The Celtic Conspiracy (8 page)

The room was quite large. In the middle of it was a massive wooden table where a dozen men were seated. The walls were covered with shelves filled with chalices, tools, and storage vessels. Some sun was streaming through the openings in the foundation of the house, allowing him to see his surroundings in the bright bands of light.

“By Jupiter, you’re alive!”

“Yes, Mercanus. I can’t quite believe it myself. But I have no good news to report. They have killed Sopatros.”

A murmur ran through the room, followed by a ghostly silence. Finally one of the Druids started to speak. “Aside from this youth, no one has survived, and more attacks will follow, I tell you. The emperor has answered the intrigues of Ablabius with action.”

Datanos looked into the terrified faces of the men. Even the Druids, whose emotions were not normally so easily read, clearly understood the implications of the events of the past hour.

“We have to flee!” one old man said. “They are destroying all the symbols of our gods. The Christians are insisting that every last trace of our presence be wiped out, here and throughout the empire. Twenty years ago, I could already see where things were headed, how much power and influence the Christians were gaining under Emperor Constantine.”

“They want to completely annihilate us,” one of the young philosophers said in despair. “What kind of god is it that cannot tolerate any other god, that blinds his followers, that incites them to such actions?”

“But it’s obvious. They fear our knowledge,” Datanos said. “Since Constantine chose to favor the Christians, they have betrayed their own teachings. Everything their apostles have passed down to them has either been destroyed or distorted.”

“We have to warn all the scholars,” one of the youngest Druids said. “But we can’t just leave! Don’t you see what’s happening here? They are annihilating our world, its entire history of creation and its masters—forever.”

“No, my young friend.” A soft, deep voice rang through the cellar room. All heads turned to Rodanicas, the astronomer who was said to have a comprehensive understanding of time and space. He was a legend, a man who had had contact with many foreign cultures—no one would dare to contradict him. “No knowledge can remain hidden forever. A lie like this, and a crime like this, against the law of the gods, will be made known.
It is not for us to determine the time for this, but it will come, you may be certain of it.” Rodanicas looked around at all the men who listened to him. They were transfixed. “At the end of the fourth sun, our spirit will return. There is nothing more here, nothing worth saving. Everything has been desecrated.”

Datanos was wringing his hands in despair. “And will we find a way to protect our knowledge?”

“No. Listen to me. Rodanicas is right,” Aregetorix said. Almost seventy years old, he was the oldest and highest-ranking Druid in Rome. Like most of the Druids, he no longer revealed his identity. Instead, he served as a teacher at the imperial court, instructing children in philosophy, mathematics, and Latin. Like his father before him, he was a secret scout, acting as eyes and ears for the few remaining Druids in the rest of the empire. “Our time here has passed. If our bodies should survive, we must assimilate and take on their faith. If our spirit, our culture, and our knowledge are to survive, we must choose exile and leave. Everyone must make this decision for himself. For we Druids, the path is already laid out and determined. We shall return to the promised land. We’ll set out tonight. What is the consensus? Who will follow us?”

“Datanos, come with us!” one of the younger philosophers urged. “You have to see that they’re not just hunting the Druids anymore, but all scholars who are not prepared to subject themselves to Constantine’s insanity.”

Datanos nodded. “You’re right,” he said softly. “They are forcing people into the most abominable kind of spiritual slavery.”

* * *

Shane was both intrigued and skeptical, but before he could formulate his misgivings, MacClary picked up the thread again.

“For more than two thousand years, people haven’t been able to determine their own lives and their own fate. How was it possible that rulers could, with clockwork certainty, make men go to war? My dear Adam, our Christian-influenced culture has created and maintained regimes that exploit nature and humankind alike. With faith, all things are possible, regardless if it’s right or wrong. Still, we have another choice and another chance, but only if we can turn back to the point where we chose the wrong path.”

“But more and more people are turning away from the Church anyhow.”

“That’s hardly the point,” Ryan said. “Look inside yourself, Shane. You know what’s going on.”

Shane held up two hands to concede the point.

“The Christian blessing, the embodied realization of the message of Jesus, originated and continues to originate from individual people,” Ronald added. “And these people had to and still must assert the good that they do, often in the face of opposition from the Vatican. These
Christians drew their strength from precisely those Bible passages that are not of Christian but rather of Jewish origin. The commandment to love, for example. And, like Christianity itself, original sin is an invention of Paul. The persecuted pagans probably knew this. The only defense of original sin is based on circular logic. If death is a result of our sins, there must be sins if there is death. Sins, for which God’s punishment is death. Therefore, sin is transferred to all of Adam’s descendants because they were born mortal.

“But enough of that. Human dignity and human rights exist in Christianity only for believers, because they’ve been given a kind of amnesty from God.
Nulla salus extra ecclesiam
—outside the Church there is no salvation. And who’s inside or outside, who belongs or not, that’s again decided by the Church. That’s why it’s no historic accident that the Christians didn’t view the pagans, those who haven’t been baptized, as people. As a result, they didn’t have to be treated as people. With the Enlightenment came human rights. Meanwhile, the interpretation of humankind standing tall before God had its roots in Judaism.”

“And the interpretation that men are themselves godly and possess the godly potential for creation—that has roots in paganism,” said Ryan.

MacClary nodded and then continued. “My father was so involved with this during his time as an archaeologist that I can’t escape his legacy. As you yourself said, Adam, this question is occupying more people in all corners of our
beautiful planet.” Ronald looked at his watch. “It’s time for me to leave for my dinner engagement. I hope I haven’t bored you too much. I would love to invite you to dinner tomorrow evening, so we can continue this discussion.”

Adam smiled. “I look forward to it.”

As Ronald MacClary left his residence along with a group of unknown men, George Cassidy waited in a van parked just down the street. A former CIA agent, Cassidy had found employment with the Vatican secret service after his cover had been blown in a botched operation in Argentina. From that day, he’d vowed to never fail on a mission again, and he’d been able to keep that promise.

Now that MacClary and the others were gone, Cassidy and his team entered the house, laden with equipment. He deployed his men quickly, instructing them on preferred locations for the bugs and cameras—the “eyes and ears of God,” as Cassidy liked to think of them—they’d been tasked with planting. As he moved to put a microphone in a bookcase, Cassidy’s eyes fell on a parchment scroll housed inside a glass cabinet. He knew very little Latin, but he could translate some of the words, enough to feel a frisson of unanticipated tension. He took a quick picture of the scroll and got back to work.

“We have two minutes,” Cassidy whispered to the others. No more than ninety seconds later, they left the house as stealthily as they’d entered it. Heading back to the van, Cassidy tried Thomas Lambert on his phone. When there was no answer, he cursed under his breath and opened the door of the van, which was so packed with monitors and other transmission equipment that there was barely room to sit down.

He uploaded the picture he’d taken of the scroll to one of the computers in the van so that he could compare the parchment to other examples and, even more important, get a reliable translation of the few lines he’d been able to photograph.

“Scoot, could you get me a secure connection with the main computer in the archive?” he asked an associate.

“I think so. Give me five minutes.”

“OK. Just do what you can.”

Cassidy stared out the windshield at the full moon that illuminated the entire street all too brightly for his comfort.

“How far can the signal be transmitted?” Cassidy asked.

“A good twelve miles.”

“Then take us as far away as we can get.”

The van drove off just as Cassidy was connecting with the computer in Rome. His queries didn’t return anything interesting, until the translation of the second line made him break out in a cold sweat.

“The deadly testimony of Constantine...”

Cassidy had long been aware of the potential sources of embarrassment to the Church, so he knew that there were virtually no verifiable artifacts from the period around the year 300. Unless this was an ingenious plagiarism or an elaborate hoax, MacClary was sitting on a discovery whose true importance he couldn’t possibly know.

“Damn it, I need Salvoni!”

* * *

“As I said, I might be able to tell you a bit more about the meaning of your dreams,” Thomas said as Shane took a sip from his second pint. “I feel that there’s a strong bond between us, and I trust you. This is a trust borne out of instinct, and that instinct is the important thing, my friend. Instinct or intuition, or whatever you want to call it, that’s what we’ve lost. Intuition is knowledge, Adam, a knowledge that, if you’re truly aware of it, can be an inexhaustible source. It was this source of power and self-determination that the Christians and the Romans fought with every weapon at their disposal, because it threatened their power and would have meant humankind’s advancement to a higher level of consciousness. It was this source that they wanted to silence with the greatest manipulation ever constructed. And they’ve been mighty successful.”

Shane’s discomfort must have been apparent on his face, because Thomas added, “Hey, don’t worry, it’s OK. Just find a way to accept what you’ve been looking for the whole time.”

Thomas’s words just made things worse. Feeling helpless, Shane broke away. As he did, he noticed the barkeeper turning up the volume on the television. The president of the United States had just begun speaking.

“Few people would have thought that someone like me would one day be making this speech, but it is critical that I do so now. Peace, ladies and gentlemen, has a cause and an effect. War has a cause and a horrible effect. For our own sake, we must put an end to the cause of war. As with every conflict, one side must surrender for peace to truly prevail.

“That is why I have decided, only after intense debate within my own party and in Congress, that the United States shall forgive all debts owed by developing countries. In addition, the United States will ensure that these countries will never again be forced to sell their own raw materials at prices set by the international markets...”

Shane could hardly believe what he was hearing, and he saw that Thomas and Deborah were as astounded as he was. Everyone in the entire pub was listening, transfixed by the words of this woman, announcing a sea change in American economic policy. A change that would send shockwaves through the international financial system.

“My fellow Americans, I know the effect this decision will have on our economic system and on our current doctrine of growth. However, I am also certain that we will be able to limit the negative repercussions if other nations are ready to join us. We need a new world balance. We’ve known this for some time, long before the last financial crisis. Tomorrow’s wealth cannot have its foundation on the senseless materialism of today. Let’s
not fool ourselves; our old reliance on growth is a cultural and economic mistake. We need to admit that here and now, and I say this as the leader of a nation that has in the past been one of the worst offenders.”

“You see, Adam,” Thomas said, the shock at what he was hearing clear in his voice, “that’s what I mean. Consciousness is no isolated thing, it’s a collective energy, that, in the end, will simply and movingly contribute to survival, factually and spiritually. The universe in which you live is not only a material fact; it’s also a very spiritual one.”

Shane tore his eyes from the television to look at Thomas. “I know, and the Druids were aware of this. It was a culture based on the interdependence of three factors: God, man, and nature.”

“It was man’s task to convey the knowledge of the dying from other dimensions, and above all to protect the respect for nature as the mother of all things. With the disappearance of the European shamans, this spell was broken, only then allowing imperial Rome to exploit the earth with a religion that was alienated from nature. You understand, Adam, that if we want to end all of this, we have to show people, to prove to them what happened back then. And that includes those who are beginning to recognize the bigger picture. That’s why I trusted you from the beginning. I felt immediately that you have everything in you. You just can’t live it yet.”