“Wait,” Kaplan said urgently, keeping his voice low as if he could be heard outside. “We’ve got company, car lights coming.”
The four of them ducked low in their seats trying to hide from the beams of the headlights. As the car approached, it flashed its lights from low beam to high beam twice. The apparently abandoned Fiat across the street flashed its lights on and off.
“Sterling, I thought you said that car was empty?” Hunt said.
“He must have been ducked down. I didn’t see anyone in there.”
The approaching car slowed and a man jumped out of the parked Fiat and climbed into the arriving car with a backpack in his hand. The car moved slowly by the gates to the banqueting hall, then sped off. Taillights could be seen on the Derryvogilla Bridge going over the River Bonet, then out of sight.
“That was him,” Jake yelled, now holding the night vision goggles. “I got a good look at him, no mistake about it. That was that son of a bitch O’Rourke. He’s here already and there’s someone with him — he looked Middle Eastern.”
“I don’t freakin’ believe it. Was it Nasiri?” she asked.
“I couldn’t tell for sure, O’Rourke’s head blocked some of my view. He was definitely Middle Eastern though.”
“Farid Nasiri? The Al Qaeda arms dealer?” Sterling asked. “What would he be doing here?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute.” Hunt turned around and peered over the seat of the car at Jake. “Bentley was right about you. You are good.”
“One other thing though,” Jake said. “He’s knows we’re here. He looked right at us. Whoever it was in that car must have told O’Rourke about our arrival. We have to assume they know we’re onto them. We should reassess our planned operation.”
“You’re probably right, Jake. Now we have to improvise. Quick change of plans,” she said.
“Jake, you and Kaplan check out the banqueting hall and Sterling and I will follow O’Rourke and Nasiri. You know what to look for, you’re the one who told me. Just keep listening to the radio and stay out of sight. Sterling and I will handle O’Rourke and company.”
Before she could finish, Jake and Kaplan jumped out of the car and raced for the gate to the ruins. By the time Sterling turned the car around to follow O’Rourke, they had disappeared over the high stone wall and into the ruins of the O’Rourke Banqueting Hall.
“We’re in,” Kaplan said. “I’m in anyway. Navy boy’s still stuck on the wall. But I’m sure he’ll be along shortly.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Jake said. “I had to give Kaplan a boost or he’d never have made it over the wall.”
Jake’s earpiece crackled, then Hunt’s voice said, “That was fast. Now you two quit horsing around and find that entrance.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jake said. “Be careful — people have a bad habit of dying around O’Rourke and Nasiri,”
Sterling and Hunt drove over the Derryvogilla Bridge using the very faint light of the moon as their only illumination.
Another car was parked nearby. Its driver watched the game of cat and mouse unfold in front of him. He smiled and chambered a round into his Beretta.
CHAPTER 69
At O’Rourke’s insistence, the Persian had shed his traditional Muslim garb for the attire of the Western world. He wore jeans, black t-shirt, a brown leather jacket and black athletic shoes.
The Persian had jumped into O’Rourke’s car and quickly informed him of the vehicle with the three people in it. “Ah, the ghost of Laurence O’Rourke, even the Americans are chasing you now.”
“You must be the Persian, the man who will make me a very rich man,” O’Rourke replied.
“I don’t want any trouble with the Americans. Can you lose them?”
“This is my town. I will lose them and we’ll be out of sight before they can react. There is no way they could possibly find us after that. What you want is hidden in a very secure place. After you have checked it out and paid me, then you can figure out how to remove it.”
The Persian looked over at him and sneered. “Let’s hope for your sake nothing goes wrong. You’re a very confident man, Laurence O’Rourke, but too much confidence can make a man careless.”
O’Rourke caught a quick reflection in his rearview mirror as the other car turned around. The nearly full moon caught the windshield at just the right angle to catch his attention. He watched as a shadow crossed the Derryvogilla Bridge behind him, and he knew he was indeed being followed.
He needed to get to the abbey, but the other vehicle was following too close. He needed more time to get the Persian and himself into the friars’ tunnel without revealing the secret entrance from the abbey.
He stopped and turned the car around in a driveway. He knew he could catch his pursuers off guard and get a jump on them into town. He pressed the accelerator and sped back toward town, darting past the Saab, which had already pulled over to the side of the road. O’Rourke raced over the Derryvogilla Bridge and turned onto Main Street.
He sped through town past the Banqueting Hall, and turned into the Abbey Manor Hotel. He pulled into the rear parking lot and parked between two larger cars, concealing the Peugeot from the view of Main Street. He grabbed two items from the back seat — the only items he would need, a flashlight and a gun.
He scanned the parking lot for any signs of movement, motioned to the Persian to follow him, and quickly made his way to the northwest corner of the parking lot where a footbridge would take them over the River Bonet.
They reached the footbridge and he turned on his flashlight and followed the gravel pathway up the hill toward Creevelea Abbey. The eastern sky was waking up as dawn approached. Not a cloud could be seen on the horizon. The ruins of the abbey were barely visible in the pre-dawn light.
Creevelea Abbey, the last Franciscan friary founded in Ireland before the suppression of the monasteries by Henry VIII, was founded by Eoghan O’Rourke and his wife Margaret in 1508. Brian Ballach O’Rourke partially restored the abbey, which was unsuccessfully suppressed again in 1539. The friars retained possession of the abbey for another half-century, despite ongoing threats of suppression.
During the tumultuous decade between 1545 and 1555, the friars had secretly tunneled from the abbey to the O’Rourke Banqueting Hall. They also built a chamber room large enough to house dozens of friars for extended periods of time more than forty feet underground.
Access to the secret room was either through the nearly fifteenhundred-foot tunnel from the abbey or through a four-hundred-foot tunnel from the banqueting hall. In 1575, the friars built a onehundred-fifty-foot third tunnel — a small escape tunnel that led to a wooded area on the banks of the river. Its exterior exit was kept covered with stones.
The bond between the O’Rourkes and the friars remained sacred. The existence of the tunnels and the room had been handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. No one outside the O’Rourke family knew for certain of its existence.
Laurence O’Rourke and Farid Nasiri slipped quietly into the ruins of the abbey. O’Rourke hadn’t used the abbey entrance to the tunnel for over thirty years due to its open exposure and relentless pounding of tourists. His usual access had been through the banqueting hall but that was too risky now with the intrusion of the Americans.
The lichen-covered stone walls and archways of the Abbey of Creevelea stood mostly in ruins. The tower still hovered high above the ground. The grassy grounds of the interior courtyard had become a cemetery over the years, now dotted with tombstones and grave markers. Mounds of broken boulders, now overgrown with grass, littered the Abbey landscape.