Background: Conspiracy, deception and games within games are the order of the day, writes Gerry Moriarty.
Stormontgate is developing like some malevolent form of Narnia. As soon as you pass through the wardrobe you enter a dark world of smoke and mirrors - of dirty tricks, securocrats and IRA and British conspirators.
Last week, when the head of the North's Public Prosecution Service said he had decided against proceeding with spy ring charges against Denis Donaldson and two other Belfast men "in the public interest", it was speculated that the public interest might be spookspeak for protecting a British agent or informer operating "deep within the IRA".
Now it seems that was indeed the case, or perhaps part of the case. In this John le Carré world of intrigue, espionage and counterespionage it does not pay to be too definitive. Who knows for sure what dark games are being played behind other sinister games?
Politically this could cause damage as Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair prepare for a spring heave next year to bring Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley closer to a deal to restore devolution. Building up the prospects of an accommodation depends on establishing some form of trust. The events now unfolding around Stormontgate do not help.
Yesterday's revelations are right up there with the "Stakeknife" allegations against Freddie Scappaticci, the reputed former head of the IRA's "nutting squad" that dealt with IRA informers, real or imagined, often brutally.
Mr Scappaticci is now understood to be living in Italy, assured, we are told, that the end of the IRA "armed struggle" spares him from being "nutted" himself. The background to Stakeknife has never been resolved, and many wonder if the Stakeknife title was an amalgam of a number of senior IRA spooks, and is this latest revelation another chapter of this whole extraordinary dark thriller?
BBC security editor Brian Rowan added to the thickening plot last night by saying he believed Mr Donaldson was not the mole whose information prompted the Special Branch to carry out the 2002 Stormontgate raids; that it goes deeper.
Mr Donaldson was one of Sinn Féin's engine-room team. He was regularly seen in the company of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. He was a hunger-striker, a personal friend of Bobby Sands; the head of Sinn Féin's administration at Stormont; and therefore the eyes and ears of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness at Stormont.
For reasons that Brian Keenan's family could not quite figure, he travelled to Lebanon in 1988 to meet the head of Hizbullah to try to get the hostage freed. He was a big player in Sinn Féin's international division, always a rather interesting position.
Mr Donaldson was arrested in October 2002 with his son-in-law Ciarán Kearney; and William Mackessy, a former Stormont porter. Those arrests triggered the collapse of the Northern executive and assembly. The case against the men collapsed in mysterious circumstances last week.
"Outing" Mr Donaldson yesterday, Mr Adams insisted there was no spy ring at Stormont, that it was "a carefully constructed lie created by the Special Branch in order to cause maximum political impact".
In his statement to RTE last night, Mr Donaldson echoed those comments saying "I was not involved in any republican spy ring in Stormont. The so-called Stormontgate affair was a scam and a fiction, it never existed, it was created by Special Branch."
The Northern Ireland Office refused to go into detail about Mr Donaldson but insisted there was a spy ring. "The fact remains that a huge number of stolen documents were recovered by the police," it said.
It is dangerous to assume anything in this spy story but, given that the NIO says Stormont documents ended up in republican hands, then one would expect that they have evidence to support this allegation.
It is difficult for both Sinn Féin and the NIO to claim they have clean hands in this business, although that will not prevent them protesting their innocence of dirty exploits.
It is possible this affair can eventually be parked as one of those bizarre issues that is beyond and not quite relevant to real politics.
But when you enter such a world of conspiracy and deception who can say with any certainty that there isn't something else coming down the tracks to cause more political wreckage?