And there is more talk about all of this in the background than there has been for a very long time.

That could be why the republican Roy McShane chose to run on Friday - why he is now in the protective custody of Intelligence services.

Informers are being frightened by what might emerge from the exploration of Northern Ireland's past - and this digging for the truth.

That explains the haste with which the UVF leadership rushed into the room this week to meet Lord Eames, Denis Bradley and their colleagues.

It was the loyalists who raised the issue of the Eames/Bradley visit to the Stevens Investigation - the inquiry that examined the whole question of collusion and looked at the role of the agents.

The UVF was interested to know how that visit - and obviously the information gleaned - would fit into the overall Eames/Bradley report, expected in the summer.

It sounds like fishing - sounds like someone is worried.

At least one of those in the room would have reasons to be concerned.

There was a background dialogue before Tuesday's meeting - involving a member of the Consultative Group and a loyalist intermediary.

And that dialogue brought about a situation in which the overall leader of the UVF, his number two and the commander of what that organisation calls its "1st battalion" on the Shankill Road, came to meet the Eames/Bradley Group.

They come no higher in the UVF - and one of them in particular rarely strays outside his loyalist circle. And yet he wants to talk, or is it listen, to Eames/Bradley.

The nervousness is not just in the loyalist community - and that is seen in developments around Roy McShane - a one-time driver for Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.

There are many others like McShane.

At a conference a few months back, a member of the Eames/Bradley Group spoke of 10 filing cabinets containing details on republican informants.

Roy McShane's name could have been in those cabinets - just one of many.

And we now have a situation in which those who for years survived in their secret roles fear the present - and fear what the peace might find out about the war.