The Celtic Conspiracy (33 page)

“What was horrible?” Jennifer asked.

“The roles, Jennifer, the roles we’re playing here. If I’ve learned anything in the last several days, it’s that, even though the Druids and the other indigenous peoples were aware of this contrast of good and evil, they meant something different by it. I don’t know how to explain it. They knew that everything that we do or think creates the reality that we live in.”

“And what does that have to do with this hearing?” Jennifer asked, half asleep.

“At some point I started not being able to tell the difference between the intrigues of this ice-cold cardinal and Ronald’s actions. They are children of their time. They know no other way besides going up against each other. And what’s happening out there on the street? Exactly the same thing. Irreconcilable extremes come into conflict with each other and play Cowboys and Indians. Damn it all, when are we finally going to grow up? When will we realize that all of these divisions exist only in our own deluded minds? Here, the latest news. Look at it.”

“But Adam—”

“Look at it!”

Jennifer looked at the European newspapers. Several people had been severely injured in demonstrations in St. Peter’s Square.

“When we were in the gardens at the White House, I told you what I had found in the scrolls and what the Druids had meant by a change of consciousness. And you and MacClary can’t come up with anything better than—”

“Stop it, Adam! You knew from the beginning what Thomas and Ronald were planning. And yes, not everything has gone as we had expected, but what do you think we should do now? Just throw it all away?”

“Well, in any case I won’t be going with you on this path anymore. Even the president understood that.”

“But Adam, we don’t have any other choice but to show the world how the Vatican betrayed its own values! Yes, damn it, I gauge people by their acts, what else? For me, history is the history of humanity. Step by step, we’re approaching a better world.”

“Who says that your justice system is the right one? I recall that one of your presidents almost set fire to the whole world with it. With a single sentence.”

“Adam, I don’t need any lessons in penal law.”

“He said: ‘We’re waging a crusade against evil.’ And what exactly are we doing?”

“But that’s—”

Deborah walked between them. “Really, Adam, don’t you see the differences anymore? On one side you have the path of the Church fathers, using a written tradition to open the doors to rigidity, dogma, and quiet manipulation. And they did this so efficiently that the Vatican is scared shitless to admit even a hint of it. On the other side you have the Druids, who tried to prevent precisely this manipulation by using an oral tradition. All we’re trying to do is bring things back into balance again!”

“Yes, but it’s precisely because of this inflexibility that the Vatican’s time was over a long time ago. It’s just that
no one noticed. My God, Jennifer, the facts of our find are enough. They can’t escape it anymore. We don’t need this huge showdown!”

“That may be, but stop accusing me of thirsting for revenge. I have nothing but sympathy for the victims of this church. I want to get rid of their control. That’s the only way we can even begin to turn this almost two-thousand-year-old curse into a blessing.”

“That may be, I have to admit, but it would be more healing for all of us if the pope made this step himself without our having to force him into it with this verdict. And what about Ronald? Are you going to tell me he doesn’t have any desire for revenge? Who murdered his father and why? Do you know the true motive? Was the culprit only a victim of his own mistaken beliefs? This world will never change if we don’t learn to forgive! Criminals, victims...how else do you want to divide it up?”

“Adam, that’s enough already. If you mean what you’re saying, then it’s better for everyone if you fly back to Austria now. There’s nothing else for you to do here,” Jennifer said, despairing and hopeless. Then she turned around and left the room.

“Whew.” Deborah clasped her hands behind her head and looked at Shane critically. “You expect a lot, my friend. Every revolution has its victims, of one kind or another.”

“But I don’t want a revolution. And it isn’t even about what I want as an individual. It’s about change. We don’t have any more time for this petty reckoning.”

“But maybe we do need a transition, Adam,” Deborah said, the argument clearly upsetting her. “You know, the teachings of the Druids also talk about truthfulness. And that’s what’s going on here in this court. It comes down to clever discourse and truthfulness.” Both of them could hear the sobs coming from Jennifer’s room. “And this isn’t the solution either, if one of us is suffering,” Deborah said, looking at him reproachfully. Then she sat down and buried her head in her laptop, not deigning to look at him again.

Shane walked over to Jennifer’s door, where he knocked cautiously.

“Come in already,” Jennifer said with a last sob as she blew her nose.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, Adam. I overreacted. It’s strange, but I’d just been thinking about this myself, what we’re doing and where it’s headed. I—”

“Well, how do I know what role my identity is playing here?” Shane smiled. “Again, I’m sorry.”

“If you’re looking for an answer to the question about your identity, I can tell you where you’ll find it, my wise Druid.”

“Hmm?”

“Within yourself,” Jennifer said gently.

Deborah knocked and stuck her head in the room without waiting for an answer. “Hey, the president just announced that she’ll be giving a speech about the
Supreme Court hearing tomorrow morning at eleven,” she said in excitement.

“I think we’re not all that interested in that right now, Deborah.”

Deborah stared at the two of them and then went red in the face. “Oh, um, sorry.” She left the room as quickly as she had entered it.

Shane felt helpless. The tension between them was almost palpable. He stood in the room a bit lost and looked at Jennifer questioningly.

“Get over here already.” Jennifer scooted over to make room. When he got over to the bed, she took his hand and pulled him to her side. “I’d like to find out what it feels like.”

Bowled over by Jennifer’s directness, he lay down next to her and pulled her to him. He could feel her warmth, her firm thighs, and the softness of her curves, and he felt like he was holding something infinitely precious.

He laid his large hand protectively on her head and could feel for the first time the tenderness of this woman who was so tough in her job. Ms. Iron Heart, Thomas Ryan had called her once. How many light-years ago was that?

“Forgive me,” Shane said.

Something seemed to fall away from Jennifer. The pressure to always be strong had become almost unbearable in the last few days and hours. She nestled closely against him. Right now his chest offered her a feeling of being at home, and she felt safe. It was something new
for her, that a man wasn’t just trying to have sex with her. It was a deeper intimacy. Two people in love, two hearts almost terrifyingly open to each other. Her senses opened up, her energy sank into his body, and she was one with him, even before their bodies joined.

Adam could sense an almost unbearable tension. This woman had fascinated him from the first moment he met her and had drawn him to her like a magnet. It was only the excitement of the last several days that had made him hold himself back. Now, when he let himself go, a passion broke out of him that extinguished everything else.

* * *

Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.

—Thomas Jefferson

The entire day the president had refrained from saying a single word in public concerning the worldwide protests about the hearing. That afternoon, she found out that the Irish Parliament had decided to call a special session of the United Nations. In light of the dramatic turn of events and the accumulation of internationally relevant
crimes committed by the Vatican and the members of the Catholic Church, eighty-six nations had come out in favor of the special General Assembly within hours of its announcement. Even the Security Council was going to meet to discuss the worldwide clashes between those opposing and those supporting the imminent trial after radical Christians had thrown incendiary devices at many of the US embassies and numerous deaths had been reported throughout the world as a result of the unrest.

The president looked out onto the street from her bedroom window in the Executive Residence of the White House. The last demonstrators were still in front of the White House fence and had lit candles. She knew that her political fate hung on the speech she would be giving the next morning. She lifted the receiver of the telephone on the small, antique table next to her.

“Bill, could you please bring me the draft for the ‘Butterfly’ project. I want to work on it again.”

“But Madam President—”

“Bill, please, no discussions now.”

A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in, Bill.”

“Madam President, I must inform you that neither the Cabinet nor the Senate wants an open debate on this project at this time.”

“Thank you, Bill, that’s all.”

“Very well. Good night, Madam President.”

Project Butterfly was one of the many possible strategic plans economists had been working on after the last financial crisis. It was radical—too radical.

When will people be ready for this?
she thought, suddenly too tired to read through the material. With a sigh she put the document on the table, stood up, and went over to her bed. She lay down on the bedspread and pulled out a pillow. She just wanted a couple of minutes to think.

Instead, she slipped into a state where she was hovering between sleep and consciousness, like a space between realities.

She could see herself standing in front of all the cameras the next day in the White House Press Office looking into perplexed faces. Suddenly Lisa, her five-year-old daughter, came in holding a parchment from the library of the Druids in one hand and the Declaration of Independence in the other. Lisa gave her both of the documents and asked if it was true that the earth was a living creature and that it was sick and would soon die.

Behind her came Adam Shane carrying a stack of papers on which an enormous, beautiful butterfly was sitting. She looked into the eyes of the butterfly, and then it flew away from the stack of papers and through the room. Little Lisa cheered it on, crying, “Fly, fly, butterfly. You’ll make the earth well again!”

Slowly the president awoke. To her surprise it was five in the morning. At some point, she must have fallen asleep.

She let herself sink back down into the pillow. She remembered that her daughter had asked her this question a couple of weeks earlier. As far as the parchment of the Druids was concerned, it had developed the notion of mankind’s freedom and self-determination to a much deeper level than even the Constitution of the United States. Though a landmark document, the Constitution came at a point after people had long since oppressed those cultures that were able to live in harmony with nature.

The decline of the aboriginal people had certainly not been a natural phenomenon. For centuries it had been politically motivated with the support and justification of a faith that had been nothing but a lie from the very beginning.

The president heard Adam Shane’s words:
What does it mean to develop a spiritual consciousness for the original culture of the Celts if you also just stood by and watched as the last tribes of the world perished?

“That is the truth, uncomfortable as it may be,” the president said to herself decisively. “And I always thought you would be the first one to retire, Ronald MacClary.”

Jennifer turned up the volume on the television as Adam and Deborah took their seats in front of the screen. The president’s speech was about to begin.

“Good morning, ladies and gentleman of the press, my fellow Americans. I would like to use the opportunity of the current events in Washington to discuss several questions of faith. My daughter asked me a couple of days ago if the earth was so sick that it was going to die. Lisa is, as most of you know, five years old.

“How should I answer her? Should I lie to her?

“Because we really have arrived at an historic turning point. We are headed down a descending path of social, ecological, political, and economic crises in a period of global power struggles that threaten our survival. We have to reorganize our lives into lives that are peaceful and that will allow our children a world with a future. The choice is still ours to make, but it all depends on our values, our convictions, our visions, and our communal planetary ethics.

“You will perhaps be surprised when I maintain that these communal ethics have existed before. They were known to the
original inhabitants of this country as they were to all other indigenous peoples. ‘Take nothing more than you need’ was the guiding principle of these cultures. The reverence for the actual wonder of creation, of our earth, was a given for the indigenous peoples. This is also the message we can glean from the recently unearthed trove from the Celts and Druids, the original inhabitants of Europe, which is now being argued about in the Supreme Court. The resulting unrest in Rome points to fears that I will not touch on today. There is only one thing I know for certain: our current consciousness will be determined by the assessment of this trove and by the assessment of Church history, the consequences of which I can only briefly outline. It will determine whether the unity of humankind can now become concretely known to us or if we will degenerate further.