Barker sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs, and put a foot up. He spoke in a low tone so he wouldn’t be overheard. “You have to understand the situation, lad. We have to remain adaptable and react quickly to any new information. Dunleavy was grafted onto this faction, but McKeller, O’Casey, and the Bannon brothers have likely been friends since childhood. They function as a team. Perhaps they were fortunate to find such a well-known spokesman as the colonel, but he, too, was fortunate to come across a group of such earnest, radical-thinking young men. I need to get as close to the inner workings of the faction as possible.
“The last two hours with Colonel Dunleavy have been very informative. As I previously mentioned, he fought for the Confederacy. I would say that he possesses bravery, spirit, and a natural ability to influence others. I do not think, however, that he is a very intelligent man, and that worries me. Either his threat was made on the spur of the moment, and he is attempting to deliver what he has promised, or the plan to bomb London was calculated by someone else. I don’t care for either of the choices. I wish I could convince myself that this was solely his doing.”
“What makes you think him incapable?” I asked.
“I suspect that through much of his youth he got by on family money. I would hazard a guess that he is the youngest son of the Dunleavy family and hence was relegated to the military. Alfred Dunleavy appears to be a very spoiled man. I imagine he started debauching himself in military college and hasn’t stopped since. The loss of his side in the war was a deep blow to him, and was followed by his family’s financial losses. He was trained for nothing but war and drinking, and being of Irish descent, he naturally drifted to the radical fringe, where he joined in a mad attempt they made to hold Toronto for ransom in 1868. It was a failure, as well, and serving on losing sides must haunt him. Note his fondness for Confederate gray. Dunleavy was imprisoned four years for his part in the affair, and he is very proud of it. It is his continuing entree into Irish-American politics and the coffers that go with it. He spoke of a book he is writing, his memoirs, but if he were an astute man, he’d have finished it long before now and used it to his advantage.”
“You’ve formed an opinion of him quickly,” I noted.
“It is important in our work, lad, to be able to evaluate men quickly, and to make a few constructive inferences. The most important thing right now is that I believe that this plan is brilliant, and I do not think him a brilliant man. Therefore, it is possible someone else is doing the thinking for him.”
“Could it be one of the faction members, like Garrity or O’Casey?” I asked. “It would be a good combination of their brains and his name.”
“You could very possibly be right,” he admitted. “If everything goes according to what Dunleavy said, he could find himself the first official leader of Ireland, with both the younger men standing in the wings. Between the three of them, they could have Irish politics sewn up for the next twenty years, at least.”
“If it isn’t them, then who could it be?”
“First of all, it could be one of the men we spoke of earlier: Rossa, Davitt, Cusack, or O’Muircheartaigh. The latter, I’ve said before, is a master strategist, but I cannot picture him sharing his plans with another faction when he’s got one of his own.”
“I see.”
“What do you think of the Bannon brothers as candidates?” he asked.
“Them? I hardly think so,” I said. “They seemed rather slow, and those clay pipes of theirs …”
“Not necessarily, lad. Pipe smokers are often strategists, and the more silent they are, the more I wonder what they are thinking.”
“Well,” I said bitterly, “you’ve narrowed it down to just about everyone in this business but Dunleavy.”
“Yes, but there is still time yet. Not plenty of time, but time enough. If it makes you feel better, by all means, include the colonel as a suspect. It’s still conceivable that the old fellow had a rare stroke of genius.”
For now, we had more immediate things to worry about. We had one week to dispose of the unstable dynamite and somehow provide new explosives in exchange. I wondered if Barker was really planning to give them better and deadlier bombs. It was just the sort of thing he would do, confident that he could get them away from the terrorists again when the time came.
Barker slept in his spectacles and snored through the night on his back. The next morning, he was rested and refreshed, which was more than I could say of myself. I began to unpack my old pasteboard suitcase, opening a bureau drawer in the room.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Barker said. “We shall be moving again tomorrow.”
“Again? Where to?” I asked, my hands full of shirts.
“Across the Mersey and into a northern corner of your native Wales. Dunleavy says the dynamite is hidden in a barn near an abandoned lighthouse at Colwyn Bay. It is very remote. I believe we can stage our demonstration there.”
“But if we know where the dynamite is, why don’t we simply inform Scotland Yard? They can’t very well attack London with nothing but those sticks they carry.”
“True, but if these Fenian terrorists are thwarted once, they shall merely come again later and more prepared. I’d have them arrested on the spot if I thought a good barrister couldn’t help them wriggle out of it. They must be caught red-handed.”
I must admit my face fell. I do not have Barker’s manner, and all too often I show what I am feeling.
“Buck up, lad,” my employer said. “I shall insist that we have complete privacy while preparing the explosives. You look as if you could do with a day or two in the country.”
I suspected that meant that when we blew ourselves up, we wouldn’t even have the opportunity to take a few terrorists with us, but I kept my opinion to myself.
“First, we have work to do in Liverpool,” he went on. “We must see what kind of supplies we can gather. We shall be purchasing these items, though Dunleavy promises to reimburse us when the funds arrive from America.”
For the most part, London is a conservative, Anglican city, with dissent saved for unionist organizations, and the Speaker’s Corner of Hyde Park. On the other side of the Irish Sea, Catholic Dublin is a single dissenting voice, unified against England. Liverpool is both at once, oil and water that will never mix. One street has signs imploring one to vote for the most recent Fenian candidate, while the next bristles with Orangist ribands and placards. Liverpool is London’s spinster sister, querulous over issues, passionate but changeable, willing to go whatever way the wind may blow.
Dunleavy had returned to his hotel room, intent upon soliciting aid from one of the local city councilmen. Much of his time seemed to be spent looking for money. I would have thought in such case he might have moved to a less expensive hotel than the Midland, but I supposed in order to secure such funds, one must not look as if one were in need of them.
Miss O’Casey was intent upon ensuring that Cyrus Barker didn’t starve while in Liverpool. She fed us a breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon, sausage, black and white pudding, tomatoes, and toast. Dummolard couldn’t have done any better.
With O’Casey’s aid, my employer had compiled a list of places for us to go. At an ironmonger’s in Hanover Street, we filled several baskets, purchasing spools of wire, a dynamite plunger, buckets and paddles for mixing chemicals, and sundry other equipment. We collected more than was necessary to blow up Dunleavy’s old dynamite.
Before the day was out, we had visited a whitesmith, a chemist’s shop, and a chemical warehouse. I couldn’t help but wonder at how easy it was to purchase such terrible things when one has the means to do so.
14
I believe that it is part of human nature, when one is about to set out upon a journey, to want to know the destination. Few of us in our lives step up onto some random train and leave their arrival to fate, but that is exactly what I was doing. Barker knew, of course, but I would sooner get an answer by speaking directly to the engine which was sputtering and steaming by the platform in Birkenhead Park Station, across the Mersey from Liverpool. It was the ninth of June, 1884, and we had been in the city for three days. We hadn’t been discovered so far, but if we made just one mistake, Barker and I would be occupying two of those pine boxes Mr. Anderson had been so fond of describing. Beneath the casual veneer of the Irish faction members lay the hearts of cold-blooded murderers. Of that I had no doubt.