The Thieves of Faith (16 page)

And along the bottom, in the depths of the map, adjacent to an underground river, was the depiction of three enormous vaults, large rooms with an ominous portrayal of death hanging over each doorway. Michael didn’t need to be able to read Russian or Latin. It was clear to him what was being depicted and where he would have to go if he was to find the box that he would need to exchange for his father. The box that literally meant life or death for Stephen Kelley.

“What are you going to do?” Busch asked, waving Genevieve’s note at Michael.

Michael hadn’t moved from the couch since he read the documents of the Kremlin and studied the map provided by Genevieve. He had thumbed through the files, astonished at their content and detail, trying to digest the task before him.

“Did you hear me?” Busch asked again.

“You read the note, what do you think?” Michael said.

“I don’t know, everything seems so conveniently coincidental,” Busch said, his voice thick with skepticism. “This is insane, no offense…but the Kremlin. You can’t pull this off.”

“I don’t know. Under no circumstances are we to let Susan see this map.”

Busch folded it and the painting and placed them back in the case. “He’s your father, Michael. What are you going to do?”

“My father is dead,” Michael said. “As is my mother. Kelley’s blood may run through my veins, but he is not the man who raised me. The day he gave me up he also gave up the right to call me son.”

“That’s cold. Remember, you came looking for him. Sounds to me like the guilt talking, like someone’s trying to build a wall around their heart so they can absolve themselves of responsibility.” Busch eased up his harsh response and leaned into Michael. “I thought you wanted to find him.”

“That’s what I thought, but maybe…” Michael felt Mary’s letter in his pocket. “Maybe I was doing it for the wrong reason. I don’t think he wanted to be found.”

“Stephen is a good man.”

Michael turned to see Susan walking in the room.

“He doesn’t deserve this,” Susan said. “If you knew him—”

“I don’t know him and I don’t know if he ever wanted to know me. He seemed to know who I was but he never came looking for me,” Michael said with a shake of his head. “I think it is pretty fair to say his only interest in me is saving him.”

Susan stared at Michael, and walked over to him, all the while trying to contain her rage. “Come with me.”

Michael looked toward Busch and back to Susan. He stood and followed her out of the library, down the hall, and up the big sweeping set of stairs. They walked past stunning photographs of rivers and mountains, wildlife and bustling cities. It was a pictorial gallery the length of the stairway that continued along the upstairs hall.

“He is a good man, Michael.”

“Listen, I’m sure he is, but thirty plus years is an awfully long time to ignore your flesh and blood. Where are we going?”

Susan led him into and through Stephen’s elegant, dark-wood bedroom to his large double-wide closet. “If I can’t convince you”—she pulled back the floor-length mirror and opened the heavy safe-room door—“maybe he can.”

Susan entered the room, opened two drawers in the wall console, turned, and walked out, leaving Michael alone staring into the darkened space. He flipped on the light and stepped in. Michael paid no mind to the guns or security measures; he ignored the bottles of wine and boxes of Cuban cigars. He had installed several of these types of rooms for clients. Fully equipped bunkers for emergencies that ended up being nothing more than storage for clothes, knickknacks, and the occasional piece of contraband.

Michael simply stared at the wall, at the fastidious arrangement of pictures, losing himself in the display before him. He looked at photos, every one of them of a single subject, one individual. It was all him: a collage from youth through college, a pictorial memoir. It was several minutes before Michael turned his attention to the large, overflowing drawers. There were two of them, oversized and deep. As he looked in, he was taken aback, for what he was looking at in the drawer, what he was looking at on the wall, was his life. Articles about him from his high school newspaper, pictures from games, team photos, class photos, his yearbooks. A complete chronology of his youth.

There were articles on his big come-from-behind football win against Stepinac, his top-shelf goal with less than a second left to win the hockey regionals, a program from a piano recital when he was eight years old. And there were more pictures of him, lots of them, with friends, birthdays, with the St. Pierres, all showing a happy, smiling family.

At first, Michael felt violated, the subject of some clandestine operation, his secretive nature throwing up a shield at all observers. He tried to calm his nerves, pulled a stack of papers and pictures from the drawer, and took a seat on the floor. He began reading, he read them all, looking at each shot as if it was new. And he realized the life he looked at was from the perspective of a man who cared but who could never come close. A father who admired a child from a distance, who stayed away for his son’s benefit. And Michael felt pain, pain for the man who watched from afar, who was denied the intimate sharing of accomplishment and success of his flesh and blood. This collection was not obsessive nor voyeuristic, it was a collection of pride, of admiration in a child that a father gave up for all the right reasons. And Michael realized that while Stephen may have given him up for adoption, he never abandoned him from his heart.

Michael sifted through every stitch of paper, picture, and memento. His father had a better historical record of him than even he possessed.

Finally, Michael gathered everything up and placed it all neatly back in the drawers. He took one last look at the room. It was painfully organized, just like Stephen’s appearance. Guns in racks, their respective ammunition in boxes stacked under each weapon. Cigars labeled and ordered by date, a typewritten list of emergency numbers next to the phone. Michael thought the man to be thorough, meticulous, and as such he was surprised. Michael had looked and looked again but there was one photo conspicuously absent. It was the only one he had ever actually longed for.

There was no picture of his mother.

“Oh, God,” the voice said.

Michael turned to see Busch standing in the doorway, looking at the pictures on the wall, of the memorial to Michael.

Busch looked at his friend, lost for words. He had seen displays like this before: criminals’ homes, displaying their obsessions with their victims. But this was not that. There was no doubt in Busch’s mind what this was. It was a wall of regret, a wall of what might have been. A window into the feelings of Stephen Kelley.

“I don’t think he ever gave you up,” Busch said softly.

Michael looked at Busch, lost for words. He flipped off the light and stepped from the safe room back into Kelley’s large closet.

“We’re going to Russia,” Busch said reluctantly. “Aren’t we?”

Michael and Busch walked out of the closet, through the bedroom, and headed down the stairs.

“Not to be the constant pessimist, Michael, and please don’t be offended, but this is well over your head. This is the Kremlin, for Christ’s sake. This isn’t some museum. This is the center of the Russian world. It’s the White House, the Capitol, and the Smithsonian wrapped inside a Russian fortress. This is going to take money, influence, and luck, all of which you and I are sorely lacking.”

“I can always count on you to spread a little sunshine.” Michael glanced at his friend.

“Yeah, well. I hate to add, how do you know they won’t kill this Stephen guy anyway?”

Michael walked back into the library, not knowing what to say as he held the fate of Stephen Kelley, of his father, in his hands. “As long as they think my intentions are to carry out their request, as long as they don’t have the box, they’ll keep him alive.”

“And what happens when they do get it?”

Michael thought a moment. “Don’t know yet, but I’ll know when the time comes.”

“I’m going with you.” Susan stood in the doorway, suspiciously looking back and forth between Michael and Busch.

Michael dismissed her with his eyes and a shake of his head before turning back to Busch. “I’ve got to find a way over there—”

“I don’t think you heard me,” Susan interrupted.

“I heard you,” Michael said without looking her way. He continued talking to Busch. “I’ve got less than sixteen hours—”

Susan stalked into the room, stopping directly in front of Michael. “I’m going with you or I am calling the police.”

“We have the police here.” Michael pointed at Busch.

“Spare me your lies,” Susan shot back.

“Lies?” Michael asked with a confused smile. “And what would you tell the police?”

“That five minutes after an ex-con visited this house, Stephen was kidnapped.” Her accusing eyes bore into Michael. “I’ll let them put the pieces together.”

“I thought you were an educated woman.” Michael stared back. “That would pretty much ensure his death.”

“What makes you think you can do this?” Susan’s question was more of an accusation.

“For one, the people that kidnapped Kelley do. They wouldn’t put me in this position if they didn’t have faith in my abilities.”

“Abilities?” Susan shoved an old newspaper clipping in his face. It was the article about Michael’s arrest in New York several years back. “You’re a thief, a common criminal.” Susan was beginning to lose control as she tore into Michael. “This is your fault. This has nothing to do with Stephen and everything to do with you. His life couldn’t be in worse hands.”

“Maybe you should calm down,” Michael said as he looked between the newspaper and Susan. “There is a lot you don’t know—”

“I know enough,” Susan raged on, barely controlling her anger. “You care about nothing but yourself, you have no sense of morality. I could see why Stephen would deny knowing you.”

Michael’s eyes narrowed. “Morality? Listen, for someone sleeping with her boss—”

Susan slapped Michael across the face. Hard. He didn’t flinch. At first it shocked him and then it enraged him. The room fell silent. She drew back her hand again and swung it around but this time, Michael stopped it, catching her hand in his. He waited a moment and through gritted teeth said, “Listen, I’m sorry about your boyfriend—”

“He is not my boyfriend.” Susan violently yanked her hand away from Michael and walked across the library. She took a long breath, leaned against the desk, and stared at the picture on the shelf of the young man in a suit standing next to Stephen Kelley.

“Do you know what it is like to lose someone?” Susan asked, continuing to stare at the picture.

“Are you kidding me?” Michael said, his own wounds now exposed.

“To have someone you love suddenly torn from your life, ripped from this earth?”

Michael just stared at her, unwilling to go into the death of his wife.

“It’s been almost nine months. Peter was one of those people that could just do it all. Modestly brilliant. Finished high school at sixteen, Harvard at nineteen, Yale Law at twenty-two. But that is all inconsequential next to his heart. He never thought of himself, always putting others first. When his mother died, he was fourteen. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, he let the pain of loss help him to grow and he became even closer to his father. He wasn’t arrogant, didn’t even know the word ‘pride,’ always said
we
instead of
I
, never took credit, always shared or deflected it.” A melancholy smile arose on Susan’s face.

“He was being groomed to take over his father’s business. He followed in his footsteps, spent two years at the DA’s office; in less than five years he had worked in every legal division of his dad’s firm, knew everything better than his mentors. And yet he shunned the titles that his father thrust upon him, deferred credit to those who made lesser contributions. He was one of the truly selfless people in this world.”

Susan paused a moment, her eyes focused on the pictures of Peter that scattered the shelves. “Every April, Stephen and Peter would stand on Main Street in Hopkinton in the middle of a pack of twenty thousand. Four hours and twenty-six miles later they’d cross the finish line in Boston, side by side, as father and son.” Susan finally looked back at Michael, a sad smile on her face. “And the funny thing…Peter never told his father, he hated running more than anything else.”

Michael and Busch silently watched the roller coaster of emotions play through Susan’s words.

“Peter left work late one night, after helping a first-year associate with a brief.” Susan paused, she hung her head, her eyes welling up. “Car hit him head-on, his father could hardly identify the body.

“Stephen’s pride, his reason for living, his only son died that day. And now you, the antithesis of Peter, the representation of everything he was not, arrive on the front step of this very house, the house that Peter grew up in.”

Michael said nothing as the phrase cut through his heart.

“That poor man has spent nine months grieving his son; you’d be cold if you had such a loss. He was just getting it back together.”

“And what are you? The loyal employee looking to fill the void in her boss’s life?” Michael asked.

“Actually, no. I was looking out for him as if he was my flesh and blood. Stephen’s my father-in-law. Peter Kelley was my husband.” The tears silently streamed down Susan’s cheeks. “And now, they’re probably going to kill Stephen even if you do what they say.”

“Probably,” Michael said. He watched the shock of the remark register through the sorrow on Susan’s face. As angry as she made him, he pitied her, he empathized with her pain, her loss. It was a wound that would never truly heal and cause a host of emotions to rise without warning. He looked to Busch, who hung his head, and finally looked back at her and spoke softly. “But I’m not going to let that happen.”

Busch watched the change in Michael’s demeanor.

Michael sat on the couch and proceeded to tell Susan exactly what was going on. Michael explained the ransom, the antique box sought by an obsessive, the bounty for the return of Stephen. He told her about Genevieve and Julian, he told of the complications that he would face in the Kremlin. He explained it all. Everything right down to their slim chances.