The Celtic Conspiracy (12 page)

“Hello, Mr. Shane,” said a female voice from behind him. “You have a unique gift for setting things in motion.”

“Oh, thanks,” he said, turning toward Jennifer, “but that was just luck, albeit a wonderful kind of luck. I’m still fairly nervous about the whole thing, I have to confess. I mean, I’ve only known the others for a few days, and then all of this...”

“I know,” she said with a hint of wistfulness in her voice. “It can be a bit stressful when you meet Ronald MacClary. How did you end up here, anyhow?”

“Oh, well, you see, for one thing, I’m interested in the art of healing with herbs. And for another, I’ve spent
quite a bit of time—for as long as I can remember— trying to fathom our purpose. In other words, asking ridiculous questions that can make one’s life a living hell.”

Shane looked at Jennifer with a warm smile.

She returned the smile. “Ah, and I always thought that only the Church was concerned with hell.”

Shane felt his cheeks flushing. He needed to deflect the focus away from himself. “And what do you do, if I may ask, Ms. Wilson?”

“Please call me Jennifer, Adam.” She sat down opposite him and rested her elbows on the small table, supporting her head with her hands as she looked out the window. “I got here, like you, because of my interest in Ronald. When I was just beginning my career as a lawyer, I was hoping for his support to advance my career. But at some point I finally realized that I no longer needed that help. Then, for some strange reason, a real friendship developed.”

“Are you as caught up in his quest as the rest of the group?”

Jennifer smiled and leaned back in her chair. Shane couldn’t help but look at her. He had never met someone with so much femininity, beauty, self-assuredness, and intelligence all at the same time, and he had to control himself not to give away his feelings. He wasn’t accustomed to responding to women this way. In fact, he hadn’t felt like this upon meeting a woman since he met Victoria ten years ago.

“Let’s say,” Jennifer began, shaking Shane from his reverie, “I share Ronald’s opinion about the Vatican’s
questionable history. And I couldn’t care less if a crime is a year, a hundred years, or a thousand years old, especially if it concerns murder and torture. Meanwhile, I assume I don’t need to explain my opinion about the Catholic Church from my perspective as a woman.”

The forcefulness of Jennifer’s convictions made her even more fascinating to Shane. “But prosecuting old crimes probably doesn’t work that well.”

“No, of course not. For that, we would have to have a complete cultural sea change, and such a change is difficult to imagine. Still, historical crimes
ought to be
punishable. And...oh, forget it. I’m just succumbing to the usual sad combination of philosophy and wishful thinking.”

With that, Jennifer seemed as though she were ready to leave the room.

Surprising himself, Shane reached out a hand. “Please continue.”

Jennifer settled back. “Do you really want to talk about this?

“Absolutely.”

And so they did, long into the night.

Shane was just finishing his packing after a total of three hours’ sleep, wondering why he’d even bothered to pay for the hotel room. Though they never got far from the subject of Ronald’s search, Shane still felt as though he’d gotten to see inside Jennifer a bit during their time together. He hoped it wouldn’t be the only long conversation they ever shared.

Minutes later, he found Deborah and Thomas waiting in front of the hotel in a taxi that would take them to the airport. As the taxi drove away, Thomas lifted up his hand. “Gentlemen, before we board the airplane, I have something here to fortify our spirits. It should help us to be successful on this trip if we are under the protection of our ancestors.”

Thomas took three small cloth bags out of his pocket and handed one to Shane and one to Deborah.

Shane sniffed at his bag. He smelled meadowsweet immediately, then ash leaves, beard lichen, fleabane, ivy,
and mistletoe. It was a sweet-tart smell, and he was quietly moved by this present, since it had come from Thomas’s Druid heart.

“But that’s not all. Deborah also put a bit of Irish wisdom in with it, which, I think, is quite appropriate for you, Adam.”

Shane opened the bag carefully, taking out a small piece of paper.

Act, before it happens,

Steer, before it’s lost,

The wise man retraces the steps that men have gone,

Working to bring things back to their true nature.

And he fears only one thing: to act against nature and the unity of all life.

“Thank you, Thomas, and many thanks to you as well, Deborah. Yes, that’s it exactly.” Shane took Thomas’s and Deborah’s hands. “I’d like to thank you both from the bottom of my heart.”

Thomas and Deborah smiled and squeezed his hands.

“Just one more thing, Adam,” Thomas said. “We have no idea what we’re about to experience on the continent or what we’ll find there, but I’m asking you to trust me, no matter what happens.”

“What’s the plan, practically speaking?”

“We’ll drive to Klagenfurt first. There Ronald’s friend will give us all the equipment we need. He has invested
quite a bit of money for us three, well, let’s call ourselves hobby archaeologists.”

“And then? I mean, we can’t just walk all over the place and dig.”

“Don’t worry, Adam,” Deborah said. “This isn’t the first time Thomas has been involved in something requiring both courage and good planning.”

Shane was confused by this for a minute, until he understood what Deborah had meant. Thomas had, after all, spent his early childhood in Northern Ireland.

* * *

Jennifer had postponed her early-morning meetings at Ronald’s request. Now she was sitting in his kitchen eating breakfast, a bit the worse for wear after her late-night discussion with Adam Shane. Ruth was puttering around the kitchen, quietly scolding.

“I always knew that this confounded scroll would bring more bad luck,” she remarked yet again. “I should have just knocked it over while I was cleaning.” She poured Jennifer another cup of coffee.

“Ruth, it’s OK,” Jennifer said. “First of all, Ryan knows his way around an operation like this. Second, we’ve made sure that no one can connect Ronald with the whole thing. And third, I honestly don’t think they’re going to find anything at all.”

Ruth looked at Jennifer for a moment, sighed, and got back to her work.

Just then Ronald came into the kitchen. He was holding a stack of papers. “Jennifer, would you come on a walk with me?”

“Sure. Some fresh air would do me good.”

In the foyer, Ronald helped Jennifer with her coat. Outside, sunlight was streaming off the puddles left by the morning rain, so much so that Jennifer decided to wear her sunglasses.

“Ronald, tell me what you think this expedition is going to uncover. I mean, you’re not going to find Jesus’s tomb there.”

Ronald seemed unusually serious. “I haven’t told you everything up to now. Let me put it this way: my father left details about some crucial items he had seen in the cave but couldn’t rescue. This has created a context for me that has always fascinated me as a lawyer and a judge.” Ronald handed the papers to her. “Here, please read through this. In these papers, my father describes the results of the Church’s activities in culture, economics, and politics over the whole spectrum of our society.”

Jennifer was a bit annoyed; she already knew the whole history of Christianity, thank you very much, a history of war and torture, of betrayal and abuse of its own ideals. She also knew all too well MacClary’s attempts at taking legal action against the Church. In 1984, he had been head council in the conviction of the Jesuits and the Mafioso Michele Sindona. This man was very well acquainted with Pope Paul VI, friends with the then-head of the Vatican Bank, and responsible for the reorganization of finances in
that bank. He had been convicted in what was at the time the largest bank failure ever in the history of the US. But before Ronald could bring additional charges connected to the Vatican Bank’s role in Mafia money laundering, Sindona was sent to Italy. Despite being under heavy guard, he was found dead from cyanide poisoning soon thereafter.

“Jennifer, the current abuse scandals, the facts about the Vatican’s role in international money laundering, and the sheer mass of internationally active historians who have demonstrated the Church’s almost unbroken history of crime—perhaps all of this might offer us an unexpected chance to end the whole nightmare.”

“And you think your three Druids will find something in the cave that could help you with this? You’re completely crazy, Ronald MacClary.”

“I don’t think so, Jennifer. My father told me that even the foundation of the Church was a criminal act and that there was still so much to discover, unsuspected even by critical historians.” MacClary pointed to his father’s papers again. “I also had a meeting last week with Bob Chaney. He’s one of the judges on the International Criminal Court. Believe me, with what we now know, the Vatican can no longer be so certain of its immunity.”

“Now we just have to hear from the United Nations,” Jennifer said, half in jest.

“Spare me the sarcasm. There’s really only one country whose legal system might offer us the possibility of attack, and that’s the US. Ryan might be able to help us, both with his dual citizenship and his history, but only if
you’re prepared to represent him. Then we could at least make sure it gets the proper attention and use the media to open the subject for discussion. Can I count on you? Purely theoretically, of course.”

Jennifer couldn’t believe the course this conversation had taken. “Yes, you can, Ronald, and afterward I’ll be your geriatric nurse. You must realize that we’ll both be out of a job before a single hearing or even one complaint can be written.”

Jennifer stood next to him as if rooted to the spot. The whole story was utter nonsense and had no chance of succeeding. On the other hand, there had been that case in Boston where her good friend Louis Baker, a federal prosecutor, had managed to launch the Blackfoot Indians’ action for restitution of old cultural artifacts. Jennifer had handled it so well that the judge admitted the case and Jennifer won it. The museum being sued eventually had to return the artifacts.

Compared to what MacClary had in mind, though, that was a walk in the park.

* * *

Lambert seemed to be walking aimlessly through the Sistine Chapel when Salvoni approached him nervously from behind. “Ah, Salvoni,” Lambert said, turning, “I’ve already heard about the events in Dublin. You have, I think, everything under control for our Austrian expedition?”

Salvoni was surprised by Lambert’s calm. “Yes, we’ll try to be there by nightfall. Unfortunately we don’t have the exact coordinates, but I have some people following MacClary’s friends.” He had the feeling that the matter could get out of control since his contacts at the Austrian secret service hadn’t yet confirmed their assistance.

“Tell me, what is our greatest concern here?”

Salvoni had expected to be berated for the sloppy work in Dublin, not plied with cryptic questions. “There is always the possibility that something could go wrong. Why don’t we go the unofficial path and make public what we know? We could declare the discovery the result of our own research.”

Lambert answered with unusual indifference. “Oh, Salvoni. In order to hate our history, you’d have to know what it was. And who knows our history? Only the disoriented atheists flailing around in the world of science. The people of faith won’t have any understanding of these events.”

“But Cardinal, you know that MacClary’s father was hot on our heels once. Too close, to be honest. And although we can’t really be certain of what the man discovered, we can guess. You must know that the possibility still exists of finding evidence from the period when the Church was founded.”

“Even so, I have always argued that you can’t apply today’s ethical and moral standards to the actions of the bishops of Constantine’s time.”

Salvoni knew that this was an ambiguous line of reasoning, and he was sure that Lambert knew this as well. “What should we do now, then?”

Lambert’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll say this for the last time: remaining calm is our best option. Go about your work, but don’t take any risks. It’s just not worth it, even if MacClary does find what he’s looking for. Take a couple of men and try to stay two steps ahead of him. But keep your distance at first. Only intervene if it seems prudent. I don’t want MacClary to know that we have any interest in him and his activities.”

Salvoni had his misgivings—the scandals were already beginning to pile up—but he was clever enough not to express these out loud. “Good, Cardinal. You bear the responsibility for this, so we will proceed with caution.”

“Yes, Salvoni, I do bear the responsibility. Thank you, and keep me informed.”

“When will you tell the Holy Father about these events?”

Salvoni saw Lambert’s face redden, and he was certain an explosion was imminent. Instead, the cardinal’s expression softened, and he said, “What events? Please, Salvoni, the Holy Father really has other things to think about at the moment than some treasure hunters and heretical sinners like MacClary. Don’t give it another thought.”