“It’s done,” he said. “I’m about to clear out of here before the owners get home.”
“He paid for it?” asked the guy who’d called himself Liam.
“And took it along. It was a heavy, and we had to lug it to his car. You said I could add his cash to my fee. I may need it for my back now.”
“Keep it. Did he say where he was going?”
“Nah, just anxious to get away with it. He was interested in the markings like you said.”
Ten
A dark sedan waited behind the deserted roadside restaurant, a vehicle larger than average by Ireland standards, driven by someone unconcerned with petrol costs.
The location had been chosen hastily by phone when the woman called in, reporting mixed news, the mishap with the tourist and the triumph of obtaining the stone.
Jaager parked their vehicle near a back corner of the abandoned building and walked around to let her out. He escorted her to the sedan where he took a post, ready to stand guard, one hand holding his thick wrist as his arms crossed in front of him.
As she climbed in a rear door, a man in the back gave the driver a gentle nod, and a barrier slid up between front seat and back. As the woman settled into a seat, the tall man snapped the door closed and stood with hands folded outside.
“Welcome, Ms. Trumble,” he said in the soft voice.
“Sir.”
“You may call me Malphas.”
That had to be an assumed name, but she nodded. The leader of her section referred to him as The Shepherd. That had always been enough for clarity and sir sufficed for her salutation. She’d been told small talk was not expected, and she’d never been comfortable with it anyway.
He appeared ancient, skin wrinkled and loose at the jaw, hair snowy. The black suit looked like it would be perfect for lying in a coffin. For a wake. She could only imagine the watery eyes behind the black lenses of his sunshades.
She’d wrapped the stone in a silk scarf. Placing it between them, she folded back just enough of the brightly colored fabric to reveal the markings.
Long, skeletal fingers traced the etched characters, and she detected a slow intake of breath that suggested a positive assessment.
“Better than working with photographs,” he said.
He gave an almost imperceptible nod.
Freya shifted in her seat. She didn’t want the elation to show. She’d done as ordered in all instances to the best of her ability, but the praise ignited a satisfying burn at her core. She wanted to tilt her head back and raise a song, the zealot in her almost overwhelming the calm, efficient demeanor she’d worked to establish and maintain in all her endeavors. In a closed chapter of her life, she hadn’t been quite so successful. She didn’t want to lose what she’d gained as a believer with a purpose in this new mission.
“Does this give you enough pieces?”
The old man passed the scarf and stone to the figure beside him, a man in dark clothes and a hood whose hands looked younger and less withered. Her section leader called him The Friar.
“This is Balor,” the old man said.
The younger one had been so silent Freya had almost forgotten he was there. He folded back the scarf again and let a beam of sunlight strike the stone’s swirls and markings.
After a heartbeat, his head bobbed up and down once, slow and grim.
“Is that enough?”
Balor’s head turned side to side. Freya had come to expect theatrics.
“We’ll need to proceed with seeking the other pieces,” Malphas said.
He slipped a hand into his breast pocket and produced a small, flat phone. His thumb clicked a few times on the screen.
“The data is on your handheld,” he said. “I’m sure Mr. Jaager is ready to accompany you. Proceed.”
So the quest would continue.
Eleven
“This is the stone found in the farmer’s field and stolen from Castle Cluin,” Bullfinch said as the image McKenzie had provided flashed on the screen at Aisteach headquarters.
A gentle motion with two fingers produced a new image, the symbols from the stone, black on a white background, side by side.
“O.C.L.T. analysts took the photos we sent and produced this representation of the characters, then enhanced them and compared what they found to other known alphabets including Ogham markings and characters found in European caves recently by researchers that pre-date what we recognize as established languages.”
Another tap of his finger and some of the markings on screen disappeared, leaving only a pair of the hash-style marks which slid together at the center of the screen to sit side by side.
Bullfinch smiled as he realized he had begun to develop some proficiency with electronics at Mack’s direction. He couldn’t help but be a little proud of himself.
“Some of the markings on the stone were meaningless, but these were mixed in and bear enough similarities to suggest they aren’t random.”
He clicked again and another symbol appeared beside the three. The similarities were obvious.
“This is the mark from Professor Burke’s desk, enhanced from a photo I took of it and sent off.”
“He’d seen these or similar markings,” Rees said.
“It would appear so.”
He clicked again and a few more symbols appeared.
“Stylistically the three new markings seem in alignment with these that our analysts located through various references.”
“Where do those come from?” Rees asked.
“These appeared in letters sent to various scholars in Europe and the British Isles about eighteen or nineteen years ago. The letters claimed a scholar had run across various symbols and was beginning to compile them, but he’d run into difficulties, feared he was being followed by shadowy figures with nefarious purposes, and wanted to get the data into the hands of someone knowledgeable.”
On the screen, several points of comparison between the characters were now highlighted in yellow--the slashes, a few serifs, and a few other similar alignments.
Rees wrinkled his brow. “Was any research stimulated?”
“No,” Bullfinch said. “The letters were generally regarded as a hoax. The source was never identified. They stopped circulating after a couple of years and were largely dismissed.”
A new image flared onto the screen. A line drawing of a coiled serpent. Some of the markings were similar to the images already visible.
“By serious scholars anyway,” Bullfinch continued. “O.C.L.T. analysts believe these symbols represent similar markings.”
“Where’s this one from?” Rees asked.
“An Internet site called Stranger Bazaar.”
O’Donnell snickered. “Of course it is.”
“Brainchild of a couple of conspiracy theorists from London.”
“The site claimed the markings were related to an ancient belief that a giant serpent could be awakened.”
“Anything grounded in actual research?” Rees asked.
“No, it’s all based on rejected ideas and theories.”
“So people inspired by hokum related to snakes who may have scared Professor Burke years ago have resurfaced and are killing people for the marks on our farmer’s stones and others,” O’Donnell said.
“It would appear so.”
Rees shifted in his chair. “All or most of it’s from Éire?”
“Some of the letters were dispersed further afield, but the markings seem to originate in Ireland.”
“Other than connecting snakes and symbols, how does any of this help us find our venom killers?”
“At the moment it only gives a sliver of possible understanding of their motive. We may find more signs of artifacts in Ireland that can help us get a step ahead of them, but the roots of these symbols are not Irish alone. In India there was a race called nāgá, part serpent. That suggests virulence.”
“You asked someone about that. Could some of that belief have made its way to Ireland?”
“Connecti
ons don’t seem to have been made before,” Bullfinch said. “What we do often see if we delve deeply enough into cultures is parallel belief. Many cultures have dragons. We can find reasons for that, but if you like conspiracy theories or Chariots of the Gods thinking, you can get to the notion that there’s something behind the legends, something real that turned up in diverse locations, appearing to different groups and cultures. There’s been a lot of study recently in Ireland about the impact of comets on belief, maybe even that the mythic figure Lugh was inspired by sights of comets.”
“The locals did the best job they could of telling about what they saw in the world by reflecting it in their art and stories?” Rees asked.
Bullfinch gave him a slight head tick of confirmation. “Something like that.”
“Still, snakes in a land with no snakes?” O’Donnell asked.
“You do have accounts of them being driven out,” Bullfinch said. “And who knows what the Celts saw? Who knows what artifacts have gone undiscovered or tucked away in sealed-off Neolithic passage tombs? Or what did the Druids really know and what did they do? We’re aware of a ritual involving oak and mistletoe to cure ills from one section of Druids, but that’s about all. There haven’t been many details uncovered about their other rituals.”
“You think someone’s pursuing lost Druid knowledge?”
“It’s a possibility. Julius Caesar and Pliny the Elder alluded to Druid secrets. With the Roman invasion, a great deal of knowledge was lost or hidden.”
“Do we think knowledge has been hidden or suppressed?” Rees asked.
“Perhaps someone’s sat on discoveries for one reason or another,” Bullfinch said. “Fear of what it might lead to?”
“A conspiracy among scholars?”
“Bullfinch was telling me there’s been a bit of proprietary behavior among scholars through the years,” O’Donnell said.
“I mentioned the Dead Sea Scrolls controversy,” Bullfinch said.
“Could Burke have known of something he kept secret?” Rees asked. “We got word the man killed with venom just before Burke was named Nathan Finch. Graduated from Trinity, but then a lot of people in Dublin did.”
“Burke was nervous about something. Maybe the killers just thought he knew something and couldn’t get what they wanted out of him, killed him in the process,” Bullfinch said. “Everything amounts to enough to get O.C.L.T. interested.”
“Maybe you two should be talking to more of his friends,” Rees said. “There could well be something Professor Bullfinch might pick up on.”
“No word yet on a path after leaving Trinity?”
Rees shook his head. “As you can imagine, it’s a process even with facial recognition software…”
“Been there,” O’Donnell said under her breath.
“…and it was a rainy day.”
“Maybe it’s back to Trinity then,” O’Donnell said. “To rattle the professors’ chairs.”
“Maybe so,” Rees said. “Just try not to rattle too hard. Aisteach doesn’t need additional complaint calls.”
Twelve
Freya watched the blue dot that corresponded with their car glide toward the pin graphic on her mobi. Its movement was barely perceptible, firing her impatience as they travelled through County Fingal north of Dublin. The goal seemed so close, yet each step was slow and frustrating.
A light rain had set in a few miles back to slow progress even more. It fell harder now, but it didn’t seem to bother Jaager, who steered around the twists in the old highway with just a wrist resting atop the steering wheel. His expression suggested he was unaffected by the waves of rain splashing on the windshield, though the shadows made his cheeks look like they were spotted and melting.
He was as committed to the cause as she, but he didn’t say much, didn’t make conversation, didn’t betray any feelings or hint of his anticipation. He just functioned. She could appreciate that, the efficiency, the calm, but his robotic style made long trips dreary. As the meters rolled on, it seemed they were in some perpetual loop, making no progress at all.
She watched buckets-worth of rain slosh down the windscreen and occupied her thoughts with daydreams of their pending results. If traveling with Jaager was boring, changing the world, upending it, giving it a shake was not.
She’d grown up in a little village not that different from the one they were headed for, and things had never changed. Her father had trudged out into his fields day in and day out, covered up on rainy days, bundled up on cold ones. When the sun rose high and blistering, he put on a hat with a wider brim and mopped his brow with a little more frequency and didn’t alter his routine much from there.
When she’d first moved to Dublin—to seek work, to escape—people had made fun of her country accent. She’d started then, building her persona, toughening her outer edge, smoothing out her style and her accent, and she’d started a climb in an office job, taking a personal assistant position that had suited her more than shop girl, and she’d begun to learn the ways of commanding respect.
She’d done well for two years, keeping her boss’s diary, tending to day-to-day affairs, never missing a detail even as she maintained a rigorous personal regimen that included a daily physical workout that kept her lean and toned. That compounded her stamina and resolve. When other things had been snatched away, her discipline and that personal power had remained. Even after a client from Australia had torn her world apart. She’d been assigned to see to his needs while he was in town. They’d had different opinions about how far her instructions extended. Ultimately the company had sided with the client. She’d been dismissed, dismissed and devastated.
She reminded herself that was behind her. A new calling had replaced what she had lost. She’d found it in coping with the fallout of her dismissal, and she and Jaager were heading toward the realization of new goals. Far more important goals than she’d held as a secretary or personal assistant.
The car turned onto the dirt road they sought, and Jaager steered through a series of twists and turns, navigating potholes and ruts filled with rain until they were facing a little white cottage with a red door and a thatched roof, just beyond a low stone fence. Hills rolled into the distance beyond the structure, disappearing into the mist and rain.
Freya slipped a knit tam over her hair and did a quick check of her makeup before levering her door open. Time for a bit of charm.
She led the way up the stone path to the front door, rapping gently while Jaager took a position at her shoulder. As always, he looked distracted and nonchalant, but she knew he stood ready to act, ready for whatever might greet them.
As it turned out, it was an old man in a tweed cap and heavy turtleneck sweater who answered the door. He looked out, seeming puzzled at first. Then something flickered in his gray eyes.
“You’re the folks from the institute.”
“That would be us,” Freya said. She flashed a smile. “Copley Institute. We were hoping you could show us the markings you found.”
“Jack Patterson. Come inside. I have the old photo.”
Jaager’s features didn’t change, but he looked toward Freya, and she could read his impatience. He didn’t care about niceties or finesse, but she gave him a “be-patient” gaze, and they followed the old man into his front room.
The same white stone that formed the outer wall was exposed in his living room, avoiding gloom even though the light through the small windows was gray. A few logs smoldered in his little fireplace, and a coffee pot sat on a black metal pad near the hearth.
“Can I interest ya?” he asked. “Or you could have tea or Guinness.”
“Just the photo. We’re on a time constraint.”
“Mind if I have a cup? Old bones and it’s chilly.”
Freya said that would be fine. He urged them to seats on a wooden bench then poured sludge into a mug. He added a bit of whiskey from a bottle under a cabinet, hoisted the cup toward them and disappeared through a narrow doorway.
J
aager’s muscles were taut. Freya sensed the tension at her side, and she could detect tension in his breathing. She put her hand on his forearm.
“No one has to die here,” she said.
He turned, and the lenses of his glasses were like cold stone, or at least the seemed that way.
“Patience,” she said, though she reminded herself she’d done the killing at Castle Cluin, not him.
“Here we go.” The old man had returned with a ragged brown photo album.
He sat on a little wooden chair across from them, flipped past pictures of his younger self with a wife and a few different dogs then and produced a snapshot that had been tucked back in the folds of the album.
“’Twas a long time ago the wall inside crumbled,” he said.
The picture wasn’t sharp, but it offered a look at a gray and damp stone wall illuminated by a camera’s flash, probably an old-style bulb. Markings were etched into the curved surface, some characters clear, but the message, if it was a message, disappeared into darkness above and below the photo area.
“When did you find this?” Jaager asked in his throaty rasp.
“Years ago now. Ah’d almost forgot about it. Told the professors about it back when. They sent some folks out, had me show them the spot, took some photos and seemed interested then, no more.”
“No one else has contacted you over the years?”
Patterson chuckled.
“I didn’t say that. Didn’t hear back from the professors’ folks. Now and then some folks you might say were from, uh, the edge. Figured there was some kind of word of mouth that brought ’em. Heard somethin’ from someone who heard somethin’ from the professors.”
Jaager’s face turned in Freya’s direction, his lips tight, whitening as he pursed them, and a muscle in his jaw rippled.
“What made them ‘from the edge’?” Freya asked.
“They were lookin’ for signs of monsters and stuff. Alien hunters.
“What did you tell them?”
“The weird ones. Away, I sent ’em. Comin’ round here in robes and funny headgear or with a fiáin look in their eyes. First few I showed the spot, then just gave directions; I feared some of ’em would fall in the lough and started sayin’ I did it to ’em. So I just started to play dumb. Figured everyone would forget one more set of stone ruins, ’til I heard from official types like your institute. Took you a little more seriously.”
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