Redemption - Leon Uris [135]
I was totally captured by what the man had concluded in finding a path through the swamp. I’ve been his follower since I messed my first diaper. Would he confide in me now?
“Seeing as how you’re unloading your mind,” I said gingerly, “would you mind telling me how you see our recent future?”
He stared at me rather strangely. “Don’t even question that I trust you entirely,” he said, “but do you want to be burdened with some highly inflammable secrets, even if you don’t agree with me?”
“That’s up to you, Conor. You’re the one with the burden. Maybe you need to hear yourself say out loud what you’ve been thinking.”
“Maybe I do, runt. I’ll give you the simple version,” he said slowly. “We have brought the Brotherhood to a capability to execute well-planned raids.”
“Bridges, police stations?” I asked.
“Bigger. Our first priority is to make a monumental strike, keenly planned, using a maximum of men—say two dozen volunteers on a target that will stop the momentum of the Ulster Volunteers, hit the British in the stomach like a mule’s kick, and be of such magnitude they will never fully recover from it.”
“Surely we’ve never had a success like that against the British in five hundred years. All we seem to end up with are glorious defeats.”
“Victory,” he said, and it was a lovely-sounding word. “A giant raid is the priority.”
“Why, what’s your thinking?”
“To make the Brotherhood believe in itself as fighters. To have gained the knowledge that the British are not invincible. To know two dozen Irishmen can inflict a grievous defeat on them. But mainly, the Irish people will realize they are being led by men of skill and valor and not a bunch of blowhard barroom republicans.”
“That all sounds lovely,” I said, playing the devil’s advocate, “but where are you going to find twenty-five Irishmen who won’t fuck up the detail?”
“We already have them, Seamus. It’s merely a matter of making them believe they can do it.”
“How?”
“We pick our finest and urge them gently to volunteer. Then we sequester them and inflict brutal training, infinite execution, willingness to sacrifice. We make them believe in each other. We make them believe in their leaders. We tease them about a target that will change the name of Irish history. You see, that’s why I can’t have the Council muck it up. The Council is well meaning and they’re talented, but we’ve no discipline and less faith in ourselves.”
“How are you going to keep this secret from them?”
“Dan Sweeney will approve the raid and the Council will accept his argument for absolute secrecy. If they don’t trust Dan Sweeney, then we have no Brotherhood.”
“And just when does this extraordinary event take place?”
“We go into training the minute the war starts on the European continent.”
Jesus, Conor Larkin was dead serious. When the man thinks things out, he does it, indeed, indeed. I felt myself quivering and almost too dry to speak. “So, you remove a major target, then what? Do the British leave Ireland?”
“Are you going to continue to be hilarious or are you after listening?”
“I’m listening,” I croaked.
“After the big raid we bend all our efforts to completing our infiltration of a home army and make it our nationwide tactical unit. This will give us three to four thousand men, maybe more, legally under arms.”
“You’re dreaming. The British will never allow us to have a home guard.”
“At some time they’re going to have to. The Ulster Militia is going to become so powerful they’ll have to throw us a bone, and in a war they’ll have to let us watch the coast and guard certain facilities.”
“You’re dreaming.”
“I say there will be an Irish Home Army. A year or so into the war, at a time of the Brotherhood’s choosing, we use the Home Army to stage a nationwide rising and declare Irish independence.”
“Declare what?”
“Independence, man, independence!”
“So then the British leave Ireland?”
“The Brits will put the rising down ruthlessly. How dare the paddies jump us in the back when we’re in the trenches in Europe! The very savagery of their