The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a Dublin Family, Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising

by Dermot McEvoy

  “Why don’t we rush them?” asked Charlie Dalton.

  “No!” snapped McKee.

  “But—”

  “No,” McKee repeated, this time more quietly. “We’ve lost enough good men today.” Eoin took a sip of his porter, and, at that very second, the British came out of the Mater, empty-handed. He looked at McKee and, for the first time that day, saw some hope in his comrade’s eyes. “Eoin,” he finally said, “go visit Róisín.”

  Eoin wiped the suds off his mouth and headed for the hospital. Inside he found Róisín, who had a look of exhausted terror on her face. “Dan’s fine,” she said. “He’ll be ready to give birth any minute now.”

  “Thank God,” Eoin breathed.

  Róisín could sense something was wrong. She said the first thing that popped into her mind. “Treacy?”

  “Shot dead in Talbot Street less than an hour ago.”

  “This can’t go on, Eoin. It has to stop.”

  Eoin knew she was right. It was now October, and Collins had said throughout the year that they had only until the end of 1920 to win Ireland’s freedom. They were down to ten weeks.

  110

  They are determined to make an example out of Kevin Barry,” Collins said.

  “I would say they are doing a good job of it,” replied Dick McKee.

  In the office at 3 St. Andrew Street, Collins had assembled Dick McKee, Liam Tobin, Paddy Daly, and Mick McDonnell of the Squad, along with Eoin.

  “Is there a chance of negotiations with the British for Kevin?” asked McKee. “Can’t Griffith do anything with his English contacts?”

  “They are not in a negotiating mood, apparently,” replied Collins. “I asked Arthur, and the back door has been shut on us. They think they have the upper hand now.”

  “But Barry’s only eighteen years old,” McKee exclaimed indignantly.

  “As was one of the British soldiers who was killed in that ambush,” said Collins. “In fact, he was younger than Barry.” McKee fell silent. “I know he’s one of your lads, Dick, but we’ve got to be realistic here. The British are not going to let Barry live. That would send the wrong message.” Silence permeated the room. “It’s only a question of who will go first—MacSwiney or Barry.”

  “Well,” said Paddy Daly, breaking another long silence, “what will be our response to this shite? We’re getting nowhere. We kill them and kill them, and nothing ever changes. I don’t see a way out of this cycle.”

  “That’s why we’re here tonight,” said Collins. “Crow Street is beginning to get a grasp on the Sheik’s friends from the Middle East, the expanding Cairo Gang.”

  “What do we know about them?”

  “We know,” said Collins, “where many of them live. We are tagging them right now. Within weeks, I hope we can strike.”

  “What would be the purpose of striking these bags of shite?” asked Daly. “All our strikes are getting us nowhere.”

  “These guys are special.”

  “In what way?” asked McDonnell.

  “They are special because they are here to do a specific job. They were not sent here for the purpose of tracking Breen or Treacy—although they were in on those jobs—but to bring the leadership of the movement down. To kill me, McKee, Mulcahy, Brugha, Tobin here. The lot of us, TDs, ministers, army chiefs. To put it simply, they were sent to Ireland to cut off the head of the duly elected Irish government. I’m not going to let that happen.”

  “Where do we come in?” asked Daly.

  “When Liam and Eoin finish compiling their information—hopefully within the next fortnight—we are going to take them out in one fookin’ morning. This is going to be a big job, and I mean big. It’s much too big for the Squad alone. I want Mick and Paddy to coordinate with McKee and Mulcahy and get more teams together so we can effectively take them all out at the same time. Timing will be of the essence. Start now,” continued Collins. “Tell the Volunteers that these are going to be close-shot executions, and if they can’t handle that, get someone else. I want cold-stone murderers for this job. There will be no fuck-ups on this job.”

  “How many?” asked McKee.

  “Plan on fifteen to twenty execution teams. The Squad itself can handle only about four, so recruit your best men out of the Dublin Brigade, Dick. I want no culchies for this job.” Collins—a proud culchie himself—was surrounded by Dubliners, and his comment caught the men by surprise. “I want Jackeens who know this city inside out. After this job, the city will shut down. I need men who know the streets and can get back to their homes without detection.” Collins paused. “I expect the retributions to be horrific.”

  “What’s the exact message here?” asked McDonnell.

  “I am telegraphing and telephoning this operation to the British government. The exact purpose is twofold,” replied Collins. “To cut off the head of British intelligence in Ireland—thus blinding the British—and to put the fear of fooking Jesus into the British, right up to their Prime Minister in London. He thinks he can terrify us. Well, we are going to fooking terrorize him and the British like they’ve never been terrorized before!”

  111

  EOIN’S DIARY

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1920

  ALL SAINTS’ DAY

  A terrible day in Dublin. A terrible week in Ireland’s history.

  They hung Kevin Barry this morning at eight a.m. On a Holy Day of Obligation. It was almost as if the British were trying to rub salt in the Irish wound. Are they that blind? That vengeful? That dense?

  Collins is beside himself. For the last few days, he has been pulling at straws, trying to figure out a way of getting Barry out of Mountjoy Prison. He has been all over McKee and Mulcahy, looking for the answer. He was hoping to resurrect the successful escapes of de Valera in England and Robert Barton here, but luck was not on his side this time. I have seldom seen Mick like this. He is fit to be tied. When he realized that escaping was futile, he even started planning Barry’s funeral. But the British were ahead of him on that one, too. There would be no funeral. The British had learned from the funerals of Rossa and Thomas Ashe that these funerals are nothing but recruiting tools for the IRA, and they weren’t about to allow Barry’s burial in Glasnevin to turn into a thousand new recruits for the Dublin Brigade. Kevin’s resting place is the inside yard of Mountjoy. A sad, lonely, unjust place for a heroic Fenian.

  Barry’s death was made even worse by the death earlier in the week of Terence MacSwiney. The Lord Mayor of Cork City died on October 25 in Brixton Prison in England. After seventy-four days, he had starved himself to death. Mick wanted to bring MacSwiney’s body through Dublin on its way to Cork for burial. But again, the British had preempted him. They brought the Lord Mayor home to Cork in a British navy warship, bypassing Dublin and the great publicity show.

  MacSwiney was buried yesterday, on All Hallows’ Eve, a spooky, mystical time of the year. Mick wanted to go to Queenstown to meet the coffin but was talked out of it. “Don’t be a bloody fool,” McKee had snapped at him, and the commandant was right. Broy and Boynton also reported that G-men had been dispatched to Cork to see if a foolhardy Collins would turn up at the funeral. Thank God, they were disappointed.

  So, for now, we all sit here in Dublin, among the gloom and doom of this terrible day in Irish history, and wonder what is next. We know the other shoe has to drop. I look at the calendar and see that tomorrow is All Souls’ Day, and I wonder who will get the honor of being the next martyred dead.

  112

  Dublin had fallen into a depression. You could just feel it. When de Valera was sprung from Lincoln Gaol, you could feel the ecstasy in the streets. Now, the wounding of Breen and the deaths of Treacy, MacSwiney, and Barry had seemingly taken the air out of the city. Dublin was choking on gloom.

  The darkness had penetrated even the ranks of the movement. Eoin noticed that Liam Tobin, always saturnine, looked like he was about to burst out in tears any moment. Dick McKee was deeply affected by the death of Treacy and now wa
lked around listlessly. And the scowl never left Collins’s face. He was beginning to actually look like that picture that Crow Street had supplied the Sheik with. Every intelligence briefing with the Big Fellow was gruesome. No one could do anything right—especially Eoin. Why didn’t he have the information? This paper? That photograph? Eoin could do nothing right for the Commandant-General, and he wished there was an end in sight.

  But depressed or not, the filthy work of the revolution continued. Collins and Tobin had decided who among the Castle elite would be the first to go—and Derek Gough-Coxe caught the short straw. They decided that the main shooting team would be led by Vinny Byrne, and that Eoin would be his number-two man. The two immediately began to tag the Sheik. They picked him up from his lodgings in 38 Upper Mount Street in the morning, followed him to Dublin Castle, and caught him again at night. If Gough-Coxe went out during the day, Boynton would call Crow Street, and Eoin or another agent would be dispatched to watch him. The whole purpose was to get Byrne and Eoin as familiar as possible with the Sheik’s schedule.

  As Eoin stalked the Sheik, he realized that his housekeeper was Rosie Deasy, a friend from his childhood. Eoin and Vinny were standing on the corner of Merrion Square when they saw Rosie enter the premises at seven a.m. That morning, Vinny tagged Gough-Coxe to the Castle alone, while Eoin walked across the street and knocked on the front door of number thirty-eight.

  “Rosie?”

  “Is that you, Eoin Kavanagh?”

  “It is, indeed, Rosie. Can I come in?”

  “You can’t, Eoin,” said Rosie. “There are gentlemen getting ready for work.”

  “What time do you get off at?”

  “I have a few hours off after luncheon.”

  “Could we meet for a cup of tay?”

  “Sure,” said Rosie, smiling sweetly.

  “How about the DBC Tea Room on the Green? Half-two?”

  “I’ll see you there.”

  True to her word, Rosie was right on time. Eoin bought her a cup of tea and a sweet cake, and they talked about old times on Camden Street. They were both the same age and always seemed to have a connection, either eyeing each other at Sunday mass or playing hide-and-seek in the alleys behind the Meath Hospital. After some small talk, Eoin finally asked, as casually as possible, who the men were living at the Mount Street address.

  “They are English gentlemen,” said Rosie.

  “What exactly do they do?” persisted Eoin.

  “They are quiet gentlemen,” she said. “They spend most of their time writing.”

  “I’m sure they do,” replied Eoin, a little too cynically for Rosie’s liking.

  “What?”

  “Oh,” said Eoin, “I was only thinking out loud.”

  “They are very good to me, especially Mr. Gough-Coxe.”

  “Who else lives in the house?”

  “Oh, several friends of Mr. Gough-Coxe, although most have moved out in the past few weeks.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Oh, they looked like military officers,” said Rosie, “but they don’t wear uniforms. They never go out during the day, but always at night, after curfew.”

  “Isn’t that rather queer?” prompted Eoin.

  “Yes,” said Rosie, finally thinking about it. “It is rather queer.”

  “Do you know where these other men went?”

  “Yes, they went to other rooming houses in Baggott and Pembroke Streets.”

  “Do you have these addresses?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you give them to me?”

  “Sure,” said Rosie, with a laugh. “What’s so important about these gentlemen? They seem like good sorts.”

  Eoin could see he was getting into a bit of a fix. “If you bring these addresses to me tomorrow, I’ll tell you why these men are so important.”

  “It’s a date,” said Rosie, truly delighted at the prospect of seeing Eoin again.

  “It’s a date,” repeated Eoin, praying that the rebels’ luck was about to change.

  113

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1920

  The Prime Minister was feeling his oats.

  At the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London yesterday evening, David Lloyd George—perhaps relishing in the deaths of Treacy, MacSwiney, and Barry—was feeling confident enough to proclaim that, “Unless I am mistaken, by the steps we have taken, we have murder by the throat.”

  He paused for effect and then repeated, “Murder by the throat, I say!”

  “The men,” he continued, “who indulge in these murders say it is war. If it is war, they, at any rate, cannot complain if we apply some of the rules of war.”

  After being interrupted by cheers, the Prime Minister continued, “But until this conspiracy is suppressed, there is no hope of real peace or reconciliation in Ireland. Why? They were afraid. They were intimidated. You must break the terror before you can get peace. Then you will get it.”

  As might be expected, the Prime Minister’s words about having “murder by the throat” caused a sensation in Dublin. Men in the Dublin Brigade movement were beside themselves with vituperation, but Collins had suddenly turned serene, his demons seemingly abating as he continued to plan. Every day, he met with Tobin and Eoin and went over every detail of where the Sheik’s Cairo Gang were living and working.

  “There has to be more,” Collins said. “These will do, but I want more.”

  “I’ve been tagging the Sheik with Vinny,” Eoin began. Collins shrugged his shoulders. “I know his housekeeper from the old neighborhood.”

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “I have.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She is reluctant to help us.”

  “You’re jokin’!”

  “She says the Sheik treats her very decently. That he’s very kind to her.”

  “What have you found out?”

  “There were other agents living in the same house with the Sheik, but they recently moved to other rooming houses in Baggott and Pembroke Streets, and Earlsfort Terrace. They go out by night, stay in by day.”

  “What do you make of this, Liam?”

  “We are expanding our list,” said Tobin. “Some of these characters we didn’t even know about until Eoin chatted up the housekeeper.”

  “Rosie needs a little encouragement,” offered Eoin.

  “Who’s Rosie?” questioned Collins.

  “The housekeeper,” said Eoin.

  Collins thought for a moment. “Set up a quick meeting tomorrow morning with Rosie, right after the Sheik heads out to the Castle. In Merrion Square Park. I’ll chat her up, but good.” The Big Fellow got up and walked out of the room.

  114

  Collins sat alone on the bench inside Merrion Square Park. The weather for late autumn had been extremely moderate, and he looked snappy in his three-piece suit with his trilby cocked over his eyes. As he saw Eoin and Rosie approach, he stood up and put on that dazzling, gap-toothed Collins smile that the ladies found so irresistible.

  “Rosie,” said Eoin, by way of introduction, “this is Mick Collins.”

  Collins bent down to the young woman and shook her hand. “Are you the Mick Collins?” she asked, a little breathlessly.

  “He’s the one with TD after his name,” said Eoin, annoyed.

  “You,” Collins said to Eoin, “shut up! Now, Rosie, I hear you want to help Ireland.”

  “Oh,” said Rosie, sitting down on the park bench. “I’m so conflicted.”

  “Well,” said Collins, “that’s good, because it means you are a sensible and thinking woman. I want to thank you for the information you’ve supplied to us already. I hear that Mr. Gough-Coxe has a very busy rubbish basket.”

  “Oh, Mr. Collins . . .”

  “Call me Mick.”

  “Oh, Mick, he does an awful lot of writing. I wanted to bring you some, but I felt guilty.”

  “Now, Rosie,” said Collins, “you know we’re at war with the British. This is a v
ery important moment in Irish history, and you can become a part of that history if you help us.” Collins took Rosie’s hand and placed it in the palm of his right and then closed the left on top of it. He looked her intently in the eye. “Will you help us, Rosie? Will you help poor ould Ireland?”

  Eoin was thinking that Mick could shovel the shite without the aid of a shovel, when Rosie opened her purse and pulled out a wad of papers. “Here, Mr. Collins. Take these. I’ve been saving them for a while. I don’t know why. Something just told me to.”

  Collins looked through the papers quickly, then glanced at Eoin with a look that told him there was something special here. “God love ya, Rosie. Thank you.” He stood up, and so did Rosie. “Now, don’t mention this meeting to anyone. Just go about your business as you always do. You’ve been an immense help.”

  “God protect you, Mr. Collins,” Rosie said and gave him a small curtsy, as if he were some kind of royalty. She turned and headed back in the direction of Mount Street. “We may have hit the motherload,” Collins said to Eoin. “Let’s go to Mespil Road and sort this out.”

  They headed towards the Grand Canal and were in the Mespil office within ten minutes. Collins threw his hat off and started to go through the papers. Eoin looked over his shoulder and said, “Jaysus, Mick, look at all these fookin’ names and addresses.”

  “Go,” said Collins, pointing to the typewriter on the other side of the room. “I’ll dictate, you type.” Eoin put a sheet of paper in the typewriter. “No,” said Collins. “We’ll need carbons. Five, plus the original. For Tobin, McKee, Mulcahy, Daly, and McDonnell. You are to deliver this memo personally.”

  “How about Brugha?” said Eoin, mentioning the Minister for Defense.

  “Fook Brugha,” replied Collins. “If we let Cathal know about this, he’ll be telegraphing Dev in America to know if we should be doing anything about it. Dev will think about it for a month or so, and nothing will get done.”