The DeValera Deception Read online

  Table of Contents

  Enigma Books

  Also published by Enigma Books

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Publisher’s Note to Readers

  Prologue

  Part I - New York and Montreal, 1929

  Chapter 1. - The Prime Minister

  Chapter 2. - Churchill’s Cable

  Chapter 3. - John Devoy

  Chapter 4. - The Graf Zeppelin

  Chapter 5. - Miss Photo-Journalist

  Chapter 6. - Stay Out of Our Business!

  Chapter 7. - Tommy McBride

  Chapter 8. - The Night Train to Montreal

  Chapter 9. - Can You Ask Around?

  Chapter 10. - Blood and Steel

  Chapter 11. - A New Request

  Chapter 12. - You Were Warned

  Chapter 13. - You Arrested Herbert Hoover!

  Chapter 14. - I’ve Had A Break-In

  Chapter 15. - My Regards to Your Lovely Wife

  Chapter 16. - Tommy McBride Is In Town

  Chapter 17. - You’re Too Nosy, Devoy

  Chapter 18. - My Decision Is Final

  Chapter 19. - An Anonymous Tip

  Chapter 20. - Jumping Bail

  Chapter 21. - She Was Nothing Special

  Part II - Cleveland and Chicago, 1929

  Chapter 22. - My Old Friend!

  Chapter 23. - Sheila Greene

  Chapter 24. - Fair Game

  Chapter 25. - We Don’t Need Help From Amateurs

  Chapter 26. - He Didn’t See It Coming

  Chapter 27. - To Avenge Her Death

  Chapter 28. - Another Hearst Publisher?

  Chapter 29. - Blackthorn

  Chapter 30. - Strictly Off The Record

  Chapter 31. - I Have Ample Resources At Hand

  Chapter 32. - Winston Was Right

  Chapter 33. - Leave The Woman Here

  Chapter 34. - She Needed A Drink

  Chapter 35. - Cockran and I Are Old Friends

  Chapter 36. - You’re Not An Angel

  Chapter 37. - Mr. Capone Sends His Regards

  Chapter 38. - You Won’t Be the First

  Chapter 39. - How Long Have You Known Mattie?

  Chapter 40. - The Plot Thickens

  Chapter 41. - You’ve Been Swell and I Haven’t

  Chapter 42. - Was She Losing Her Touch?

  Chapter 43. - Halt! Federal Agents! Hands Up!

  Chapter 44. - Mr. Capone Is A Peaceful Man

  Chapter 45. - Your Virtue Is Safe With Me

  Chapter 46. - Aquinas Explained

  Chapter 47. - Better To Be Lucky Than Good

  Chapter 48. - A Message To Hearst?

  Part III - California, 1929

  Chapter 49. - Whose Side Was Mattie On?

  Chapter 50. - Jack Manion

  Chapter 51. - Take The Folders, Leave The Money

  Chapter 52. - They’re Together Now

  Chapter 53. - Unfinished Business

  Chapter 54. - Giraffes!

  Chapter 55. - The Great Engineer

  Chapter 56. - Geneva Doesn’t Tolerate Mistakes

  Chapter 57. - There Is Nothing I Can Do

  Chapter 58. - The Shadow of the Graf Zeppelin

  Chapter 59. - My Final Word

  Chapter 60. - The Apostles

  Chapter 61. - Take a Look, Irishman

  Chapter 62. - The Odds Are Against Us

  Chapter 63. - Thought You Could Use Some Help

  Chapter 64. - Two Gun Ed Davis

  Chapter 65. - Churchill’s in Danger!

  Chapter 66. - No Loose Ends

  Chapter 67. - I’ll Survive the Embarrassment

  Chapter 68. - I Was Only Following Orders

  Chapter 69. - Now We Have A Hostage

  Chapter 70. - Take Care of McBride

  Chapter 71. - The Rules Of The Railroad

  Chapter 72. - You Really Don’t Know? She Never Told You?

  Chapter 73. - You’ve Got Some Good Points

  Chapter 74. - Top Of The Morning To You, Tommy

  Chapter 75. - I Wasn’t At No Bloody Trial

  Chapter 76. - He Didn’t Finish The Scone

  Chapter 77. - Sand Castles

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgements

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright Page

  Enigma Books

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  A Death in Washington: Walter G. Krivitsky and the Stalin Terror

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  Hitler’s Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf

  At Napoleon’s Side in Russia: The Classic Eyewitness Account

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  France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932-1939

  Mussolini: The Secrets of His Death

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  To Carol and Becca, the loves of our lives. And to Katie and Kelly, daughters and sisters we love as well.

  Publisher’s Note to Readers

  Some may question casting Winston Churchill as a key character in a series of historical thrillers set during 1929-1939, his “Wilderness Years” when he was out of power, out of favor and a lone voice warning against the rising danger posed by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. They shouldn’t. Saving Western Civilization in 1940 when England stood alone as a beacon of liberty in a sea of tyranny tends to overshadow Churchill’s earlier accomplishments.

  Enigma Books publishes significant works of 20th Century history by scholars and journalists for all readers and now, with this new Churchill series, brings a fresh and exciting approach to the historical thriller centered on one of the last century’s greatest movers of history itself. Churchill is, in many ways, the ideal historical figure around which to craft a period thriller. He was an adventure-seeking young man, a fencing champion in prep school, a championship polo player in the army and a sea
plane pilot in the early, peril-filled days of aviation in 1910. In between, he was a much-decorated war hero in bloody battles on the Afghan-Indian border, in the Sudan, and in South Africa where his commanding officer nominated him for the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military honor, and where he escaped from a prisoner of war camp and made his way to freedom over hundreds of miles of enemy territory. In World War I, while other politicians, safely abed, sent millions of young men to their death, Winston was with his troops in the trenches of the bloody Ypres salient daily risking death himself.

  More importantly for this new series, Churchill maintained a private intelligence network in Britain and Europe during the 1930s which often left him better informed than his own government. The writing team of the critically acclaimed Churchill biographer Michael McMenamin and his son Patrick McMenamin use this fact as a catalyst for their stories. With Churchill at the center spinning his own web, he lures into many adventures his fictional Scottish goddaughter, the beautiful Hearst photojournalist Mattie McGary and the American law professor Bourke Cockran, Jr., a former U.S. Army counter-intelligence agent. Winston, a romantic at heart, brings the two young people together. Romance blooms but it is not a match made in heaven. Both characters are strong-willed individuals and their Celtic tempers frequently clash. Cockran is the fictional son of Churchill’s real life mentor Bourke Cockran, a prominent turn-of-the-century New York lawyer, statesman, orator and presidential adviser whose life is chronicled in Becoming Winston Churchill, The Untold Story of Young Winston and His American Mentor by Michael McMenamin and Curt Zoller (Enigma Books, 2009).

  The first three novels take place during 1929-1932, before Hitler’s ill-fated, but entirely legal, appointment as the German Chancellor. In The DeV alera Deception, Winston, Mattie, and Bourke tangle with the IRA and a real-life, pre-Hitler, Russo-German conspiracy to dismember Poland. In doing so, they discover a plot in the US to assemble arms for an IRA coup d’état in the new Irish Free State and Cockran seeks revenge for his wife‘s murder by the IRA in the 1922 Irish civil war. In The Parsifal Pursuit (Enigma Books, Spring, 2011), Winston sends Mattie on a grail quest in the company of a handsome villain intent on her seduction, a journey shadowed by the Nazis who want the ancient Christian artifact for Hitler. Also at Winston’s behest, Cockran travels to Germany to represent a beautiful blonde heiress who is the victim of a Nazi fund-raising tactic—extortion of her business by a protection racket worthy of Al Capone. In The Gemini Agenda (Enigma Books, Fall 2011), Winston and his private intelligence network put Mattie and Bourke on the trail of a plot by Nazi scientists to kidnap and conduct lethal eugenic experiments on American twins. Shockingly, they learn the conspiracy is funded by Wall Street financiers and elements of US Army Intelligence who hope to unlock the secret to creating a master race.

  I hope you have as much fun reading these stories as I did. A new Winston-Mattie-Bourke trilogy set in 1933-1934 is in the making so stay tuned…

  Robert Miller,

  Publisher,

  Enigma Books

  I have long since concluded that revenge is the most expensive luxury known to man. Anyone who pursues vengeance can generally attain it but it is all he is ever likely to accomplish.

  Congressman William Bourke Cockran,

  27 April 1896 letter to Winston Churchill

  Prologue

  America and Russia, 1922

  After a national struggle sustained through many centuries, we have today in Ireland a native Government deriving its authority solely from the Irish people, and acknowledged by England and the other nations of the world.... and it is the duty of every Irish man and woman to obey it. Anyone who fails to obey it is an enemy of the people and must expect to be treated as such.

  Notes by General Michael Collins

  August, 1922

  It would certainly not be good policy for us to cut Germany off from all trade with the West and leave her no means of development and recovery except in the East. For if Germany turns to Russia, she can find everything in Russia that she requires, not only for recovery of economic strength but for world power... [S]he could develop, free from any treaty stipulation, those great arsenals, ammunition factories, and aviation centres which are forbidden her in her own country.

  Winston S. Churchill, “Have We Done With Germany?”

  Illustrated Sunday Herald, 23 November, 1919.

  San Francisco

  4 July 1922

  11:00 p.m.

  Throwing your lot in with Eamon de Valera rather than Michael Collins—the “Big Fella”—during the Irish civil war was not a recipe for a long life. The fact that the Big Fella was in league with Winston Churchill was no excuse. Joseph Murphy was to find that out the hard way.

  The evening was cool and the fog had set in as Murphy walked briskly from the Union Pacific Club toward his home. The 45 year old Irish American banker had celebrated the 4th of July there where he drank more than his share of scotch in the cocktail hour, vintage French Bordeaux with the prime rib during dinner, followed by cigars and brandy—much, too much, brandy—in the library later. Still, the plump, prematurely graying man was pleased. Irish Catholics like him were not permitted to be members of the Union Pacific Club and few were ever invited as guests. Perhaps a change in by-laws might even bring him a membership nomination in a few years time.

  As he walked, hoping the cool air would clear the haze from his brain, Murphy thought back over the events of the past week after the outbreak of open hostilities in Ireland between the forces of the new Irish Free State and the IRA. The encoded telegram from his control in London. The shipping arrangements made both here and in New York. The rifle orders placed with Colt and Winchester. The new model machine guns ordered from Thompson. All that was necessary, even critical, the telegram had made clear, if Dev and the IRA were to have a chance against a Michael Collins-led Free State Army supplied with all the modern weapons it needed by Winston bloody Churchill, the hated British Empire’s Secretary of State for the Colonies. The arms for the IRA were ready to ship and now it was time for Joesph Murphy to do his part.

  Tomorrow, when the banks reopened after the holiday, he would arrange the wire transfers from Guaranty Trust in New York. He wished this part of his life were behind him. He didn’t relish being the IRA’s last remaining paymaster in America—the trustee of three million dollars which Eamon de Valera had raised here to finance the war against the British.

  The street lights were glowing in the fog as he walked from one oasis of light in the gloom to another. Murphy honestly had doubts about what he was doing. The Brits had pulled out of everywhere but the North. Ireland had its own government, overwhelmingly elected by the people and led by the legendary Michael Collins, “The Big Fella”. The Irish Free State. No different than Canada. The south of Ireland, at least, free from the Brits at last. Was it really necessary for Irish to start killing Irish? To “wade through Irish blood”, as Dev had said? Didn’t it reinforce the stereotype that his Protestant friends had joked about that evening?

  “You’re a fine fellow, Joseph,” they said, “a credit to your race. But don’t you have to admit your civil war proves Irishmen just don’t have the necessities for governing themselves?”

  No, Murphy didn’t think that. But he couldn’t shake his misgivings. Still, duty was duty, and the telegram’s instructions were unmistakable. The other two trustees were unavailable. One dead, the other missing. Dev was counting on him. Tomorrow would be the day. Then, perhaps, it would at last all be over. Ireland truly free.

  Murphy heard footsteps behind him. He wasn’t concerned. This was Nob Hill, not the waterfront. He paused at a street light and a tall man with light brown hair walked past, his trench coat collar high and disappeared into fog which was steadily growing thicker.

  Murphy was close to home now. He sensed movement toward him from the right, but before he could see anything or react, a gloved hand clamped itself over his mouth, keeping him from crying out. Simultaneously,
he felt a revolver pressed into his side as the man spun Murphy around until he was facing him, the revolver now pressed against his heart. Murphy stared into a cold, impassive face whose hazel eyes locked on his own and he felt a shudder convulse his body.

  “The Big Fella sends his regards,” he heard the man whisper. “You should have listened.” Murphy heard the weapon fire, felt the searing pain in his chest and slumped to the damp concrete, the blood pooling beneath him.

  Bourke Cockran, Jr. walked away, pushing a large Webley revolver back into the polished leather holster inside his trench coat, the body of Joseph Murphy no longer visible in the fog. He didn’t feel better. He had hoped he would. Murphy was the third—and the last—to die. Michael Collins’ message—the Big Fella’s message—had been delivered. No one would dare lift a finger to help the IRA now. But Nora was still dead and the ache in his heart remained. Even Michael Collins’ promise to find those responsible and make them pay wouldn’t change that. Nothing would. Not even revenge. But without Nora, he would settle for that.

  Moscow

  5 July 1922

  6:30 a.m.

  Madness. Simply madness. There was no other explanation. Oskar Weidenfeld, the German charge’ d’affaires to the Soviet Union, resumed pacing in his suite at the Metropol Hotel, his silk dressing gown knotted tightly at his waist, his breakfast still untouched on the silver tray beside his bed, running his hands through his thinning brown hair. His mind worked in a logical, precise way. But his mind would not be still, not after the extraordinary conversation the evening before with Leon Trotsky, the head of the Soviet Union’s Ministry of War.

  The German General Staff was out of control. Sondergruppe R! How high did the conspiracy go? How widespread? The head of the General Staff, General Hans von Seeckt, was certainly involved. And his arrogant aide, Major von Schleicher. Had they really told the Russians that Germany would be ready for a “great war of liberation” in only five years? Had they learned nothing from their mistakes in the Great War? Madness.