The Celtic Conspiracy (17 page)

“I’ll try to reach him right now,” MacClary said, signing off. He hit Ryan’s number, hoping the man’s phone could get reception.

Ryan had lain down on a rock ledge in the second chamber when a sound startled him. At first he thought it was just more earth sliding down. But the sound came again. Something was definitely moving outside the entrance to the cave. As he stood to investigate, everything suddenly went dark around him. The work lights had all gone dead at the same time.

Ryan reached into his jacket pocket to pull out a gun. He didn’t get that far. A blow to the head threw him back against the cave wall. The lights went back on and he saw a masked man dressed in black lunging at him. Dazed, but getting back to his feet, Ryan yelled, “Who in the devil are you people?”

Then a second blow hit him. As he fell, Ryan ripped the mask from his attacker’s head, taking a clump of hair with him. The enraged man screamed and then delivered a devastating kick to Ryan’s ribs. Ryan tried desperately to make out the face of his attacker, but a second later everything went black.

* * *

“Leave him there. He’s not going anywhere,” Salvoni said coldly, signaling his men to follow him so that they could get to work. He was fuming as he looked around the cave, thinking about how his worries had been trivialized over the past few days and how wrong everyone else had been.

The men hastily began to pack artifacts into the prepared boxes they had brought with them, but Salvoni was sure that the two who had already left had the most important items with them.

* * *

Ryan gradually came around. His head was throbbing, and with every breath he took the pain in his chest was so overwhelming that he wanted to scream. It took superhuman effort for him to keep lying still. If he didn’t move, maybe they would just leave him there. He had already tied his scroll onto his back under his jacket, so there was no way he could hide it beneath the debris.

As he lay there, he tried to steal glances at his assailants. One was wearing the ring of the St. Pius X Brotherhood. Apparently one of the shadiest sects inside the Catholic Church had their dirty fingers all over this operation. Ryan tried not to panic as he considered the implications for the world...and for himself.

* * *

Salvoni moved the men on. He knew there wasn’t much time left. There were no sightseers at this time of year, and there was not a person to be seen far and wide. But anyone by a window at the inn next door could see activity, and it was quite possible that someone had already called the police. And his men had attacked too quickly and too violently, so they wouldn’t be able to learn more from the man in the cave. This was not going at all the way he’d intended.

* * *

Georg Winter had his hand on the telephone when his son, who was standing at the window peering through the foggy night, said, “Just leave it! We shouldn’t get mixed up in this. It looks to me like a Cobra special operations unit. We’ll make fools of ourselves if we call up the police like some suburban housewife catching someone parking illegally.”

Resigned, Winter let his hand drop. He didn’t feel right about this, because he was sure he had heard people walking over the lot, maybe coming out of the forest, unusual for this time, but the boy was probably right. It was usually not a good idea to get mixed up in these sorts of things.

* * *

Salvoni gave a last look at the man lying motionless on the floor and crossed himself.

“What should we do with him?” one of his people asked as he made his way to the exit with the last of the boxes.

“Leave him here, set the rest on fire, and close up the cave so no one will notice it.” Perhaps it was a good thing that the Austrian special operations unit Salvoni had requested hadn’t come after all. Most likely no one would pay any attention to this mountainside ever again. The rain, which had recently started and was getting heavier by the minute, would wipe away all traces that anything had been here.

Having met Markus Steinberger in Klagenfurt, Shane and Deborah were on the empty early-morning autobahn headed toward Vienna, Steinberger and his sons driving a hundred yards behind them.

“Give me your cell phone,” Shane said. “I need to find out if Thomas is all right.”

Deborah handed him the phone. “You won’t reach him. He’s still in the cave, and there’s no reception there.”

“I’m not calling Thomas,” Shane said as he dialed MacClary.

“Deborah, is everything all right?” MacClary said, his voice anxious. “I was just about to call.”

“It’s Adam, Professor. I needed to call you because I don’t have a good feeling about Thomas. Why did we leave him back in the cave? If nothing else, we could have stored the artifacts in Klagenfurt and waited for him there.”

“We couldn’t do that, Adam. Every minute counts. The scrolls need to be preserved immediately. You have to respect Ryan’s decision. Believe me, Ryan and I know exactly what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”

“But—”

“Believe me, everything is fine. The rest of the artifacts will be retrieved by the Viennese archaeologists. We’ll try to reach Ryan so he can leave the cave soon, but just in case, I told the head of the Archaeological Institute that he’s there.”

Shane tried to take solace in MacClary’s words, but his tension refused to ease. “All right. Thank you, Ronald. I just want Thomas to come back to Dublin quickly. He should be there when we establish the value of the trove.”

“Where are you now?”

“We’ll be in Vienna in about two hours, I think.”

“Fantastic. Call me when you’re at the airport.”

Shane hung up and was about to give Deborah her cell phone back when he noticed her looking intently out the right side mirror.

“Deborah, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just imagining things, but it’s very strange. There’s been a car behind Steinberger’s following us.”

* * *

Cassidy was getting more furious by the minute. There hadn’t been a single opportunity to make a move without any witnesses, and he couldn’t reach Salvoni to determine a new course of action.

All he could do was drive.

* * *

Salvoni headed toward the bus. To all outward appearances he seemed completely at ease, but inside, thoughts were rushing through his head. What would be the fallout from this operation? What did it all mean for his own future? He had just learned from Cassidy that the other two, apparently protected by friends, were driving unchallenged toward Vienna. Lambert would go berserk when he found out.

* * *

Ryan had gotten lucky. As the cave burned, he had quickly managed to dig his way through the mud to the surface. Were his attackers already gone? Were they lying in wait for him somewhere?

He tried to stay calm and to clear his head. Finally, he used his last ounce of strength to dig through a narrow hole. His abused body was so weak, though, that every time he tried to pull himself up the last few feet, he slid back onto the steep slope.

He doubled over in pain. It felt as though he had broken several ribs and was bleeding from several wounds in his head. Was this how he was going to die? Knowing he couldn’t let that happen, he drilled his hands into the earth and pulled himself, excruciatingly, to the surface.

He slowly tried to get up and go down the slope. As he reached the edge of the forest near the parking lot, pain screaming through his body, a bus turned the curve and
blinded him. He dropped down again onto the muddy ground and took cover in the bushes.

* * *

Adriano Paltini was just cleaning his gun when he happened to look out the rear window. Was there something moving in the brush? He was going to dismiss it as a figment of his imagination, but then habit and discipline took over. He went to look for Salvoni to report what he’d seen.

* * *

Ryan lay behind the bush, groaning. The pain was excruciating enough, and now the headlights of the bus had blinded him to the point that he could only see bright spots in front of his eyes. He searched his jacket pocket for his cell phone, but the effort made him double over in pain again.

The first thing he saw when he got his vision back were the lights in the window of the inn. Apparently someone was still awake there, although it had to be after three o’clock in the morning. What if he asked them for help? “You don’t have anything to lose, Thomas,” he said to himself, trying to get up his courage.

Hopefully nothing had happened to Shane and Deborah. If everything had gone according to plan, they would be close to Vienna by now.

Ryan pulled himself up and began to drag himself toward the inn. As he did, he felt the presence of someone else.

And then everything went black again.

“Father!” the young man yelled at the top of his lungs. “Come down and help me carry this man in the house. He’s wounded and he needs help.”

“Slow down, now, I’m coming, I’m coming!” The old innkeeper dragged himself out of the house into the pouring rain. “We really should call the police now.”

“If we call anyone, it should be an ambulance.”

Georg Winter grabbed the injured man under his right arm while his son took the left side. They carried him carefully over the lot and up to the inn. Irena, the young waitress who had been waiting there, opened the door, and the two men dragged the unconscious body into one of the lower guest rooms where they heaved him onto the bed.

“My God,” the woman said when she got a good look, “we need to call the hospital immediately.”

* * *

Ryan slowly rose again from the darkness. He was lying on a bed and he heard voices. Someone was talking about sending him to the hospital.

“Wait,” he said, his voice and the rudiments of his German sounding unusually thick to his ears. “Where am I?”

“We’ve been watching what’s going on,” a male voice said. Ryan tried to focus on the figure. “There were quite a few people here and a lot of boxes.”

“I can explain,” Ryan said slowly, trying to sound normal. The last thing he needed was an ambulance, since it would almost certainly lead to an appearance by the police. “I don’t know who those men were, but I know they were looking for the same thing...uh...I was.”

“They didn’t exactly look friendly,” grumbled an older man as a young woman gave Ryan a glass of water.

Ryan took a sip, surprised at how welcome it was. “I need to get going. I promise I won’t cause you any problems.”

“You should stay here for a while,” the younger of the two men insisted. “First, it doesn’t look as if you can walk very well yet, and second, I saw some of the men climb out of the bus only about a hundred yards from here.”

“That means they saw me,” Ryan said, searching for his cell phone. “This is very bad.”

“We’ll be glad to help you,” the older gentleman said, “but you have to tell us a bit more.”

“It has to do with something found here during World War II. Apparently the men with the bus didn’t want my friends and me to retrieve it.”

“Italians,” the older man said.

“What?”

“They were Italians. I saw their license plate.”