The Celtic Conspiracy Read Free Page B

after studying archaeology, had gone to law school in Boston. There, he completed his degree in record time and later served for several years as a judge in the district court of Boston before being named to the Supreme Court, where he had been serving as chief justice for the past three years. But whenever he could, he still came back to his parents’house in Dublin on Arbour Hill, across from the National Museum. There he buried himself in his father’s research.
    MacClary was rummaging through one of the countless leather portfolios marked with the family crest when his gaze turned to the cabinet where his father’s inheritance had been stored for so long. In March 1943, just before he was born, his father had taken over leadership of a large unit of soldiers. Badly wounded, he came back from Austria, and a few years after returning home, he died from a grenade splinter that had lodged in his lung during combat. On his deathbed, he spoke to six-year-old Ronald in a way the boy could barely understand, but would never forget.
    They were in a run-down hospital, and his father’s body had withered to the point where it seemed as though he’d already been long in his grave. The room reeked of fear, the smell alternating between antiseptic solutions and feces.
    “You have to keep investigating my trove, my son,” Sean MacClary had said with as much emphasis as he could muster. “You’ll find everything in my library. I didn’t have time to write everything down, but it’s the key to understanding our culture, everything that makes us who we are. It all began with a horrible crime. Look in the...”
    The diminished man’s breath faded, and only a strained rattle filled the room.
    “Where should I look, Father?” Ronald said desperately, knowing that there was more to this and that it waswithout question the most important conversation of his young life. But the conversation, and his father’s life, was over.
    As he got older, Ronald looked through every square inch of his father’s archives and never discovered anything. Even the scroll in the cabinet hadn’t yet revealed its secrets. One thing was clear: his father must have stumbled across something from antiquity, because that was the only thing his archaeological heart burned for. Hardly anyone had known as much detailed information about the Dark Ages, which was to the elder MacClary the blackest period of human civilization. In Sean MacClary’s mind, the Inquisition, the two world wars, and all the other conflicts were only byproducts of that earlier period of civilization.
    His father’s legacy was much more to Ronald than just some historical or archaeological riddle. It was the only possible justification for the man having so little time, or love, left over for him. So many times, Ronald’s mother had bitterly cried over how alone and abandoned she felt. Even as a boy Ronald had found it all so unfair, and although in those few moments he’d had with his father he’d gotten excited about the search for the past, it had been the question of justice that led him to break off his studies in archaeology to begin studying law. However, those years of study in his father’s library had also made him a critical student of religious history.
    Ronald couldn’t deny his roots. He had looked after his parents’ house and his father’s library for decades,watching over it like a treasure. He avoided making any changes for fear of forever losing the opportunity to solve the puzzle his father had laid out before him.
    “It’s all God’s fault,” he said with an ironic smile. Then he turned back to his computer to finish his upcoming Trinity College lecture.

AUSTRIA – MARCH 13
    Shane had no more time to think about the dream that had catapulted him awake this morning. He needed to get out of bed and on with his day. Within the next half hour, a dozen ailing people would begin filling his office.
    He opened the bedroom door and headed to the bathroom.