The Thieves of Faith (43 page)

“You don’t understand,” Michael said.

“I understand more than you know.” Raechen flipped another switch and the image on the television screen abruptly changed. Michael’s heart ran cold as he saw the exterior image of the Kremlin, the black ZiL sitting there, its engine idling, himself in the driver’s seat. Raechen paused the video. “I understand the value of life. And I am going to show you how well.”

Raechen ignited the lighter and held it under the blade, waving the dancing flame against the metal until it glowed red. They stared at each other. Michael looked for a spark of mercy, a hint of compassion, but there was nothing there. This was a man without hope, someone whose love was replaced by vengeance.

“You see, a man talks only when he can no longer take it, can no longer bear the torture,” Raechen said without emotion as the air around the blade began to dance from the heat. “But some men, and I suspect you are one of those men, can endure physical pain up to the point it kills them.”

Raechen pocketed the lighter. He held the glowing knife in front of Michael’s eyes, gripped the hilt of the blade tightly, and jammed it down between Michael’s thighs, burying it in the wooden seat of the chair inches from Michael’s crotch. Michael didn’t flinch, his eyes never wavered or blinked, he just kept matching Raechen’s stare.

Raechen pushed up Michael’s shirtsleeve and clamped his hand around Michael’s bare forearm with an iron grip. The smell of burning wood wafted up from the chair, smoky ringlets floating about. Raechen grabbed the hilt of the knife and pulled the red-hot blade out of the seat.

They held each other’s stare. Michael fought to remain composed, hiding his fear. He knew what was about to happen and tried to detach himself from the moment.

Raechen brought the knife inches from Michael’s naked arm. Michael could already feel the heat from the blade. Their eyes locked, neither of them flinching. And without fanfare, Raechen lay the blade on Michael’s forearm.

Michael buried his mind, sending the pain to somewhere deep in his subconscious. He could hear his skin sizzle, smell the flesh burn. But he refused to give in to the agony, refused to give in to this man before him.

And just as suddenly, Raechen pulled the knife away.

“But torture need not always be physical,” Raechen said in his slight Russian accent. He put the knife on the desk, grabbed another chair, and rolled it directly in front of Michael. He pulled out two pairs of handcuffs and clipped them to the chair arms. He walked back over to the video player and hit
PLAY
. The image of the ZiL dissolved, replaced with an image that burned into Michael’s eyes, that filled him with pain and dread. It was far worse than the burning blade, even worse than if Raechen had thrust the knife into his heart. Michael saw an image of Susan, her hand touching his cheek as they sat in the black car just outside the Kremlin.

“Most do not realize the greatest aspect of torture is the anticipation, the psychological dread.” Raechen indicated the chair across from Michael. “As she sits in front of you, staring into your eyes as I slice off each of her fingers, as you watch her scream as I remove her ear, I sense you will tell me where you have taken Julian Zivera’s mother and you’ll tell me where Zivera has hidden the map of the Kremlin underground.”

The image continued to play. Like a voyeur, Michael watched as he and Susan stared at each other, her hand rising up to stroke his face. The two people before him looked passionately at each other, sharing an unspoken tender moment that culminated in a gentle kiss. Michael realized at that instant how strongly he felt for her, how strongly she felt for him; he saw it now, not only on his own face, but hers. And the out-of-body experience ended. The image abruptly looped back on itself to Susan’s hand on his cheek, the scene starting anew.

The guilt flooded Michael; as much as Susan demanded to be involved in this entire ordeal, Michael was the one who allowed it. Against his better judgment, he allowed her to dive the Liberia and she was almost killed. Now because of Michael, they were going after her and he felt as if he had signed her death warrant. And to make matters worse, she was carrying the satchel concealing the golden box.

“I want to know where Genevieve Zivera has been taken,” Raechen said slowly.

“You know I was chasing her, you know she was supposed to be in that ambulance. I have no idea where she is. Somebody stole her from us.”

“Who?” Raechen looked at Michael.

Michael turned away. “Why do you want her?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Raechen leaned down, looking straight into Michael’s heart. “So I can kill her.”

Michael stared back at his captor, with no doubt in his mind. There was a serene ruthlessness to the man, a calm that comes from only one of two things, complete confidence in one’s abilities or sheer insanity.

“Zivera is a hypocritical fool who feigns pious altruism to hide a dark, power-mad heart, and I plan to make him suffer. Julian Zivera will suffer tenfold what my son feels. I will not rest until you have all been hunted down and dispatched.”

“Why not just go for Julian? His mother is innocent, she shouldn’t have to suffer.”

“Neither should my son.”

The man’s words, his feelings, were so close to what Michael had felt when his wife was taken ill. The anger at God and the world, the pain of your heart withering along with the health of the one you love. Michael could almost sympathize with the man if he wasn’t voicing his intent to kill Genevieve.

“Maybe you do not know where she has been taken, but maybe your woman will.” The tattooed Russian stepped to the video console, flipped another switch and every television, every computer monitor filled with the video image of Susan’s hand on his cheek. The screens lined the entire wall, filling his line of sight.

“You’ll never find her,” Michael said.

Raechen walked to the door, opened it, and turned back to Michael. A smile broke out on Raechen’s face; it was not a smile of joy, it was a smile of victory. “I already have,” Raechen said as he closed the door behind him.

As the door clicked shut behind Raechen, Michael’s mind kicked into overdrive. He wasn’t going to waste his time on pity or fear. He had only one thought. If he had any chance of saving Susan, he had to get out of here.

He looked at the cuffs about his arms, spun around in the chair looking at the room, looking for solutions. The images of him and Susan continued on the televisions and computer monitors. He did everything to avoid seeing them; he had to stay focused, he couldn’t afford to let his heart get in the way.

He looked at the arms of the chair he was strapped to. Each arm, the entire chair for that matter, was thick and heavy. Not some flimsy, easily breakable chair like you would find in an antique shop in France. Raechen wasn’t stupid; he knew what he was doing when he locked Michael down.

But he didn’t know Michael.

Michael tried to reach his breast pocket. He needed his sunglasses and he needed them now, but the cuffs held his hands just out of reach.

Michael tilted the chair back and forth, finally falling over to the floor. He landed sideways, his head smacking the ground. He ignored the pain and rocked over until he was prone on the floor, the chair, handcuffed to him, covering his back. He angled his body forward until the sunglasses spilled from his breast pocket on the floor in front of him. Michael maneuvered his body and picked the glasses up in his left hand. He opened them and carefully angled the frames to the ground, pressing until the right earpiece snapped off the lenses. Michael carefully picked up the ear stem: it was four inches long and less than an eighth of an inch wide. Its thickness was perfect.

He extended his left arm, pulling the handcuff tight against the arm rail. Slowly, moving in fractional amounts, Michael moved the thin strip of metal toward the handcuff. But not toward the key slot. Fallacy of fallacies. While many handcuff keys were universal, picking a cuff lock was not as easy.

Michael bypassed the keyhole and manipulated the thin metal strip toward the slight opening where the teeth end of the cuff inserted into the female end, locking the cuffs in place. The thin strip of metal just fit into the frame of the cuff. With a dexterous motion, Michael pressed the strip farther into the female end until he heard a
click,
the lock that fell against the teeth was pressed up, and the cuff fell away, freeing his hand. Michael made quick work of the other cuff, removed the handcuffs from the other chair, and stuffed the four sets of restraints in his pocket. He didn’t have an immediate need for them but suspected he would regret leaving them behind. He righted the chair and pulled it in front of the main console. He flipped the switch that Raechen used and the plethora of images froze, locked on Susan. Michael couldn’t help staring. He studied her face; the smile she wore came through her eyes. Michael felt a warmth run through him. She cared for him.

He flipped the switch and suddenly the screens were filled with varying images of the Kremlin, both interior and exterior. Churches, offices, palaces, and jail cells. Michael watched as tour groups were led through the Armory, while a second group could be seen exiting the Cathedral of the Assumption. The image on each monitor cycled through a series of ten viewpoints each. This vantage point provided him insight into the entire complex. The Russian labels under each monitor were useless to Michael but it didn’t take him long to figure out what each monitor represented.

As Michael looked about, he realized that this must have been an old security point. The media only came through on VHS, there were no DVD players or drives in the computers. And the computers…well, they were pushing ten years of age. This was not the primary security point, it wasn’t even a secondary point. It was a casualty of time and lack of funding.

Michael sat back and watched the monitors. The one in the second row center left was alive with activity; guards ran in response to orders being given somewhere off camera. Michael watched as three black Suburbans loaded up with a contingent of armed men. Finally, the man giving the orders stepped into view. It was Raechen. The mini caravan rolled out of the garage and disappeared from the monitor’s image. Michael sat back, trying to take all the images in, looking for the three black trucks, and they were finally there on the lowermost monitor. The same heavy gate he saw part of while he sat in the ZiL opened and the three trucks tore out into the bright sunshine of the Moscow day.

Michael turned his attention to the cabinets; rummaging through, he found no weapons, only books, papers, and charts—all in Russian; pencils, pens, and tape. If he was going to save Susan he would need more than a few office supplies. He found a large spool of electrical wire, unwound fifty feet, and added it to his makeshift arsenal.

Michael slowly opened the door into the white hallway. It was beyond quiet; there was no sign of anyone. He ventured out into the hall and moved to the first door down the line. He opened it only to be greeted by a completely vacant room, no furniture, windows, or carpets. Michael checked the eight other doors only to be met by the same sight. The floor was ghostly vacant but for the abandoned security room.

Michael headed back down the hallway to the elevator. It was the only way in or out; without a set of stairs, the floor was truly a firetrap. Against his better judgment, Michael hit the button and fell back to the video room. The whine of the machinery kicked in. Michael heard the approach of the cab and hoped that he was not bringing someone to his vacant floor. The chime
pinged
and the door opened. Michael peered out to find the elevator vacant. He sprinted down the hall and stepped in; holding the door open, he hit the uppermost button only to confirm his suspicions. The button did not light up; the uppermost floors were keyed off.

Michael was beginning to understand why Raechen hadn’t thrown him back in a cell; there was truly nowhere to go except back down toward Ivan’s torture cell and Raechen’s armed guards.

Dmitri Grengenko joined the Red Army dreaming of action and mayhem in the Spetsnaz, Russia’s special forces. A farm boy from Kursk Oblast, he had come of age during the Afghanistan war back when the Soviet Union was a power to be reckoned with, back when the Red Army struck terror in the heart of its enemies. He trained hard, sniper school, war college, dreaming of ascending the heights of military greatness, to be part of the great army that fought back Napoleon, defeated Hitler’s forces in World War II, and crushed all comers with a swift decisive blade.

Now he sat one hundred feet under ground with the cliché tin cup of vodka-laced coffee at a small wooden table, his position nothing more than a jail guard for a lone American prisoner by the name of Michael St. Something. Dmitri’s dream shattered like the USSR did after perestroika, forgotten like the twenty-six million Soviets who died in World War II. Reduced to idle chatter and cards with his fellow soldier, Pelio Kestovich, Dmitri longed for battle, the chance to show his talent, his hand-to-hand skills. To do honor to the memory of his parents, to put all that training to use in service of Mother Russia.

Neither he nor Pelio understood why they had been posted in the bowels of the earth, unsure if it was punishment or just bad luck. The black section had been closed for years, or at least before either of them had even enlisted. They heard rumors of its operations, as was customary of all Communist-era divisions, but did not believe in its mythic existence until they were assigned to work for IIya Raechen—a man whose reputation outdid that of the Devil himself.

The
ping
of the elevator stirred Dmitri out of his daydreams and brought him and Pelio to full attention. They hoisted up their rifles, ready to greet their interim commander. Standing ramrod straight, they watched as the doors slid open, both ready to impress Raechen, but he was not there. In fact, no one was there. The doors opened to reveal a vacant cab in the center of which was a single wooden chair. And without fanfare the doors closed. The elevator hummed as it disappeared. The two guards looked at one another and, in almost perfect synchronization, sat back down.