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.