“That it?” “Gotta be. It’s a coat of arms inlaid into the chimney.”
Jake pushed on the crest.
It moved inward.
Nothing else happened.
Jake grabbed the crest and tried turning it to the right. It turned but without results. Jake then turned the crest to the left. Nothing. He turned the crest further to the left until it stopped, then back to the right until it stopped again.
Still Nothing.
Kaplan moved closer to Jake. “Hurry up, Jake. We’re losing precious time here. What’s the problem?”
Jake shot Kaplan a look. “If I knew, we’d be in already.”
Jake studied the golden crest. “It pushed in but nothing happened and it turned but nothing happened. The range of motion for the crest is ninety degrees to the left and ninety degrees to the right.”
“Combine your efforts. Maybe if you pushed it in and turned it at the same time,” Kaplan said.
“It’s worth a try. Did you learn that from your Special Forces days?”
“Nope, saw it on National Treasure.”
They both laughed as Jake leaned into the crest, turning it to the left as he pushed. He reached the ninety-degree mark and heard a click. He felt the excitement build inside him but nothing else happened. He looked at Kaplan.
“Turn it back to the right now.”
He pushed as he turned it back to the right. All the way to the right. The crest stopped.
They heard a thud followed by the sound of stone grinding on stone. The noise was right in front of them, behind the ivy curtain. They felt the vibration as the stone wall in the fireplace slowly moved open.
“I’ll be damned. It worked. I’ve got to watch more movies.” Kaplan said.
“Something worked, let’s see.”
Jake reached his hand out toward the wall and parted the curtain of ivy with his flashlight.
Kaplan shone his light into the fireplace and they saw an opening in the five-foot-thick stone wall just large enough to crawl inside. The beam lit up the opening, revealing steep stone steps circling straight down into the darkness.
Jake spoke into his headset. “We found it, we found it. The steps lead straight down below the north wall.” He gave Hunt the sequence of steps to unlock the entrance. “We’re going in.”
She whispered, “Roger that. I’ve got something too. O’Rourke and Nasiri are here. He’s hunched over some sort of gravestone or something and pushing. Wait, they’re gone. They just disappeared. Just like that. Jake, you and Kaplan wait there for Sterling. I’m going in here. Jake, did you hear me?”
Jake and Kaplan didn’t hear Hunt. They were already twenty feet below the banqueting hall, descending the stone steps into the tunnel.
* * * Collins watched as O’Rourke and the Persian disappeared. Disappeared into some sort of hole in the abbey. Now there was someone else. A small dark figure dressed in black moved toward the exact spot where O’Rourke disappeared.
Earlier, Collins had spotted the tail on O’Rourke and watched as O’Rourke doubled back. When the tail doubled back, he followed the second car to the Abbey Manor Hotel.
Now, he reasoned that someone must have gotten out of the tail car when O’Rourke doubled back, and whoever it was had run the half mile to Creevelea Abbey from the road.
Collins had followed the tail car into the parking lot and watched as a man dressed in black followed O’Rourke and the Persian across the footbridge and up the path toward the abbey. Something was wrong though. The figure he was looking at now was not the same person that followed O’Rourke and the Persian.
The small dark figure shined a flashlight on the gravestone. The backdrop of light from the approaching dawn had brightened the sky just enough for Collins to recognize the figure as that of a woman.
He waited patiently as the woman worked on the stone. She knelt down, then hunched over the stone. Thirty seconds later she disappeared in the same spot as O’Rourke and the Persian had.
Collins knew he had the location. This had to be it. He didn’t know what the location held, and he really didn’t care. All that was left was to execute the remainder of his contracts. He walked over to where O’Rourke and the woman disappeared and found an opening revealing stone steps leading down into the depths below the abbey.
Collins took out his Blackberry to send his last message, the location of O’Rourke’s secret.
No service.
* * * Jake and Kaplan descended into the dingy depths below the O’Rourke Banqueting Hall, their headlamps illuminating the way. The steep steps wound down in a circular fashion, damp and slick with mold. The air—stale and musty.
Jake knocked down several spider webs as he descended. Hunched over because of the low headroom and sharp turns, the taller Kaplan slipped before reaching the bottom, banging his shin on the stone steps.
They reached a chamber around forty feet below the surface. Stone walls lined the fifteen-foot-square room. It was empty, left vacant for centuries and now the home of rodents and spiders. The only way out, other than the way they came in, was through an arched doorway on the western wall that appeared to lead to another tunnel.
Movement on the floor caught Jake’s eye, rats scurried in the damp darkness. Beady little eyes glowed from the beam of the flashlight. A cold chill ran through him. Jake shivered.
“God, I hate rats,” Jake said. “We need Hunt. She probably eats them for snacks.”
”You don’t like her very much, do you Jake?”
“I like her as much as she likes us. It’s kind of a toss-up—rats or Hunt. Not much difference as far as I can tell.”
Kaplan laughed.
Jake moved through the doorway into the tunnel. It was barely three feet wide and only about six feet high. He unconsciously hunched over as he walked down the narrow tunnel, with Kaplan a few feet behind.
“Hey, squid, are you claustrophobic too?”
“No, I’m not. But thanks for asking.”
Their bantering seemed to ease the tension.
They felt the slope in the floor.
“Looks like we’re headed downhill?” Jake asked.
“Yeah? What was your first clue? The fact that it’s getting sloppier with every step. Be careful.”
The stone walls became moist, then wet. They stopped and listened. Standing in roughly an inch of water, they could hear the sound of the River Bonet rushing overhead.
“Do you hear that?” Jake asked.
“I’m not deaf. The river’s directly above us.”
“How do you think the tunnel survived all these years without caving in?” Jake asked.
”How about you stop giving off negative vibes while we’re below it. I didn’t bring my water wings.”
They pushed on for about another hundred yards, noticing they were walking slightly upgrade. The tunnel opened into a larger space. Using their flashlights, they surveyed the chamber.
Kaplan studied the room. “I guess I expected something a little bigger, Jake.”
“Gregg, look.” Jake pointed toward the ceiling.
Bare light bulbs were strung from the stone ceiling. As Jake and Kaplan moved farther into the room, they found a table and chair, a radio with wires he guessed ran up to the surface, a small refrigerator and a gas camping stove.
Jake moved his hand to the left. “Look over there—boxes of supplies stacked next to the refrigerator.”
Kaplan moved to the side and shone his light behind the refrigerator and supplies. “Hey Jake, back here I got a generator. It looks like it’s vented to the outside. And next to it is a large bank of batteries. That explains O’Rourke’s extended disappearances. All the comforts of home.”
“Yeah, a big rat living with his little buddies.”
Next to the table was a file cabinet. Jake walked over and opened the top drawer. He heard Kaplan walk off behind him. The next few minutes he spent rifling through the folders, reading the files as quickly as he could. Absorbing the details. He realized
O’Rourke hadn’t made a veil threat. He did indeed have documentation that could destroy the New Northern Ireland Assembly.
“Gregg, you’re not going to believe this shit. There are several folders, each containing notes and records from secret, unmonitored meetings between Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party. And look, here’s a hit list, an IRA/Ulster hit list, names of individuals from both sides whose existence was considered a deterrence to the peace process and a hindrance to true power-sharing in Northern Ireland.” Jake pulled out the list. His headlamp shone on the files while he read down the list of names. The Ulster list had about forty names. All but four had been lined out. The IRA list had almost twice as many names. Again, all but four were marked out. An asterisk indicated that the lined out names had been eliminated. Several of these names he recognized by the media reports of their deaths.
He noticed that one name on the IRA list without an asterisk was circled in ink—Laurence O’Rourke.
Jake put the folder back and opened the second drawer. In the front of the drawer was an IRA weapons list. He studied it closely, then called for Kaplan, “Gregg, come here and look at this.”
Kaplan stepped behind him. “What have you got there?”
“It’s a list of the ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ weapons depots for the IRA. The list contains the weapons storage facilities’ locations and a detailed listing of the weapons contained in each. Here’s a copy of a memorandum issued to the DUP and the Independent Monitoring Commission, the watchdog agency monitoring the Northern Ireland paramilitary groups.
“Look, it lists the locations of only the ‘official’ weapons storage facilities. It includes a statement declaring that the weapons listed here are all the IRA had in its cache, and that the IRA now considers itself in full compliance with the cease-fire agreement.”
Kaplan scanned the list of storage facilities. “Jake, this place isn’t on either of those lists, and look at the signature on the bottom of the memorandum—‘compiled, authorized and signed by Laurence O’Rourke, Former Quartermaster General, Irish Republican Army.’”
“Okay, I give. Why would this place need to be on here?”
Kaplan started back across the room. “Come here, Jake. I’ll show you why.”
Jake placed the folder on top of the drawer before turning around. He scanned the large room with his flashlight. Kaplan was standing in a doorway opposite the tunnel entrance shining his flashlight into a black void.
“What is it?”
Jake walked over to Kaplan and aimed his light into the void.
Kaplan said, “I figure it’s roughly a hundred fifty feet by two hundred feet.”
Jake was dumbfounded. “Holy shit.”
To his left was a huge assortment of boxes and crates. Boxes of different sizes and shapes stacked to the ceiling filled the large room. The boxes and crates created a maze of walkways throughout the chamber room.
“Stone columns, evenly spaced. And look at the notches in the walls—just large enough to be bunks for the monks.” Jake laughed. “Bunks for monks. That rhymes.”
“Idiot. Look up , the ceiling has vents in it too. These monks sure knew what they were doing. You were right, Jake, the Friars’ Chamber indeed does exist.”
Jake walked over to where Kaplan stood, beside the shortest stack of boxes, about chest high, and read the markings on the side.
50 lbs. SEMTEX SEMTEX. Plastic explosives. Jake totaled the boxes, three thousand pounds of explosives.
Kaplan said, “I don’t really know that much about SEMTEX, but I’d bet this is enough to destroy this entire town.”
They stepped to the next stack, seventy wooden crates. Stamped on the side of each crate were the words:
Grenade Launchers 10 Count Jake and Kaplan separated and hurried around the room, checking the crates and boxes and making a quick mental inventory of what they’d found. In addition to the Semtex and the grenade launchers, they found one hundred forty-two shoulder-launched SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles, four hundred fifty American-made Barrett .50-caliber rifles, six hundred Armalite M-16A2 rifles, thirteen hundred AK-47 rifles, thirty Browning rifles, nine hundred Belgian FAL rifles, thirteen hundred forty Makarov pistols, twelve hundred fifty Webley .455-caliber service revolvers and nearly two hundred .50 caliber and .30 caliber machine guns.
They gave up counting about halfway through the chamber, noting the crates and boxes of weapons and ammunition were marked as originating from places all over the globe … the Soviet Union, Libya, Syria, Britain and the United States.
Kaplan looked at Jake. “After just reading the lists of weapons stored at the other facilities, do you realize that this Friar’s Chamber contains more weapons and explosives than the entire ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ weapons storage facilities combined?”
Jake now understood what O’Rourke’s secret was and why so many must be after it. The SIS records of the Persian’s arrival in Dublin, Ireland, had thrown up a red flag when Jake did his research. His insight, which was really nothing more than a hunch, about the connection between Laurence O’Rourke, a former Quartermaster General for the IRA, and the Persian, an Al Qaeda arms dealer working directly for Bin Laden, was right on the mark. A hunch he drew only after recalling something O’Rourke said right before Beth was shot … I have made a lucrative deal that will allow me financial security for my very long life.
“Well,” Jake said, “this explains the presence of Farid Nasiri with O’Rourke. The ramifications of letting these weapons fall into the hands of Al Qaeda are too great to sit by and wait for the cavalry. We need to find Hunt and Sterling and find them fast. We’re going to need more help.”
“I think you’re right. Let’s go find them.”
The generator roared to life behind them.
Before they could move, all the lights illuminated in the enormous chamber room.
The first thing Jake and Kaplan saw was Laurence O’Rourke standing only ten feet away with a gun pointed at Jake’s head.
CHAPTER 71
“ Well, well. What have we here? Mr. Pendleton, we meet again. Seems like I’m always pointing a gun at you.”
O’Rourke held the gun steady. The obese Iranian was sweating and winded from the long walk through the tunnel.
“Yeah, yeah. You point your gun, you lose your gun.” Jake motioned to Kaplan.
Kaplan started to move.
O’Rourke fired a shot. “Stay where you are. Both of you. I’m rather surprised to see you, of all people, intruding into my private chamber. Who are you really working for? Certainly not the NTSB. No doubt the U.S. Government. But who? CIA? FBI, maybe? Maybe your newly founded Department of Homeland Security? And all this time I thought you were merely a stupid aircraft accident investigator.” O’Rourke looked at Kaplan. “And you—you’re the redhead’s boyfriend, aren’t you? What are you doing here?”
“I’m catching up on my Irish history. You know, the kind not found in travel guides,” Kaplan said.
“Oh, you Americans, always making lame attempts at humor. Well, your history lesson is over. This time you won’t live to haunt me again. First things first, Mr. Pendleton. Take your gun out nice and slow and place it on that crate over there.” O’Rourke motioned with his empty hand. “Don’t be stupid and try something you’ll regret.”
Jake removed his weapon and placed it on the wooden crate next to him.
“Very good. Now step away a few steps.”
Jake took five steps away from the crate.
“Now you,” he motioned to Kaplan. “You do the same.” Kaplan obliged and followed the same routine that Jake just had. “Now let’s go.” O’Rourke motioned with his gun.
Jake needed to stall for time—time to allow Hunt and Sterling to find the chamber.
“What is this about?” Jake asked, raising his arm and sweeping it around the room. “What is all this about?”
“You are so naive. This is about power, control, and freedom, among other things. I don�
�t expect you to understand, you’re American. This is Ireland. This is about something you could never understand.”
“You’re wrong. I may be an American but I do understand. I understand that you’re a traitor to your own country, to your own people.” Jake pointed to Nasiri. “And now you’re helping terrorists. You are nothing more than an assassin who would kill his own mother for money. You can’t expect to get away with this. You can’t expect that no one will come after you.”
“No one come after me, are you joking? Pay attention. Everyone is already trying to kill me because I know too much or,” O’Rourke waved his gun over the cache, “they want this. Some want to use it, others want to destroy it and pretend it never existed. Either way I can never live in peace again without always looking over my shoulder wondering is today the day somebody gets lucky? Is today the day I die?”
The Savannah Project (Jake Pendleton series) Page 27
