Jack of Spies

by David Downing

  The sound of feet racing downstairs had them turning toward the doorway. Two young men came in, followed by Caitlin, who introduced them. “This is my younger brother, Colm,” she said, introducing the taller of the two. He was almost lanky and seemed slightly uncoordinated, as if he hadn’t quite learned how to work his limbs. He had a shock of floppy brown hair, the same green eyes as his sisters, and the sort of face that better suited smiling than the frown it was wearing now.

  “And this is Seán Tiernan,” Caitlin said. “He’s visiting from the old country.”

  Tiernan was equally thin, with a pale, sharp-featured face. His black hair was brushed straight back from a high forehead and worn slightly long at the nape and sides. The brown eyes were slightly hooded and brimming with intelligence.

  Both men shook hands with McColl, but not with any friendliness. There was something close to resentment in Colm’s eyes and a colder watchfulness in Tiernan’s. The Irishman was probably in his late twenties, wearing a suit a couple of sizes too large for him. They would all have gone to Mass that morning, McColl guessed, and Tiernan would have borrowed the suit from Colm.

  “Lunch is served,” Orla announced from the doorway.

  The dining room was at the back of the house, its table set for eight. There was a tree visible through the window and two landscapes on one wall. McColl recognized the Cliffs of Moher, but not the town nestling by the sea. “It’s Lahinch,” Caitlin said, following his eyes. “My father’s family came here from Clare.”

  She put him between herself and Patrick, sitting opposite Finola, Colm, and Tiernan. A plate of carved roast chicken and several vegetable dishes were passed around, and, rather to McColl’s surprise, Caitlin’s father produced a bottle of Bordeaux for the men to share. The women were offered only lemonade.

  They ate in silence, resuming conversation between courses. “Where is your home, Jack?” Orla asked him as the first plates were taken away.

  “I rent a flat—an apartment—in London at the moment, but I’m hardly ever there. My mother and father live in Glasgow now, but we came from the West Highlands originally. A place called Fort William.” There were more questions about his family, which he answered as briefly as politeness allowed. From what Caitlin had told him, Ronan Hanley had little sympathy for his own father’s socialist views.

  The talk turned to China and the warm reception accorded Caitlin’s newspaper pieces. Orla was clearly immensely proud of her niece and annoyed that the male members of the family hadn’t even read most of her articles. “She’ll be a famous journalist, you mind my words. Just so long as she follows her star.”

  She was looking at Caitlin as she spoke, but McColl had the distinct feeling that the words were also aimed at him.

  “And when are you returning to England?” Orla asked, as if to confirm his suspicions.

  “I’m not sure,” he told her.

  “But you are going back?”

  “Eventually. And when are you returning to Ireland?” he asked Tiernan, intent on changing the subject.

  “In a few weeks. I’m not certain.”

  “And where in Ireland are you from?”

  “I’m from Cork, but I live in Dublin now.”

  “Oh, what part?”

  “Do you know Dublin?”

  “Not that well,” McColl acknowledged.

  Tiernan allowed himself a smile. “Well, fitting as it sounds, I live on Cork Street.” He allowed himself a slight smile. “The district has the name of Dolphin’s Barn, and it’s not so bad.”

  “Colm fell in love with Dublin when he came to stay with you,” Caitlin said, smiling at her brother.

  “As much as you can love an occupied city,” Colm said without smiling back.

  He was a deeply angry young man, McColl thought. And anger allied to a righteous cause, as someone had said, made for a dangerous combination.

  The Irish issue had been broached, and once the women had left the table, Ronan Hanley took it up in earnest. “So, Jack, how are you seeing the future of Ireland?”

  McColl felt four pairs of eyes swinging his way. “The next step is Home Rule,” he replied. “After that …” He shrugged.

  “They’ve promised Home Rule before,” Ronan said. “So what makes you think they mean it this time?”

  “It’s as good as done. I can’t see anything stopping it.”

  “A European war,” Tiernan suggested in his soft and almost menacing brogue.

  “That might delay things, but …”

  “Ah, we’ve waited long enough,” Ronan said, almost wistfully.

  “And what about Ulster?” Colm asked with more than a trace of belligerence.

  “That may take a bit longer,” McColl conceded. “The last I heard, there were plans to let the Ulstermen opt out for five or six years, until they got used to the idea.”

  Tiernan was having none of that. “They never will get used to it, and they’re bringing in guns. And if your government in London orders your army to coerce them, then our information is that the army will refuse.”

  “A mutiny?”

  “It won’t be called that. I doubt it’ll see the light of day. The politicians will just bring their promises back into line with what they can deliver, which won’t include Home Rule for the whole island.”

  “And that’s the least we could accept,” Ronan added with a sigh. “And that only as a stepping-stone to full independence.” He seemed almost resigned to missing his dream’s fulfillment.

  “Then maybe I’m being overoptimistic,” McColl said. He was wondering who Tiernan’s “our” was, but risking a direct question felt unwise. “How did people here feel about the Dublin lockout?” he asked Caitlin’s father, hoping that the question would draw out the others.

  Ronan grunted. “A sideshow. Ireland needs rid of the English, not a socialist revolution.”

  “Ireland needs rid of English capitalism,” Colm disagreed, looking to Tiernan for support, “or nothing will really change.”

  Ronan shook his head. “Now, don’t give me any of that IWW drivel, not in my own house.”

  Tiernan looked down at the table, a slight smirk on his lips, but said nothing. Colm opened his mouth but closed it again when Caitlin reappeared.

  “Before you get trapped in a century-long discussion about Ireland’s future,” she told McColl, “I’m taking you to see Coney Island.”

  He got to his feet, pleased at the chance for time alone with her, a tad frustrated that the conversation had been cut short. He thanked her father for his hospitality, shook hands with the other men, and went to say good-bye to Orla and Finola. Caitlin’s aunt seemed genuinely pleased to have met him, but perhaps she’d been reassured by confirmation of his eventual departure.

  He and Caitlin walked down to West Street and joined those waiting for a Culver Line streetcar. “So what did you think of my family?” she asked, the look in her eyes belying the lightness of tone.

  “I liked them,” he said simply. Which was mostly true. They had certainly seemed a far cry from Reginald Fairholme’s “family to give London nightmares.” “Your aunt’s lovely, and your father was less frightening than I expected.”

  “He was on his best behavior.”

  “Patrick doesn’t say much, but he and Finola seem nice enough.”

  “They are. And Colm?”

  “He’s incredibly angry.”

  “About the state of the world? He has cause.”

  “I’m sure he does.” McColl paused, choosing his words with care. “But that’s not where the anger comes from. Or not all of it.”

  He half expected her to bite his head off, but she didn’t. “I don’t like Seán Tiernan,” she said, as if he were the cause of her brother’s ire. “He’s been the perfect guest, and I’ve nothing against the IWW—quite the contrary—but there’s something about him.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Do you? I’m glad. And here comes our streetcar.”

  The journey
took about twenty minutes, and continuing their conversation proved impossible amid the hubbub of excited children. It felt as if half the residents of Brooklyn were heading for the beach, and some for the first time. “But what does the ocean look like?” one small child kept asking her mother.

  Some of the families looked desperately poor to McColl, the children sallow and very thin, wearing clothes and shoes that bore signs of repeated repair, their parents tired-eyed and looking older than their children suggested they should be.

  When the car reached Coney Island, the beach was less crowded than McColl expected and only a few brave souls had taken to the water. Caitlin led him eastward along the line of sideshows and rides, many still closed for the winter. The spider boy and the four-legged girl were pulling them in at Dreamland Circus, but Caitlin had something else in mind.

  “We’ve only just had lunch,” McColl protested, staring up at the Giant Racer roller coaster.

  “That was hours ago,” Caitlin insisted, pulling him toward the ticket line.

  Ten minutes later they were sharing the front seat of a car slowly ratchetting its way up an extremely steep pair of rails. As they neared the summit, McColl heard the Italian-American girl behind him lauding the view of the Long Island coastline, then her partner’s sardonic response. “I wouldn’t get too attached to the view, sweetheart,” he drawled, concluding this warning, with wonderful comic timing, at the moment the world dropped away beneath them.

  Several long minutes and heart-stopping plummets later, their car grated to a blissfully permanent halt on planet Earth. McColl climbed gingerly out and wondered if kissing the ground was in order. Caitlin took one look at him and laughed. “Wasn’t that wonderful!” she exclaimed.

  “Let’s walk along the beach,” McColl suggested before she demanded a second ride.

  “All right,” she agreed, her eyes still full of laughter.

  They wove their way through sand-castle builders and softball games to where the Atlantic waves were gently rippling ashore. The sea was warm to the touch and, considering its urban neighbor, looked surprisingly clean. They walked hand in hand along the water’s edge, in silence for quite a while, until Caitlin announced, out of the blue, that Tiernan was in New York to find recruits.

  “Recruits for what?” McColl asked, almost in spite of himself. She was doing Cumming’s work for him, and if she ever found out, he doubted she would forgive him for her own naïveté.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “I just overheard him and Colm talking. The Republican movement, I suppose. Or some part of it.”

  “Has he recruited Colm?”

  “I hope not, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

  “What does Colm do?” he asked her. “Does he have a job?”

  “Oh, yes. When he decided he didn’t want to go to college, Father told him that was fine but he shouldn’t expect to sponge off the family. And he hasn’t. He’s working in a bar at the moment, but he’s had lots of different jobs.”

  “He and your father don’t seem to get on.”

  “No. They used to, when Colm was still a child. But these days …” She sighed. “It seems worse than it was before I went to China. I think Colm will move out soon and find a room somewhere. It’ll be better for both of them.” She looked at McColl. “He’s not a bad boy. Really.”

  A sister’s intuition, he wondered, or wishful thinking? “He’s young,” was all he said. In the distance a large liner was heading out into the Atlantic, gray smoke pumping from all three funnels.

  “When Aunt Orla asked when you were leaving—” she began.

  “After warning me not to derail your career,” he wryly interjected.

  “Oh, you noticed that …”

  “It was hard to miss. Not that I blame her.”

  “She wants what’s best for me. But was it true? Do you still not know when you’re going?”

  “Yes, it was. And no, I don’t. Jed and Mac are sailing on Tuesday, but I’ve still got some business to wrap up.” Being with her, he thought, and spying on her family.

  “So not long, then?”

  “A couple of weeks, I expect. Are you keen to see the back of me?”

  “No,” she said, taking the question more seriously than he’d intended. “But I have so much work this coming week, and I’m off to Paterson on Saturday morning.”

  “Why? And where exactly is it, come to that?”

  “It’s in New Jersey, about an hour’s ride on the train. I told you about the strike there last year—most of the silk workers were out for more than six months. I interviewed a lot of the wives in the first few weeks, and the paper I was working for then wants me to go back and do a catch-up piece. There’s a rally planned for next Sunday, so it seemed a good time to go.”

  “Could I come with you?”

  She looked surprised, then grinned. “Why not? You should find it interesting. But I’ve arranged to stay with one of the strikers’ families on Thursday night, so you’ll be alone in your hotel.”

  “And Friday night?”

  “I think that might be possible. Ah. But I should tell you—Colm and Tiernan are both coming along.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s an IWW event. The IWW more or less ran the strike last year.”

  “Well, I’m happy to spend a couple of days with the two of them. Unless your brother has a violent objection to my sleeping with his sister.”

  “I suppose he might. But if he does, he’ll have me to deal with.”

  That night McColl telephoned the number Kensley had given him and left a message requesting a meeting the following morning. On his way back from Brooklyn, he had decided that the Hanleys had little to fear from his professional attentions and that he could take Cumming’s job with a reasonably clear conscience. Ronan Hanley was obviously past it, and Caitlin, while quite possibly a threat to patriarchy, was only a passive foe of the British Empire. Colm and his friend Seán Tiernan were actively involved in something with an Irish dimension, but whatever it was seemed much more likely to involve international socialism than German intelligence.

  He told Kensley as much when they met next day. “No one mentioned the Germans or the fact that a European war might provide the Irish republicans with an opportunity. All the Hanleys want an Irish republic that includes Ulster, but Colm and his friend Seán Tiernan want a socialist revolution as well, and I can’t see them regarding the Kaiser as a suitable ally.”

  “People take guns wherever they can get them,” Kensley observed. He had suggested the two of them talk as they walked, and they were now zigzagging their way uptown. “I take it you’re accepting Cumming’s offer of permanent employment?”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “Without knowing the salary?” Kensley asked, sounding amused.

  “I can always demand a raise when I get back to London.” Riches were all very well, but lately an interesting life seemed more important.

  “Fair enough,” Kensley said. “So where were we?”

  “People needing guns not caring where they come from,” McColl reminded him.

  “Oh, yes. Well, if the Germans offer Seán Tiernan and Colm Hanley guns to fight Ulster,” Kensley continued, “I can’t see them refusing.”

  “Mmm, maybe.”

  “We do know that some of these Irish bastards are in bed with the Germans.”

  “If de Lacey’s rumor wasn’t just that. I take it you’ve had no luck with Rieber.”

  “Not yet,” Kensley admitted, “and it is possible that de Lacey was imagining things. But I still don’t think so.” He paused as they crossed a road. “Seán Tiernan is a new name to me,” he said when they reached the other side. “I’ll ask Cumming to check him out with Kell—that’s his opposite number in the Security Service. If Kell’s people don’t know the man, then they’ll go looking. Ireland’s their responsibility.”

  “He normally lives in Dublin, on Cork Street,” McColl offered.

  “Good. Do you know when
he’s going back?”

  “He said a few weeks when I asked him, but I wouldn’t count on it. He’ll be in Paterson this weekend, him and Colm Hanley. There’s an IWW rally, something to do with last year’s strike. Caitlin will be there, too, interviewing wives.”

  “And you?”

  “Yes, I’m going. What can you tell me about the IWW? It’s just another union, isn’t it?”

  Kensley shook his head. “It’s more than that. Their idea is a giant union that includes all the workers and is powerful enough to see off any employer. With no one allowed to make profits, we’ll all live happily ever after.”

  “You’re not a believer, then.” They were walking past the entrance to a luxury apartment building, where a black man in a brass-buttoned suit was helping a resident with her latest shopping.

  “They have some decent people—Eugene Debs is a man who’s hard to dislike—and they’ve won a few battles, but there’s no way they’re going to overthrow the whole goddamn system, and I think they’re beginning to realize it. So these days they seem to spend most of their time arguing among themselves about what to do next. Debs and his friends think politics is part of the answer, but men like ‘Big Bill’ Haywood are still clinging to the original big-union idea. And as in any losing game, you’ll always find a few bright sparks who are willing to up the stakes, especially when it’s other people’s lives they’re gambling with.”

  “Tiernan strikes me as that kind of man.”

  “Handle him with care, then. And watch out for yourself in Paterson—trouble’s more likely than not, and they don’t mess about in this country. Neither the owners nor the unions. They’ll both be out for blood.”

  “An area like this,” McColl said, casting his eyes over one colonnaded, graystone mansion, “and you can see why. If you have a house like that, you’re not going to give it up. And if you don’t have one, you hate the man who does.”

  On Tuesday afternoon McColl accompanied Jed and Mac to Pier 59, where the White Star Line’s Olympic was loading for departure. The ship looked much like her sister Titanic, but none of the boarding passengers seemed overly concerned that history might repeat itself. As Mac wryly noted, icebergs never struck twice in the same place.