The Second Assassin Read online

  Over the past two years or so there had been dozens of arrests both here and in the north, thinning the already depleted ranks of the paramilitary organisation. Almost as bad were the divisive squabblings of half a dozen factions of the Irregulars from Belfast all the way down to the Cork Brigade. Because of this, formerly low-grade officers within the IRA ranks were suddenly being thrust into prominence.

  In 1937, Russell, a Dublin cabinetmaker, had been the IRA’s quartermaster but the interim chief of staff at the time, a barrister named Sean McBride, accused Russell of tampering with IRA funds and squandering the organisation’s money. McBride, a member of the Army Council, had Russell drummed out of the IRA altogether, an odd event in itself since usually the only way to retire from the IRA was by way of a bullet through the back of the head.

  Russell, undaunted and now with a taste for power, managed to ally himself with another Dublin faction of the group and twelve months later, with few others left to choose from, Russell was made chief of staff and brought Hayes with him into the spotlight. Up until then Hayes had been an on-again off-again supporter of the organisation as a town councilman in Wexford, a man known to be a soccer lover and someone who enthusiastically enjoyed his drink. Now, with Russell apparently already gone to America, Hayes would be the de facto leader of the entire Irish Republican Army and, if what Holland said was true, a traitor to it.

  Father O’Hara managed to guide the backfiring Austin up to the main road then turned left, following the line of the gorse-and-bracken-covered hill to the right. In the distance Barry could see the dark slate roofs of the town’s outlying buildings and what appeared to be a narrow high street between them but O’Hara abruptly turned sharply to the right, geared down with a grinding clatter and pointed the car up a steep and very narrow roadway that suddenly appeared, flanked by a pair of high stone walls. Barry caught a quick glimpse of a whitewashed boulder at the side of the road, a name painted on it in tar black: FRIAR’S HILL.

  As the Austin struggled upward along the narrow snaking roadway there was very little to see – both sides of the rough thoroughfare were screened by dense and ancient ramparts of blackthorn and holly. Then, just as suddenly, they were out of it, climbing to the crest of the bare-topped hill.

  On the left there were a few stony fields set with more sheep and the barely visible ruins of some old stone buildings, perhaps the long-vanished monastery that had given the hill its name. On the right the precipitous slope of the hill dropped away, offering a windswept vista ranging down to the railway station in the distance with the single line of track that ran northward up the coast and then to the beach and the flat grey sea beyond. Inland from the railway track Barry could see stands of forest, farms and other hills but here there was nothing except the road and a single small cottage on the right surrounded by a low stone wall. Yeats had written about places like this, called it a ‘terrible beauty.’ Terrible indeed, and like a dark stone within his own heart, unutterably sad.

  The cottage was like ten thousand others in the country, low to the ground, almost as though its shoulders were hunched against the cold winds that came off the sea and roared over the stony fields around it. The spackled grey walls were thick, mildew stained and uneven, the windows small, their panes cheaply made, whorled and rippled, spotted with bubbles and oily occlusions. The roof was local slate, the cracks between each piece deep green with moss. Better than a crofter’s hut perhaps, but not really what anyone would want to call a home with any pride. The simple door was made of iron-strapped planks, once blue, now scoured to smooth silver by the winds.

  The priest ground the Austin to a halt in front of a gateless opening in the wall around the cottage and all three men clambered out, instantly feeling the wind as it plucked at their clothes and hair, stinging their eyes. Holding his jacket tightly closed with one gnarled hand, O’Hara led the way up to the cottage door. He thumbed down the latch without knocking, ducked his head under the lintel and disappeared inside. Holland began to follow him but Barry put a hand on his arm, stopping him.

  ‘A priest? And Hayes an informer?’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘The R.C.s have been against the IRA from the start – you know that. The Church has never shared power lightly. Being a member in good standing is grounds for excommunication.’

  ‘Then there are IRA priests hereabouts celebrating mass without authority,’ Barry scoffed. ‘And that still doesn’t explain Hayes.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s got to be some sort of trick.’

  ‘No trick,’ Holland answered, gently removing Barry’s hand from his arm. ‘Hayes is a traitor to his own because he has no choice.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s gay,’ Holland answered flatly. ‘There are no queers among the heroic brethren of the IR bloody A nor will there ever be.’

  ‘Does the priest know?’ Barry asked.

  ‘The priest is the one who told us where to look,’ said Holland. ‘Now come along. We’ve work to do.’ He followed O’Hara into the cottage, Barry close behind him.

  The Scotland Yard detective stepped through the doorway and paused, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light. The inside of the cottage was as rough and simple as the exterior. The door opened into a low-ceilinged front room that ran from one side of the house to the other. A narrow archway to the left led into a tiny kitchen and a doorway on the right opened into a small, dark bedroom. The whole place was filled with the dark, oily scent of burnt peat and the musk of rising damp. As Barry took a step within the room the pegged floors squeaked under his feet.

  Close to an iron fireplace against the far wall, Stephen Hayes sat at a roughly made table, O’Hara standing at his back, a protective hand on his shoulder. Hayes was a large man, forty or so, broad-shouldered, relatively tall for an Irishman, with red bushy hair, a strong jaw and the florid cheeks of a drinker. There were two empty bottles of Beamish Stout on the table in front of him and a half-filled one in his clasped hands. He looked up for a moment as Holland and Barry entered the house, then looked down at his hands and the bottle in them once again.

  ‘I’ll leave you then,’ the priest said quietly. ‘When you’ve a mind I’ll see you safe back to the city.’ He patted Hayes on the shoulder, then turned away and went into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

  ‘There’s tea in the kitchen if you’re wanting it,’ Hayes said. ‘I think. ’Tisn’t my house so I really don’t know.’ He nodded towards the closed bedroom door. ‘Belongs to one of Father Bunloaf’s flock.’ Barry barely suppressed a smile. He hadn’t heard the term since he was a boy.

  ‘We’re not here for tea, Mr Hayes,’ said Holland. He pulled another chair out from the table and sat down across from the man. Barry seated himself to the left.

  ‘This is Detective Inspector Barry,’ Holland continued. ‘He’d like to know some things concerning the whereabouts of your superior.’

  ‘Sean, you mean?’ said Hayes. He lifted the bottle of stout and took a swallow.

  ‘Sean Russell, yes.’

  ‘Gone to America,’ Hayes answered. His voice was blurred with drink.

  ‘We know that.’

  ‘Sunday week,’ Hayes went on. ‘A Norwegian liner out of Le Havre, the Stavangerfjord.’

  Barry did the calculation in his head. Eight days out of Le Havre. Even for a small liner, more than enough time to reach New York.

  ‘Rumour has it he’s gone to raise funds from his friends of Clan na Gael,’ said Holland. Clan na Gael was the wealthiest and most powerful of the expatriate Irish organisations in America and had been a source of arms and finance for the Republican cause from the start.

  ‘Rumour’s wrong,’ Hayes grunted. ‘We’ve plenty of funds; it’s brains we’re lacking.’ He reached into the pocket of his coat and Barry stiffened but Hayes only produced a little packet of papers and a pocket tin of Players tobacco. He began rolling himself a cigarette, his broad fingers surprisingly deft.

  ‘Then why did he
go?’ Holland pressed. ‘It must have been important for the IRA chief of staff to leave his post in the middle of a major campaign.’

  ‘The bombings?’ Hayes made a snorting sound. ‘That’s nothing. That’s just—’ Hayes stopped talking. He licked the cigarette paper, twisted one end and lit his creation with one of the wooden matches he kept in the tobacco tin.

  ‘That’s just… what?’ Holland asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Hayes grumbled stubbornly. ‘I’ve nothing more to say.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Holland. ‘But you know the consequences.’ He pushed back his chair, scraping it across the plank floor and stood up.

  ‘Wait.’ Barry could visibly see the man’s bravado fade, his shoulders sagging as though under some great weight.

  Holland stopped, hands holding the back of the chair. ‘Well?’

  ‘Sean’s not gone for money. There’s more to it than that.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘There’s some of us who think there’s going to be another war soon now. There’s some of us who think that, if it comes, we’ll be dragged into it like we were before. De Valera says we’ll be neutral but there’s some that don’t believe him or anyone else in the Dial.’

  ‘Like Sean.’

  Hayes nodded. ‘Like Sean. He who hates my enemy is my friend – that’s his creed.’

  ‘The Germans?’ asked Holland.

  Hayes nodded again. ‘One in particular. A man named Goertz. They’ve come up with a plan, God bloody help them.’

  ‘To kill the king and queen in America,’ Holland offered.

  Hayes stared at him, eyes widening. ‘You know?’

  ‘About the plan but not the details. That’s why we’ve come.’

  ‘All I know is that it’s made Sean enemies within the organisation. Gilmore’s bunch, along with Ryan and O’Donnell. Then there’s McCaughey in the north, with Liam Rice and Charlie McGlade. They all think it’s madness. If Frankie Ryan hadn’t gone off to fight with the Spaniards he would have topped Sean himself for his foolishness.’

  ‘They’re not backing him?’

  ‘They don’t have to,’ said Hayes. ‘Sean has enough friends to carry him along in the United States, not to mention Goertz and all the Germans can bring to bear. Kill the Royals and the Yanks will stay out of the war, that’s his idea. With the Yanks out, Hitler’s mob invades England and Ireland is free at last.’

  ‘Russell actually believes that?’ Barry asked, dumbfounded. The simple logic was good enough to a point, but what made Russell think that Hitler would stop after invading England? With Heinkels and Dorniers flying out of Liverpool or Manchester, Dublin could be bombed in a day and Belfast the following morning. The Irish Sea hadn’t stopped Cromwell and it wouldn’t stop Goering’s Luftwaffe, that was a certainty.

  ‘Sean believes it with all his heart,’ Hayes answered, nodding. ‘He has to believe in it because nothing else is working in this godforsaken country and we’re being made fools of.’ He tapped the ash of his handmade cigarette into one of the empty beer bottles. ‘Bombs that don’t go off. Exploding toilets. Bombs that blow up the people setting them.’ Hayes paused, shaking his head wearily again. ‘The organisation is a joke. Sean knows it and so do I.’ He gave a hollow little laugh. ‘Bunch of yobbos skulking about playing soldiers and silly buggers, drilling with broomsticks and waiting for action that never comes.’ He paused and took another swallow of his beer, slamming the bottle back down onto the table. ‘Sean wanted to strike a blow for once! To do something that mattered, something that would be remembered!’

  ‘You know nothing of the details?’

  Hayes lifted his shoulders slightly. ‘Faic,’ he answered. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Russell didn’t confide in you?’

  ‘Sean confides in no one, least of all me.’

  ‘He said nothing at all?’

  ‘The only thing he told me was that the plan was a case of foils, whatever that means. He thought it was a great joke, that.’

  Hayes lifted the bottle again but this time Barry reached out and gripped the man’s wrist, stopping him. ‘We have to find him, Stephen,’ he said quietly. ‘If he does the job he’s set upon, and with the Germans’ help, he’ll put back the cause a thousand years. Winston Churchill will come across that little bit of water out there and make Oliver Cromwell look an amateur before he’s through. Ireland won’t see freedom again for an eternity. Do you understand?’ He dropped his hand away from Hayes’s wrist.

  The red-haired man put down the bottle of his own accord. He looked at Barry and nodded, ignoring Holland now. ‘There’s a woman,’ he said slowly. ‘A courier bringing him documents that he needs and news of those against him here.’

  ‘Her name,’ Barry insisted.

  ‘Sheila,’ Hayes answered. ‘Sheila Connelly. Travelling false and using the name Mary Coogan.’

  ‘Where do we find her?’

  ‘She sails in five days from Southampton. The Empress of Britain.’

  Chapter Nine

  Thursday, April 20, 1939

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  After the appearance of the appropriate classified advertisement in the Havana Post, there was an exchange of telephone calls between John Bone and his prospective employers that resulted in an agreement to meet face-to-face in New Orleans on Friday, April 21, a date and venue agreeable to both parties. In aid of that meeting Bone had been sent a Chicago and Southern Airlines ticket for a flight that would have brought him in to Shushan Airport on Lake Pontchartrain on the morning of the meeting but he elected to ignore the ticket and instead booked passage on the United Fruit Company steamer S.S. Tivives. The comfortable two-day voyage on the well-equipped cargo–passenger vessel left Bone rested, relaxed and in New Orleans a full twenty-four hours before he was expected to arrive.

  The Tivives docked at the Thalia Street pier shortly after eight in the morning after the last slow leg of the journey up from the Gulf of Mexico. It was hot, without a hint of cloud in a weak blue sky, but the air seemed almost palpably damp – normal weather for New Orleans. Bone left the ship and went through a cursory customs and immigration check, travelling on a well-worn Canadian passport identifying him as a petroleum engineer named Edwin Dow. The passport was quite legitimate, although Dow had been dead for the last six years – a victim of yellow fever in the jungles of Uruguay while looking for likely drilling sites on behalf of British Petroleum.

  When the passport came into Bone’s hands it was almost out-of-date so he simply removed Dow’s photograph, replaced it with one of himself and then had it renewed at the Canadian Consulate in Montevideo. A year ago he’d renewed it again, this time at the embassy in Havana, further muddying the trail of his adopted identity.

  Leaving the immense, swelteringly hot passenger shed he carried his single small bag onto the street and out of the sickly sweet reek emanating from the banana warehouse next door. He found a taxi at the stand in front of the shed’s main doors. Following Bone’s instructions the driver headed up to Tchoupitoulas Street, then turned right until they reached Canal Street. They swung onto the broad avenue with its paved centre boulevard of so-called neutral ground and then drove north-west into the hotel and theatre district, the broad hazy breadth of the Mississippi retreating behind them.

  The driver turned left onto Baronne Street and deposited Bone in front of the huge, red-brick pile of the seven-hundred-room Hotel Roosevelt. He went to the front desk, announced himself as Edwin Dow, with a confirmed reservation made by telegram from Havana. The clerk gave him his key. Bone waved off the bellhop and took the elevator up to his room. Depositing his case on the bed, he removed a lightweight, pale green cotton shirt, equally lightweight cotton trousers, fresh socks and a pair of cool, open-weave rattan loafers. He also took out a small, cased pair of Zeiss binoculars and the most recent edition of the AAA guide for the eastern United States. That done, he went to the adjoining bathroom and showered.

  Refreshed, he returned to the bedr
oom, changed into the clothes he’d laid out and then used the AAA guide to find a nearby garage where he could hire a motor car for the next three or four days. He found one on Gravier Street only a few blocks over from the hotel, which promised to deliver a vehicle to him within the hour.

  Pleased with his progress so far, Bone picked up the binoculars, went down to the coffee shop, bought a newspaper and ate a light breakfast of poached eggs and dry toast, then went to the cigar store in the lobby. He purchased a road map of New Orleans and its environs, a small pocket diary with its own pencil, two bottles of Pepsi-Cola from the cooler and an odd-looking souvenir bottle opener in the shape of what appeared to be a flattened crawfish. He also purchased a pair of green- lensed Cool Ray sunglasses from a display beside the cash register and wore them out of the shop.

  With the strap of the binocular case over his shoulder, his purchases in a brown paper bag and the folded newspaper under his arm, Bone went back to the lobby, where he found the young delivery driver from the garage already waiting for him. Bone filled out and signed the rental form and paid a twenty dollar cash deposit. Using the road map and the stub of a pencil, the driver showed Bone the best and shortest route to his destination before they went out to the car.

  The vehicle waiting at the curb was a dark blue Ford, six or seven years old by its boxy, squared-off look, but well kept and in good running condition according to the young man from the garage. It had been freshly oiled and watered and the gas tank was full. Bone got behind the wheel, took a moment to familiarise himself with the controls, then drove the young man back to the Gravier Street garage, promising to return the car sometime before the following Monday. Bone checked his watch. It was now ten o’clock.