“Mmm.”
“Pour yourself an Irish and have a seat.”
We heard Burke Senior coming back in.
“Come on upstairs, Declan. I’ve given you a room with a view of the water. A calming influence.”
“I need calming down, you’re thinking?”
You will,
I said to myself. But there was something I hoped to clear up first.
“Brennan must be very happy to have his father here.”
“He didn’t look as if he’d gone mindless with joy, but you can’t expect a grown-up son to give you a big sloppy kiss at the airport.”
“A grown-up son is never too old to be hurt by a father who means the world to him.”
He looked at me sharply. “Is there a point you’re about to make here, Montague?”
“That last day in New York, I know Brennan was a little . . .”
“Yes, yes, I know it. I’ll have a word with him. Are you hearing me though, Collins? I said ‘a word.’ I did not say I’m going to make a speech from the dock. I did not say ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’ I did not say I would be subjecting myself to an interrogation. I said ‘a word.’”
“That sounds clear enough.”
It was time to get down to brass tacks. I decided to pop the question without warning.
“Declan.” He put his case on the bed and turned to face me. “Did you ever pass information to a Soviet intelligence officer operating in the United States?”
“Did I
what?”
“Were you spying for the Russians in return for Russian guns for Ireland?”
He stared at me in utter astonishment. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was innocent of that charge, no matter what else
he had done.
“I guess I have my answer.”
“How in the hell did you come up with a daft idea like that?”
I had come up with the idea — and it wasn’t daft — when I looked at all the evidence from a fresh perspective after rereading the obituary of Uncle Joe MacKenzie.
“Why don’t you have a seat, Declan?”
He shook his head, his eyes never leaving my face. He wanted to be on his toes if I got any crazier.
“His loyalty to his Uncle was never in question,” I recited from the Cathal Murphy obituary. “Uncle Joe Stalin.”
“Have you taken leave of your senses? It was a reference to my uncles, who fought for Irish independence. Along with my father.”
“Your uncles, plural. More important to you, your father. If that’s what the old lady meant, it would have been worded that way. The
FBI
is looking into Nessie Murphy’s death. You did know that the author of the death notice has been murdered?”
“I know that,” he snapped.
“Papers were stolen from her apartment, Cathal’s journals.” The colour drained from Declan’s face. I went on. “Cathal Murphy met secretly — or so he thought — with a man from Washington, who came up to New York to see him in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Probably one in a series of clandestine encounters. I had been thinking of a G-man. An
FBI
agent.” I would spare him the story of his two young children following their mother’s admirer all the way to his meeting at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I had remembered Bridey saying she couldn’t make out what the Washington man said when he shouted at the young boys loitering around his car. He had yelled, but she couldn’t understand him. Maybe, I thought, with the Uncle Joe Stalin reference fresh in my mind, the man had a foreign accent. She hesitated only a moment before saying yes when I called her on the phone. That was it: a heavy accent. “It turned out the man was a foreigner,” I told Declan. “Cathal Murphy worked —”
“Fagan,” Declan interjected. I knew he was poleaxed; he was actually offering me information!
“Did you know Murphy was Fagan when you first read the obituary?”
“Certainly not.”
“Fagan was working for a defence contractor, Desailes Inc., the manufacturer of top-secret surveillance equipment for spy planes. He couldn’t smuggle out photos or papers; security was too tight for that. But he didn’t need to. He had a photographic memory, according to his sister. He could memorize the information. Specifications? Details of government orders? He could keep it in his head until he got home. Murphy/Fagan was renting two apartments. How could he have afforded that? Somebody was paying for it. Who? Irish Republicans?” Declan snorted at that. “There were code books in Nessie Murphy’s apartment. She lied about where they came from. No doubt his methods, including his code systems, became more refined once he was in regular contact with his Soviet control.
“Obviously you weren’t aware of what you were getting when you took up the collection those Sundays at Saint Brigid’s and picked up the specially marked church envelopes Fagan put in the basket.”
“You’re fucking right I wasn’t aware of it.”
“I know. He probably told you it was coded information about bank accounts, contacts, shipping schedules and other details about the proposed arms shipments to Ireland.” Declan was silent but I knew from his expression that I had it right. “In fact, though, Fagan had given up smuggling guns out of the US after being caught and spending time in the clink. He hit upon the idea of trading secrets to the Soviets in return for Russian weaponry, presumably shipped directly from the
USSR
. You didn’t know any of this, but you were the courier.” Silence. “Now, I’m sure he didn’t have you meeting a Russian. Your contact would have been an American. The man wouldn’t even have known your name. Or maybe you didn’t meet anyone. You used a letter drop or some other system.” Again, no reply.
Declan sat glowering in my direction but it wasn’t my face he was seeing; it was Charlie Fagan, who had set him up in a perilous adventure that could, at any time, have been exposed.
“I guess he had his revenge on you after all, Declan.”
“What do you mean, his revenge? How many of these goddamn avengers are out there, trying to blow my head off after all these years? What did he have to be vengeful about?”
“You took away the love of his life.”
Astonishment gave way to wariness as he contemplated what, or who, I meant. “How could I have done that? I’ve been married to the same woman for over fifty years.”
“He was in love with Teresa. Worshipped her in Dublin, followed her over here.”
“What? What are you telling me now?”
“It’s true, Declan. He didn’t have much in his life: he was saddled with a cranky, resentful, determinedly dependent sister; he loved a woman he could never have; he had his two religions, the Catholic and the Irish. But he took care to ensure that he wouldn’t lose that life, such as it was, if his operations were ever discovered. It would be his rival — you — who would face life imprisonment or even execution by the American government if your role as courier were ever revealed. No doubt he told you that one shipment of handguns, as welcome as it must have been back home, would not be enough to return you to the good graces of the
IRA
. And that he had a way to help you pay for the sins you committed against that unforgiving institution. Old Nessie knew some of this all along. No doubt the rest of it was known to her only after he died and she read his papers. She had it in for you too. For Teresa as well, more likely than not. If it weren’t for Teresa, and then you, her brother would have married in Ireland and taken Nessie in. Life would have been much more comfortable with a sister-in-law to cook and clean for her. She hated her life here, and sought revenge of her own.”
Declan had sunk down onto the bed. He stared at the wall without speaking.
“Let’s call Leo,” I said.
“Let’s not.”
“He told us to drop it.”
“Leo’s a wise man. What was it about ‘drop it’ that you didn’t understand, Collins?”
“The Russian connection. That’s what I didn’t understand. I thought he was warning us off for other reasons.”
Namely, that your own son had tried to kill you.
“What’s his number in Dublin?”
“Leave the poor man alone. He’s out of all that now.”
Out of it himself but still in the know.
“I’m going to find his number.”
Declan sighed and drew a scrap of paper from his wallet. “What time is it? Just after seven, so it’s midnight there.”
“No, it’s just a four-hour difference from here.”
He grudgingly picked up the phone. “Could I speak to Father Killeen, please. Is he now. Well, I’ll hold on then. Tell him it’s Declan.” He glared in my direction while he waited.
“Dia is Muire duit,
Leo!” I did not understand anything he said following the godly greeting, with the exception of something that sounded like
“O Coileáin”
(me) and something else that could have been “Russian.” He may have lost much of the Irish he had learned under Leo’s tutelage in Mountjoy Prison, but he was able to make himself understood well enough to exclude me from the conversation with his old commander. Then he switched to the language of the oppressor. “Well, he had me gobsmacked here, Leo. I know. I’m sure you did.” A reproving look at me. “Here he is. Put the fear of God into him, will you? I’ll be in touch. Take care of yourself.”
He handed the receiver to me. “Good evening, Leo.”
“What did I tell you about this matter,
O Coileáin?”
“You suggested I drop it, was that it, Father?”
“But you didn’t listen, did you?”
“I’m all ears now. When you got back to Ireland, did you mention —”
“I didn’t
mention
anything
,”
he snapped. “I asked some questions.”
“I have a question for you, Leo. Were there Irishmen in the
USA
trading secrets to the Soviets in exchange for Russian arms for Ireland?”
“Never say that again. Ever.” There was ice in his voice.
But I persisted. “So, when the police solve the murder of Nessie —”
“They’re not going to solve it,” Killeen said in the same icy voice. “It should never have happened; it was not intended; it was not sanctioned. The poor woman, God rest her soul. But now that it’s happened, it will remain unresolved. They will find there is no one to arrest for it.”
“So there was an Irish connection after all.”
“Not to the attempt on Declan, there wasn’t.” The words were clipped, followed by silence. This was as close as I would ever come to hearing what I now knew to be the truth. That Irish Republican
forces — “not sanctioned,” so it was someone acting unofficially — had killed Nessie to protect whatever information was contained in the personal papers of Cathal Murphy/Charlie Fagan. I wondered if the Russian agent was still in place in the United States. The fact that there was “no one to arrest” meant either that the killer had succeeded in getting out of the country, or he had been eliminated after the murder. I would never know.
“Are you still with us, Collins, or have I finally succeeded in shutting your gob?”
“My gob is shut.”
“Is your good friend Brennan there?”
“He’s downstairs. I’ll —”
“Never mind him for now, then. So, Monty, I hope you’ll be coming over to see me before I get old and unable to hobble around after you and the Burke brothers. And sisters.”
“I thought perhaps I’d just taken a flame-thrower to my bridges with you, Leo.”
“Of course not! Young pups have to be brought into line once in a while. I feel quite capable of doing that in my current role, as in my previous one.”
“You are capable indeed, Leo.”
“I’ll look forward to seeing you. God bless you, Monty.”
“Thank you, Father. Bye for now.” We hung up.
Declan was giving me a fierce look. “If you were my son I’d give you a clout in the head.”
“If I were your son I’d take it. Let’s go down and join Brennan. Is that the first time you’ve talked to Leo since he left?”
“No. We exchanged Easter greetings.”
“Oh? Easter Sunday?”
“Saturday, it was.”
“So, did you call him, or did he call you?”
“I called him, caught him just before he headed out for the Vigil at the Pro-Cathedral. He — You’re going to get that clout in the head, Montague, if I hear another fucking word. Or if I even see a look on your face that makes me suspect you’re thinking such vicious thoughts again.”
We had joined Brennan in the kitchen by that time. He was
looking at us with one quizzical eyebrow raised. “You’re going to clout Monty, is that what I heard, Da? Any particular reason?”
“The fecker just interrogated me to check on Leo’s alibi!”
“Alibi for what?”
“The murder of the old woman,” Declan growled.
“
Iosa Críost,
Collins! How does your mind operate? You didn’t honestly think Leo —”
“No, I didn’t.” I thought it highly unlikely. But it was a relief, nonetheless, to have it confirmed that he was in Ireland at the time Nessie Murphy was killed.
“I’m going to run out and pick up something for us to eat,” I said to my guests. “In the meantime I’m sure you gentlemen have things to talk about. Now that I’ve filled your father in, Brennan.” I started for the door, then turned back. “The whole time we were in New York, we thought Declan had all the information we were looking for, and was keeping it from us. Turns out he didn’t know the half of it!”
I smiled at Declan and opened my mouth to deliver another remark. I was silenced by a cold blue glare.
The following books proved invaluable in the writing of
Obit
.
Anderson, Brendan.
Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA
(The O’Brien Press, Dublin, 2002)
Behan, Brendan.
Borstal Boy
(Knopf, New York, 1959) Behan, Brendan.
Confessions of an Irish Rebel
(Bernard Geis Associates, New York, 1965)
Coogan, Tim Pat.
The I.R.A.
(HarperCollins, London, 2000)
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for their kind assistance: Asst. Police Chief Kevin McGowan, Dr. Laurette Geldenhuys, Rhea McGarva, Helen MacDonnell, Joan Butcher and Edna Barker. And, as always, Joe A. and
PJEC
. All characters and plots in the story are fictional, as are some of the locations. Other places are real. Any liberties taken in the interests of fiction, or any errors committed, are mine alone.