House of the Dead

by Des Sheridan

  He put his team to work, using satellite imagery as well as maps, to add detail to the picture. Then Robert realised that, to make sense of the data, they needed to know what was happening on the ground in real time. Armed with that evidence, he felt sure, they could mobilise international opinion and rouse the Coalition Authority into action. But to verify exactly what was going on they desperately needed to get out into the field and that was easier said than done. Talking to the military authorities the answer was always the same: the priorities were security, water and electricity and no resources could be spared for anything else. As the months slipped by, Robert grew increasingly frustrated and his exchanges with his superiors were becoming heated, as he challenged their inertia. An experienced officer, Robert accepted the need for military discipline, however irksome it might be, to ensure a swift, concerted response in any military contingency. But this was no longer an invasion. It was an occupation and the decisions now were not primarily military; they were administrative and political. And they were not going his way. In fact they were making it well-nigh impossible to deliver his mission. In his mid-twenties he found himself reacting like a rebellious teenager. He would sometimes voice his concerns in the mess, especially when the damage to the ancient heritage was resulting from ignorance on the part of the military. Last week he had regaled his fellow officers with a scathing account of how the US military at Babylon had dug trenches and created car parks and helipads created within the old city precincts. Two days later a Colonel in his home regiment called by and bluntly told him that if he didn’t curb his tongue, he would soon be in trouble. Robert was surprised by his own response. He loved the army but he realised he was beginning not to care if they drummed him out. If he couldn’t help stop the rot what was the point of being here? Then this week, after he had been in Iraq nine months, he got a tip off from a US military contact.

  ‘Rumour has it some mad Italian fucker at An Nasiriyah is making waves chasing the bastards off sites with a chopper, go find him,’ were the exact words.

  And find him he did, in the shape of Captain Niccolo Fabbro of the Friuli Air Assault Brigade, the Italian Army aviation helicopter regiment.

  Chapter 7

  Skellig Islands, Ireland, July 823

  Spinning around, Lorcan roused Patrick, placing his hand over the man’s mouth in case he cried out, for Skellig Michael was less than a mile distant and sound carried only too well over water. They must stay out of view as well, for Skellig Bheag was overlooked by the higher summit of the larger island and a keen-eyed Dane might well spot them. Startled, Patrick fought back, thinking Lorcan an assailant. The two holy men briefly rolled and tumbled on the ground, their dark brown, coarsely woven habits and rope belts flying in all directions, as did their beaten-copper-coloured bony arms and legs.

  ‘Be still, for God’s sake,’ hissed Lorcan viciously. ‘It’s me! Be quiet, brother - this is mortal danger for us!’ He gestured Patrick to look to Skellig Michael.

  ‘Holy Mother of Jesus!’ exclaimed Patrick, crossing himself with the crucifix that hung from the large chain of prayer beads around his neck, as his eyes took in what was happening. He spluttered his response.

  ‘This cannot be a coincidence, brother. They must know of the Triskell! But how? It is impossible! So few of us know!’

  ‘I am afraid what you say is both possible and true as well. God bless and protect our brother Sean.’

  Lorcan crossed himself and realisation dawned on Patrick. Sean was one of the small group of initiates who knew about the artefact, but he had been taken prisoner in a Danish raid at Clontarf three months ago and not heard of since. He must have disclosed the secret!

  ‘I see! Oh my God! Is that what made you decide to move the artefact?’

  Lorcan nodded his head slowly. Patrick spoke again after a few moments.

  ‘Then praise the Lord for calling Fintan to his side, for it has saved our lives!’

  He was right, thought Lorcan. Had Fintan’s health not declined last night they would still be at the monastery and facing a bloody end. And had they stuck to their original intention of lighting a byre beneath their deceased friend, their location would have been disclosed. They were truly twice blessed. He wondered if any of the monks had managed to reach the safety of the Hermitage on the high peak; it was their only hope. He turned cold at the thought, nearly losing control of his foregut. What if he and Patrick were spotted? The Danes would be sure to investigate and capture would then be inevitable. Horror that he might soon face the same fate as his brothers alternated with a surging glee, almost sexual in its strength, that Providence had saved them. Shame overwhelmed him.

  Darkness fell and the marauders settled down to a grisly entertainment. From the cries the two monks could tell that some captives were being tortured; others they supposed were pushed off the cliffs to meet immediate death, crushed on the rocks below. A great fire soared into the sky above the monastery to the accompaniment of a heathen chorus of drunken singing. Lorcan and Patrick, retrieving the blankets from around Fintan’s corpse, passed the night in reasonable physical comfort. Lorcan, however, was beset by terrible dreams from which he repeatedly awoke. What if one of their colleagues was at this very moment disclosing their location? He thought of the young monk, who had so keenly wanted to come on the trip with them. Would he keep his counsel? Lorcan doubted it and anxiety enveloped him afresh.

  Chapter 8

  Mayo, Ireland, June 2014

  The wind blowing through the small Mayo graveyard was cold and sharp; a chilly day for June, the gusts darting in and out between the Celtic crosses, winged angels and yew trees. The mourners formed a small tableau around the open grave and the attention of a casual passer-by would most likely have been drawn towards the fashionably-dressed young woman with long auburn hair who stood in their midst. Tara raised the high collar of her black coat around her neck to stop her hair blowing across her face. Fastening the upper button, she glanced about. The small turnout for the funeral of her grandfather was not surprising as he had retained few links with his birthplace. Only a few stalwarts with long memories had braved the weather to pay their respects.

  In addition to herself, the mourners comprised her father Brian, her elder sister Niamh, along with her husband Neil and their eleven year-old daughter, Aoife. Tara had not been particularly close to her grandfather; he had been an affectionate enough granddad, but one she had rarely seen. Even when he had been around he had often seemed half absent, as though located mentally somewhere else.

  Her father, she noted, was moved by the burial, his blue eyes misting up, his hands opening and closing as he tried to stand still. He was not, Tara mused, a man you would normally associate with immobility. In his mid-sixties, Brian Ruane was a bustling presence, full of vigour and enthusiasm, who swept through life making an impact. He had always been an indulgent parent, encouraging Tara to think of herself as very clever and special. Not always the wisest course of action, thought Tara, reflecting on her recent American debacle. Still, she had been home three months now and was getting better, she told herself. April was off the chart. She remembered little about it, not recollecting at all some events that her therapist referred to. May was better but still bad. She had been very withdrawn, locked into her own thoughts. But gradually, day by day, in small ways she was coming out of her shell. And although today was a bleak occasion, nonetheless she was pleased. She had been out all day and was coping.

  She briefly caught her sister’s eye but could read nothing in it. It was odd how the human eye could sometimes convey so much but at other times you might as well eyeball a goldfish. Niamh was certainly a different kettle of fish from her father. Tara remembered Niamh saying how, as the eldest child, she had witnessed the tensions between her parents and had watched her mother, Catherine, come off second fiddle to her dominant, egotistical husband. Tara recalled how there was never any doubt; the needs of his career in the diplomatic service always came first. An expert in Anglo-Irish r
elations, his expertise had been much in demand when the Peace Process took off in the late eighties. He was the man the key players wanted when something needed fixing: the ultimate go-between. When Catherine had died of a rare form of leukaemia, it was Niamh who picked up the pieces for the family, while Brian, by way of coping with his loss, had upped his time on the fairway and his intake of port.

  Tara knew that Niamh’s jaundiced view of her peacock father extended to include herself, casting her as the indulged sibling. Tara had to admit that there was a good deal of truth in that assessment. On the other hand, she knew that you didn’t quickly forget a scolding from Niamh, and she took care not to cross her elder sister unless she felt particularly bloody-minded about something. It carried a price if you did. It was fair to say that over the years they had steered clear of each other, and the intervening expanse of the Atlantic Ocean had made that easier. Her father’s hand alighted upon her wrist and Tara looked downwards, for he was a good foot shorter than she was. It was time to go.

  ‘You will miss him, won’t you?’ Tara said to Brian as they walked back towards the cars.

  ‘Yes, I will,’ said Brian. ‘It was a shame you never got a chance to know him better. You know we both get our brains from him.’

  ‘Well, there is no fixing that now,’ observed Tara after a moment, thinking that it was unusual for her father to strike a negative note.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t quite say that,’ her father replied. ‘There is one thing you could do for both him and me, if you are game.’

  ‘Go on then, tell me,’ she said.

  ‘Not now, later - in the car,’ her father replied hurriedly, spotting a local man making a beeline for them to offer his condolences. Twenty minutes later, when the small gathering had dispersed, they climbed back into the car. After the biting nip of the graveyard, the shelter and comfort of the hired limousine was very welcome.

  ‘Here, this will help warm you up,’ said her father conspiratorially, passing her his hip-flask.

  She sensed that he was pleased to have her home. As the Jameson’s hit her throat with a warming flush, Tara noted the inscription on the silver flask. For a warm road, love Catherine. Whatever their differences, she thought, her mother had loved her father.

  ‘Now then,’ her father said. ‘Let’s talk about your grandfather.’

  Settling back into the comfort of the well-upholstered seat, Tara let him do the talking. Out came the reminiscences, the stories and fond memories. A skilled raconteur, Brian conjured up images of a life filled with colour and interest. Tara expected that there must have been differences of opinion, but if so her father gave no hint. Today was not the day for that, she supposed. Finally her father got to the point, for Tara knew him well enough to know that there would be a point.

  ‘Now, the thing is when Dad came to live with us he started to sort out his journals. He always said he had tales to tell and now was his chance to do so. I was wondering if you would look at his papers and see what they amount to. Who knows, they might be worth publishing.’

  Brian paused, awaiting an answer.

  ‘Would you not be better placed to do that?’ Tara asked. ‘After all you were close to him and would probably know the people he wrote about.’

  ‘Of course,’ replied her father smoothly. ‘I will read them, but right now I need someone to look at them with a detached eye and make an initial assessment. Put them into some sort of perspective. Would you do it for me? You can take your time, there is no rush.’

  Tara smiled to herself. He was right; it was a good way to get to know Grandfather Joe. But she also saw the ulterior motive; Brian wanted to keep her busy. Since her return from the States he had not pressed her for details. He knew of course that she had nose-dived after the disappearance of her partner, Newton, and the loss of her high-flying job. She was seeing a psychotherapist and made no attempt to hide the anti-depressants she was taking. Yet he had never probed, happy just to have her home and offer her a refuge where she could put herself back together in her own time. And it made sense to give her a task to distract her mind.

  ‘OK, sure,’ she said. ‘I will have a look at the papers.’

  They both fell silent as the car sped along the country roads, winding its way back to Sligo as evening fell. By the time they got home it was dark, and the headlights threw into relief the stone walls and the looming shapes of trees as the car turned up the drive to Rosnaree. No doubt it was because she was tired and had not eaten but Tara felt they were waiting to pounce on her. She was relieved when they reached the normality and bright lights of the house. It had been a long day, her longest day out yet and she felt shattered.

  Chapter 9

  An Nasiriyah, Iraq, January 2004

  Nico’s shouted commentary was just audible over the roar of the engine as they took off from the Tallil airbase. When they had shaken hands earlier in the day Robert had clocked a tall, slim man with a tight, wiry grip. He was strikingly handsome too, like an actor from an Italian film. In the four hours since then Robert had discovered that Nico was a very energetic officer with a low boredom threshold and a gregarious nature, qualities which made him popular with his men. Things happened around this man: that much Robert could see.

  A few miles distant the lights of the great Shiite religious city of An Nasiriyah twinkled through the darkness of the night sky. The Mangusta A129, twin-cockpit attack helicopter sped through the darkness, navigating its course using an advanced night vision system. Nico was sitting in the lower cockpit with the pilot, while Robert and three Italian soldiers occupied the upper one.

  ‘We head straight for Umma, so we reach there maybe twenty minutes. Then you see. Umma is a great tell, or mound, Akkadian, dating from about three-thousand BC,’ Nico bawled.

  Robert had done his homework. He knew that Umma’s main claim to fame was as the place where the Shulgi calendar, the predecessor of the later Babylonian calendar, had been found. But no amount of research could have prepared him for what he saw as they zeroed in on a cluster of lights piercing the pitch black of the desert night. Pinpricks at first, as the chopper got closer they became more like football stadium floodlights. The aircraft banked to give Robert a panoramic view. Eighty feet below them, generators fed four great arc lights that lit up the scene like a giant movie set. Some two hundred people, armed with pickaxes and shovels, milled around bulldozers which were churning up the ground, clouds of dust rising about them. Groups, each consisting of about ten men in a mixture of Western and Arab dress, worked the upturned piles of sand that the excavators had spewed up for the night’s work. The booty – cylinder seals, clay tablets, statuary and ceramics – was being piled indiscriminately onto the backs of a fleet of trucks. Robert heard cries and saw men starting to point up at the helicopter.

  Nico shouted excitedly, ‘Tombaroli, tombaroli,’ his white teeth gleaming in the poor light. Robert recognised the Italian phrase for tomb robber, but it didn’t for him capture what he saw unfolding below. As they flew low over the sprawling expanse of the former city, kilometre after kilometre was pockmarked by craters. This was despoliation on an industrial scale of mankind’s oldest civilisation. He had seen artefact robbery in Afghanistan but this was on a much bigger canvass. It was jaw-dropping, as though a clan of over-sized and hyper-active badgers had decided the tell was the perfect place to dig a gigantic sett.

  As the helicopter swung back towards the main focus of activity Nico pointed out men, with AK47s cradled in their arms, guarding the trucks but making no effort to shoot at the chopper.

  ‘They know better than to attack us. We have Hellfire and Spike-ER missiles,’ he observed with a grin. ‘These flights scare the thieves away for a few days and we follow up with ground patrols, when we can. But no matter, a few days and the thieves return. Make no mistake, Roberto, this is big crime effort, Mafiosi.’ Nico rolled his dark brown eyes knowingly.

  Robert spotted two trucks heading off into the desert, their payload on the back, and pointed
towards them. A moment later the Mangusta was off in hot pursuit and, buzzing low above one truck, managed to force it to a stop. The lorry swung in its track as the driver finally braked to a halt. The chopper thumped to a bumpy landing and the Italians poured out, quickly surrounding the vehicle. Four men, two of whom were little more than boys, emerged, putting their arms over their heads as though they were used to the drill. One of the Italian soldiers spoke some Arabic and began to try and interrogate them. But one of the prisoners, a man in his forties with a thick Saddam look-alike moustache, spoke up.

  ‘Would it make things easier if we speak in English?’

  Through their translator the men admitted that they were part of an organised operation but claimed that they were simply grafters. Judging by their grubby attire, and the work they had been doing, it was difficult to challenge this. They stank of dried stale sweat. Robert pressed the man, who was clearly well educated, on the damage they were doing to their county’s heritage. The Iraqi, eyes flashing, spat back.

  ‘What would you have me do? I used to be deputy head, at my local secondary school. But the Americans call for all Baathists to be sacked. Most of us hated Saddam but to get on you had to join the Party. And now I have nothing. So I steal from the desert and the past to feed my family. Have you got children? Would you let them go hungry day after day? What the hell would you do? If I don’t do this some other bastard will. You think I should stand on fucking principle?’