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

by Dermot McEvoy

  “Yes, ma’am,” Eoin replied smartly, as Róisín headed for her bedroom. The slam of her door left him feeling lonely for a moment. But although Róisín was only in the next room, she quickly faded from his thoughts, replaced by the odious Shankers Ryan.

  132

  Saturday, February 5, 1921, dawned damp and miserable, and the Squad was on the make. They were going to make this kill quick and definitive. The shooting team would be made up of Eoin, Vinny Byrne, Paddy Daly, and Jim Slattery. A cover team of four would lend support.

  Hynes Pub in Lower Gloucester Street was the destination. Shankers Ryan, the tag team had discovered, always needed a pick-me-up in the morning. Hardly a day went by when he couldn’t be found gargling with a pint of porter first thing. Dalton and Leonard were back on station and reported the news to the Dump that Ryan had just marched into Hynes. At half-ten, two automobiles pulled up. The shooting team hit the street and pulled their guns as the cover team, in the second car, took their positions outside the pub.

  Shankers had just taken his first taste of the day. He was putting his pint glass back down on the bar when the door burst open and the four men entered the room. He didn’t even have time to turn around before Eoin stuck his Webley in the back of Ryan’s head and commanded, “Hands on the bar!”

  The barman had his mouth open and was about to warn Ryan when Paddy Daly hopped the bar and shoved a big Colt .45 into his gob. “Hit the deck,” Paddy said, and the barman slammed onto the floor, flat as a pancake.

  Vinny moved in and did a quick frisk, relieving Ryan of his Webley. “The Republic thanks ye,” he told the chagrined Shankers.

  Leo Flynn, Shankers’s lone drinking crony this morning, felt the cold steel of Jim Slattery’s gun at the back of his head. “Down,” was the only command he was given, and he sunk to his knees like an altar boy at the offertory of the mass.

  “John Ryan,” said Daly, “you have been found guilty in the murders of Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy . . .”

  “And Conor Clune,” added Eoin.

  “ . . . And Conor Clune,” Daly continued. “Your sentence is death. Say your prayers.”

  Ryan cocked his head to the left, looked up at Daly, and gave a definitive, “Fuck you!”

  They were to be the last two words of his life. Eoin shoved his Webley under Ryan’s jaw and pulled the trigger. The bullet drove through his chin and exploded out of the top of his head, lodging in the ceiling. Ryan, his eyes still open, dropped to his knees, which made it easier for Daly to nail him with a shot to the left side of his head. Slattery came around and put one in the back of his head.

  Slowly the three shooters started backing out of the bar. Vinny Byrne remained. “Now lads,” he said to the barman and the lone customer, “just keep observin’ that floor, and all will be well.” Vinny was about to back out with the others when he decided he hadn’t come all this way to do nothing. He went to the dead body of Shankers Ryan and saw that smoke was still coming out of his head from the three shots. “Jaysus,” said Byrne with a laugh, “he should give up the faggots!” Vinny aimed his trust trusty Mauser, Peter, and blew the front of Ryan’s face off with one shot.

  Leo Flynn, only a few feet away from Ryan on the floor, felt the blood splatter on him. He thought he was next, and, out of the dark reaches of his brain, he managed to retrieve a prayer he hadn’t uttered in donkey’s years. “Oh my God! I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell . . .” Vinny, with a small laugh at the man on the floor imploring his Perfect Act of Contrition, backed out of Hynes Pub and joined his fellow shooters. “I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.” Leo Flynn looked up to find the room empty and discovered that, in his fear, he had peed himself.

  The only thing that Eoin could think of in the car was that he was desperate to get the hell out of Monto. The cover team headed for the Northside, while Eoin’s car raced for the quays and Butt Bridge. They crossed the Liffey, and Eoin jumped out at the corner of D’Olier Street, right across from the DMP stationhouse in Brunswick Street. He looked at his left hand, which was splattered with the blowback blood of Shankers Ryan. Against the wall of Trinity College, he took out his handkerchief and began wiping the blood off his shooting hand. He looked around cautiously, but no one was paying any attention to him. He put the handkerchief back in his pocket and thought about Shankers Ryan, with his final defiant, “Fuck you!” In the past Eoin had, in his own way, grieved for his victims, even the execrable Sebastian Blood. But Shankers was different. Maybe it did get easier the more you did it. But Shankers was now as dead as he would ever be, and Eoin felt absolutely no remorse.

  All he could think about was Róisín and what she had said the night before: “A warm hand can change your world.” Eoin waded through the Saturday morning shopping crowds, heading for Walworth Street, where Róisín O’Mahony and her healing hands were waiting for him.

  133

  MONDAY, MARCH 14, 1921

  “This is fucking insanity!”

  Eoin had had it, and he was giving Collins an earful in the Andrew Street office. “What’s the purpose anymore? Nothing changes, and our lads are still being hanged by the British.”

  Collins only offered a feeble, “I know.”

  “Have you seen this morning’s Freeman’s Journal? SIX IRISHMEN DIE TODAY. That says it all. Thomas Whelan, 22. Patrick Moran, 26. Patrick Doyle, 29.” Eoin could see Collins wince as he read off the roster of the condemned. “Bernard Ryan, 20. Thomas Bryan, 22. And Frank Flood, 19. Nineteen! He’s even younger than I am, for Christ’s sake! This has got to stop, and it’s got to stop now!”

  “Look, Eoin,” said Collins quietly. “I did everything I could for those lads, but I couldn’t get them out. We tried our backdoor channels, but the British are adamant about this.”

  “This country wants peace,” Eoin insisted. “This country deserves peace. She has suffered enough.”

  “I know,” Collins agreed. “Dev and Griffith are doing all they can with the British to get a truce.”

  But Eoin was having none of it. “They’re not doing enough. Tomorrow, there will be six more men dead. They’ll write songs about them and call them our ‘heroes of renown’”—he stopped to laugh bitterly—”and for what? You told me it was over after Bloody Sunday, and yet we’re still losing good men every day.”

  “It really is over,” Collins said feebly, “but these things take time. Empires don’t like being dismantled.”

  Eoin looked at Collins and did not speak immediately. “The problem with Ireland,” he finally said, “is that we always say ‘it’s over.’ But in Ireland, nothing is ever over.”

  Since the return of President de Valera to Ireland and the imprisonment of Arthur Griffith in Mountjoy Prison, Collins had learned the meaning of being a third wheel.

  Before Dev had returned, there had been some movement in the truce negotiations. Archbishop Patrick J. Clune—ironically, Conor Clune’s uncle—had come in from Perth, Australia, and had been shuffling back and forth between Dublin and London trying to find common ground. The Archbishop had reported to Collins that Lloyd George was “genuinely anxious” for peace, but Collins was not taken in and had no intention of letting up now that 10 Downing Street had been slapped awake by Bloody Sunday. Griffith—conveniently situated in Mountjoy, where the British could always find him—was the point man in the negotiations. Father Michael O’Flanagan, the vice-president of Sinn Féin (but without any portfolio), had also shot off to London, hat in hand, seeking out the Prime Minister. “Father Michael,” remarked an annoyed Collins, “feels that nobody is able to handle things quite like he does himself.” Collins’s real fear was that the country would cave to Lloyd George and get terms short of what they deserved. Collins did not delude himself about the IRA’s precarious situation, but this was not the time to buckle.

  When de Valera returned, Collins wa
s shunned to the back of the class by the grand marionette of deceit. Men like Austin Stack—the Minister for Home Affairs, designated by de Valera to be Acting President if anything should happen to Dev—and Cathal Brugha were getting all the attention from Ireland’s President. Collins went about his business in finance and on his work with the Squad and the IRA throughout the country. Brugha, the titular Minister of Defence, came to Collins with his one idea. “I think we should assassinate the entire British cabinet.”

  “Cathal,” said Collins, “didn’t you come up with that idea about three years ago, during the Conscription Crisis? You’ve had three years. Think harder!”

  “I may have to borrow some of your men,” he persisted.

  “You not getting any of my men,” snapped Collins, “for that harebrained idea. The Squad will not be compromised. We’re finally getting some traction in London, and you want to destroy that? You’re daft.” Collins had made an enemy for the rest of his life.

  De Valera was always worried about getting arrested, but he shouldn’t have bothered. The British knew all about him and had no intention of detaining him. Right now, the British needed Eamon de Valera. Collins, however, was a different case. “Extremists must first be broken up,” said Lloyd George, before truce negotiations could start in earnest. Collins had bested the British on Bloody Sunday, and their hatred—and fear—of him ran deep.

  Collins had never seen Eoin this distressed, even after one of his shootings. “You’re taking these hangings personally, aren’t you?”

  “You’re damn right, I am.”

  “Why?

  “Do you know what they’re hanging Thomas Whelan for?”

  “Bloody Sunday.”

  “They are hanging him for the job I did!” Eoin exclaimed, gesticulating wildly from behind his desk. “I murdered Derek of Suez, not Tom Whelan.”

  Collins stood up from his desk and tugged his waistcoat down. “These things happen,” he said. “They happened in the past, and they’ll happen in the future. There’s nothing we can do about them. That’s why war is so random. We’re lucky. Thomas Whelan isn’t.” Collins went to the front of his desk and sat down on its edge. “How long have we been together?”

  Eoin looked up. “Five years next month.”

  “A long time.”

  “A full quarter of my life. T’ink about that. A long time, especially for a couple of rebels. We still breathe.” Collins gave an appreciative laugh. “But this has got to stop.”

  “There will be a truce by summer,” reassured Collins.

  “Then the families of these lads,” said Eoin, “will look back and want to know what their sons died for. On the day of the great truce, the lads in Mountjoy will get a reprieve. But there was no reprieve for these boys. It makes no sense.” Eoin paused, the events of the day weighing down on him. “Every day, I get up and say a Perfect Act of Contrition, just in case it’s my last day. I’m no hero. I just want to make it right. I wish I could just throw this fucking gun of mine into the Liffey and be done with it forever.”

  “You will follow your orders,” said Collins, with an edge to his voice.

  “Yes, Commandant-General,” snapped Eoin. “I haven’t seen you pull any triggers lately.”

  Eoin was immediately sorry he had uttered the words, and he knew they had stuck in Collins’s craw. There was a moment of silence before Collins spoke. “You’re right,” Collins admitted. “I wish I could be out with the Squad on every job, but I can’t. That’s not my job right now. I hate sending you guys out to do this terrible stuff, but there’s no other way to do it.”

  “I’m sorry, Mick. I didn’t mean that.”

  “Oh,” said Collins, with a light laugh, “you meant it. And you’re right to say it. The pressure on us in the last year has been incredible. Sometimes you have to let go.” There was nothing but a heavy silence as Eoin got up and put on his coat. He then pulled his pocketwatch, Collins’s Christmas gift, out by the fob and flicked open the lid.

  “What time is it?” asked the Commandant-General.

  “Too late for the Mountjoy lads. By now, they’re all in Heaven.”

  “Where are you going?” quizzed Collins.

  “Back to Crow Street.”

  Collins got up and put on his own coat. “Let’s pay Peadar Doherty a visit before you hit Crow Street. Sometimes a drink is as good as a prayer.”

  “And sometimes,” replied Eoin, “a drink is a prayer.”

  The two men walked out into Wicklow Street and headed for the Stag’s Head, their love spat settled for the time being.

  134

  By April, Collins was in his full “bad cop” mode.

  Eoin thought part of the reason was that the Big Fellow didn’t like being number four on the Irish political totem pole, behind de Valera, Stack, and Brugha. Eoin knew Collins was smarter than the three of them put together, and that it was eating away at his boss. Any deference he may have had for de Valera was dropped. If Dev sounded conciliatory to Britain in the papers—playing his own version of the “good cop”—you could be sure that Collins would have a bloodthirsty retort in the same papers only days later.

  Of course, this only served to further confuse the Prime Minister and his Minister for War. “We are getting an odious reputation,” Churchill told Lloyd George.

  “The question is whether I can see Michael Collins,” the Prime Minister said, his olfactory system shut down years before. “No doubt he is the head and front of the movement. If I could see him, a settlement might be possible. The question is whether the British people would be willing for us to negotiate with the head of a band of murderers.”

  Lloyd George was clearly obsessed with Collins, and Collins couldn’t resist teasing the Prime Minister. “Lloyd George,” Collins said in a newspaper interview, “has a chance of showing himself to be a great statesman by recognizing the Irish Republic.”

  De Valera, with the help of Brugha, kept chipping away at Collins’s power, casting doubt on his competence, even as Minister for Finance. Probably the ultimate insult was Brugha accusing him of misappropriating funds for buying ammunition in Scotland by redirecting it to his own family.

  “That lying sonofabitch,” Collins spat.

  “Everyone knows,” Eoin comforted, “that Cathal isn’t the brightest bulb on the Bovril sign across from Trinity College.” Collins grunted. “Don’t dwell on it. You know the source. Or should I say, sources.”

  “I don’t know why the three of them are ganging up on me,” Collins grumbled, showing how depressed he was over the whole thing.

  “They are ganging up on you because you are dangerous to them,” replied Eoin.

  “To them?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s an interesting way to put it.”

  “It’s the only way to put it,” said Eoin, trying to put a little cheer into the downtrodden Big Fellow. “Besides,” he added, “Dev found Brugha’s charges to be ‘groundless.’”

  Collins laughed. “No one can pronounce charges ‘groundless’ like President de Valera,” he observed, “and make them sound like a capital offense.”

  In all the years they had been together, Eoin had never seen this side of Collins before. It was obvious to Eoin that Collins had been hurt by the way he was treated by de Valera and his inner circle. And when he was hurt, Michael became either blustery or depressed. Years later, Eoin would realize that this was the bipolar side of Michael Collins. He would note that all great men—and women—had a little of the crazy in them, which separated them from the conforming majority and put them into the sui generis genius class.

  Now Eoin sat looking across the room at Ireland’s revolutionary genius, quietly doing his correspondence without enthusiasm or caustic comment, and wondered what it would take to get Michael Collins back where he belonged—leading, not following.

  135

  Eoin and Collins were back at the Bachelors Walk office, working on Loan business, when Eoin suddenly said, “Have you re
ad Yeats’s poem about Easter 1916 yet? It just came out.”

  “No, I haven’t,” replied the Minister for Finance, tersely, without looking up from his ledger books. Collins wondered what was banging around in Eoin’s young brain. Ireland was at the end of her rope, and all he wanted to do was talk about poetry.

  “Pearse, Connolly, MacDonagh, and MacBride are mentioned in it,” said Eoin earnestly, before pausing. “You’re not.” Collins leapt across the room and took Eoin to the floor in one fell swoop, his Webley flying out of his shoulder holster. “Jaysus, Mick, me gun!”

  “Ya little bastard, ya!” Collins roared, as he pinned the lad to the floor with little effort. Eoin was too small to wrestle with. “You’ll need a gun!” Collins was sitting on Eoin’s chest, completely incapacitating him. “Do you know why I’m not in that poem?”

  “No!”

  “Because I’m still fookin’ alive! Are ya ticklish?” Within seconds, he had Eoin howling.

  “Uncle, uncle, uncle!” Eoin gasped, and Collins let him go, laughing himself as he tried to get his breath back.

  “Speaking of uncles, how’s your Uncle Charlie? Have you seen him lately? Is he still working at Guinness?” asked Collins, straightening his waistcoat.

  “I had a drink with him a few weeks ago,” answered Eoin, cautiously, reholstering his weapon.

  “Does he have any more guns for me?”

  “He’s looking.”

  “He lives in Stoneybatter, right?”

  “You know that,” replied Eoin. “On Ben Edair Road.”

  “Near Aughrim Street?”

  “You’re in the right neighborhood.”

  “We could always use another safe house. Perfect cover, former British army. He married?”