The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a Dublin Family, Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising (58 page)

“Now, now, General,” said Churchill, “there must be a way to resolve this problem.”

But Collins was having none of it. Eoin could hear Collins’s voice rising, and he looked at Thompson with trepidation. He got up without saying a word and peeked through the kitchen door, which gave him a clear view of Churchill and Collins going at each other.

“You hunted me day and night!” Collins shouted, gesticulating with his snifter. “You put a price on my head!” Birkinhead was afraid that blows were about to be struck.

“Wait a minute,” countered Churchill, “you are not the only one.” With that, Churchill took Collins’s wrist and pulled him from his chair. He walked him to the other end of the living room and pointed out a framed poster on the wall. Collins put his nose almost to the glass. It was a poster from the Boer War for the recapture of one Winston Churchill. “At any rate, it was a good price—£5,000. Look at me—£25 dead or alive. How would you like that?”

Collins was silent before shouting out, “£5,000 my arse! It was £10,000!”

“Whatever pleases you, General Collins.” Both men laughed a good drunken laugh, and Eoin let the kitchen door close, the crisis concluded. It was the moment that finally broke the iceberg that existed between the British and the Irish, and, now, for the first time, a Treaty was possible.

“Yes, Prime Minister, I was Mick Collins’s bodyguard and general factotum.” A shocked Churchill embraced the congressman, but Eoin did not return the hug. “You look well, Prime Minister.”

“I am well,” said Churchill. “And this time, we’re going to be on the same side!”

“You’re lucky Hitler is such a dunce,” said Eoin. “Only someone that stupid would declare war on the United States of America.”

“Well put,” said the president. “Let’s drink to victory!”

The three martini glasses clinked together. “To our three great countries,” said Eoin.

“Three?” said Churchill and the president, together.

“You’re not forgetting about poor little
Saorstát Éireann
, are you?”

“The Irish Free State,” sniffed Churchill. “Very difficult person, that de Valera.”

“Yes,” said the president. “Charles De Gaulle thinks he’s Joan of Arc. Eamon de Valera thinks he’s St. Patrick.”

The two leaders—who had their hands full with de Valera’s neutral Ireland—laughed, but Eoin did not. “Perhaps,” counseled Eoin, “but if Britain didn’t habitually condemn Irish patriots to death, there might be more cooperation from those you didn’t get around to shooting—namely Eamon de Valera. You condemned this man to death! You expect him to kiss you now because you’re in trouble?” This was not going the way the president had expected. “You know de Valera is difficult. It’s no secret. That’s why Michael Collins negotiated the treaty.”

“De Valera is insignificant,” said the Prime Minister.

“Then why did you cable him on the night of Pearl Harbor, December seventh?” The president’s ears pricked up in surprise.

“Where did you hear about that?” snapped Churchill.

“Maybe my intelligence network is
still
better than your intelligence network,” laughed Eoin, but there was no smile in the laugh. “Remember who I worked for—the DOI of the IRA.”

“DOI of the IRA?” echoed Roosevelt.

“Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army,” said Churchill. “Michael fucking Collins.”

“Yes,” said Eoin, with a sly smile. “Michael fucking Collins.” FDR blew smoke out of his nose and turned on that dazzling smile, showing he was enjoying the match. Eoin’s intelligence network was Jack Lemass, who had fed him the information. “I hear you’re a great fan of Thomas Davis?” Eoin said to Churchill.

“Thomas Davis?”

“He’s the man who wrote “A Nation Once Again.” If I recall your exact words in that de Valera telegram: ‘Now is your chance. Now or never. A nation once again. Am ready to meet you at any time.’” Eoin was polite enough not to mention that Churchill’s cable-writing was cognac-fueled.

“Is that true, Winston?” asked FDR.

Churchill harrumphed and straightened out his dickin-bow before Eoin came to the rescue. “And you did the right thing, Prime Minister.” Even Churchill looked stunned at that. “If Dev had any wit, he would have shown up the next morning at 10 Downing Street. Now, Michael Collins would have made a deal with you!”

Churchill smiled at the congressman. “Yes, General Collins would have made a deal. As always, he would have done what was right for Ireland.” He paused for a second. “He would have done what was right for everybody.” The prime minister took a slug of his cigar. “I’m mildly shocked that you are defending the
Taoiseach
,” surprising Eoin, in that he knew the relatively newly minted Irish term for “prime minister.”

“I am not defending Eamon de Valera,” said Eoin. “I am defending the right of Ireland to have her own say—no matter how different it may differ from that of Britain or the United States of America—in this war that is about to engulf the world.” He turned to the president. “You t’ink this man de Valera—who I don’t personally like or admire, for that matter—is a troublesome wart. But he can be dealt with.”

“How?” asked the president.

“A pet will get more of a positive reaction out of him than a threat. Remember, he sent the Dublin fire brigade to Belfast to put out the inferno from the
Luftwaffe
’s bombing campaign last spring. It was Irish generosity at its best. He can be stroked.”

“He did do a good job there,” admitted Churchill.

“So realize, gentlemen, that the wily old rebel now in Dublin, the
Taoiseach
, can be
gently
maneuvered. And I can help you with that.” Eoin had stood his ground between two of the most important men of the twentieth century, talked common sense, and proved that he was no one’s pawn. And with that, Eoin Kavanagh said his goodbyes and rushed to catch the train back to New York City, hoping that Róisín had kept his dinner warm—and was still in the mood to talk to him on this strange Christmas Eve.

 149

I
t was early on the morning of December 6, 1921, at 10 Downing Street. The Irish Delegation had just signed the Treaty, and they were being photographed by the British Pathé Newsreel cameramen. Collins, considering the ordeal and stress he had been under, looked remarkably fresh and handsome, even with his awful “Charlie Chaplin mustache,” as Kitty called it. He even smiled and laughed for the camera.

He came out of the room, and his smiling face went completely blank as he motioned to Eoin to follow him into the cloak room. “This morning I signed my death warrant.”

Collins’s words rang in Eoin’s ears. “My God,” he said, “what are you talking about?”

“My life is forfeit.”

“Twelve months, sixteen days,” said Eoin to the distraught Collins.

“Now what are
you
talking about?”

“It’s exactly twelve months and sixteen days since Bloody Sunday.” Eoin grabbed Collins by his two arms. “You did it, Mick. You did the impossible.”

“I did fuck all.”

“Don’t you say that to me after all we’ve been through.” Eoin released his grip on Collins and stuck his index finger right under Collins’s nose. “The delegation birthed a nation this morning, and you and Mr. Griffith were the midwives.”

“I hope it won’t be a stillbirth,” replied Collins. “But that’s up to those back in Dublin. I don’t think Dev will receive this well. But I’ll do my best to get it through the
Dáil
. It’s my duty. If I don’t, we’ll be back to the killing again. Even if we do get it passed, we might be back to the killing again.”

“A civil war?”

“A hell of a civil war.”

“Led by Mr. de Valera?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Michael Collins. Then he laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“I was just thinking about your mouse.”

“My mouse?” said a confused Eoin.

“You said the second mouse gets the cheese.”

“Oh,” Eoin replied, shaking his head as though he were in terrible pain, “don’t say that.”

Collins smiled an exhausted smile. “I guess I’ll never see the cheese, will I?”

And he would never see the cheese, because, in an act of total selflessness and total love of Ireland, Michael Collins threw himself into the trap and sprung his country free of seven hundred years of British oppression.

1922

 150

E
OIN’S
D
IARY
J
ANUARY
7, 1922

I
s toil
64
. Ní toil
57
.

That was the vote in the
Dáil
today, in favor of the Treaty. 64 yeas. 57 nays. It’s hard to believe that, after seven hundred years of British occupation, fifty-seven Irishmen actually voted against getting the British out of this fucking country, including Dev, Brugha, Stack, the Countess Markievicz, and the rest of that gang. Mick was beside himself. “The Irish inability to concede victory,” he snapped at me, “is apparently in the blood!”

They’re outraged that the six Ulster counties are not coming into the new Free State. They never consider what the Orangemen think. If the situation were reversed—if the new government were to be run out of Belfast—how would all of us Catholics feel about that? We’ll have enough trouble setting up a government that works. The Orangemen would only complicate the situation. Anyway, Mick thinks that this will work its way out because of the boundary commission, which, he hopes, will bring Catholic Tyrone and Fermanagh into the Free State.

And if it isn’t the North they’re upset about, it’s the loyalty oath to the king. With these people, there will always be an excuse. And that’s that, as Mick would say.

I am very disappointed over the whole vitriolic tone of the debate, but I’m more concerned with Róisín. I think the whole Treaty debate is beginning to get under her skin. She knows the sacrifices that we have all made, and she’s had enough. The
Cumann na mBan
has voted 419-63 against the Treaty, and she is livid about that. I think her romance with the Countess Markievicz is over. The Countess called Collins and Griffith “oath breakers and cowards” in the
Dáil
. “I can’t believe,” Róisín said in disbelief, “that she could talk to Mick that way, after all he has done for the country.”

Róisín is beginning to talk about New York nonstop. “Let’s just leave,” she said to me last night. “I’ve had enough.” I told her we couldn’t leave now, because the job wasn’t done. Mick is feeling very down about all this nonsense, and I couldn’t leave him at this time. “Mick will survive!” she snapped at me.

“So you want me,” I replied, “to leave him in the dust, just like the Countess Markievicz?” She had no reply. I told her what Mick said to me the day the Treaty was signed in London, about predicting his own demise, but the bold Róisín told me it was just nonsense. I don’t think it’s nonsense. I wish we weren’t in this mess, but we are, and I’m determined to ride it through so we can, finally, have our own little country.

But Róisín, at the bottom of it all, is right. It’s despicable shite we’re going through, after all the hard work Mick and Mr. Griffith did in London. Róisín talks always of “America,” but it’s New York she means. It has come to mean paradise to her. And she may be right, because New York and its speakeasies look very appetizing right now. But, for the time being, I shall remain here in Dublin at Mick’s side. God help us all.