The DeValera Deception

by Michael McMenamin

  “Don‘t worry about it, Joe.” Cockran said. “You and the Apostles did your best. I can‘t quarrel with that.” Cockran paused, wondering if he should bring up the mysterious message which had led him and Jack Manion to Wyntoon. “Uh, Joe. The same day your boys rescued Mattie, I received an unsigned note, complete with a map, telling me Mattie was being held at Wyntoon by the IRA. Know anything about that?”

  O‘Reilly looked embarrassed. “I do. It was Bobby Sullivan. He‘s more or less been your guardian angel ever since New York. Once we learned that the IRA had taken Mattie, Bobby was hot to go after her but our mission was the arms shipment. So, I told him no, not until I cleared it with Hazel. Bobby was furious. Called me a coward.” O’Reilly paused, a wistful look in his eyes. “He never would have said that to the Big Fella. Anyway, Hazel gave the okay within an hour. Bobby was fit to be tied while we waited so that’s when he sent the message.”

  O’Reilly grinned. “Once Hazel gave the okay, Bobby was fine. Took me aside and apologized. Said he knew I wasn‘t a coward. I‘m glad Hazel approved the rescue. No one in their right mind ever wants to be on the wrong side of Bobby Sullivan.”

  “Now that we know where the arms are being shipped from, what do the Apostles plan to do next?” Cockran asked.

  O’Reilly grinned again. “We‘re going to Los Angeles. Long Beach actually. Wouldn‘t you be thinking we‘ve got ourselves a warehouse to blow up?”

  Cockran nodded. Of course. Like any man, the Irish Free State had a right to defend itself. If a government wouldn‘t protect you from violence, you had a right to do so yourself. His father would have preferred a law suit but, for Cockran, that point had been passed in their last session with Hoover. If the U.S. Government was going to do nothing, the Irish Free State had a right to act. The bastards were going to pay. Michael Collins had taught him that.

  61.

  Take a Look, Irishman

  Los Angeles, California

  Thursday, 22 August 1929

  4:00 p.m.

  The Bradbury Building was located on the southwest corner of Third Street and Broadway. Six stories tall, it had a large central atrium in the building‘s interior around which offices were located. Twin open-grill elevators were located on either side of the lobby and gave their passengers an open view as they slowly rose. Sturm and McBride took the left elevator to the sixth floor and walked down an interior corridor to room 610. The top half of the opaque glass door contained the legend in gold letters, “P.D.C. Investments, Inc.”

  Sturm produced a key and opened the door. The office consisted of a single room with a beat-up wooden desk, two side chairs, a swivel chair behind the desk, and two file cabinets. In the right-hand corner of the room was a large square safe. Cromwell had made the room available, explaining that one of his investment companies owned the building.

  Sturm went over to the safe, knelt in front of it, and spun the dial combination. He opened the large door and pulled out the large leather valise which Zurich had given him that morning on the Graf Zeppelin. He placed it on the desk, undid the straps and opened it.

  “Take a look, Irishman. Exactly $4 million in gold bearer bonds. $2.5 million are in dollar denominations and $500,000 each in English pounds, Italian lira and Swiss francs. Yesterday‘s Wall Street Journal is inside so you can compare the exchange rates.”

  Sturm handed McBride the page with the exchange rates and sat down on one of the side chairs. Thirty minutes later, McBride had filled four pages of a paper pad with notes, conversions of the lira, pound and Swiss franc into dollars. Sturm had not expected him to be so meticulous. Or so apt at mathematics without an adding machine.

  McBride surprised him again when, after counting the bonds, he placed a phone call to the Hotel Cecil and gave directions for three of his men to meet him at the Bradbury Building, instructing them all to be armed. McBride‘s men arrived twenty minutes later. “Would you be needing to have this fine leather satchel returned to you, Mr. von Sturm?” he asked.

  “Consider it a gift, Herr McBride. A small gesture of gratitude for all your work.”

  Immediately after McBride closed the door and Sturm heard his footsteps receding down the hallway, he placed a phone call. “He‘s on his way down now. Follow him and report back”

  Malibu, California

  6:10 p.m.

  A stiff breeze moved the early evening clouds overhead and, across the highway, the beach was lightly populated, a few surfers still catching waves. Sturm was wearing sun glasses but the man with him at the table outside the roadside diner was not, squinting against the glare. “I followed them, Herr von Sturm. They passed the branches of at least four banks on the way.” Bruno Kordt said. “They went directly to Union Station and placed the bag in a storage locker.”

  Sturm laughed. “I suppose that was because the Irishman couldn‘t find a mattress large enough to hide it under. What was the locker number?”

  “Number 44.”

  “And you have someone watching it now?”

  “Yes, Herr von Sturm. We‘ll know if it‘s moved.”

  62.

  The Odds Are Against Us

  San Simeon Airfield

  Thursday, 22 August 1929

  6:30 p.m.

  Bourke Cockran and Joe O‘Reilly climbed into Hearst‘s royal blue Fokker Trimotor, and turned left into the passenger cabin. There were six wicker arm chairs in two groupings, three in front and three in the back. Each set had one chair facing the other two for ease of conversation. Cockran and O’Reilly settled into a pair in the front which faced forward as the aircraft‘s motors idled on the airstrip outside the village of San Simeon. “Tell me about the threat to Churchill, Joe,” Cockran said.

  “Hazel tipped Sgt. Rankin off when he was in hospital in Chicago. But we think the danger‘s over,” O’Reilly answered. “It was to happen today during the reception at San Simeon for the Graf Zeppelin. Once the airship went to Los Angeles, we’re told it was called off

  “Who was behind it?”

  “The IRA, of course,” O’Reilly said. “Who else would you be expecting?”

  “But why Churchill? And how did you find out about it?”

  “We don‘t know why. Mr. Churchill may know but he‘s not saying anything. As to how we knew, don’t you suppose the Big Fella would be kicking my arse from one side of Dublin to the other if we didn‘t have one of our own inside the IRA team here in America?”

  “So it was your man inside the IRA who also tipped you off to the arms buy?”

  “No, that was someone else,” O’Reilly said. “We‘re just doing what Mick said from the very beginning. No one ever beats us at the intelligence game again, boys. No one.”

  Los Angeles Metropolitan Airport

  Van Nuys, California

  9:15 p.m.

  The Apostles were all waiting at the airfield when the Fokker landed. O’Reilly introduced Cockran to Michael Collins‘ old squad. Only two faces were familiar. In contrast, they all knew who Cockran was and they came over to shake his hand, express regrets for his wife’s death and promise, to a man, that McBride would get what was coming to him.

  “Have you boys found us a place to stay?” O’Reilly asked.

  “Tis a fine place we found, Joe,” one of his men responded. “On the beach. A small house. No more than a twenty-minute drive from the warehouse.”

  Once at the beach house, O‘Reilly spread out on the kitchen table the architect’s plans for the warehouse which Hearst had secured for them. The windows were open and the sound and smell of the ocean drifted in, the breeze assisting the efforts of an electric fan. “The odds are against us, boys,” O’Reilly said. “Seamus tells me they’ve added ten more men in the last twenty-four hours. They‘ve increased their perimeter guards from four to eight. Inside, six other men are constantly patrolling. But it‘s a big warehouse so they can‘t be everywhere at once.” O’Reilly pointed to the back entrance. “This is where we‘re going in.”

  O’Reilly turned
to the man beside him, Bobby Sullivan, a tall man, late twenties, close-cropped dark brown hair, cold blue eyes and a prize fighter‘s crooked nose. Cockran remembered him from that night in Dublin at McDaid‘s. He had been just a kid. But the eyes were as cold and blue tonight as they had been then.

  “Bobby, you and three of the squad will take out the perimeter guards,” O’Reilly said. They change shifts at midnight. Use knives if you can, silenced weapons if you must.”

  O’Reilly turned to Cockran. “Patrick and Seamus are ordnance specialists. I‘ve been advised by someone with a military background that these four places would be optimum locations for the dynamite. Do you agree?” Cockran smiled at the oblique reference to advice Churchill had given eagerly the day before, no doubt wishing he could be with them tonight.

  Like Bobby Sullivan, Patrick also looked to be in his late twenties, a full head of light brown hair. Skinny as a rail and nearly six feet tall. In contrast, Seamus was barely out of his teens, a babyface with red hair and blue eyes who probably had to beat the girls off with a stick.

  “If what you‘re trying to do is collapse the roof, that may be all you need,” Seamus replied in an oddly high-pitched voice, “but I‘m thinking it‘s not the roof we‘re out to destroy but the weapons. We need to place charges where the ammunition and powder are, not the main supports for the roof. So what do we know, Joe, about where the ammunition is stored?”

  “We haven‘t been able to find that out. We know there are artillery shells and mortar rounds at the left front of the building, fifty caliber machine gun belts by the rear door.”

  “Right, then,”Seamus said. “Those are the two main places. They‘re far enough apart at opposite ends of the building. Explosions there should create a fire of a sufficiently large proportion to reach any ammunition in the middle as well. Patrick and I will place the charges in the rear first. Then I‘ll do the artillery shells and mortar rounds myself and set a ten-minute fuse. That should give Patrick time to pick a third spot in the center of the warehouse with no more than a seven-minute fuse. We‘ll leave only a two- or a three-minute fuse on the .50 caliber ammunition. I‘ll set it off as we leave the building. The explosions ought to be nearly simultaneous. Make sure you get word to our man about these steel plates we‘ll be needing.”

  63.

  Thought You Could Use Some Help

  Long Beach, California

  Friday, 23 August 1929

  1:30 a.m.

  The sky was cloudless with no moon as two long, dark-colored motorcars pulled to a halt in a deserted side street three blocks away from Pier Three and the warehouse which serviced it. The Apostles disembarked, each wearing a long, dark coat, some with soft hats, others with short-billed caps pulled low on their foreheads. Inside their coats, suspended from a leather strap with a catch release, were Mauser submachine pistols with sound suppressors.

  Bobby Sullivan pulled a silenced automatic pistol from his pocket. It looked like a Colt .45 to Cockran. He turned in a practiced motion and shot out the single street lamp still burning on the block. Cockran stood next to O’Reilly and Sullivan as the other men gathered around.

  “The game is on, boys. Let‘s synchronize our watches,” O’Reilly said. “Bobby, you and your men will have fifteen minutes to take out the eight perimeter guards. No slip ups. Cockran and I and the rest of Team Two will hole up in the deserted shop just down this alley. After Team One has taken out the guards, Bobby will position one of his men adjacent to the spot where the sleeping quarters for the ten off-duty men are located. Make sure your man is no more than ten yards away. As soon as he hears a shot fired, your man goes right up to the window. It will be open for ventilation. He drops two hand grenades in the open window and then heads to the back of the building to cover our exit.”

  O’Reilly looked at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. “It‘s 1:41. At 1:56, Team Two will move and we’ll be taking Seamus and Patrick with us.”

  Fifteen minutes was an eternity to Cockran. He assumed most of O‘Reilly’s men had not been in the Great War. The minutes before you went over the top were the worst. You had time to think. Too much time. Fortunately, it hadn‘t been that way for Cockran the last time he was in combat. It had happened spontaneously. Boys were missing in no-man’s land and Wild Bill Donovan was going after them. Who was coming along? You had no time to think. You grabbed your weapon and headed out after the old man who was leading from the front. Tonight, Donovan wasn‘t there. O’Reilly and Bobby Sullivan were the ones leading from the front. And Cockran had time to think. About Nora. About Paddy. About Mattie, too. And, yes, about Tommy McBride. In the war, he gave no thought to the men he might kill. Tonight was different. McBride should be inside and if he was, Cockran would find him. And kill him.

  Fifteen minutes later, Cockran and the rest of the Apostles in Team Two were crouched behind trash bins less than eighty feet from the rear door on the south side of the warehouse which faced the water on its western side leading out to Pier Three. They looked at the light over the door to the warehouse—Bobby’s signal—and saw that it was still on.

  “This doesn‘t look good, Bourke,” O‘Reilly whispered. “But we can‘t wait. After we‘ve been inside the warehouse fifteen minutes, Bobby will set up a diversion in the front with unsilenced weapons. When the other man in Bobby‘s team hears that, the grenades go in the window. Or sooner if we‘re forced to fire first.” O’Reilly turned to the short, fair-complexioned, blue-eyed man beside him, a cloth cap pulled over his forehead, “Seamus, take out the light.”

  Seamus did and the team moved forward, three of them along either side of the alley. Cockran and O’Reilly were on the left-hand side and, as they reached the intersection with the street, they knelt behind two trash barrels in the cover cast by their shadows. Cockran looked down and saw he was kneeling on the outstretched left arm of a body hidden in the barrel‘s shadow. The man‘s wrist was still warm and Cockran instinctively reached out with his left hand to check for a pulse in the carotid artery. He pulled his hand back, covered with the sticky blood from the large gaping wound in the man‘s neck. Bobby Sullivan had been here.

  Cockran patted O‘Reilly on the shoulder and mouthed the words “one down” and held up a single finger. O’Reilly nodded and looked across the narrow alley at the other three Apostles and gave them the same signal. One of them held up two fingers and Cockran could see the work boot on a second body across the alley from him.

  Thirty seconds later, Team Two was inside the warehouse, the rear door on the south side unlocked as promised. Cockran watched as Seamus and Patrick located the .50 caliber ammo and placed four taped dynamite bundles in the middle of four crates which were stacked two high. The dynamite was on top of the second stack of crates and would not be observed from the warehouse floor. The grease-smeared fuse was run between the crates with barely two inches extending out into the aisle blending in with the dark cement floor. Also as promised, two large metal plates were laying on the floor and the two men lifted them to the top of the crates and placed them in an inverted “V’ over the dynamite. It wasn‘t much but the two plates would direct some of the blast down into the crates. Five minutes had elapsed since they entered the warehouse.

  Taking on the most dangerous part of the operation for himself, O’Reilly then headed toward the west side of the warehouse with Patrick while Cockran stayed behind to cover Seamus as he placed his charges. Again, the charges were put on top of the crates and, again, two metal plates left there by the Apostles‘ inside man were laying nearby. Cockran helped Seamus move them both atop the bundles of dynamite. He had a big grin on his face. The kid was actually enjoying this. Eight minutes had elapsed and once he lit the fuse, they would have ten minutes to exit the building.

  Seamus finished placing his empty satchel behind one of the warehouse girders when they were spotted. “Stop right there!” a dark-clothed figure shouted.

  Cockran turned and fired a short burst from his silenced machine pistol at the
man twenty feet away illuminated by the golden glow of the cone of light above him. The man crumpled where he stood but not before squeezing off two shots from a revolver. Seamus lit the first fuse.

  “Get to the back! Quickly!” Cockran said. “Light the other fuse. I‘ll cover you.”

  Just then, grenade explosions in the sleeping quarters rocked the warehouse. Cockran turned toward the sound just as another man came running around the corner of the next aisle. Reflexively, Cockran cut him down with another short burst. Without the grenade blast, he never would have seen the man coming. Like riding a bicycle, he thought, comforted by the timely return of his muscle memory and not a little bit of luck.

  Cockran heard a short burst of gun fire from the rear of the warehouse. Seamus! he thought and began to run.

  Kurt von Sturm was not accustomed to waiting for a fight. He preferred to take the offensive like he had done that night in Wittmundhaven, killing the Allied sentries and destroying the naval zeppelins. After the raid on Wyntoon which had liberated the McGary woman and cut his forces in half, he had been depending on the ex-Army types Cromwell had supplied to provide a static, perimeter defense. He wasn‘t impressed. He almost would have preferred McBride and his men to these incompetent Americans. How they managed to defeat the Imperial German Army he would never know. He didn‘t believe any of that racist nonsense about the Jews stabbing Germany in the back but someone had to have done it for these American clowns to have prevailed. Sturm thought the Social Democrats and the Communists were far more obvious candidates than the Jews.