The Celtic Conspiracy (2 page)

Was it possible? Was he really standing in front of the records of the persecuted pagans?

MacClary knew that there were German troops in front of them and Tito’s troops behind. There was no way he could salvage these artifacts now, and there was very little time to stash them away.

Damn it!
he thought.
Why now? What should I do?

In spite of his confusion and frustration, MacClary felt a familiar and welcome energy. It was as though he were in his lecture hall, surrounded by students hungry for knowledge, devouring his archaeological histories like fairy tales.

“Major?”

MacClary jumped. For the briefest instant, he had been so lost in thought that he had forgotten this horrible war. He ordered Smith and Rudy to bring some new chests from the unit supply over to hold the most important pieces while he tried to think of a way to transport them securely through Austria and then through France to England. The sheer mass of these invaluable cultural treasures created an almost insurmountable obstacle. He felt like one of his medics who had to decide far too often who they could save and who they had to leave to die.

Even if he chose to transport some of the artifacts, it would be impossible to do so under these circumstances
without destroying something, especially the parchment scrolls; the fact that they were in such good condition was a miracle. With the oxygen that had rushed in with the cave’s collapse, the papyrus wouldn’t last long. In ancient times, Egypt was one of the few places on earth where papyrus could be preserved for an extended period without any special conservation method. In damper regions, scrolls were copied for preservation, and it was not uncommon for adulterations to creep in.

He looked at the writing again. It suggested a time only a few centuries after Christ. If this trove were a testament to that period, it would be invaluable to researchers. MacClary almost forgot the circumstances that had brought him here, circumstances that made it hardly seem sensible to think about the future, even for a second. There were only a few hours until he would most likely receive orders to invade Klagenfurt. How could he organize a secure and inconspicuous transport now?

MacClary was well respected and trusted by his soldiers. No major had endured so few losses or made so few bad decisions. Perhaps he could hide the site of the trove and investigate it after the war, when he could be an archaeologist again. As a major and a friend of General Brown, he could have packages and documents declared secret and brought to England without being checked. He would quickly select a few pieces and then have the entrance to the cave closed so no one else would notice it. All he could do beyond this was hope that the dry climate
would reset itself and that the damage to the artifacts would be minimal.

MacClary turned to Smith. “Could you seal the cave with a detonation so that no more air can get in, while still leaving the chamber and its treasures intact?”

“Yes, sir, but we need at least sixty feet inside for the blast and the debris.”

MacClary shone the light over the room and found more sections of the cave. Maybe his trove would survive the explosion if they moved everything further inside. He ordered his men to bring everything into the back rooms carefully. Then MacClary wrapped up some scrolls, ornamental pieces, and the chest in shirts, pants, and blankets. They would load them up under cover of darkness.

The dawn was slowly emerging. Even if the explosion hid the entrance to the cave, the men were faced with the problem of how to set off the explosion without being noticed.

That was when fortune intervened. They received orders from British headquarters to follow the Seventy-Eighth Infantry Division, which would reach Klagenfurt in the morning. With the onset of combat, a targeted explosion of a cave entrance would hardly be noticed. The detonation went off without a hitch.

Only a few hours later, the British troops marched into Klagenfurt with few losses. News of the German surrender gave MacClary hope that he would soon be able to return to his university work. He had managed to take
only a single chest of artifacts with him. Would he ever be able to explore the other treasures of this long-dead culture? If he survived the final throes of war, he would at least be able to bring some of the pieces home safely. That was a start.

Where it would end, though, was beyond anything he could have imagined.

And he who overcomes and keeps my works unto the end, to him I will give power over the heathen, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and he shall break them as the vessels of a potter.

—Revelations 2:26–27

Adam Shane sat on the edge of his bed bathed in sweat. His long blond hair was glued to his face, and his hands grabbed at the edge of the mattress while he took deep gulps of breath, as if he had emerged from the ocean seconds before drowning. A glance at the clock told him that it was six o’clock in the morning. It was time to get up.

Instead, as he tried to rise, he suddenly lost his eyesight.

“My God, what’s happening?”

He closed his eyes and fell back. His sense of balance was also gone, and when he opened his eyes again, he
could only see his surroundings as different contours of light. Pictures raced through his mind, a collage of human history throughout the centuries blurring past him. Then, as he was about to move from the present into the future, everything suddenly stopped.

His eyes could again fully see his familiar bedroom. His body again controlled his spirit.

Or was it the other way around?

“What the hell was that?”

He should have known better than to ask. This was, after all, hardly the first time this had happened.

It wasn’t all that long ago that he had been following in his father’s footsteps, working as a blacksmith, a profession that befit his huge physical form. Then his wife was diagnosed with cancer. She refused to put herself through the agonizing treatments her doctors recommended because she knew their chances of success were limited. The path she chose guaranteed her an early death—until the moment when Shane knelt by his wife after the disease had left her as spent and helpless as a child. He willed himself to find a way to help her. And suddenly he was able to do so. Simply by dint of his effort, his wife began to improve palpably before his eyes.

In some ways, his entire life had been leading toward that moment. Since he was a child, while his friends spent their time with sports, motorcycles, music, or plans for losing their virginity, he was thinking about the world and how it could be saved. At fourteen, he was reading books, almost maniacally, that other kids wouldn’t pick
up unless they were forced to in school. He longed to exchange ideas with others, but this proved impossible in the small, rural, conservative village where he grew up. His upbringing constricted him, and even though he left the town to go to college, the constriction remained.

He shook his head to jostle these thoughts away. They wouldn’t do him any good right now. He had to talk with someone. For a second he hesitated, then he reached for the telephone and dialed Victoria’s number.

“Adam, why in God’s name are you calling so early?”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not doing well. I had one of those incredibly intense dreams and I just had to hear your voice.”

Victoria sighed on the other end. “Adam, you have to take care of yourself. I’m afraid you’re going to lose it soon if this keeps happening.”

She had every right to be afraid. Six months earlier, she had taken their child and gone to live with her mother in London because she couldn’t stand Shane’s outbursts of anger over his perceptions and despair about what he called the complete collapse of humanity. “This is no way to raise our son,” she said to him before she left. He could hardly blame her for going, though he missed her and Jarod horribly.

Victoria paused on the other end. When she spoke again, there was more warmth in her voice. “Tell me about it.”

Shane related the details of the dream to her. He was in a forest he didn’t recognize. It was cold and the wind
was blowing violently. He noticed an old, very large tree whose branches were reaching toward him.

Suddenly, he saw figures in loose, bright robes in a clearing very far away. They were moving as if in a trance or in a ceremony, and they repeatedly turned their gaze to the sky. A sense of peace replaced Shane’s fear at this point, a feeling of connection and warmth. He hadn’t felt this way since he was a child. The figures seemed so peaceful, so deeply connected to nature, connected by a great love. Shane moved closer and saw that all the figures were old men. They were gesticulating quickly, but they seemed to possess a greater inner peace. It was beautiful to watch.

This clearing had to be incredibly important. The trees were arranged in a circle, all of them the same height, shape, and distance apart. In between them, Shane could make out three rows of seats forming a circle, as if it were a little theater.

Sadly, the sense of peace and community did not last. A horde of men on horseback rode into the clearing, surrounding the old men before anyone could escape. The riders’ armor looked Roman. They jumped from their horses, and even though the old men were unarmed, one of the soldiers drove his sword through the stomach of the first man until it came out the other side. Hatred filling his face, the warrior braced his foot against the chest of the old man and slowly pulled his sword out again, clearly taking pleasure in the action. Before he died, the old man shouted something in a language Shane didn’t understand.

Shane was stunned, paralyzed, horrified. He watched helplessly as the others were also brought down by swords in a blood frenzy. When the massacre was over, the soldiers got back on their horses and rode toward a small village Shane could see in the distance. He ran after them to witness the horde brutally murdering women and children.

One of the legionnaires had put a severed head on his lance like a trophy. He rode into the middle of the village, which was already ablaze and in chaos. He shouted, and suddenly Shane could understand him.

“Submit! Your gods have left you. Only our god will protect you!”

As if to underscore the point, another legionnaire hurled a spear at a fleeing youth, piercing him through. The carnage continued until everyone in the once peaceful town was dead. Before the pack disappeared, Shane saw a legionnaire with the sign of the fish on his shield ride past him, a scornful smile on his face.

“Victoria, it was like I was really there,” Shane said, drained from the experience of sharing his vision. “It was much more than just a nightmare.”

“Adam, I see parallels and a message to your own life, here. This eternal frustration with the world that always makes you turn away from any beautiful moment. But the fact that you’re sharing this is a first step to overcome your dark world,” Victoria said tenderly, and Shane knew that she was genuine. This was as sympathetic as she had sounded since their separation. “I’m here for you if you need me. If you want, Jarod could come stay with you
in three weeks’ time. I have to go to New York, and he misses you so much. I’ll call you on Friday.”

“I’d like that. Thanks for listening.”

They hung up less than a minute later, but the conversation had done what Shane had hoped it would. It had restored some of his strength. He could think about the vision a little more dispassionately now.

He remembered that in the dream he had visited the village before the attack, feeling very much at home. The village was made up of about forty houses surrounded by a rampart of wood and sand piles. Beyond the heavy wooden gate that formed the entrance was a fountain in a square about a hundred yards away. Arranged in a circle on the square were the house of a blacksmith, a market hall of some sort, and two other houses, one belonging to a chieftain and another to a Druid. Shane had seen many people going about their business on a beautiful, sunny day. The style of the houses and the differences in dress showed there were differences in social class, but no one seemed to be unhappy or suffering. On the contrary, this community, perhaps because of its size, seemed to function well. He would have gladly stayed there.

Until the destruction began.