The Celtic Conspiracy (25 page)

“Ronald, sit down and make yourself comfortable. What we have to discuss will be less comfortable, in any case.”

With those words MacClary’s hopes of getting off lightly came to an abrupt halt. “Let’s get it over with,” he responded, trying to keep his voice calm.

Diana Branks looked at the man sitting across from her with a mixture of warmth and great seriousness. “I have here a dispatch from our ambassador in the Vatican,” she said, making clear from her tone that she was now speaking as his superior and not as a long-term confidante. “It says that the Holy See is complaining about a not unimportant United States justice who has been in Dublin attacking the Church with baseless accusations, so much so that the director of Trinity College felt it necessary to cut off one of his lectures. Ronald, I know that you are no friend of the Church, but this is going too far. I can’t allow someone in your position to attract this kind of publicity.”

“Madame President, I’m well aware that the belief in God is one of the most important pillars of our Constitution, but—”

“No buts. I have made my own conclusions. But what am I supposed to do now? The American media hasn’t
jumped on this yet, but if it does, you could be threatened with impeachment.”

“It seems I may have gauged the situation incorrectly. The crazy thing about this is that the lecture was nowhere near as controversial as they are making it out to be. I can only attribute this huge reaction to the position of the Church in Ireland. At the moment, it has its back up to the wall.”

MacClary’s thoughts were racing as he spoke. He had to borrow time. It didn’t make any sense to tell her everything now. After Jennifer had filed her official brief, then he could tell the president more. Otherwise, she could very well ask for his resignation on the spot.

“Fine. So what do you recommend?”

“I will make an official apology to the Vatican and take responsibility for the fact that I didn’t examine my sources carefully enough,” MacClary said contritely. “I will also express my regret that a private event was made public.”

“Good, Ronald. I hope that will smooth some ruffled feathers. I’ll convey this to our ambassador in Rome, and I’ll expect your note of apology to reach Rome today. I’m sorry to have to rush off, but I have to get to my next meeting. Thank you, and we’ll talk again when we get a reaction from the Vatican.”

MacClary stood up and headed toward the door. Then he stopped still. He simply couldn’t hold back. The matter was too explosive, and too many of the people working with him had already been placed in danger. He had to convince people with the truth, with his heart.

“Is there something else, Ronald?” President Branks asked.

He pulled himself together and squared his shoulders. “Madame President, how pressing is your appointment?”

The president’s eyes widened. “My goodness, this isn’t like you at all! There is something else behind this, then, isn’t there?”

MacClary moved back toward his seat. “You could say that.”

* * *

Shane, Deborah, and Jennifer had spent the rest of the afternoon looking at Deborah’s translations.

“It really is an incredible feeling to be standing here in front of these things so many centuries after they were written,” Shane said, sitting at the back end of the laboratory while Deborah and Jennifer were standing in front of the parchment. “It must have been unbelievable for Thomas to see how the circle completed itself. I just wish he’d get in touch with us soon.”

“He will,” Deborah said. “You can count on it. That boy can’t be stopped so easily.”

Jennifer took off her glasses and began to clean them carefully. “What irritates me, though, is Thomas’s stubbornness. In his paranoid way, he convinced Ronald that the scrolls should never be retrieved by the authorities
because the artifacts would disappear in the scientists’ laboratories. Of course, he was afraid that he wouldn’t have access to them anymore and that the Vatican would seize the most sensational pieces.”

“On the other hand,” Shane interjected, “I can completely understand his point of view when I look at what’s in front of us. We have to move forward now. And judging by Rome’s reaction, he was right.”

Jennifer nodded, though she seemed weary. “I know. I’m going to see this thing through to the end. Tomorrow I’m meeting with Louise Jackson. She’s a woman, African American, and anything but Catholic. She just finished working on the indictment against the Vatican Bank. I’m sure she’ll help us. We already have enough evidence here for that, and—” Jennifer broke off as she looked out the window. She slapped her hand on the table. “Hey, there’s Ronald. He’s outside making a telephone call.”

Less than a minute later they heard the door. Ronald came into the laboratory and almost threw his briefcase on the first table, right next to a parchment. He caught himself, realizing how fragile the document was, and instead set his briefcase on the floor. As he looked up, his entire face was beaming. “So, my dear friends, now we have our work cut out for us. It’s all gone a bit differently than I had planned, but I think it’s the right way—the only way. I just couldn’t bring myself to lie to the president. She knows everything and has given me free rein. That means I’m responsible for how this moves forward, and if it becomes too explosive, I’ll have to resign from
my position. Jennifer, now it’s up to you, your district attorney, and Thomas.”

Jennifer shook her head. “But Ronald, we don’t have enough here! The testimony of Thomas, Deborah, and Adam...that’s just not enough.”

“Hey, hey, wait a minute,” Deborah interrupted. “At the moment there are three places where these scrolls are being stored. We have some, Thomas has one, and we assume that some are in the Vatican, as long as they weren’t insane enough to destroy everything. If the archaeologists can confirm that all the parchment comes from the same source, that would be a strong argument in our favor. We just have to find the other scrolls and have them officially seized. Though ‘just’ is a relative term here, of course. I’ve also discovered that almost all the scrolls have a very small marking. It’s a Celtic protection symbol, a circle intersected by two lines. Here, see? And—”

“Not in the Vatican,” MacClary said as the others leaned toward Deborah.

Deborah looked up at him. “What?”

“These scrolls are not in the Vatican. There is an archive outside of Rome, hidden underneath a church. That’s where the most sensational documents of the last hundred years have been stored, restored, and prepared for conservation. After being examined by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, they are brought there—most of the time, at least. But we’ll never get in there. No judge will give us a search warrant for that.”

“We’ll take care of it.”

Everyone turned to look at Shane, who had spoken so quietly they weren’t sure they’d heard him correctly. Jennifer looked from one to the other, bewildered.

“What are you going to take care of?” Ronald asked.

“Ronald, there’s much more at stake here than just the formal matter of law. This is a matter of justice, and as you yourself said that night when we first met, it’s about historical truth. For that, we have to be willing to take some risks, don’t we?” Shane smiled, as if he had suddenly had a fantastic vision. “It’s about time that an earthly court puts an end to the heavenly crimes in Rome.”

“Where are you heading with this, Adam?” Jennifer asked in concern.

MacClary shook his head decisively. “No, absolutely not. I can’t.”

“Oh, yes you can, of course you can. I’m not the slightest bit afraid of this. Just tell me where the archive is. I’m sure that Deborah wants to help her friend Thomas in any way she can as well.”

Jennifer took two steps in his direction. “So you’re just going to march into the Vatican archives and walk out with cases of parchment, which you’re then going to get through customs and bring back to Washington? You’re completely insane.”

Shane tried to remain nonchalant. “Not
cases
; that would definitely be noticed. But one or two scrolls, so that we know where the rest of them are. We’ll photograph everything so that we have additional proof that it’s not just rogue individuals who are behind this but the
Vatican itself. We would also be able to see which artifacts the Vatican considers to be worth taking these kinds of risks for. We really didn’t have enough time to see what the other scrolls might have yielded.”

MacClary looked at Jennifer and then nodded to Shane. “All right, but if you’re caught, I can’t do anything to help you. We all have to be aware that we’re increasingly operating on the wrong side of the law to win our case. That has always been a very, very risky way to play the game.”

Jennifer still wasn’t sold. “My God, Adam, are you really sure you want to do this? And you, Deborah—”

Deborah held up a hand. “I’m with Adam.” She grinned. “Thomas has prepared me well for this sort of thing over the last several years.”

“What do you mean by that? You haven’t—”

“No, no, even Thomas has long given up the old ways. But we’ve talked a lot about how one would undertake an operation like this.”

That surprised even Shane. He hadn’t seriously thought that Deborah would be so ready to take such a risk.

“Well, then...” MacClary wrote the address in Italy on a piece of paper, picked it up with the fingertips of both hands, and gave it to Shane. The gesture seemed almost as formal as the Japanese visiting card ritual.

As Shane scanned the information on the paper, MacClary turned to Jennifer. “My dear, I’m flying to The Hague tomorrow and then back to Dublin. Once you’ve
met with Ms. Jackson, we should quickly sit down together and go over everything again.”

“I basically have everything ready, Ronald, even the documents for filing an objection in the Supreme Court.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“Ronald, don’t forget that the most important thing here is whether Thomas can lodge a claim as a victim against the elite of the Church or only against individual perpetrators. If the Vatican claims, as they did in the case in Mississippi, that the perpetrators are not affiliated with the Vatican, then we have a serious problem. Even as we speak, the lawyers in Rome are trying to stop the suit in the Kentucky abuse cases using the same strategy. The plaintiffs had to withdraw everything that they couldn’t prove.”

“Yes, I know, Jennifer. That’s why Adam is right. If we can prove that the scrolls are in the Vatican or in an institution that belongs to them, then I can, in any case, assert the claim to surrender stolen cultural assets. That may actually be the only way.”

Deborah had spent the entire evening learning about the area around Orvieto. Right near the gothic dome built by Lorenzo Maitani, there was a hotel named Duomo Orvieto. She couldn’t imagine any place in or around the dome where there might be an archive of such significance, but if MacClary were so sure, then it had to be there somewhere. She checked again.

After a half hour of staring at her computer monitor, she let out a little sigh. It wasn’t surprising that she had missed it: a small, seemingly unimportant detail in the structural plans of the dome.

In the adjoining room of the large apartment in the Hotel Monaco, where MacClary had gotten them all a room, Adam and Jennifer were talking so loudly that Deborah could hardly concentrate. She tried not to listen to the argument, but certain snippets of conversation kept on bleeding through.

“Adam...”

“...but it’s not that hard to understand...”

“...I can’t do this anymore...”

“Adam!” Jennifer yelled so loudly that Deborah got up and opened the door.

“It’s all right. I understand. I’m just worried that something will happen to you two,” Jennifer said, trying to calm down.

“Hey, do you guys need an intervention here?” Deborah joked. “I did a seminar in college on relationship mediation.” She ducked as Jennifer threw a ball of paper at her.

“Why are you willing to take such a huge risk, Adam?” Jennifer continued as though Deborah wasn’t there. “I mean, you can just go home and be done with the whole thing.”

“And why do you follow Ronald?” Adam responded.

“Because...” For a moment there was dead silence, and Jennifer looked into Adam’s face. Then she shut her eyes and breathed in and out slowly. “Perhaps because I’ve always done it. Every time Ronald says, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do now,’ I’ve always trusted him. Believe me, I was just about ready to stop and go my own way, but I can’t just leave him in the lurch on this one. You don’t have any obligations here, though.”

Adam stood up and faced her, clearly agitated “I have a damned obligation to
myself
. I don’t want to spend another day like a stupid sheep, just putting up with everything and passively hanging around. I want to begin to act—finally—to put something in motion, and in a very definite direction. I want all the lies to be cleared out at last, and this might be one of the biggest lies of
our entire civilization. This is my chance to do something with my life, something I’ve always dreamed about doing. You and Ronald, you want to bring the Vatican before the law and to see the organization convicted. I can accept that, and it probably is a part of this story. The other part of it, though, is the vision that Thomas, Deborah, and I share, that people will finally be able to learn the truth about a religion that has been foisted upon them by those in power, a religion whose values and doctrine have systematically undermined their own self-determination.”