House of the Dead

by Des Sheridan

  The man was shouting now directly into Robert’s face, his eyes like doorstops, his nostrils flared. Robert didn’t flinch but the vehemence of the outburst reduced him to silence. Unable to answer the tirade, he turned away, feeling foolish.

  Nico took charge and made the Iraqis dump their spoil on the ground before sending them off empty-handed. Seeing Robert’s hang-dog look, Nico put his arm around his new colleague’s shoulder, patting his back and chuckling as they walked back to the Mangusta.

  ‘Don’t look so worried, Roberto, he will be back tomorrow and get paid then. How you say it in English? Believe me you?’

  As the helicopter took off, roaring upwards at ten metres per second, Robert felt sick inside and it wasn’t down to the rotary uplift. What he had seen had shocked him to the core: industrial-scale, indiscriminate rapid harvesting of the world’s heritage. He recalled Donny’s remark of six months ago that, in less than ten years, more damage had been done to the remains of the world’s first civilisation than in the previous five thousand years. He had heard the words at the time but dismissed them as rhetoric. Now their truth hit home hard.

  Not for the first time Robert asked himself what he was doing in Iraq. He felt a fool, sticking his optimistic nose into other people’s business, fretting about artefacts when they were grappling daily with matters of life and death. They had to live with the lousy decisions that were being made by the Coalition regime: disbanding the Iraqi army; wholesale de-Baathification and so on. The truth was he was powerless to stop any of it, including the pillage. Being part of the great Coalition conquering machine wasn’t helping as much as he had convinced himself it would.

  His mind drifted back. Ten years ago the British Army had rescued him when his parents had been killed in a car crash. The Army had provided him with security and direction at a critical point in his young life. Without it he had no doubt he would have gone off the rails. That, after all, is what had happened to his younger brother, Ian, who, a few years later, had ended up on drugs and in prison. Robert realised that his relationship with the Army was on shifting sands as a result of questions he was asking about the war. There were ominous signs of a Sunni resistance emerging and he heard from his mates in Basra that the Shiites militias there were turning on their liberators. Something was going badly awry with the occupation and the British seemed powerless to influence their dominant coalition partner. It wasn’t taking long for the Iraqis to turn on the Allies and, faced with the poor judgement of the political decisions being taken every day, Robert found it difficult to blame them.

  Iraq was turning into an almighty mess but on one point he was certain. The ancient peoples that had once lived here had things to tell mankind: through them we could better understand our own origins. The traces they left behind were remarkable and marvellous and they mattered. If only he could get hold of more resources! It always came back to the same thing. As the full sense of his own impotence dawned upon him, Robert smashed his right hand against the metal frame of the chopper in fury. The two Italian soldiers sitting alongside him jumped and stared, baffled by this sudden outburst of anger from the quiet Englishman.

  Chapter 10

  Skellig Islands, Ireland, 823

  The Danes decamped the next morning, their activity orderly and measured compared to the previous day’s orgy of violence. The booty captured from the small monastery made up in beauty what it lacked in quantity. Gold chalices and silver crosses glistened in the morning sun as they were loaded on board the ships. Lorcan praised God that the greatest of the island’s treasures, the relic known as the Triskell, was safe in the wooden box sitting a few feet away from him.

  Watching the invaders, Lorcan recalled how their raids had spread like a plague throughout Ireland. Precious relics were now being routinely moved around or indeed taken abroad, for safekeeping. Recently the great Missal of Tallaght had been sent to England for protection. Yet however beautiful and holy that book was, the treasure in their box was of far greater value. It carried the sign of the Holy Trinity, the three interlocking spirals, from an earlier age, long before Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth. It was proof of a Covenant between God and the Celts: a covenant as old as that which God had forged with the Jewish race. And it was a relic of great, supernatural power.

  Lorcan realised that his initial instinct, which had made him plan this journey, had been right. The Triskell was in great peril; the Danes now knew of its great power and were determined to have it. He needed to move it at once with all speed to a safer place.

  Further deliberation was abruptly halted as Lorcan realised that the ships were not departing directly southwards from Skellig Michael but were heading towards them. One of their captured colleagues must have betrayed where they were! Sweat drenched his armpits and the soles of his feet and a collapsing feeling returned to his gut. He grasped Patrick’s arm tightly but his colleague remained calm, hissing at him.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed! They are just coming this way to get the wind behind their sails. Watch now, they will soon head off northwards.’

  They waited and hid as the ships drew nearer. For a time they could even hear the sing-song conversation in the Danish tongue exchanged between the crew. Finally, after a nerve-racking twenty minutes, the ships cut an arc around their hiding place and, picking up pace, headed off north-eastwards towards the horizon.

  When they judged it safe, the two men fell to their knees, thanking the Lord for their deliverance. Lorcan had no doubt that God had saved him for a specific purpose: the Triskell had to be moved and made safe. But in an age where even the remote eyries of the Skellig offered no sanctuary, where could he hide it?

  ‘Come, Great Patron of this sacred isle!’ he called out loud to the Archangel Michael. ‘Come to my aid and guide me in this hour of need!’

  Praying intently he found himself presently distracted by a faint humming noise emitting from the treasure box, as though in response to his appeal. Placing a hand on the trunk, he indeed detected a vibration from within and the wood felt warm to his palm. Startled, he pulled back in fear, and then mastered himself. He was overwrought. That was it. Of course the wood was warm. In the heat of the day it would be. Yet not that warm, another part of his brain signalled, and not this early in the day.

  Putting aside these terrified speculations, he resumed his prayers to St Michael. Suddenly a striking image filled his mind’s eye. He saw a great rock, like Skellig Michael, except that no waves crashed at the foot of this bulwark. What’s more he recognised where it was for he had been there once, many years ago. There was no mistaking the place; it was the beating heart of Christian Munster, the ancient fortress of the Rock of Cashel. Instantly he knew his prayer had been answered. He knew where to hide the Triskell!

  Chapter 11

  Sligo, Ireland, July 2014

  Tara pushed open the door to the annexe which had been created out of part of the stable block as a flat for her grandfather. With Mrs Ryan, the housekeeper, in tow she entered. A musty smell of stale air, with a faint whiff of urine, told her she was entering an old person’s dwelling. The annexe, like a lot of things hailing from the 1970s, was not a great idea. The conversion had been carried out hastily and on the cheap, with little thought given to good taste or anything else. Badly designed rooms opened on to each other and the furniture and furnishings were a mishmash of styles and colours, all of which had seen better days. This was not her mother’s hand, she realised.

  ‘It’s not great, is it?’ said Mrs Ryan, reading her mind and throwing open a window to let in the morning air. Tara nodded but said nothing.

  ‘The thing is, he was happy here and refused to have it decorated, saying he didn’t want the disturbance. Mind you, the upstairs is much better.’

  Upstairs was indeed an improvement, the main room featuring sloping ceilings, a wooden floor and a large dormer window that offered fine views to the south west along the valley. Tara could sense already that this was her grandfather’s inner sanctum where he
had pursued his reading and writing.

  ‘He used to joke this room was his weather vane, as he could always see the bad weather coming up the valley before anyone else. You know, he had happy years here. It was just a shame when the decline set in and he started having problems.’ She shook her head. ‘I just hope I go quickly when my time is up.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Tara, a shiver passing along her spine. Joe had suffered from dementia and she was suffering from depression; she didn’t want to think they had too much in common. On her return to Sligo, her grandfather had already been hospitalised and, given her own problems, no one had suggested she visit him. When she had asked to see him in his last weeks, he was heavily sedated and spoke hardly at all.

  Mrs Ryan soon left, and Tara went downstairs to the kitchen and put the kettle on. The housekeeper had left teabags, milk and biscuits on the side for her. Biting on a Kimberly biscuit, an odd combination of ginger, sugar and mallow, Tara was suddenly transported back in time. She was in the kitchen running up to her mother to get her reward on returning from school - a biscuit for being a good girl. Tara shuddered at the intensity of the recollection. Coming home seemed to be unearthing old skeletons to add to the more recently acquired ones. Had she been right to leave Boston so quickly? Was coming home just a foolish lurch into the safety of the past? How could she have let things go so badly wrong?

  For years Tara had prided herself on being in control, of being on top. She didn’t make mistakes and mistakes didn’t happen to her. Or so she had thought. But then there was Newton, her big mistake. His image - blond-haired, open countenance and endearing grin – rose up before her. The man she had lived with for five years. The only person that she had invested in. The man who had taken her for a complete fool and nearly destroyed her. Tara felt unbidden tears well up. The old Tara would not for a second have tolerated such weakness but the new one didn’t seem to have much choice. Her therapist said it was a good sign and to be expected with the unblocking of emotions which she had repressed for so long. The release of tears certainly had a cathartic effect and she normally felt better for it. And so it was on this occasion. It was certainly an improvement on the numbing sense of detachment that had drained her for months.

  Returning upstairs, she turned the radio on and looked about her to get the measure of her task. Joe’s room was strewn with books, magazines, papers and correspondence. Getting stuck in, Tara separated the material into piles, moving books back onto bookcases and then into stacks when the shelf space was exhausted. After an hour and a half she had made good headway and it was time to start looking at the material. She turned her attention first to the correspondence. There were letters dating from the thirties through to the nineties. Not knowing who most of the correspondents were, Tara found this pile hard-going, and put it to one side.

  A second pile consisted of reminiscences and draft fictional pieces, including several short stories, which showed signs of having been revisited and amended several times. Set in Joe’s youth they took Tara into a world where everyone seemed to know each other, no one had much money and the world stopped at the end of the village. Tara smiled; Joe had the makings of an entertaining writer. But still she felt that the inner man escaped her, so she turned to the diaries.

  There were perhaps fifty diaries in a range of covers. The early ones in small, school copybooks but over the years the journals became more substantial with hard covers. Tara was surprised at the breadth of subject matter: records of events and activities; political observations and reflections on friends and relatives. Flicking through the pages her attention alighted here and there and she would pause to read a particular passage. She began to get a feel of her quarry. Joe emerged as an intelligent and independently-minded person, with good commercial acumen. And there was a wealth of detail about who did what and when. Great material for a family history noted Tara.

  Then, flicking a page over, it happened, like a bolt out of the blue. In an instant Tara and Joe’s lives fused with the emotional force of a fast-moving freight train, coming unexpectedly out of a very dark tunnel, hitting her full on.

  Chapter 12

  An Nasariyah, Iraq, September 2005

  August in An Nasariyah and the heat was intense, hanging in the air like an absorbent blanket, sucking the breath out of his lungs. Robert had been in Iraq eighteen months and, faced with sustained bureaucratic indifference, frustration had built up in him, pushing to the limits his habituated ethos of discipline and obedience. His superiors had released some resources to keep the project moving and it made some difference, but nothing near enough. He no longer bothered to hold his tongue over the shambles that was the occupation and had received two written reprimands. Something was going to have to change or he would soon be facing an insubordination charge. He rotated a pen across his knuckles tensely.

  He was in his office, in a swivel chair, his feet resting on the desk, under the clatter of a rotating ceiling fan. His mind was a bit like the fan, circling around a single thought, the privatisation of war, and examining it from different angles. The Coalition Provisional Authority was turning to private US contractors, such as Halliburton, to provide a range of services in the war zone. Engineering, construction, security, logistics and project management skills – you name it - all were in high demand. War and money went together when the US Army was on the move.

  At some point soon, Robert reasoned, the authorities would need to do something about the havoc being wrought on the cultural heritage of ancient Mesopotamia. But who could they turn to in order to get the job done? The Iraqi politicians were at best indifferent, and at worst hostile, towards anything pre-Islamic. National institutions such as the Iraq National Museum and the National Library were struggling to find their feet after the trauma of the invasion and subsequent looting. Major international cultural charities, such as the Guggenheim Museum, could provide serious funding but that was all. He knew that overseas archaeological institutions, like the British Museum, were primarily knowledge-driven and were not really equipped for such a large field task, especially in circumstances where security was an issue. The Germans and French could deploy considerable resources but were steering well clear of Iraq.

  Robert jotted down the skills needed and listed alongside the names of the people he knew who could provide them. He could bring leadership skills, courtesy of the British Army. His wife, Sarah, who now worked in the antiquities section at Christie’s, could bring expertise and familiarity with the international trade in artefacts. His friend Nico was planning to leave the Italian Army soon and knew how to run and deploy units of armed men. Mac, an American officer increasingly disenchanted with the Coalition set-up, was an engineer and security specialist. Donny could be their Iraqi expert while Rahim from Afghanistan could be another Eastern consultant. As the afternoon passed the list grew longer and Robert conjured up the idea of Artefact Retrieval and Delivery - ARAD. When finally the world saw sense, ARAD would be there to meet the emerging need for private expertise to help create a secure environment for archaeological excavations and the safe transport of any artefacts found in them. Robert had found his get-out-of-jail-free card and his mission statement!

  II: The Psychopath

  Chapter 13

  Weris, Belgium, February 2003

  Pascal de Waverin-Looz sat in a large armchair in the living room of the 17th century chateau-ferme near Weris, his childhood home. He liked coming back here. The robust walls afforded the solidity of a medieval fortress, yet once inside the building the experience was more refined. The knick-knacks, the Louis Quinze furniture and polished parquet floors - everything had been chosen by his mother, Stephanie. Coming back here brought him closer to her, her presence lingering like a fragrance in the stale air of the rarely frequented building. Inwardly he still raged at how she had been snatched away from him. She was the only one who had understood and nurtured him, and loved him for what he truly was.

  Weris was also the location of Pascal’s first paran
ormal experience when he was nine years old. The youthful event had happened without warning during a séance that his mother held in an attempt to try and contact the spirit of Ambiorix. The famous Celt was leader of the Eburones, a tribe of the Belgae, who wiped out an entire Roman legion in 54 BC. It was the first time also that Pascal had met Freya, the Dutch-Chinese medium that his mother favoured to facilitate her séances. Pascal still used her for that purpose and to advise him on magical and mythological questions. She was incredibly knowledgeable in such matters. She had recently been away for six months in Morocco. He made a mental note to arrange to see her again soon.

  His mind returned to his first séance. Without warning Pascal had felt himself start to levitate from his chair. At first he tried, with his child’s hands, to cling to the underside of the chair but then realised it made no difference. Up he floated and then found himself looking down at the people below. The feeling was ecstatic: no longer confined within his body, his spirit was burgeoning and inflating. Air seemed to be his natural medium and he was finding a new form in it, like a genie out of a bottle.

  After a time he realised that he was not alone, sensing the proximity of another, a strong, male presence. He could smell it; a thick, pungent aroma of some sweat-drenched creature, but heavily camouflaged by some dusky, sweet-smelling herb. He tried to look over his shoulder to see who it was, but whenever he did, the figure retreated from view. Who knows, Pascal thought, perhaps it is indeed Ambiorix and maybe only the dead are allowed to see the dead. But it seemed somehow other than human. Instinctively Pascal recognised that his companion, whom he would come in time to call the Other One, was animal and yet with an intelligence to match any human.