The Thieves of Faith (46 page)

Michael watched him approach, twenty feet away, fifteen…Michael needed to get out of here and fast if he was to have any chance of saving Susan and Genevieve. And he decided, no more wasting time.

Raechen was ten feet from Michael, walking quicker now.

And Michael shot him. The bullet tore into Raechen’s right thigh, going clear through and embedding in the wall. A small bull’s-eye of blood and flesh encircled the bullet hole.

Raechen hit the floor with a
thud
. Michael leapt from his chair, his gun held at the ready as he pulled out a set of handcuffs and secured Raechen’s arms behind his back. He crouched down and cleared the Russian’s pockets of his cell phone, keys, and money. He tore the man’s pant leg around the exit wound. The bullet had gone wide, missing the artery, passing through the meaty outer portion of the Russian’s thigh. Michael stood up, grabbed Raechen’s jacket off the counter, and wrapped it about his leg. Michael stood and kept the gun trained on the man’s head.

“Go ahead, shoot,” Raechen said.

“No, thanks. I’m not going to have your death on my conscience.”

“Don’t speak to me about your conscience, thieves don’t have consciences.”

“And you do? Don’t go there, don’t try to justify your actions for the betterment of your country.”

Raechen laughed. “My country? I retired to the state of Virginia five years ago.” Raechen paused, his eyes drifting with his thoughts. “My son is six years old. He has experienced more pain in his short life than a normal person would in a lifetime. I spent every waking moment searching the world for a cure for him. You have no idea what it is like to have a loved one dying, to be overcome by the feeling of helplessness.”

Though Michael knew that pain and understood it all too well, he said nothing.

“The mighty government, their brilliant doctors, offered me hope for my son. They said to kidnap Julian Zivera’s mother, bring her to us, and we will save your son.” He paused. “They dangled my son’s life before my eyes. I could care less about Russia, I could care less about America or anywhere. All I cared about was my boy and making him better. Now, I have failed him.”

“Did you really believe they could cure him?”

Raechen looked directly at Michael. “In the face of death, we cling to hope however small it may be.”

The words rang so true in Michael’s ears. As he looked down at the man, he saw himself. He understood Raechen probably more than anyone. When Mary was sick, he stopped at nothing to save her and that is what this man before him was doing. “What is your son’s name?”

“Sergei.”

Michael immediately regretted asking the question; it humanized Raechen. You never think of criminals as human, yet they are. All someone’s children, someone’s parents. They are seen with different eyes by the people they love. And it pained Michael now to look at this man, not as someone who tortured him, as someone who would not stop at killing him; he was looking at the man as a father trying to save his child.

The Russian doctors were playing on Raechen’s heartstrings; they had found the ultimate motivator. As loyal as one is to one’s country, nothing will trump love. Nothing will get in the way, nothing will come before the ones we care about. These doctors, Julian Zivera, they were as evil as could be, manipulating others’ feelings to satiate their evil greed.

Raechen’s son never had a chance.

“My father’s name is Stephen. And I only met him a few days ago. Now, he is being held, he is being ransomed, entirely unaware that they will kill him even if I successfully rescue Zivera’s mother.”

“It was more than her that you were hired to deliver, though, am I right? That is why they have taken the young woman.”

Michael’s thoughts ran back to Susan; not only were his father and Genevieve in mortal danger, but so was she. He held three lives in his hands.

“What does she have that they want? What did you steal?” Raechen asked.

Michael had already offered up more information than he should have and remained silent.

Raechen’s face softened. “I must tell you. Twenty years ago, I would have hung you upside down and slowly poked holes in your body to watch the blood pour from your wounds until I got my answers. But that was the old Russia and, quite honestly, I really don’t care whatever else you were looking for. My son is dead. Not literally yet, but his last hope has slipped away.”

“We’ve both been used. Our hearts leveraged, bent to others’ wills. These doctors, I’m sorry they are dead, but they would have betrayed you in the end as surely as Julian Zivera and Nikolai Fetisov betrayed me. It’s a terrible thing to give false hope.” It so enraged Michael that there were those who felt the world existed solely to help them achieve their own desires. Too often the powerful manipulate the hearts and desires of others to achieve their own goals. Whether it is the captains of industry taking advantage of people’s greed and their thirst for money; preachers and evangelists bartering salvation; doctors and snake oil salesmen promising miracle cures and life extension; or the worst of all, those who manipulate the frailty of the human heart.

“My son will be dead soon and in a better place,” Raechen said as he sat on the floor, handcuffed, shot, and bleeding. Michael could see the hope, the optimism for his son’s survival vanish from his eyes. Though Raechen had beaten Michael, though he had every intention to torture him and Susan, Michael felt an overwhelming sympathy for the man. For his son. For the cruelty of fate and the havoc it can play on families.

“I’m sorry.” Michael paused, seeing Raechen’s pain, the pain of loss, of feeling powerless to save the one you love. A pain he knew too well. And a pain he wasn’t prepared to go through again. If Michael had any chance of saving his father and finding Susan, he had to get out of here.

Michael quietly leaned over and gagged Raechen, regretting his actions. He tied up the Russian’s legs with wire and tethered his arms to the base of the heavy desk that was covered in monitors. He checked Raechen’s watch; it was after three, the tours ended at five. They were Michael’s only hope for escape.

Michael turned back to Raechen. “I’m truly sorry for you…and I’m sorry for your son.”

And Michael walked out the door.

The elevator carried Michael up six stories to ground level. He held one gun close to his side while tucking the other in the waistband at the small of his back. As the doors opened, he was greeted with Russian abstract paintings adorning the interior of a large hall, a modern world tucked within the walls of an ancient one. He was in the newest of the Kremlin’s numerous buildings: the Palace of Congresses, the former shouting arena of Communist rhetoric. Of course, the shouting now came through the throats of rock stars and opera singers. But there were no performances today, only tourist groups and guards. Michael covered the gun in his waistband with his jacket. He pulled a tourist map out from his pocket, buried his face in it, and stepped from the elevator. People were milling about; some listened to the tour guides’ dissertations while most looked around and spoke quietly among themselves. He pulled out Raechen’s cell phone and dialed Busch. Four times it rang before it kicked to voice mail.

“Paul, I hope to God you’re alive. I’m in the center of the Kremlin, in the Palace of Congresses. I am going to try and get out with one of the tour groups. Fetisov has Susan—”

Two guards on patrol rounded a corner and took casual notice of Michael. He slammed the phone shut, smiled at the guards, and jogged toward a swarm of fifty tourists, quietly joining them at the rear. The group was a mix of Europeans; a variety of languages echoed off the cavernous walls of the building’s vestibule. Michael gravitated toward a group of eight couples and two women—British and American—all babbling about where to eat. They were led by a female guide who chattered on in English, spoken with a severe Russian accent. Michael lost himself in his map and waited for the group to continue on.

They rode the escalators up to ground level and exited the Palace of Congresses into the late afternoon sunshine. It was the first daylight Michael had seen since the dawn rush hour, and while it stung his eyes he embraced it and hoped he would be able to feel its warmth from the other side of the Kremlin wall.

The group walked as one across the wide sidewalks past the Arsenal across the Kremlin grounds, and made their way to the courtyard of churches. Michael had failed to fully appreciate their beauty when he, Susan, and Nikolai toured the grounds. The golden domes shimmered in the bright light of day, an explosion of colors and design so uniquely Russian that nowhere the world over had it been mimicked. Their beauty did not leave an impression the first time he saw their magnificent display; this time, right now, it was all the more grand. Being pursued had a way of focusing Michael’s senses, his memory, his thoughts. He could vividly recall every job he had ever done, every step of escape, and right now he wished he wasn’t creating more of those memories.

The group was halfway across the courtyard when the alarms sounded, loud and cutting. The tour group jumped as one as a collective fear ran through them. Guards and army personnel seemed to emerge from every door, from around every corner. A force one hundred strong materialized from the walls as if they were lying in wait for this moment.

There was no doubt in Michael’s mind what set off the disturbance. It was him. Michael casually moved toward the middle of the pack. He feigned surprise at the disturbance but he didn’t need to feign his fear. The crowd remained frozen, unsure if panic would turn the running guards on them.

Soldiers shouted to one another as they all headed toward the Palace of Congresses. Michael could hear one of the students translating the running soldiers’ words. “They are looking for a man who poses great danger. Tall, dark hair. Hell,” the student said as he looked around at the large group, “that could be all of us.” Some of the students found the joke amusing but the elders did not as they remembered the oppression and fear that emanated from within the compound where they now stood, a memory from the not-too-distant past.

Michael would never get out the front gate now, or any gate for that matter. The guards would be checking everyone, questioning them all about the American with the thick brown hair. Michael was trapped and if he was caught, the implications would not only affect him: his father would die. And so would Susan.

Michael knew there was only one way out: his original escape point. He and Busch had resolved that if anything went wrong they would exit through the hidden bowels of the Kremlin. But to get there, Michael would have to make it clear across the sixty-eight-acre site back to the Arsenal, to the one elevator that would take him to the medical lab and the opening to the cavern entrance. But, as he knew so well, the Arsenal was the staging ground, the center of operations for the Presidential Regiment, the Kremlin Guard, a force composed of Russia’s most elite troops, commanded by a leadership schooled in the ways of old. To evade them, Michael would have to enter their sanctum; he would have to enter the hornets’ nest in order to escape.

If he could make it down the elevator to the medical facility, the guards would never be able to track him through the old tunnels and caverns. They probably didn’t even know they existed. Michael had committed the exit pathways to memory. The mazelike design would be his ally and his pursuers’ downfall. But he had to get there first.

A contingent of guards had surfaced to supplement the ones already dispatched and they were all heavily armed, hungrily searching for the person who had violated their capitol. Michael had borne witness to the determination and anger that the U.S. Secret Service and Capitol Police had demonstrated when the U.S. Capitol had been violated. These soldiers would be no less severe; they would shoot to kill if the occasion arose.

Michael knew he couldn’t make a run for it; he would be a sure lone target and would be dead before he made it fifty feet. He needed a cover.

And then, without warning, a small explosion echoed off the far walls of the Kremlin, black smoke rising up in the distance. Fear dissolved to panic. The tour guide was young and useless, unprepared for a situation such as this. She became lost in her own hysteria, running off without any care for her charges.

Michael looked around. The explosion was no coincidence. He picked up his cell phone and feigned a call. Several Englishmen looked at him. Michael nodded his head, turning away from the group. “OK,” he said to no one. “I know where that is.” And he slammed the phone shut.

“Listen to me,” he said, turning to the tightly bunched group. “We need to get to a safe point. I suggest we get out of the open.”

They all looked to Michael, unfamiliar with this man. “My wife, she said the Palace of Congresses is still open. We could wait this out there.”

They all continued to look at him as if he were crazy.

“Suit yourself,” Michael said. He turned and began walking.

The group looked to one another for a leader, for someone who could provide an alternate solution, but no one rose to the occasion. Michael continued to walk and then, as if they were all tuned in to the same command, they followed him. Twenty of them. The English and Americans. Michael turned to look back and seeing their approach, slowed his pace. He melded into their masses and they moved off as one toward the Palace of Congresses. It was two hundred yards away and directly across from the Arsenal.

The guards were now in a frenzy. Scores of them ran off toward the point where the black smoke floated upward, while others had the presence of mind to keep searching for the one dark-haired man.

Michael’s group walked en masse past the Central Executive Military School, the Senate building, and across a large courtyard, all silent, but their eyes speaking volumes of fear. Michael kept his eyes ahead, the de facto leader of a group who were his unwitting protectors. The smoke continued to rise in the direction of the easterly wall, somewhere off by the Spasskaya Tower. Michael recognized help when he saw it. Busch was somewhere around, but as Michael looked about he saw no one familiar.