Excalibur Rising (2 page)

        “Who taught you that?” Peacock asked.
        “You did,” Ryan replied.
        Peacock shook his head. “I never taught you any such thing.  I taught you that the Arthur we hear of in legends was probably a creation of medieval romances, but he was rooted in fact.  I know I taught you that, didn’t I?”
        “No,” Ryan said firmly,  “you taught us that there is absolutely no historical record of Arthur, and the Arthurian stories seemed to be formed out of thin air and ancient legends sometime in the 11
^th
Century.”
        The old man grinned engagingly. “Well,” he said, “maybe that was before I had my change of heart on the subject, before I started really looking.  Don’t tell me, Marcus Ryan, Ph.D. that you have never, ever, considered the possibility that somewhere in this great round world…  I did teach you that the world was round, didn’t I?”
        Ryan laughed and nodded.
        “Have you never considered,” Peacock asked again, “that somewhere in this great round world, the sword of Arthur may exist?”
        Ryan was reluctant to join in his game but honesty forced him to say that yes, he had considered it, of course he had considered it.  “Historians are all romantics at heart,” he said, “and if it was ever found…”
        “It is found.”
        “...if it was ever found, “Ryan continued, “it would obviously be priceless.”
        “We could get a price.”
        “I could never authenticate it,” Ryan said.  “I could never put my name to such an outrageous claim.”
        “I’ve seen it,” Peacock said.
        Silence filled the room.  Ryan lowered himself slowly onto the sofa and stared at Peacock.  He was looking for the sudden wink, the slight lifting of an eyebrow, the twitching of his lips, anything that would tell him that the aggressive little Englishman was joking.  The silence hung heavily between them and Peacock’s face gave no sign.
        “I’ve seen it,” Peacock said again with a note of awe in his voice. He leaned forward fixing Ryan with the hard stare of his pale eyes. “I’ve seen it,” he said yet again as though he could hardly believe it himself. “I’ve touched it.”
        He stretched out his hand and touched something that only he could see. “It’s nothing fancy, just a smattering of jewels,” he said. “It’s not well formed, rather primitive, pre-Saxon, possibly Roman, or early Celtic; very heavy.  It was made for a big man.”
        “You’re serious, aren’t you? “Ryan asked.
        “Yes.”
        “And you’ve told Mandretti already?”
        “Not everything.  I’ve hinted.  I’ve told him enough to whet his appetite.  I told him that I had something very special and that you would authenticate it, and he invited me to come here.”
        Ryan thought about Michael Mandretti seated behind his enormous desk in his enormous office in the Mandretti executive suite.  He tried to imagine himself wading across the sea of white shag carpet to stand in front of that desk and tell Michael Mandretti, who was without a doubt the most frightening man Ryan had ever met, that he, Professor Marcus Ryan,  was willing to throw the whole weight of his professional reputation behind a fairy tale.
        “He trusts you, Marcus,” Peacock said. “He doesn’t trust me.”
        “I’m not surprised,” Ryan replied. “I don’t even trust you, not this time.”
        “I’ve seen it,” Peacock said again.
        “Where?”
        Peacock smiled beatifically. “It’s well protected, but not well guarded,” he said. “Its protection is its anonymity. No one realizes what it is.  We can get our hands on it.”
        “Is it in a museum?” Ryan asked.
        “Not exactly,” said Peacock. “That’s why it’s safe for the time being.”
        He fell silent and then took a deep breath as though he had decided to launch into an explanation. Ryan waited, admiring the professor’s showmanship.  He didn’t believe a word Peacock was saying, but somehow the old professor had managed to hook him and Ryan was eager to listen.
        “Let me show you something,” Peacock said at last, delving into the pocket of his tweed jacket.  He produced something wrapped in a white handkerchief.  He unfolded the handkerchief and revealed a small gold pin set with an unusual dull red stone.
       “What is it?”
        “It’s a companion piece to the sword,” Peacock said, “which I managed to liberate.  The sword stays where it is, but I give you my word, they belong together.”
        He handed Ryan the pin.  Ryan turned it over in his hand and stared at it for a long time. 
        “It has you stumped, doesn’t it?” Peacock said.
        Ryan continued to examine the pin in silence.
        “Have you ever seen anything like it?” Peacock asked.
        Ryan shook his head. “I can’t place it,” he said, “At first I thought Saxon, but it’s not quite right. It’s not Roman, and definitely not Celtic, and there’s something strange about the metal.”
        “And the stone, “Peacock added. “Have you ever seen a stone like that before?”
        Ryan turned the pin over and over in his hand.  On first glance the stone was dull red, like something that had been shaped by the sea and washed up on a pebble beach, but on closer examination it seemed to glow with an inner fire, as though heat had been sealed into the very center of its being.
        “What is it?” he asked.
        Peacock shook his head. “No idea, but it’s quite soft.  I dropped it on the bathroom floor this morning and a piece broke off.”
        “You dropped it?” Ryan exclaimed.
        Peacock pointed a stubby finger at a corner of the setting.  “There was another small stone set in metal prongs.  They broke.”
        “For heaven’s sake,” Ryan said, “what are you thinking of? This shouldn’t be wrapped up in a handkerchief and stuffed in your pocket.  This should be in a padded case.  I don’t know what it is, but it’s ancient and it’s valuable.”
        “Which is the very reason why I am carrying it in my pocket,” Peacock said. “No fuss, no big fanfare, much the safest way.”
        He handed Ryan a twisted scrap of paper. “I wrapped the broken piece in here. I thought you might want to take a look under a microscope.”
Ryan took the paper from him, and put it in his own pocket.
        “The gold’s strange,” Peacock said. “It’s not actually gold.  It’s a kind of crystal.”
        “It can’t be,” Ryan said.
        “But it is,” he insisted. ”You’ll see what I mean when you put it under the microscope, and there’s a document___ ”
        “A provenance?” Ryan asked.
        “Not exactly. To be honest I don’t know what it is. I’ve lodged it in a safe place but I brought a sample to show you.  It’s in my room, I’ll go get it in a minute and you can see what you make of it. It’s a bit of a puzzler.”
They were interrupted by two firm raps on the door.
        “Room Service.”
        The dreaming look faded from the professor’s eyes and was replaced by an anticipatory twinkle. “About bloody time,” he declared. “I hope you ordered something decent.”
        “Chateau Neuf du Pap,” Ryan said as he crossed the room to open the door.
        Peacock raised an appreciative eyebrow. 
         “Very good lad,” he said. “You have a good memory.”
        The waiter was a tall well-built man who looked supremely discontented with his career choice.  He wore the Indiana Jones themed costume issued to all workers to complement the emerging theme of the Mandretti, including well-worn jodhpurs and soft leather boots. His hair was light brown with sun-bleached streaks and definitely needed to be styled, or at least washed, and he wore an eye patch.  Ryan made a mental note to tell the management that eye patches were the preserve of pirates, not treasure hunters. The waiter deposited the tray on the coffee table.  An elaborate pseudo-gothic goblet accompanied the wine.
        “Compliments of the management,” he said.  He picked up the wine bottle. “I took the liberty of opening the wine, sir,” he said, “to allow it to breathe.”
         He spoke clearly, but Ryan found his accent unusual.  Scottish maybe.
     The professor beamed delightedly. “Excellent, excellent,” he said. “I see there is some culture in this benighted town.”
        “Just a little,” said the waiter.
         Ryan leaned forward to look at the goblet. “I haven’t seen these before,” he said. “They’re very good replicas.”
         The waiter’s hand shot out, seizing the goblet before Ryan could look closer. “They’ve only just arrived,” he said. “I didn’t bring one for you.  You didn’t order anything.”
        “No, “Ryan said. “I have my own supply.”
      He took his billfold from the nightstand and gave the waiter a tip.
         “I have to get some ice,” Ryan said to Peacock. “There’s an ice machine at the end of the hall.”
        “Ice!” the professor bellowed. “I don’t need ice! Philistine!”
         Under the professor’s eagle eye, the waiter lifted the wine bottle to pour the wine into the goblet.   Peacock held out a restraining hand. 
        “For goodness sake,” he said. “You can’t put a good wine into that, that...thing.  Heaven knows what it’s made of and what it will do to the bouquet.  Marcus, do you have another glass?”
        “Yeah, sure,” said Ryan.  “But it’s just a water glass.”
        “So long as it’s glass,” said Peacock. 
        Ryan held the glass out to the waiter who poured a generous measure of wine, which he handed to the professor.
         “Let me look at the goblet again,” Ryan said to the waiter.  “I want to see what it’s made of.”
        “No, really, it’s okay,” said the waiter, setting the goblet on the cart and preparing to leave.
        Peacock took a sip of the wine. “If it’s just some cheap metal,” he said to the waiter, “you’ll have everyone in the restaurant sending back their wine.”
        “Not in Vegas,” Ryan said. “Not everyone’s a connoisseur.”
        “I’ll tell the restaurant manager,” the waiter said.  He sounded more angry than anxious and was making small movements towards the door. 
         Ryan reached over, lifted the goblet from the cart, and carried it to the window. After the first judicious sip of the wine, Peacock was taking hearty swallows and seemed to be really relaxing into the chair.  Ryan assumed that he was very tired from his journey. 
        He tried to concentrate on the object in his hands but his mind was full of questions.  He really didn’t know where to begin or how to assess the professor’s outrageous claim to have found the fabled Excalibur.  He put his hand in his pocket and touched the twist of paper, feeling the hard outlines of the stone.  Much against his better judgment, he knew he would have to find out more. Given the strangeness of the dull red stone, and the certainty of Peacock’s own conclusions, he would have to do something.
        “Sir,” said the waiter anxiously, “you need to give me the goblet?”
        “Yeah, sure,” Ryan said, turning from the window and reigning in his wandering thoughts, and then he saw the professor.  Peacock held the water glass of wine but he was no longer drinking. He seemed to be struggling to breathe.
         Ryan fell on one knee beside the chair, dropping the goblet into the professor’s lap as he reached forward to loosen the old man’s tie. 
        “Sir,” said the waiter, hovering in the doorway.
        “Get help,” Ryan said.
       “Just give me the goblet,” the waiter said.
        “To hell with the goblet,” Ryan shouted. “Call down to the front desk, get an ambulance.”
         Peacock drew in a strangled breath and dropped the water glass.  The wine spilled across his lap and spread in a red stain across the floor.  His eyes were fixed on the goblet that lay in his lap.  He lifted it in both shaking hands.
        “It’s not a fake,” he murmured. “Early Saxon.”
        “Forget about it,” Ryan said, lifting Peacock’s chin and seeing that his face was waxy white and that he was gasping for breath.  Behind him he heard a faint click and turned in time to see the door closing behind the waiter.
        “Hey,” Ryan shouted, “get back in here.”
        Peacock drew in another strangled breath and his body began to convulse.  The goblet slipped from his lap to the floor.        
        “I’ll get you an ambulance,” Ryan said. “Just hang on.”
         But Peacock could not hang on.  His hold on life slipped away.  Even as Ryan lifted the phone to call in the emergency, the professor stopped breathing.

McCarran Airport, Las Vegas
     The one-eyed man sprinted through the airport.  He had wasted precious time at the baggage check-in.  Of course he should have known sharp objects, such as jeweled daggers, would not be permitted in his carry-on. He should have known, but in the excitement of the moment it had slipped his mind.  Travel by air, although very efficient for long distances, was not as simple as stepping through a gate.  But that was an unfortunate fact of life. There were no gates in the Americas, how could there be?
     His lingering elation at the successful completion of his mission was somewhat mitigated by the indignity of airport security.  Why did they have to look beneath his eye patch?  Surely they should have understood that the bearer of such a wound would not want to reveal it to anyone.  Oh how shocked they had been to see the extent of the damage.  I told you not to look, he thought.  The young pretty one had been especially shocked at the extent of the scarring.  That’s what it looks like, he wanted to say, when you have your eye gouged out in a world where there are no antibiotics, no plastic surgeons, no ambulances, and no laws.  Don’t worry about it, pretty young woman, I had my revenge, very much more than an eye for an eye.
     He made certain his eye patch was firmly in place as he joined the shuffling line of passengers boarding the London flight.

CHAPTER TWO
        

     Ryan was not surprised to find that Michael Mandretti was well acquainted with the Las Vegas Police Department.  Obviously Mandretti and the police understood each other’s needs.  Mandretti needed to keep his hotel running smoothly, and the police needed to deal quickly and quietly with the suspicious death of a foreign tourist.  Within an extremely short space of time, the mortal remains of Taras Quentin Peacock had been examined, photographed, zipped into a plastic body bag, and sent to the morgue, without any interruption to the river of money flowing into the Casino.
        Ryan’s own meager possessions were bundled up by a couple of chamber maids and removed to a vacant room on the seventeenth floor while a cleaning crew arrived to tackle the stains on the carpet.
        Ensconced in his new room, Ryan was allowed twenty minutes to shower and shave before he was summoned into the “presence.”
        It seemed to Ryan that the executive offices of the Mandretti occupied about an acre of prime real estate on the ground floor.  He made his way through the vast lobby of the hotel which rang with the beeping and buzzing of thousands of slot machines. The décor echoed the intrepid explorer theme with ruined temples, fallen statues, and a 50ft. high waterfall.  The entrance to the executive suite was concealed within a cavelike opening but once through the doors, any illusion of ancient architecture was instantly banished. The hub of the Mandretti organization was all 21st Century efficiency with the coming and going of men in suits and beautiful young women in power dresses.
        Ryan found Mandretti alone behind his ocean of desk and waded across the carpet to seat himself in the white leather guest chair that Mandretti indicated with a wave of a manicured hand.
        Michael Mandretti was a young man, or at least a man of Ryan’s own age, and Ryan still liked to think of himself as young.  He had the dark hair and dark eyes Ryan expected from anyone whose last name sounded so specifically Italian, but there was a certain unexpected sympathy and warmth in the way he rose from his seat and patted Ryan’s shoulder as Ryan sank into the chair.
        “I’m sorry,” Mandretti said. “He was an old friend, huh?”
        Mandretti’s accent betrayed his youth somewhere in New York City, Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens,  Ryan had never been able to tell the difference.  All he knew was that Mandretti sounded like an average New York gangster from central casting, but his eyes told Ryan that he was far from average.
        “He was my professor at Harvard, “Ryan said.
        “Your – er – mentor?”
        Ryan wasn’t sure if the question related to his relationship with Peacock, or the correct use of the word “mentor”.  Lately Mandretti had been trying to improve his vocabulary and fill in the many gaps in his education, and Ryan had become his unwilling tutor.
        “Would you like a drink, Doctor?” he asked.
        Mandretti always addressed Ryan as “doctor”.  He seemed more far more impressed by Ryan’s title than Ryan was himself.
        “No,” Ryan said.
        Mandretti returned to his seat. “My guess is poison,” he said.
        Ryan nodded his head.  It was hardly an impressive guess, particularly in the absence of bullet holes, knife wounds, or other glaring evidence to the contrary.
        “In the wine,” Ryan said, “brought up by room service.  Have the police talked to the waiter?”
        Mandretti shook his head. “That wasn’t one our waiters,” said Mandretti.
        “No, I suppose not.”
        Ryan waited.
        “Our waiter, the one who should have brought you the wine, was found in the wine cellar,” Mandretti said.
        “Dead?” asked Ryan.
        “Alive,” said Mandretti, “trussed up like a pig, but still alive.  He didn’t know nothing.”
        “Neither do I,” Ryan said. “I don’t have anything else useful to tell you.”
         “Don’t you?” Mandretti looked him in the eye and Ryan could swear that he grew bigger.  He was an average sized man in a well-cut suit, no enormous gangster shoulder pads, no huge muscled neck, but when his eyes met Ryan’s, Ryan felt his strength.
        “Professor Peacock wrote me a letter,” Mandretti said, “a genuine old fashioned letter, pen, paper, stamp.  Don’t get them very often. He said he had something to offer me, something of great value and he said you would vouch for him.”
        “I don’t think I can do that,” Ryan said.
        “He said you would.”
        “That’s before I knew what he thought he had.”
        Mandretti nodded his head. “So he did have something, Doctor?”
        “No, “Ryan insisted, “he didn’t have anything.  He had a wild idea, that’s all.”
        Mandretti pulled a letter from a drawer and laid it on the pristine oak surface of his desk.  Ryan recognized Peacock’s flowing handwriting and distinctive turquoise ink.  Mandretti made no pretense of reading fluently. Ryan concluded that he was probably not used to reading cursive writing. No doubt his world was all e-mails.  He stumbled through the words, tracing a path with his forefinger.
        “The treasure I can offer you is one of such great notoriety, and such fame, that owning it will make you the greatest collector of all time.  In the history of Europe, maybe even the world, there has never been such a treasure, and it can be yours.”
        Mandretti looked up from his reading. “What did he find?” he asked.
        “He didn’t find anything,” Ryan replied.
        Mandretti waited and Ryan found himself hurrying to explain.
      “Professor Peacock was a very entertaining man,” he said, “a great teacher, but very, well, flamboyant.”
        Mandretti raised a questioning eyebrow and Ryan reminded himself not to use three syllable words.
        “He was a show-off,” Ryan said. “He’d do anything to get our attention and keep our interest.  That’s all he was doing in that letter, Mr. Mandretti.  He was showing off.”
        Mandretti looked  at the letter. “Your friend wasn’t rich,” he said.
      Ryan shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know.”
        “I do,” said Mandretti.  “When a man writes me a letter like this, I look into it.  I look into him.  He didn’t have no money.  He didn’t have no money, and he had a pile of debts. So, this man with no money and lots of debts buys himself a ticket to come and see me.”
        “I thought that you...”
        “I invited him, I didn’t pay him,” Mandretti said.  “That’s a lot of money he spent just to show off.”
        He looked at Ryan for a long moment, and Ryan felt his blood temperature drop.
        “So what did he find?” Mandretti asked.
        “A sword.”
        Mandretti snorted contemptuously. “We got swords,” he said.
        “We got lots of swords,” Ryan confirmed, abandoning his usual grammatical care. “This was a king’s sword.”
        “Ah, I see. King what?  King who?  King of where?”
        “King of England.”
        “Nah,” Mandretti said. “Them English royals don’t go around losing their swords.  Prince Charlie, and Prince Willy, I bet they know where their swords are.”
        “It was a long time ago,” Ryan said. “It’s just a myth.  There are people who choose to believe in King Arthur___.”
        Mandretti leaped to his feet. “Excaliver,” he shouted.
        “Excalibur,” Ryan corrected.
        “Whatever.”  Mandretti’s eyes were bright with delight. “Excaliver,” he said again.
        Ryan let it ride.
        “Jeez,” Mandretti said.  “The Excalibur Hotel, just down the road.”
       “I know it,” Ryan said.  He could see the place from his bedroom window, a somewhat shabby, Disney like confection of towers and moats, with not even an attempt at historical accuracy, an attraction whose time was long past.
        “If I had the sword, I could put them out of business,” Mandretti said.
        Ryan considered telling him that he could probably buy them out of business if he sold just a handful of the treasures he was keeping in his vault.
        “I saw the movie, you know,” Mandretti said. “Excalibur, the movie. Yeah, I saw it when I was a kid.  Knights in armor and the queen sleeps with her husband’s best friend.  He throws the sword in the lake.”
        “I’ve seen it,” Ryan said.
        Mandretti was round in front of his desk now, pacing so excitedly that his polished Oxfords were barely touching the upper levels of the carpet.
         “The stuff they did with their armor on,” he said. “You’re the historian, Doctor, can a guy really do that in armor?  I mean, wouldn’t the woman get real squashed?” He waved a hand and laughed at himself. “Don’t answer that,” he said. “But I always wondered.  I always wondered.”
        He perched himself on a corner of the desk. “Jeez,” he said, “Excaliver.”
        He shook his head and grinned at Ryan. “I know, I know, it’s Excalibur, but when I was a kid that’s what I used to say, running around with a stick in my hand.  So, he found Excalibur?”
        “Excalibur doesn’t exist,” Ryan said. “Arthur never existed and neither did his sword.”
        “You sure?”
        “Quite sure,” Ryan replied. “King Arthur was an invention of medieval poets.  There is no evidence that he was ever a real person.  People made him up because they needed a hero.  It’s a beautiful story, but it’s not true.”
        Mandretti looked at him. The fire was still in his eyes. “This ain’t really your area, is it, Doctor?  I mean you ain’t no advanced English history expert, right?
        “Well, no.”
        “That’s okay.” He patted Ryan on the shoulder.  “You do just fine for what I want.  You’re the best.  That’s why I hired you, but you ain’t no English history expert.  Now this Professor Peacock, he was the best at his game, right?”
        “He was good,” Ryan said.
        “And he was from Oxford,” Mandretti said. “That’s one of the oldest universities in the world, ain’t it?”
        Ryan nodded.
        “And it’s in England.” Mandretti added. “He has to know more about what’s going on there than you do.  Stands to reason.”
        “Nothing’s going on,” Ryan said.
        “Then why is he dead?” Mandretti asked.
        Ryan closed his mouth.  Everything he had planned to say disappeared from his mind.
        “Someone believed him, and someone tossed his room,” Mandretti said, “went through his suitcase, clothes, everything.  You any idea what they were looking for?”
        “He said something about some papers,” Ryan admitted.
        “Well,” said Mandretti, “there ain’t no papers now.”
        He rose to his feet and walked around behind the desk.  He opened a drawer and pulled out a plastic bag from which he extracted a replica goblet similar to the one brought in by the waiter with the eye patch, the one Peacock had rejected because it could taint the flavor of the wine.
        “What do you think?” he asked.
        “They’re good,” Ryan said, “They fooled the professor.  Must have cost a bundle.”
        “They didn’t cost me nothing,” Mandretti said. “This is the only one and it doesn’t belong to the hotel.”
        “That’s part of the crime scene,” Ryan exclaimed. “Why did the police let you keep it?”
        “They’re finished with it,” Mandretti said.  He tossed it across the desk and Ryan caught it clumsily. “I told them you’d be the one to find out where it came from, because it ain’t a wine glass from our restaurant.”
        “The waiter said it was,” Ryan protested. 
        He looked carefully at the silver object in his hands.  It was about eight inches tall and appeared to be genuine silver, recently cleaned and polished, and with no signs of tarnish. 
        “That ain’t from our restaurant,” Mandretti said. “It ain’t fancy enough.”
        Ryan swiped his sleeve across the goblet to remove the light coating of fingerprinting dust.  He took his time.  “He said Saxon,” Ryan said eventually.  “I think he was right.  Possibly from a church.”
        He set it carefully on the desk. “It’s old, “he said, “but not really valuable.  With the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII and later under the Puritans, all kinds of church artifacts found their way into household use.   It’s interesting; probably worth a couple of thousand.”
        “And they left it behind,” Mandretti commented. “Hey, maybe it’s to show us they don’t care about money.  Maybe someone just wanted to make a point.  It’s very classy, you know; very classy way of doing business.  Kind of royal, wouldn’t you say?”
        “What do the police say?” Ryan asked.
        Mandretti dismissed the police with a flick of his wrist. “We ain’t waiting for them,” he said. “I got my own way of doing things. “
        He pressed the intercom on his desk and within ten seconds a tall and beautiful young woman in a white blouse and short black skirt was at his side. Mandretti barely glanced at her, and Ryan was too distracted to take much interest in her as she swayed across the room clasping an iPad to her bosom.
         “I’ll need the plane,” Mandretti said. “File a flight plan to Key West.  We’ll be ready in an hour.”
        She nodded, smiled and was already tapping the screen as she left the room.
        “Go get packed,” Mandretti said to Ryan. “Go, go; get out of here.  I gotta make some calls.”
        “You want me to go to Key West?” Ryan asked.
        “That’s where you’re from, ain’t it” Mandretti asked.
        “I used have a house in the Keys,” Ryan confirmed, “but I’m not exactly welcome there these days.  I wasn’t planning on going back yet.  Are you getting rid of me?”
        “I’m coming with you,” Mandretti snapped. “Didn’t you listen to me?  I said “we”.  That’s you and me.  There’s someone we gotta see.”
        “In KeyWest?”  Ryan asked, feeling stupid.
        “That’s where she lives, and we don’t have time to mess around persuading her to come here, so we go to her.” Mandretti said.
     “Mr. Mandretti,” said Ryan, “who are you talking about?  I know every treasure hunter in the business, and no one lives in Key West.”
     “I don’t need no treasure hunter,” said Mandretti, “I got you, and you’re good Doc, I’ll give you that, but this woman is different.  My brother told me about her.  He was doing some business, you know, in the Keys, and he lost something, and this woman found it for him.  He says it’s like voodoo.”
     “Voodoo?” said Ryan.
      Mandretti warded off Ryan’s protest by picking up the phone. “I talked to her already, told her we was coming,” he said.  “Go pack your stuff. Bring that network jacket you used to wear.”
        “That was years ago,” Ryan protested.