Acting on Sean Russell’s orders, Barry and Sheila Connelly gave the IRA leader a two-minute lead as they left their small hotel on Congress Street, separating themselves by half a block or so, but never letting the tall, striking figure out of their sight. According to Connelly this was standard IRA procedure, the watcher behind able to see if the figure in front was under police surveillance of any kind.
At some point along the way Russell would stop to look in a shop window, light a cigarette or stoop to tie his shoelace, giving Barry and Connelly a chance to pass him. If there was anyone following, Barry would walk on the inside, away from the curb, with Connelly on the outside. If it had been Connelly alone doing the job, she would have switched her purse, or a folded newspaper, from one hand to the other.
For the next hundred yards it would be Russell looking for a tail, and then if distance warranted, they would switch again. So far Barry hadn’t noticed anything, either anyone following on the sidewalk or in a vehicle. Either Foxworth’s FBI agents were very good at keeping themselves hidden or Russell had managed to give them the slip somewhere along the way.
Ahead of them, the IRA chief seemed entirely unconcerned, walking slowly, smoking a cigarette as he went, a hearty, powerful-looking man out for a stroll, enjoying the sun-filled afternoon. They’d left Chicago at midnight the night before, taking a slow-rolling overnight train to Detroit on the Wabash Line, arriving at the Union Depot on Third Avenue shortly after 1 P.M. All the berths on the train had been sold and they were forced to travel by coach.
Barry was bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and desperate for a bath, but somehow Russell looked fresh and alert, without a care in the world, even though he’d nipped steadily at the pint bottle he kept in his jacket pocket throughout the trip. He’d even stopped to replenish his supply on their way from the train station to their hotel.
Barry watched as Russell reached into his pocket yet again and took a quick drink from his bottle. “He’s a drunk.”
“He’s Irish,” answered Sheila Connelly, poking her arm through the crook of his elbow and pressing herself lightly against him.
“I’m Irish and I don’t drink like that.”
She laughed lightly. “You seem to have come over all terribly moral, Mr. Barry, considering our situation together since we were in Chicago.”
The policeman flushed brightly but he made no move to pull away from the touch of her arm in his. “What I meant was, he seems to be drinking a great deal for a man who’s about to go slinging bombs about at the King and Queen of England.”
“Now that’s true enough.”
They continued to follow the big, red-haired man, Barry’s fluxing thoughts giving him a case of mental vertigo that was almost enough to make him physically nauseous. What mad fate was it that had carried him across the seas to find himself falling into what he thought could well be love with a woman who was as much his prisoner as his lover? How was it that he was in this alien city, following a drunkard assassin down God only knew what terrible path?
He expressed none of this to the woman beside him. “He seems to know his way around well enough,” he said.
“It’s not the first time he’s been to America.”
They turned down Brush Street, walking toward the railyards and the river. In the distance, on the Canadian side, Barry could see freight cars being loaded onto huge flat-bottomed ferries for the short trip across to the United States. Reaching the rail depot at the foot of Brush Street they followed Russell onto one of the cream-colored electric trolley trains, seating themselves in the rear car, with Russell in the car ahead.
They rattled northward, weaving their way through a dozen or more clattering switchpoints as they maneuvered through the Grand Trunk Railyard, eventually gaining speed as they cleared the yards and headed north along the river on a single, one-way track. Five minutes later they passed the sprawling Marine Hospital and turned west, slowing as they pulled into Beaufait Station.
They stopped for a moment, the drone of the electric motors fading to a hum, waiting to take on passengers. The motorman in the front car blew his whistle, and just as the doors began to close, Barry saw Russell jump up and push through the doors. He and Connelly barely had time to do the same before the little train surged off again.
Russell walked up half a block to the corner of Bellvue and climbed in beside the driver of a humpback dark green Dodge sedan that stood by the curb, its engine idling. “Now what?” said Barry.
“We get in as well, I supppose.”
“The tram ride was just another way of making sure he wasn’t followed?”
“Something like that.” She smiled. He’d spent three years in the trenches of France and Belgium, always frightened, waiting for that last, sick moment to come when the hammer was about to fall. She’d been living with that same terror for more years than that. That was the horror of it—she was used to this.
Reaching the automobile, Barry pulled open the rear door and let Sheila in first, then climbed in beside her, sitting directly behind the driver. The car smelled of cigarettes, Russell’s whiskey breath and the sweet lavender scent of the driver’s glistening pomade. The man was young, no more than twenty-two or twenty-three. He was dressed in an off-the-rack blue suit and there was a great deal of dandruff on the fabric at the shoulders.
Russell turned and looked back over the seat, smiling broadly. “This is Michael,” he said, indicating the driver. “He’ll be our guide and chauffeur for today.”
“Where are we going?” Barry asked.
“Never you mind for the moment, Tom Sullivan. You’ll know soon enough.” He turned to the driver. “Off we go then, Michael, m’dear.”
They headed northwest, Barry trying to remember the streets they turned onto and failing, Russell smoking cigarettes and drinking steadily from his new pint of Bushmills.
“They call this a Mickey bottle here in America—did you know that? But at home if you ask for a Mickey of Bushmills or, God help you, Jameson, they look at you terrible strange. Isn’t that the oddest thing? Like the word nigger being used by all the top people and no one taking offense, least of all the coons.” He let out a long harsh laugh.
Michael, the driver, said nothing at all, but every few seconds Barry saw him glance into his rearview mirror, eyeing his passengers. “Tell your friend Michael that it’s not polite to stare,” said Barry. “He’s offending the lady.”
Russell smiled. “He means nothing by it.” The big man looked toward the driver. “Do you, Michael?” The young man continued to drive and to say nothing. Russell kept on talking. “Now did you know, Michael, that Mr. Sullivan here is a New York City policeman?” He took out his package of Old Golds and lit a fresh one from the butt of the one before it. “Fancy that, to have a policeman of my own, just like His Majesty.” Russell dragged deeply on the cigarette, letting the smoke spurt out from his nose in two strong streams.
“Did you know that, Mr. Policeman Sullivan from New York City? That the king has his own policeman and the queen as well?”
“You learn something new every day,” said Barry, trying to stay calm.
Russell picked a fleck of tobacco from the tip of his tongue, examining it closely before he turned and flicked it out the open vent window. For some reason Barry found the gesture particularly obscene and turned away, staring out the window rather than continuing to look at the man’s face. Tall, broad-shouldered and charismatic though Russell was, the policeman suddenly realized that the other man was somehow very small.
As they moved toward the city limits Barry saw that they were moving in a zigzag pattern through broad, tree-lined streets. The houses, mostly brick or stone, were large and set well back from the sidewalk. The neighborhood was an affluent one. “Where are we?” he asked without turning away from the window.
“Some people’d like to think it was Grosse Point, but it ain’t,” said Michael, speaking for the first time. His voice was flat and plain with no trace of an Irish lilt. “Good side of Hamtramck maybe, or Harper Woods—I’d give it that.”
“Wouldn’t mean a thing to these dear folk,” Russell said. “Doesn’t mean a thing to me, as a matter of fact.”
“We’re where the rich people live,” Michael said. “Doctors and dentists and the like.” He nodded to the left. “Other side of Gratiot and it’s all Polacks and Wops and Kikes and such.”
They turned to the right and Barry saw the street sign: FOREST. The street was like a half dozen he’d already seen on the ride—wide, with more than enough room to park on both sides, the trees in front of the houses large and mature. The numbers on the doors went up rather than down as they continued along. Eventually Michael pulled in to the curb and parked, but left the engine running.
“Home sweet home,” said Russell. He turned the handle on the car door and opened it. Barry looked out.
The house they’d parked in front of was a large, two-storied affair of brick and stone, much like the others around it. There were a pair of white Georgian columns flanking a black door with a large brass knocker and the number 1142 in brass along the broad lintel. There was a small brass plaque on the left-hand column but Barry was too far away to read it. He closed his eyes briefly, memorizing the address, 1142 Forest Street.
Russell turned to Michael again. “Back here in an hour,” he commanded. Michael nodded. He stepped out of the car and pulled open the rear door. “Come along you two.” Sheila exited first, followed by Barry. Russell slapped the roof of the car and it moved away. Russell headed up the shrub-lined walkway leading to the front door of the house.
Climbing up the low steps to the front door, Barry read the brass plaque—Dr. David Doyle, Physician. The Scotland Yard policeman watched as Russell rapped lightly on the knocker, two short, short long short, short long. The letters IRA in Morse Code. Barry pretended not to notice, his eyes on a flicker of movement behind the curtains of a narrow window on his left.
Without waiting for anyone to answer the knock, Russell thumbed the door handle and went inside the house, Sheila and Barry close behind. They were in a small vestibule, stairs turning sharply upward to the left, open pocket doors leading to a wood-beamed dining room on the right. The door shut behind them. Turning, Barry saw a young man in a pair of flannels, a white shirt and a sleeveless knit vest, one hand on the door handle and the other holding the pistol grip of a drum magazine Thompson submachine gun, just like the ones Barry had seen in half a dozen gangster pictures.
“Is that really necessary?” he asked.
Russell smiled. “Oh, well, you never know who’s going to be coming through the door. Better to be safe than sorry.”
“This Dr. Doyle. A friend, presumably?”
“Indeed so. On a long vacation he is. Around the world with his wife, something of a second honeymoon, you might say. Allowed us the use of his house while he was gone.” Allowed it, or had it demanded of him as a true Son of Erin?
“Kind of him.”
“The Cause touches many of us.” Russell put a pious hand to his chest, lifted his eyes to heaven briefly, then laughed again. He turned up the stairway to the second floor. As they climbed Barry picked up several strong odors that seemed to be coming from below them. Vinegar, cleaning bleach, mothballs and something that might have been corn syrup.
At the head of the stairs Barry found himself in another, wider hall. Directly in front of him there was an open door. If the wallpaper on the room within was any indicator he was looking into a nursery. To his left another pair of open pocket doors looked into what appeared to be a living room laid out with couches, comfortable chairs and several tall cases filled with books.
The walls were pale yellow and the dominant color of the furniture was green. As they entered the living room a tall, brown-suited man stood up. His dark hair was thinning into a widow’s peak and small thin lips were overshadowed by the man’s formidable nose. He had eyes as dark as the hair, and small.
“Joseph!” Russell boomed heartily. “Our friends Mr. Thomas Sullivan of the New York City Police Department and a young lady from the old sod, Miss Sheila Connelly. According to Mr. Sullivan the Clan is thinking that I need protection while I’m here so they’ve sent him along, and Miss Connelly brought much-needed intelligence from home.” Russell then introduced the dark-haired man as Mr. Joseph McGarrity of Philadelphia. “Mr. McGarrity is a great good friend of mine from years past.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said McGarrity, “I’m sure.” He shook hands with both of them. The grip was bony, but firm enough. From the sounds of it McGarrity had been in the United States for some time, but there was still a strong accent behind the flattened vowels of New World English.
“Sit down, sit down,” said Russell, waving Barry and Sheila Connelly to club chairs set across from the couch where McGarrity had been sitting. Russell crossed the room to an antique escritoire that was doing duty as an ornate bar, bottles and glasses gleaming, a filled sterling ice bucket and tongs set to one side. Murphy’s, Jameson and Bushmills, all Irish, and a single bottle of gin. Fleischmann’s, not Gilbey’s.
Russell doled himself out four fingers of Bushmills, neat, then dropped down onto the couch beside McGarrity. The thin man glanced at the glass gripped in Russell’s hand, his lip curling slightly, but he said nothing.
Russell caught the look. “You’re thinking that I drink too much, aren’t you then, Joseph?”
“I was.”
“There’s no such thing as drinking too much.”
“This is serious business we’re about, Sean.”
“Very serious indeed by the smell of it,” Russell answered, tasting the air with his nose raised. “What is it we’re brewing up today?”
McGarrity gave Barry and Sheila Connelly a long look, then turned back to Russell. “The lot. Nitrated sawdust and nitroglycerin mostly.”
“Blasting gelatin,” said Barry. Now he knew why there was such a mixture of odors in the house.
“That’s right.” McGarrity looked at him. “What do you know about it?”
“Only what I learned in the army.”
“And what army would that have been?”
“Irish Grenadiers.”
McGarrity sneered openly. “The Royal Army then. The king’s man.”
“My own man,” Barry answered, working to hold his temper. “As good as an orphan bastard from Cork could do in those days.”
“You could have joined us instead of the army.”
“What would you have given me for pay, a bullet in the head?” Barry asked. “You know as well as I do that there was no agreement between any of the factions then. You killed as many of yourselves as you did anyone else.”
“So why are you with us now?”
“Because now I can do the organization some good.”
McGarrity looked as though he was going to argue further but Russell clambered to his feet and raised a glass before his companion could speak. “Whisht! Enough blather.” He cleared his throat and spoke in Gaelic. “Go maire sib bhur saol nua. May you enjoy your new life in America, Thomas Sullivan. Long life, a wet mouth and death in Ireland!” Russell took a long swallow of his whiskey, almost emptying the glass.
“You’re the only one with a drink in his hand, Sean, and your mouth is never dry from what I’ve seen,” McGarrity said.
“Ah, you’re a hard man, Joseph.” He finished off the last of the whiskey and let the glass drop onto the small table at the end of the couch. “Up now and show us your bombs!”
They went down to the main floor again, McGarrity in the lead. At the bottom of the stairs Russell’s colleague turned to the left. Barry saw that this part of the house had been given over to Dr. Doyle’s medical practice. There were two small waiting rooms, an office, two treatment rooms, a kitchen and a laboratory. In the ten-by-sixteen lab three men were working at a large table, while a fourth man brought in a large porcelain bowl of ice cubes.
All four men were wearing shoulder rigs that carried flat automatic pistols. The men also had large handkerchiefs over the lower part of their faces but Barry could see that their eyes were red and swollen from the fumes. The stench was enough to make his own eyes water and he could feel a burning sensation at the back of his throat.
At the table one of the men began drawing off the nitroglycerin from one cooling beaker with an eye dropper, moving it to a second beaker filled with water. Barry watched as the oily nitroglycerin, heavier than the water, dropped to the bottom of the second container. When all the explosive had been transferred the man began adding bicarbonate of soda to absorb the excess acid in the beaker.
After watching for a few moments McGarrity turned on his heel and left the room without a word. He went through a narrow door. Following him, Russell, and Sheila, Barry found himself standing in what was obviously a very ordinary kitchen, complete with a gas cooker and a refrigerator. At a table in the middle of the room another man with his face obscured was adding a number of household ingredients together to make a stiff, gray-brown paste. Barry saw a jug of Sledge Hammer ammonia, a large jar of Vaseline petroleum jelly and a box of Boraxo brand saltpeter. Like the others, this man was also armed.
“He’s mixing together the stabilizer,” McGarrity explained. “Like pie dough. You add in the gun cotton, some nitrated sawdust and then the nitroglycerin. You end up with a sticky sort of dynamite you can mold into any shape you want.”
Russell put a beefy hand on Barry’s shoulder. “A dangerous fellow, Joe is. Spoons the fecking stuff into tins of corned beef and sends them to England as gifts with a friend of ours who works as a cabin steward on the Queen Mary. A certain irony there, don’t you think, Mr. Sullivan?”
“I suppose you could say that,” Barry answered, looking at the mixing bowl and its contents. Scientists at the Hendon Police Laboratory just outside of London had examined the remains of the last few bombs exploded in Birmingham and Manchester and had come to the conclusion that the explosive itself and some of the bombs’ component parts were definitely of American origin. Probably from an explosives factory just like this one.
“You don’t seem terribly impressed by all of this, Mr. Sullivan,” said McGarrity.
“I’m not here to be impressed, Mr. McGarrity. I’m here to see that Chief of Staff Russell completes his work and then returns to Ireland safely.” He paused, wondering how much he dared aggravate Russell’s mysterious colleague. “What I’d like to know is why Chief of Staff Russell is here.”
McGarrity glanced at the young man with the mixing bowl. “Are you done now, Archie?”
“Yes.”
“Then leave us.” Young Archie scraped the spoon on the edge of the bowl and carried it out of the room. McGarrity turned to Barry. “You know why Sean is here.”
“According to him it’s to greet Their Majesties.”
“According to him?”
“I bought the latest Time magazine in Chicago,” said Barry, which was true enough; he’d picked it up at the railway station. “There was a detailed itinerary of the royal visit. Nothing was mentioned about Detroit. They’re crossing the border at Niagara Falls.”
“True enough,” said Russell, “but they are coming to Windsor on the Canadian side of the river. We’ll just have to nip across the bridge to deliver our gift to the young couple, God rot their royal hearts.”
“The Canadian police must have your photograph, not to mention the Americans. They’re sure to be looking for you.”
“Half the Detroit Police Department is Irish, Mr. Sullivan.”
“And the other half isn’t, Mr. McGarrity, and it’s likely that most of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in attendance won’t be Irish either.”
“Life is full of risks, Mr. Sullivan.”
“I don’t deny it. Some are more calculated than others, however.” Barry shook his head. “Bad enough that the chief of staff is so well known, but to carry a bomb across the border with so much security in place? Madness.”
“It’s not for you to say what’s mad and what’s not,” said Russell, “and it’s me that’ll be taking the risk, boyo.”
“And me that’s supposed to keep you safe,” said Barry.
“We don’t need you to tell us how to do our jobs, Mr. Sullivan, and we don’t need you to keep Sean safe.” McGarrity offered up a thin-lipped smile. “Why don’t you go back to New York and save us all a great deal of trouble?” He glanced at Sheila Connelly, his expression souring. “Take the striapach with you,” he added, using the Gaelic word for whore. “And put her on the boat for home.”
The R, or research division, of Military Intelligence occupied two small rooms under the eaves of 55 Broadway Buildings. The closet-size outer office was for the typist, while the slightly larger inner office was occupied by the division’s only employee, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Holland.
His desk, as usual, was a mess, piled high with files and papers, with more of the same hanging from the shelves of his two high bookcases. Most of the files contained correspondence and references to irregular and guerrilla warfare tactics, past and present, which was Holland’s special interest and the focus of his work with Military Intelligence.
Holland sat with his back to the desk and his feet up on the windowsill. Since his summary return to England the month before Holland had sent half a dozen memoranda to his own superiors as well as Kendal at Special Branch and Douglas-Home at the P.M.’s. None of them had been very forthcoming, and none had expressed any opinion at all on paper.
From what Holland had been able to dig up through his own contacts, the order to have him returned to England seemed to have come from somewhere within the Foreign Office, transmitted through Douglas-Home. Officially it had been put out that Holland was needed at home and that there had been a duplication of services regarding royal security that made his presence in the United States redundant.
The truth, of course, was a great deal simpler than that. Politically, Russell had become as dangerous as one of the pressure-detonated booby traps Holland liked to design in his spare time. Since the royals had left England the bombing incidents had almost ceased. To have Russell arrested without real cause during the royal visit to the U.S. would generate an enormous amount of negative publicity, and worse, would almost certainly cost Roosevelt at least part of the Irish vote in the following year’s election.
Holland ran one hand over his bald scalp and kept staring thoughtfully out the narrow window, barely aware of the spires of Westminster peeking over the roofs and chimney pots on the buildings across from his own aerie under the eaves. Once upon a time it had all been a gentleman’s game, but no longer.
He smiled to himself, turning slightly to grab his cigarettes from the desk. He lit one and went back to looking out the window. Was Russell’s zealotry for the cause of Irish Independence any more or less insane than leaping out of a trench at Ypres or Vimy for God and Country? Was it madness to attempt the assassination of a king and queen if you thought your cause was just?
There he found himself stuck in the mire, sucking mud holding him in place, oozing up over his bloody gumboots. He remembered Thomas Barry’s words at their first meeting at Downing Street. Cui bono? Who benefits? Russell was many things, but he was no fool. He had to know the consequences of killing George and Elizabeth. An Irish assassin would be the end of Ireland.
The bald man sat forward in his chair, his feet hitting the floor. He pushed his glasses back up onto his nose and dropped ash all over his shirtfront as the mosaic of his thinking suddenly became a single, seamless design. Perhaps not an Irish assassin at all. Perhaps, instead, an Irish martyr. Poor Sean Russell, in America to attract interest in his cause, vilified by the press in Los Angeles, turned into a scapegoat without rhyme or reason.
The Irish-American vote, presently split between Republican and revolutionary, would be welded together as one in a united front. Roosevelt would suffer, perhaps even lose the election as a result, and America would stay out of the war that much longer. Long enough at least to ensure England’s invasion by the Nazis, leaving Ireland a free state on the far side of the Irish Sea with a German satrapy as its closest neighbor, a thousand years of oppression expunged at long last. They’d build a fifty-foot statue of Russell in bronze and drop it down into the middle of St. Stephen’s Green and toast his name with Guinness until the end of time.
“May the enemies of Ireland never find a friend,” Holland grumbled, remembering the old blessing he’d heard for the first time long ago. He stood up, jamming his hands into his pockets, and went to the window. It sounded good enough, but there was something not quite right about it all. It was an elaborate construct, a design as detailed as the blueprints for a building.
Perhaps a building that didn’t exist.
Holland closed his eyes for a moment, thinking hard, finally remembering what it was that Stephen Hayes had said in that lonely windblown cottage on Friar’s Hill, overlooking the steel-gray sea. He turned away from the window, went back to his chair and, coughing, lit another cigarette from the butt of the first. He pushed away the mountain of files in front of him, dragged the telephone forward and dialed for directory. They gave him the number he wanted, and ringing off, he dialed again.
“Quaritch’s.” It was the old man himself, his voice as thin as parchment but with all his wits about him.
“I wonder if you have any books on fencing.”
“We have books on everything, young man,” Quaritch answered tartly, assuming that anyone he was speaking to would be younger. “What sort of fencing do you mean? Fencing as in encircling a property or fencing as in swordplay.”
“Fencing as in swordplay.”
“Several,” said the old man.
“Excellent,” Holland answered.
Michael the young chauffeur took Sheila Connelly and Thomas Barry all the way to their hotel off Congress Street, dropped them at the front door and sped away in a cloud of dust. Connelly and Barry went up to their one small room with its sagging bed and small stained carpet.
“The bastards!” said Sheila Connelly, dropping down on the bed, her small fists pounding her knees. Barry sat down on a straight wooden chair that had been placed under the room’s narrow window.
“Why do you call them that?”
“Because that’s what they are,” she said furiously. “You heard McGarrity. To him a woman is nothing but a whore. You can bet that Sean doesn’t keep an opinion that’s much higher.”
“Then they’re fools,” said Thomas quietly. He stood, took the few short steps necessary to bring him to the bed, then knelt, putting his own hands over the woman’s. “Fools, and blind fools to boot.”
“Ach, you’re the fool,” she answered. “And a romantic one at that.” She shook her head. “There’s no place for romance with this lot, Thomas. Their only love is for bullets and bombs.”
“We can have it, even if they can’t,” he said.
“What? Love?”
“Yes.”
She squeezed his hands in hers and looked down at him. “We can have it for a moment, Thomas. No more than that.”
“Then that’s what I’ll take.”
He stood, lifting her with him, taking her into his arms and holding her, but the soft moment and the silence only lasted for an instant. As their mouths touched she began to tear at his clothes and at her own, muttering and crying to herself, eventually pulling him down onto the bed on top of her, her fingers working at the buttons of his fly, then bringing his already stiffening organ into her grip, moaning for him, her thighs parting as she lifted her hips and pulled her plain cotton underpants aside with her free hand, guiding him into her, then letting go of him, her fingers clawing at his back as she thrust upward, impaling herself on him, screaming out his name as the tears rolled down her cheeks, squeezed from her tightly closed eyes, repeating his name like a battle cry with each movement either of them made until there was no sound or movement left except their ragged breathing and the rising and falling of their chests.
Sheila Connelly must have slept because the next thing she remembered was Thomas coming back into the room, closing the door softly behind him. He had two paper cups of coffee with him and a brown bag so translucent with grease and sugar she could see the shape of the doughnuts inside.
“Been shopping, have you?”
He set the coffee and the bag of doughnuts down on the bedside table. She sat up, drawing the sheet around her breasts. He sat down on the bed beside her. “I made a telephone call as well.”
“To our friends in New York?”
“Yes.”
“You look full of gloom and doom, Thomas Barry. What did they tell you?”
“Russell called his Clan contact in New York just before we left Chicago last night. Foxworth’s man intercepted the call and vouched for you, but there must have been some kind of countersign Foxworth’s man didn’t know and Russell rang off immediately. Which means he knew I wasn’t from the Clan.”
“Yet he leads us straight to his bomb-making factory, tells us his plans. It makes no sense at all,” said Sheila Connelly. “A bullet in the brain and then tipped into the boot of young Michael’s car would be more likely.”
“Which means Russell showed us and told us exactly what he wanted,” Barry answered.
“I think we should get out of here before Russell or McGarrity change their minds.” She threw back the sheet and swung her legs out over the edge of the bed. “It’s not safe to stay here.”
“Foxworth wants us back in New York as quickly as possible,” said Barry, standing. “I checked with the air terminal. There’s a flight in two hours.” He wrapped his arms around his naked companion as she rose off the bed. “So we have a little time yet.”
By the time they were done, the coffee had gone cold. They ate the doughnuts on the airplane to New York.
Acting on what was later announced to be an anonymous tip, George Messersmith, onetime U.S. consul in Berlin and presently an interregnum official at the State Department in Washington, ordered the arrest of Sean Russell based on technicalities within the Immigration Act and certain passport inconsistencies.
At 7:10 P.M. on June 5, less than twenty-four hours before the arrival of the royal train in Windsor, Ontario, Russell and his associate, Joseph McGarrity, were picked up at the Michigan Central Railway Depot. They had been preparing to board a boxcar about to be shunted onto one of the transfer barges that would take the boxcar and its passengers over to the Canadian side of the Detroit River, depositing them at the Michigan Central yards on the outskirts of Windsor.
Both Russell and McGarrity were taken to the county jail on Gratiot Street, where they were searched. No explosives, weapons or other incriminating material was found on either man and McGarrity was released almost immediately. Later that night Russell was transferred under guard from the jail to the larger House of Correction on Alfred Street. A further search of Russell and McGarrity’s hotel rooms also disclosed nothing of a suspicious nature.
In the early hours of the following morning, acting on a second tip, the local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation under the direction of Assistant Director W. W. Bannister raided a large house at 1142 Forest Street in the affluent northeastern section of Detroit, slightly more than a block from the house where Charles Lindbergh had been born.
The raided house turned out to be the residence and office of Dr. David Andrew Doyle and his wife, Sarah, both of whom were out of the country on an extended vacation. According to the warrant issued by Federal Judge Warren C. Masters, it had been granted to search for “weapons, explosives, chemicals for the making ofexplosives and other bomb-making material of a potentially dangerous nature.” The search, meticulous and exhaustive though it was, turned up no such items, nor any sign that such items had ever been in the house beyond the strong lingering odor of ammonia still present within the building.
By 9:30 A.M. on the morning of Tuesday, June 6, less than twelve hours after Russell’s arrest, three congressmen—James P. McGranery of Pennsylvania, J. Joseph Smith of Connecticut and Martin L. Sweeney of Ohio, all Democrats—drummed up the support of seventy other Irish members of the House, calling for action at a press conference on the Capitol steps. By noon, the three leading congressmen, led by McGranery, were on the way to the White House to present their protest and petition in person. The petition was in the form of an ultimatum. Release Sean Russell immediately or look forward to a boycott of the royal visit to Washington by every Irish congressman and senator on Capitol Hill.