry and Martin. A framed Sinn Fein poster hung alongside the Irish flag.
Our boy stood up behind his desk, hand extended. 'Mr Condratowicz, nice to meet you.' His accent was straight out of the Falls Road, even though it had been softened by a few evening classes in democracy and public relations. Most of them had education, these days, now politics was the way ahead.
They shook and Dom introduced me as his producer. We shook too. His brain was already whirring.