The Thieves of Faith (49 page)

Chapter 50

M
ichael ran up the gangway to the jet, Busch
and Simon right behind him, the engine’s whine already deafening as it wound up, ready for their departure.

“Martin, where can I put my dive bag?” Michael asked, ready to leave the murky waters beneath the Kremlin behind him for good.

“Stow it in the back,” Martin said as he paid off the last of the Russian guns for hire, adding an extra fifty thousand for their continued silence.

“I need my camera,” Michael continued, his heart still racing from their escape through the Kremlin underground.

Hours earlier, Michael, Simon, and Busch had made it down the elevator of the Arsenal, through the medical facility, and disappeared into the Kremlin underground. They had followed Michael along his bread-crumb path, racing deeper and deeper into the earth away from soldiers and guards, bullets and death. Michael grabbed the gray spray can that they had left by the air vent and covered their orange-dot path as they went.

They arrived at the confluence of the rivers, the Grotto of Tsars, but bypassed their planned route of escape as they were sure Fetisov would have posted men at the river’s emergence point as a precaution.

They trudged through tunnel after tunnel for three hours, lost, practically consigned to never escaping the subterranean Russian world, when they smelled food. They happened upon a series of vents that led to a series of under-dwellers, and finally a set of stairs that emerged into the basement of an apartment building two miles from the Kremlin in Kitai Gorod. Two miles distance from any guard or soldier who wanted nothing short of their heads.

They grabbed a cab to the terminal where they were greeted by a surprised Martin.

“So how did you find him?” Michael asked Busch, pointing Simon’s way.

“I found him,” Simon said as he threw down his large bag. “I arrived two days ago. I actually came here to stop you.”

“Stop me?” Michael asked as Martin handed him his large dive bag.

“You never questioned once what you were doing in finding that box, in planning to turn it over to Zivera.” Simon’s mood darkened. “You have no idea of the danger, of the risk of it being out in the open.”

“Then what the hell is in the box?”

Simon paused. “Hope for one. Despair for most.”

“Either way, there was no need to question what I was doing,” Michael said as he riffled though his bag before finally zipping it up. “A life was on the line; my father’s life.”

“A man you just met,” Simon said in a dismissive tone.

Michael froze, he turned slowly to Simon. “Fuck you,” Michael said, though his mind was spinning with Simon’s accurate statement. He never had stopped to think about what drove him. Was he doing this for the memory of his dead wife, fulfilling her dying wish, or was he truly looking to save his father, a man that he had only just met, whom he knew nothing about beyond what Susan had told him? There was no paternal bond, no father-son relationship built over time to base this quest on. But then Mary pulled him back to the moment as she so often had when she was alive. It was her letter and the words that she had written:

Family has a way of making us whole, filling the emptiness that pervades our hearts, restoring the hope that we think is forever lost.

And what Michael realized in that moment was that he wasn’t just chasing his father, he was chasing hope, the hope that he lost with the death of his wife. He was afraid that if he lost Stephen, if he lost his father before ever getting to know him, his chance for finding hope again would be lost forever.

“This isn’t what Genevieve wanted,” Simon said.

“Then why entrust me with the painting and the map?” Michael shot back. “She knows me, she knows my past. Hell, she’s the reason this whole mess started: having me steal Julian’s painting in Geneva. If she left me out of her problems my father would be safe, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

“So you should have turned your back on her?”

“I didn’t say that. We just almost lost our lives trying to save her,” Michael shot back. “Genevieve left me the map for a reason. She trusts me. She wants that box destroyed,” he said defensively.

“She did say that,” Busch interrupted, nodding his head, praying he could mediate this moment back to calmness.

“It’s pretty hard to destroy something you don’t have, isn’t it?” Simon said.

“All right, enough.” Busch stood up. “How did you know we were here?”

“I know all about the Liberia. Genevieve revealed its secrets to me before I helped her disappear.”

“You knew she was alive as I stood graveside mourning her?” Michael exploded.

“It was the only way for her to truly disappear; it’s what she wanted, Michael. And when she resurfaced, when she came to you, I knew there was only one thing that would compel her to do so.” Simon paused, his eyes darkened. “We have to get that box back.”

“You help me get my father and Susan, and I’ll help you get back the box and destroy it.”

Simon stared at Michael. “And Genevieve.”

“And Genevieve.” Michael nodded, as the exhaustion from the day seeped into him.

“What about you, you going to tag along?” Simon said to Busch, knowing how to push his buttons.

“Tag along? You would both be breathing out of holes in your chests right now if it wasn’t for me. Tag along.” Busch stood, skimming his head on the jet’s ceiling.

“Really,” Simon said as he sat down, “you would still be dialing the Vatican for help if I didn’t find you.”

Busch closed his eyes as he tensed up, trying not to explode.

Michael threw his bag over his shoulder, picked up Simon’s bag out of the aisle, and headed to the stateroom at the back of the plane. “You guys fight it out, I need a shower so I can think straight.”

Martin emerged from the cockpit and pulled the cabin door shut. “Do you have a heading, sir?”

“Corsica, Martin,” Michael said. “We have to get to Corsica.”

Chapter 51

S
tephen lay on the floor of the guardhouse, the
Southerner’s boot pressing into his throat. His blood ran cold as he stared up into the barrel of a gun. In all of his years, he never imagined that this was how he would die. Alone, not knowing what country he was in. They would never find his body; the grave plot next to his wife and Peter would sit vacant for all eternity. He thought of Michael and what might have been, of a son he thought he had lost forever, of the promise of hope for a new beginning that would never come. And the despair kicked Stephen’s mind into overdrive: survive at any cost. Though his hands were free, there was nothing he could grab. All he had in his pocket was the map and a pen.

“You’re American, aren’t you?” Stephen gasped through his constricted throat, his hands passively at his side. “I’m putting you as a Georgia boy.”

The guard stared at him a moment and cocked his head. “You’re an American?”

“Yeah, Boston,” Stephen said, keeping eye contact with the guard. With his right hand, he slowly slipped the pen from his pocket.

The guard looked at Stephen. There was some activity going on behind the Southerner’s eyes. Maybe he got to him, maybe there was some American camaraderie left in the man.

“Boston, huh?” The guard smiled a moment and let it slip into a scowl. “Fucking Yankee.” He chambered a round.

Stephen clutched the pen in his right hand. Without another thought, with all of his might, he jammed the pen into the right calf of the guard, the calf that had been pressing on his windpipe. He drove the pen clear through the guard’s pants, into his flesh and muscle before it finally hit home into the bone. The guard drew back his foot as he shrieked in agony. Stephen rolled right, he held tight to the pen that was embedded in the guard’s leg and tugged on it, pulling the guard to the ground. The gun fired with a muffled
phut
. Stephen grabbed the man’s gun hand and twisted the pistol away. With every ounce of energy that he could draw upon, Stephen began hitting the guard: hard, deadly blows to the face, throat, and body, punches like he hadn’t thrown since his sparring days. Stephen knew how to fight, he knew how to hit, but most important, he knew where to strike to cause the most incapacitating damage.

The guard fell into unconsciousness but Stephen didn’t let up for three more blows, his adrenaline churning, getting the better of him. He hadn’t felt a bloodlust since his teens. He checked the man’s pulse; still alive.

“Don’t ever call a Red Sox fan a Yankee.” Stephen grabbed the man by the arms and dragged him into the coat closet. He stripped him of his belt, holster, radio, and ammo. He checked the guard’s pockets and took his ID, car keys, a small wad of cash, and the answers to his prayers: a cell phone.

He tucked it all in his pockets, covered the man in a pile of coats, and closed the door. He turned, picked up the gun, and quickly holstered it.

There was a sudden roar over the building, shaking the very foundation of the structure and the nerve right out of Stephen. It grew louder until it finally died a bit before a loud squeal came from outside. Stephen calmed himself as he realized it was a plane landing on the adjacent airstrip.

He pulled out the map one more time, checked his location, and left the security building. He walked across the walkway to a small parking lot filled with cars. He pulled the guard’s car keys from his pocket, pointed, and pressed the alarm button. A blue Peugeot chirped and flashed its lights in response.

Stephen drove the vehicle across the lot and stopped next to the airstrip. The same Boeing Business Jet that had brought him here taxied to a stop. A ramp was pushed up to the front passenger door. A square box of a man exited the plane with two women and a handful of soldier types; Stephen couldn’t make out their faces as they were quickly hustled into a waiting SUV, but wrote them off as Julian’s people.

He waited a moment, watching as the vehicles drove off in a convoy. He hoped whoever had arrived had done so of their own accord. He knew the security would be tripled once they found he had escaped.

He paid the activities no more mind and drove off through the compound past a series of office buildings and houses before the road became encased by a dark forest. The road wound downward for two miles, not a streetlight or vehicle along the entire route, the dark world around him accenting his fear that he would be caught.

As Stephen approached the main guardhouse, he saw the gate. It wasn’t a small wooden gate that could easily be run through but a large three-rail metal design. There were two guards standing outside, talking. Stephen thought of his two options: try to talk his way out or run the gate. Both were fraught with danger. He was on the run again, but he had no idea where he was running to. He didn’t know where he was and for all he knew, it could be one hundred miles to any sign of civilization, or worse: he could be on an island. The guardhouse was one hundred yards off and the guards began to take notice of his approach. They broke off their conversation and turned their attention to him.

Stephen began to accelerate. He checked the pistol that he now clutched in his hand against the side of the door, out of sight.

The guardhouse was twenty yards off now. One of the guards slipped into the house while the other continued to watch Stephen.

And much to his surprise, the gate rose. The lead guard waved and headed back into his hut. All of Stephen’s fear, all of his anxiety, washed away as he waved back and drove off into the night.

Chapter 52

T
he Bombardier Jet leapt off the runway into
the blue evening sky, climbing out of Russia as fast as she could fly. Michael sat in one of the thick leather chairs, ice packs on his head and each arm. Busch and Simon were on the couch, an open bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the seat between them.