The Baron at Bishops Avenue

by Jason Blacker

  "If there is no one else who wishes to speak to this motion, do I have approval that the noble Lord be no longer heard?" said Marphallow.

  Marphallow was awarded with general murmurs of agreement. He nodded his head. Loughty and Paussage remained standing.

  "Good," said Marphallow. "Shall we then vote on Lord Loughty's motion?"

  It was another rhetorical question. He was not waiting for an answer. Rather, he was waiting for his lungs to catch a breath.

  "I'll now put the question to you, my Lords. Should our Government be forced to meet with representatives of the Irish Republican Militia or their quasi governmental leaders to discuss their wish to form their own government?"

  Starting with the Government's Bench, the Lords voiced their content or discontent with the motion. By the time it came to Eric he knew what the outcome would be.

  "Content," he said.

  But he had heard more "not content" than he was expecting. Not that Loughty's motion had any real chance of being given a chance. And it would never have gotten past the House of Commons. But Eric nevertheless felt that the "content" votes that he could count perhaps on only both his hands were still too few.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Day Before Bloody Sunday

  IT was raining lightly in Dublin on Saturday the twentieth of November, 1920. It was cold enough that the noses of people on the street were red, as were their cheeks. The complexions were ruddy and breath snaked around their necks like grey scarves. Dublin was a bustling town. The largest town in Ireland and the seat of government for the Irish Republic.

  You couldn't see England from the docks that jutted up against the Irish Sea. But you could feel her presence. Prickly and pompous like the Brits that roamed the streets of Dublin as if it were their natural birthright. At least that's how Patrick Cooney felt. He had a seething dislike for the British Government. Nothing personal against Brits, but the Black and Tans and the soldiers. He'd sooner drive them out into the sea like St. Patrick did to the snakes.

  Cooney was pacing up and down the boardwalk like an agitated panther, his black woolen coat with the collar turned up protecting him from the damp cold. He bit a cigarette between his lips. A hand rolled one and over his head a newsboy cap protected him from the light rain. It was early in the morning. He'd been up since before the sun. Not that you could see it, but you could tell it was there for the sky was a smear of light grey. Cooney was waiting for the others. They'd soon be here.

  He finished his cigarette and stubbed it out under his shoe. He walked into the abandoned building. Dublin hadn't yet seen much economic improvement since the war ended, and half the docks were empty. It made it easier for him, and the IRM. Today was a big day. Tomorrow would be a bigger day if they'd just follow the plan. That was today's itinerary. Making sure everyone followed the plan.

  The wooden building was as cold and damp inside as it was outside. The lights didn't work, but there was enough light brought in from outside to make it cozy. The big doors were open and the windows were plentiful if not high above the ground. That wasn't a bad thing necessarily. It allowed for some discretion.

  Patrick Cooney pulled over a wooden crate and sat on it. He crossed his one leg over the knee of the other and waited. He was not a patient man, but he had learned patience in his long struggle against the English. Cooney was an unremarkable man to look at. Stocky of build with a round face and short stature. He reminded one of a bull dog. His hair was jet black and straight. His eyes were small but with a practiced piercing stare. His mouth was thin and closed unless he had something to say. He rarely smiled.

  The first to arrive was Aidan Boyle. A thin slight man with a temper as quick as a firecracker. He had a red mess of hair and freckles across his face. He looked impish and his eyes twinkled and he smiled easily. Though he could turn on you in an instant.

  "Aidan," said Cooney, nodding at him.

  Aidan being five years senior to Cooney's thirty had introduced the younger man to the Irish Republican Fraternity. The IRF, some suggested, was the precursor to the IRM.

  "Champion," said Aidan, smiling at Cooney.

  Cooney got his nickname as a younger man in the boxing ring. It wasn't that he had been undefeated in the middleweight division of Ireland, but he'd only ever lost three matches. All by points. He could be knocked down, but he'd never been knocked out.

  In ones and twos the rest of the men came slowly into the building. They huddled around Cooney as he waited. There would be eight of them all together. Including himself. Aidan Boyle was here. Cathal McClery had arrived. A tall man prematurely grey but with a full head of hair. Shortly after him Daire Nolan came in with Fintan O'Bern. The two of them could be brothers. Good looking men of average height with coal black wavy hair. Dark brown eyes. Jarlath Payne came in just minutes after Nolan and O'Bern. He was followed by an out of breath Nial Rowe. A chubby lad who looked younger than his age. He wasn't the toughest of them, but he was one of the most eager. They were waiting for Tadgh Ahearn.

  He wasn't usually late. But this morning he was. After about five minutes, Cooney stood up.

  "We may as well get started. None of you seen Tadgh?” he asked.

  He was met with shrugs, upturned mouths and general blank stairs. Cooney furrowed his brow and looked down for a moment. He rubbed his chin with his hand.

  "Well, let's get started then," he said. "We know where the men will be tomorrow. Are you all up for it?"

  He looked around at the now somber faces. They nodded as his eyes met each of theirs. Motion came from the large door. They all turned to look. Tadhg Ahearn ran in and then took a moment to lean on his knees. He was out of breath. After a short while he looked up and grinned. Then he winced and gingerly touched the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. He was bleeding from a small cut.

  "Sorry I'm late lads," he said.

  "Joseph and Mary," said Cooney, looking at him with a grim stare. "What the hell happened?"

  Tadgh Ahearn was a tall man. Well over six feet and thin with it. He had a long thin face with bright blue eyes and a mess of curly brown hair. He was nice enough to look at but his teeth were all crooked. He grinned again at Cooney.

  "Sorry, Champ," he said, "I had a bit of a chinwag with two of RIC's men."

  His eyes were sparkling with delight. RIC was the Royal Irish Constabulary, and Tadgh was well known to them as were some of the others.

  "And did they follow you here?" asked Cooney.

  "No, I left them bellyaching a few blocks away. I left them down in Irishtown. They didn't follow me."

  Cooney nodded.

  "Good," he said. "What did they want?"

  "The usual. They were asking about my business. Where I was going. That sort of thing."

  "And did you tell them?"

  Ahearn cocked his head in surprise.

  "You really think I'd have told them that? I told them I'd just come home from meeting their mothers. They didn't like that too much."

  "I imagine they didn't. I see they split your lip."

  "More like a kiss compared to how I gave it back."

  Cooney nodded.

  "Good. We're glad you're well. Can we get back to it?"

  Ahearn shrugged with his palms facing up. He huddled in around the group, standing taller than any of them. He patted the back of Rowe who looked up and grinned at him.

  "Like I was saying," continued Cooney. "We all know how it's going to be, right?"

  He looked around at faces that nodded somberly. This wasn't going to be their biggest act but it was hopefully going to rattle the sabers to bring the English Government to the table. Cooney took a piece of chalk out of his pocket. It was white. He drew a map on the ground in front of his crate. It was a map of a neighborhood block. He pointed to the bottom left corner. Where two roads intersected.

  "This here is Cavannagh Street," he said, dragging the chalk up and down the vertical street. "And this here is Soligmore Avenue." He dragged the chalk lengthwise along the
horizontal street. "You all know it, right?"

  He looked up from his map. More nodding faces. He looked back down and stabbed at what looked like a drawing of a house on that corner with a cross on the roof.

  "The British Army think that they can find shelter in this church of theirs. This here is St. Thomas' Church. Church of the doubters."

  The group around him laughed. That wasn't what it was really called. At least not the doubters part. Cooney looked up and let a small smile curl the corners of his mouth. But not for long.

  "Now in the back on the right side," he said, drawing an arc from Soligmore Avenue up and around the right side of the church to the back of it on the far side of Cavannagh Street, "is an entrance way to the basement. It's there in the basement where they're going to be meeting tomorrow at nine, just before the ten o'clock service."

  "And we're going to take them at nine fifteen right?" asked Ahearn.

  Cooney looked up and nodded.

  "Yeah. Nine fifteen sharp. We're gonna meet at The Long Limerick. You all know the pub?"

  Cooney looked up and was met with nods.

  "Nine in the morning we're gonna meet there. Nine sharp. And from there we'll make our way down here. Shouldn't take longer than fifteen minutes. Closer to ten."

  Cooney looked up again. Dour faces. Only Ahearn was grinning.

  "Any questions?" asked Cooney.

  "Who's gonna be there?" asked Payne.

  "My sources say there'll be fourteen men holed up there. Twelve are British Army, secret service agents, one of them will be Tadgh's beloved RIC, and the last one is a traitor. An informant."

  "What are their names?" asked McClery.

  Cooney looked up at him and frowned.

  "Names aren't important. What is important is that these men all end up dead after we've finished. Look here, these are the founding members of the Istanbul Squad. Right? These are the men who we've been hunting for years now. They're the ones that are the biggest threat to our sovereignty. They know how to infiltrate and to interrogate Irish civilians. They are not nice men. And they'll be our downfall if we don't end this Squad. These fourteen. Well, the twelve British Army Officers specifically are key members of the Istanbul Squad. If we carry this off, the government will be more inclined to talk to us. I'm sure of it."

  Cooney looked up at McClery. He frowned at him. He was trying to figure out why he was concerned about their names. Sounded like he might be a double agent. Cooney was going to have to keep an eye on him. McClery had never given him reason to be suspicious before, but this was an odd question.

  "Alright," said Cooney. "You've all got your 1910s ready and fully loaded right?"

  Cooney went around the group getting an affirmative from each of them in turn.

  "It's a great gun," said Rowe, grinning. "Nice of you to get them for us."

  "That's thanks to our lads at the dock," he said. "Now, Ahearn and I have the Browning rifles. We'll lead the attack and enter shooting as much as we can. We go in, and then the rest of you flank Ahearn and I. We fire until none of them are left standing. And then we make sure they're all dead. A bullet to the head if you need to make sure. Are we clear?"

  They were all clear. These were not men who had just come together to express their dissatisfaction with the British Government. No. These were men who had been fighting since they were two bricks and a ticky high. They were used to violence, but more than that, they were patriotic and they believed they fought on the side of angels. They were freedom fighters or so they thought. And desperate times called for desperate measures.

  CHAPTER THREE

  New York Docks

  IT was coming on five in the morning. Jersey City behind them was dark. The water in New York Harbor was black, oily and dark. It looked to have a thick, blubbery skin like a whale. It breathed slowly and regularly. Pieces of stars and the moon sparkled off its back like sprites. It was dark out here. On the pier of Port Jersey Brogan Quinn sucked on a hand rolled cigarette as he watched his men unloading cases from a container.

  Quinn was one of The Blue Eyed Boys. His older brother and a couple of other lads had started the gang in the early 1900s. They'd all had blue eyes back then. Not all of his men had blue eyes now. But it wasn't a prerequisite. Loyalty and dedication were. It helped if you were tough too. Coghlan, his older brother had been dead a few years now, but that hadn't stopped Quinn from making The Blue- Eyed Boys the biggest Irish gang on the Eastern Seaboard.

  Quinn was a slight man. He was in his early forties and wore a newsboy cap. He was five and a half feet in shoes with a creased face and a nose that God had stuck on haphazardly. But his eyes were bright and blue and he smiled easily. But the smile was sharp as a knife. He was generous to those who were loyal and ruthless to those who weren't.

  He brought his watch up to his face and inhaled on his cigarette to give him some light by which to see the time. In front of him was the grey outline of the old lady. The Statue of Liberty. Her torch barely a glimmer of hope in the dark night. It was five minutes to five. Tommy Malone was meeting them at five. Quinn looked up and walked over to his right hand Anraí Dolan. Dolan was the opposite of Quinn. As small as Quinn was, Dolan was large. A towering impressive stocky hulk of a man. A good foot taller than Quinn with over a hundred and fifty pounds on him. He was, though, a friendly giant. Slow to anger, and reticent in the use of violence, he was both capable, loyal and willing when the need arose. He had brown hair and brown eyes. Not one of the founding members of The BlueEyed Boys.

  "How you coming along, Anraí?" asked Quinn.

  Dolan turned his impressive bulk towards his boss. He looked down at him and nodded.

  "We're just about ready," he said.

  Quinn looked round the big man into the container. It was almost empty. Eight cases were left. Five needed to be put into the back of the truck for Tommy Malone. Just as he was thinking about that, he heard the dull purring of an engine approaching. The lights of the car were showing first, but the car was concealed behind a container.

  "Ready, lads," said Quinn, as he reached behind him and put his hand around his Colt 1911 in his waistband, "could be Malone, could not be."

  He dropped the cigarette and squashed it out with his shoe. The car came around the corner. It was a black Cadillac. Quinn knew it as Malone's. As the car turned the corner and its lights swept over the legs of Quinn and his men, it came to a stop and the lights went out. Quinn started up to the car. He turned around, "hurry it up," he said to Dolan.

  As he approached the Cadillac, Malone got out of the passenger side. Two of his men got out the back. They were heavily armed. His driver stayed behind the wheel.

  Malone was just a few inches taller than Quinn, which wasn't hard to do. Though he had about fifty pounds on him. Malone had been the boss of the West Side Crew for over ten years. The largest Italian Mafia group on the Eastern Seaboard. They were bigger than The Blue-Eyed Boys and getting bigger by the minute. Malone had a head for business. He was expanding into Chicago and then west from there. Malone took the cigar that barely burned out of his mouth and clutched it between chubby fingers with rings on most fingers.

  "The whisky came in good?" he asked Quinn.

  Quinn nodded.

  "Not a drop spilled. Fifty cases like we agreed. Red Beagle Whisky. Ireland's finest."

  Dolan came up to Quinn and leaned down to whisper into his ear.

  "All done, boss," he said.

  Quinn nodded, still facing Malone.

  "My lads have just finished up. Why don't you come and have a look," said Quinn, and then he looked at Dolan, "open up a bottle of ours for Malone to sample."

  Dolan nodded and hulked off towards the container. Quinn led Malone towards the truck which was off to the left side of the container. It was filled with cases of Irish whisky. Malone walked around the back of the truck, looking at the cases. They were all stamped with the logo and name of the whisky. The logo had a beagle standing at the ready. Underneath it was the nam
e "Red Beagle Whisky".

  Dolan came along with a couple of tumblers and a bottle of unopened whisky. He handed the bottle to Quinn and held the tumblers. Quinn opened the bottle and poured a finger in each glass. Dolan passed one to Malone and Quinn took the other.

  Always a cautious man, Malone waited until Quinn had taken a sip first before trying it himself. It was strong, smoky and good. Malone raised his glass up to Quinn who mirrored him.

  "You Irish sure know how to make a good whisky. Better than the Scottish."

  Malone was nothing if he wasn't charming. But he was speaking the truth. He did prefer Irish whisky to Scottish. Besides, it was easier getting Irish whisky with his connection Quinn, especially under the newly enacted prohibition. A rare opportunity for profit that the government had just offered him on a silver platter.

  "Sláinte," said Quinn.

  "Salute," replied Malone.

  Malone finished the rest with one swallow. Quinn did the same. Malone looked behind him and then motioned with his right hand. The hand that still had a cigar in it. One of the passengers who had not stayed by Malone's side opened up the trunk and took out a suitcase. He brought that up to Malone and handed it to him. Malone handed it over to Quinn.

  "Here's the money. Fifty cases of twelve bottles a case. Sixty thousand dollars for your whisky."

  Malone smiled at Quinn like he was a benevolent benefactor. Quinn handed the case to Dolan who opened it and lay it on the side of the truck to count.

  "As promised," said Quinn. "It's good doing business with you."

  Malone nodded.

  "You said you could get more of this whisky," said Malone.

  Quinn nodded.

  "I'm going to need a lot more."

  "How much?"

  "This much on a weekly basis."