“I don’t understand. You weren’t recognized in Austria, were you?”
“No, but you yourself said that MacClary officially reported the find. It’s possible that he might figure out who got the drop on whom. Then there’s this Irishman, as I said, whom we surprised...”
“Salvoni! Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, of course. That’s what I’ve been talking about the whole time! We need a one-hundred-percent airtight denial. Your job, Cardinal. There is absolutely no proof that we were there, and suspicions have never harmed us. In any case, I can think of dozens of secret services who would have an interest in someone of MacClary’s stature.”
Lambert was astounded by Salvoni’s callousness and composure, but it also helped boost his own confidence in the situation.
“Good, then it’s about time we make certain arrangements in Washington. We need to show the judge his limits. You go ahead as we’ve discussed, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
Salvoni fell back into a chair, his relief apparent. “Yes, Cardinal. The Lord be with you, and thank you for your confidence.”
“We’ll see, Salvoni.”
DUBLIN – MARCH 18, MORNING
Jennifer and Shane had taken a taxi from the US embassy to MacClary’s house. Shane found himself, to his surprise, leaning against Jennifer’s shoulder when she gently woke him and paid for the taxi.
“I’m sorry, but we hardly had a chance to close our eyes for a minute on the plane,” Shane said in excuse, still carrying with him Jennifer’s pleasant scent.
“It’s fine, Adam,” she said, laughing, as she opened the door to the house. “You already know where the guest room is.”
Ms. Copendale hurried up to them, bursting with curiosity. “Oh, someone looks like he’s in desperate need of fresh clothes and a bath.”
“Thank you, Ms. Copendale, but breakfast and forty winks sound even better right now.”
“Of course,” she said, patting his arm. “Where can I serve you breakfast?”
Jennifer chuckled. “Ruth, we’d love to come into your warm kitchen. You must know that I don’t need things as grandiose as the gentleman of the house. And you, Adam?”
“What? Uh, yes, of course, gladly,” Shane said, nodding eagerly.
Ms. Copendale eyed him with evident curiosity. “So? Have the children found what they were looking for on the playground?”
She’d obviously meant this as a joke, but neither Jennifer nor Shane could manage a laugh. This reaction caused Ms. Copendale’s expression to darken. “Where are Ronald, Deborah, and Thomas?”
Since Jennifer didn’t seem to know what she should say, Shane took the initiative. “Deborah and Ronald are in the embassy examining the artifacts at a secure location, and Thomas is still in Austria, because he was absolutely set on watching over the rest.” He didn’t have the heart to sugarcoat it. “Well...and then he was slightly injured when someone attacked him, but he’s fine now, I think.”
Ms. Copendale looked down at the floor. “I saw this coming all along, but no one listens to me.”
“What did you see coming all along?” Jennifer asked.
“Well, it doesn’t matter anymore, anyhow.” Ms. Copendale took a deep breath before going on. “Ronald’s father died shortly after the war, but not as a result of his wounds, as most people think. A doctor found a poison pill in his mouth after his death.”
Jennifer buried her face in her hands. Shane shook his head in wonder.
“You mean he was murdered?” Slowly Shane was beginning to realize how explosive this find actually was. And what about the parchment scroll that Thomas had taken with him? He had kept quiet about its true significance—and perhaps about more than that.
“In the short time that Lisa lived after that,” Ms. Copendale continued, “she was afraid that the same thing could happen to Ronald. That’s why she destroyed any evidence that could lead him in that direction, without burdening him with the truth about the death of his father. But then this Thomas Ryan turns up with his obsession to claim the legacy of the Druids, and since then...”
“Well, and then I come and find the clue straight off. It’s so strange, but perhaps it was just the right time for it,” Shane said, trying to reassure her.
“Very well. When all’s said and done you’ll have to bear the responsibility for it yourselves. But never forget how many people will be affected by this. One and a half billion Christian souls live on this earth, and most of them are just good people who need hope. Never forget that every one of these people will be affected by your actions.”
With that, she walked away.
“I’ll also not forget how many people have already been affected by this,” Shane called after her, a bit miffed at her implied accusation.
“Adam, let her be. You have no idea what she’s going through. She comes from a time when the power of the Catholic Church had a completely different authority.”
“That’s not very much compared to nearly two thousand years of terror and banishment, don’t you agree?”
“I think you don’t completely understand what this is all about, Adam.”
“Oh, yes, I do. I can even describe it to you in exact detail.” Shane was feeling that pain again, the same that he had felt on the night of his vision. He could see the executed men and the desperate masses. Even trying to talk about it brought tears to his eyes. He steadied his voice with a great effort. “I have seen, and even more, I feel what has happened over the centuries. And it’s exactly for this reason that I want to encourage you to keep on this path. It’s not just about setting limits for the Church. We have a historic opportunity—perhaps even a duty—to present this historic truth and its immeasurable aftermath. I can no longer stand by knowing that nearly every spiritual legacy of this world has been exterminated. Do you understand? Ten years ago, even the last of the Aborigines said that they were going and leaving the world, leaving it to a changed people, and...”
He broke down in tears, unable to go on.
* * *
Jennifer knew the story. In Australia, members of the last free-living tribe of this oldest culture in the world, the “true people” as they called themselves, had told their story to an American woman. Since their spiritual places and customs had been desecrated and since they were being deprived of the land where they lived, they saw no more reason to live. So they had made a decision to stop reproducing, to leave the earth.
Jennifer had the feeling that time was standing still. She could inhale Adam’s sympathy and compassion like the air that she breathed.
She lay her arm around his shoulders. Now she was in tears. She was thinking about her work for the Blackfoot Indians. The shattered dignity of this proud people had deeply moved her as well as she watched their last representatives fighting in court for the miserable crumbs of their culture. A court of the country that had destroyed them. Adam’s emotional outburst reminded her of a dream that she’d often had as a child. An old Native American in traditional dress squatted on a cliff in the Rocky Mountains, looking down, in tears, into the valley of his homeland and his gods. She had never understood why she had dreamed that, but she had always felt something like a deep weariness with the world, an agonizing memory, which had completely confused her as a child.
“It’s time we all started taking responsibility for this,” she said softly. “I’ll talk with Ronald.”
She gave Adam a tender kiss on the cheek, surprising herself with the gesture and unsure how Adam would take it.
“We’ll still need a lot of courage, Adam. At some point in court you learn a bitter lesson: if the guilt seems too great and there are too many victims, the criminals have a tendency to portray themselves as victims and look for the most absurd explanations for their acts. Or they develop an unbelievable story to distance themselves from the burden of their responsibility.” With that, she began to walk away.
Adam looked up at her, his composure obviously returning. “Hey, where a
re you going?”
“I have to think, Adam Shane. I just have to think. And for that, I need to get some space. Please, stay here. I won’t be long.”
* * *
AMERICAN EMBASSY, DUBLIN – MORNING
Deborah was completely transported. Everything she’d been able to translate in the last hour demonstrated the magnitude and wealth of knowledge that had been stored in this secret library. It was like a revelation and an indictment at the same time.
“My God, these sketches are building plans that use the teachings of Pythagoras,” she said to herself. “It’s true then. The Druids had access to this knowledge.” She remembered that only recently on Mont Beuvray, a good thirty miles west of Autun in France, the use of the Pythagorean theorem had been proven in the construction of a water basin more than 2,500 years old.
Proud and awestruck at the same time, Deborah sat in the middle of the embassy basement in a climate-controlled tent and preserved the parchment. First she opened them under high temperatures and high humidity, so that she could photograph them, and then she secured them under glass.
On another scroll there were numerous symbols, including one that reminded her of the Bohr atomic model. “Can that really be?” she wondered aloud.
“So, Deborah, how’s it coming?” MacClary said, breaking her from her reverie. He’d unexpectedly come down into the basement room and was walking around like a fascinated little boy among the spread-out scrolls.
“I’m still in a state of shock. Just look here.” Deborah pointed to the drawings and sketches she had just discovered.
“Unbelievable. That reminds me of the story of the all-knowing one that my uncle tried to get me to believe,” MacClary said as he sat next to Deborah at the table.
“The all-knowing one?”
“Yes, that’s what he called the initiates. They were, according to the legend, the preservers of an old advanced civilization that knew the creation story of humankind. They were also supposedly very advanced technologically.”
“You’re not talking about Atlantis or Mu or something like that?”
“No, no, that would just be more mystic paraphrasing for something that the newly arising centers of power in the East and Rome were afraid of.”
“I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”
MacClary took a deep breath and continued. “These so-called initiates, my dear Deborah, were no conspirators. Quite the contrary, they always represented the forces that tried, with patience and wisdom, to disentangle precisely those conspiracies and that confusion that had been built up to herd the masses into spiritual and material addiction. They tried to explain things in the framework of the perceptible world and to explain the question of ‘from where’ and ‘where to’ regarding our genesis and our demise. This was a far cry from using a god to explain this. In contrast to the religious scholars who were always servants to power, the initiates, with very few exceptions, shared all of their knowledge with their inquisitive students so that it could be transferred into the common experience.”
“That’s incredible! I still don’t understand the half of it, but...”
“I’m firmly convinced that truths have been kept from us in a battle that has been waged for centuries, truths that were a key to explaining creation in a way that had little to do with the deities we promoted. It wouldn’t be so difficult to explain the history of humankind if it hadn’t been hidden in legends or destroyed by interference from the ruling castes.”
“And the Druids were...?”
“The last of these initiates. Initiates who could have helped today’s metaphysicists, theologists, and philosophers by providing incredible contributions to the clarification of the question of creation—with or without a god.”
“That’s why they had to die and were persecuted.”
“Exactly! The Vatican played a large part in that. What we have lying in front of us here is important, of course, but it’s nothing in comparison to what would await us in the Vatican’s archives, as long they haven’t, in their insanity, destroyed everything there.”
“Well, the apple that Adam bit into takes on a whole new meaning, then,” Deborah said, grinning, as she turned to open the next scroll.
MacClary roared with laughter. “Very good, my dear friend, very good. You’ve got a handle on that message from the Old Testament as well.”
* * *
MacClary’s good humor was soon pushed away by far more serious thoughts. One thing was clear: if humans could really explain their origin, the social and cultural consequences would be incalculable. They might even find God, this god who was perhaps only a word, a thought, a bundle of light waves, or perhaps even completely without form.
Sovereignty, as humankind had known it until now, would no longer be possible. Everything that people had believed in for centuries would collapse and Christian values would have no meaning anymore. In their contemporary debates, modern metaphysicists and religious philosophers were already arguing about whether there actually was a deliberate act of creation.
Jennifer had described it once so beautifully: God is not an object. Perhaps people could find God again inside themselves. Not a tangible god, but rather something to be experienced. Something that was best experienced in love—and in the recognition that everything is connected with everything else. There must have been so much knowledge about this back then, and the destruction of this knowledge was worth everything. If there were a place where they might be able to find more, then it would be the Vatican.
“We have to get in there, no matter the cost,” he said to himself as he strode toward the telephone and dialed quickly.
“Mr. Langster, I would like to call a special session of the judges for tomorrow at twelve o’clock noon. This is unofficial. Do I make myself clear?”
* * *
Even just a few seconds ago, Deborah hadn’t taken MacClary’s words that seriously. Now, though, she began to get uneasy looking at one of the last scraps of parchment she had spread open. There were more riddles here. It wasn’t written by a Druid or by a pagan; the Latin was too perfect for that, and it was written in a style that would seem to correspond more to that of a Christian monk from that period. However, according to the author, the leaders of the Celts stood closer to the tradition of the creation story than all the other peoples of Europe. Just as the Vikings had traveled to America a good four hundred years before Columbus, the Druids had been in Asia before the founding of Rome, specifically in India and the Middle East. If they had had contact with the pharaohs, that would explain a lot. There was no proof of that, though, and the writing further down the scroll was so blurred that she couldn’t get anything more from it.
“Ronald?” Deborah called out. “I’m done for now.”
“Then drive back with me. There’s certainly more to do, and we have to see what we can do for your crazy friend Thomas Ryan. Above all, we have to find out who attacked him.”
It is you who should fear the judgment you pass, more than I who am receiving it.
—Giordano Bruno
MACCLARY’S HOUSE – MARCH 18, AFTERNOON
The taxi turned into Arbour Hill and came to an abrupt stop, causing MacClary’s head to jerk forward.
“Be careful!”
“Sorry,” the driver responded quickly, “but that man wasn’t watching where he was going.”
A somewhat rickety-looking old man was crossing the street without a care, and MacClary saw that the iron gate to his house was just closing. Ms. Copendale had told him yesterday that she had seen an old man regularly walking up and down the street and seemingly watching the house. She said that he’d once even gone to MacClary’s door by mistake. After everything that had happened lately, MacClary had an uneasy feeling. The man didn’t look in the slightest bit dangerous, but MacClary wanted to get to the bottom of it.
“Deborah, you go on ahead. I’ll be there soon.”
“What?” Deborah asked. “What are you planning?”
<
br /> “I’m just going to take a little walk. Alone.”
* * *
While Shane was sleeping in the guest room, Jennifer had made herself comfortable in front of the fire in the library again. This chair had been her favorite place for at least fifteen years, as long as she had known Ronald.
Deborah entered and asked after Adam. Before Jennifer could answer, the front door slammed, and Jennifer heard MacClary mutter a curse as he strode into the library.
“My goodness, Ronald, what’s gotten into you?” Jennifer asked. She had rarely seen him so furious.
MacClary didn’t answer but went directly to his desk. He wrote something on a pad of paper, big enough that they could all read it when he held it up.
THE HOUSE IS BUGGED. WE’RE DRIVING TO THE EMBASSY.
Jennifer was stunned.
“Where’s Adam?” MacClary asked, clearly trying to keep his voice calm.
“He’s sleeping, but I’ll go wake him.”
Jennifer went to the guest room and gently opened the door. Adam lay on his stomach, sound asleep.
“Adam, please, wake up,” she said, laying her hand on his head. Her mother had always awakened her like that when she was little because Jennifer would become so frightened when woken suddenly.
Adam turned on his back and opened his eyes slowly. “What? Oh, Jennifer, do I have to?”
Jennifer bent down to whisper in his ear. When she told him why he needed to get up, Adam’s eyes shot open wide.
* * *
If what Jennifer said was true, it was the best explanation for everything that had happened in Austria. Who was behind it, though? Shane sat up with some difficulty. Slowly he got dressed and tried to organize his racing thoughts. How far would all of this go? A cold feeling was crawling up his spine. More than anything, he was worried about Thomas. What if his attacker could track him down after all?
Just as Shane was coming out of the room, the doorbell rang. Jennifer and Ronald were already standing in the entryway waiting for him with serious expressions on their faces. Only Jennifer gave him a quick smile.
The Celtic Conspiracy Page 14