Sinn Féin ought to have been trumpeting away at its centenary celebrations by now, says Fionnuala O'Connor. Instead, the television cameras oblige Martin McGuinness to recite denials that only a few Irish News letter-writers pretend to accept.
On the republican street the yo-ho-ho of Christmas glee about the great bank robbery is over: this is the morning after, and there are a few sore heads.
Unless a hitherto unknown group emptied the Northern Bank, the IRA has just made eejits of the entire cast of the peace process, including Sinn Féin's top figures. Recent history suggests that for all the anger now, in the long run neither voters nor governments will penalise Mr McGuinness and the rest of the collective Provo leadership. But they are not enjoying themselves.
One half of republicanism has been hoist by the other. The onus of chuntering about "securocrats" has fallen on Mr McGuinness, apart from a few initial grouses from Mr Adams and some sermonising yesterday about "rights and entitlements". The Sinn Féin president can do beard-fingering and repository of republican gravitas, but he isn't much good on events, whereas Mr McGuinness reverts quite naturally to the stonewalling that stood up so well under questioning in Strand Road and Castlereagh.
It could be, of course, that Mr Adams has forgotten the principles of counter-interrogation, along with the fact of all his years as an IRA leader. By dint of repetition, he may even have erased some of the IRA-man in his psyche. Chances are that most of today's leadership have yet to separate the elements of their own being, let alone readied their followers for cutting out "the army". Stopping "the war" brought huge relief. Changing "modes" is perfectly feasible over time, as Fianna Fáil history demonstrates. But republican timescales, given to telescoping when they make demands of others, have always been elastic with regard to requirements of themselves.
It has begun to look as though it was an unbearable shock to the republican system when, in the cause of sharing power with Ian Paisley, Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness apparently volunteered at Leeds Castle the prospect of a shuddering halt: complete decommissioning by Christmas and an end to paramilitary activity.
How the Sinn Féin leaders got ahead of themselves is a mystery. It's not as if they have any illusions about the nationalist view of Mr Paisley.
With the devolution deal already long-fingered, it is less baffling that republicans supposed an IRA robbery on such a scale at this point was worth the risk. It does not do to under-estimate the self-righteousness, and arrogance, of an organisation which killed and maimed so many in the name of a nation that does not exist. Factor in that they have no reason to suppose London and Dublin will stay mad with them for long, because they have already got away with so much.
Castlereagh and Stormontgate? An extradition that fails to happen: charges dropped or downgraded. Knee-deep in the destruction wreaked by his own outfit, Mr McGuinness maintains that Northern Ireland Office "securocrats" are undermining the peace. A more detached view would surely be that spooks and mandarins come poor second-best as wreckers to republicans themselves.
What's the point of talking to the Adams/McGuinness team if their own securocrats don't tell them the plan? The question misses the point.
Flann O'Brien's policeman, who spent so much time on his bicycle that man and bike mixed molecules and were no longer distinct organisms, was no more of a hybrid than most leading republicans. There is hardly an individual in the front rank who isn't three parts Sinn Féin to two parts IRA, or the other way around.
As has been noted: the Adams/McGuinness team once announced that IRA robbers did not kill Garda Jerry McCabe though now they clamour for his killers' release. Mr McGuinness says he would be "very disillusioned if someone told me they were going to put a process I have put my life and soul into at risk". Thus primed, a "very senior member of the IRA" duly tells him that the IRA is "not in any way responsible" for the robbery.
Tony Blair could ask the White House to bar Sinn Féin from the US and put the lid on its very successful fund-raising. The House of Commons could withdraw the offices allocated to encourage republicanism's political development. Bertie Ahern could stay angry. So could voters, North and South, who thought they must swallow the past in the name of the future.
Most likely none of these things will happen. Dirty war, grubby peace.
Republicans have again sabotaged the trust that the well-meaning struggle to extend to them. Perhaps the best hope is that even some dual-purpose Provos hear how bad they sound.