The Thieves of Faith (42 page)

And as he regained his frame of mind, a thought occurred to him: he had been so worried about being rescued, waiting to be saved, he neglected to think of Michael and the dangers he was facing. He realized Michael was confronting a much greater risk than he was sitting in this plush seaside suite. Arrest, injury, death—Michael was risking it all for a father he never knew, a father who had forsaken him.

And in an obtuse way, he thought maybe this wasn’t about Michael saving him, but the other way around. Maybe he had to save Michael, to finally be the father to him that he never was. He had the chance to regain a son he had lost and he wasn’t going to let it slip away this time.

Somehow, Stephen resolved, he would escape.

Chapter 45

P
aul Busch ran through the streets of Moscow,
alone and hunted. The anger and betrayal he felt toward Fetisov was only matched by the fear that he would never see his wife, Jeannie, and their two children again. She had told him not to go. She didn’t warn him, she didn’t demand, she simply told him not to. She was right.

On more than one occasion, she had told him that one of these days he was going to stick his neck out too far and get his head chopped off. He was hoping to prove her wrong. He hated when she was right. Which she turned out to be all the time. And it was one of the reasons he loved her. He loved waking up next to her in the morning. He loved that she was tougher than anyone he had ever met on the outside, but was kinder and gentler than anyone he had ever known on the inside. During all of his years on the police force, she never questioned his devotion to the job, never voiced her fears about his exposure to the dangers of the underworld. But ever since his retirement from the force she expected him to put the danger behind him, and that had proven difficult. He loved the thrill of the chase, the adrenaline, the pursuit of doing the right thing.

And that’s what he thought he was doing here in Russia: the right thing. Julian Zivera, a man many thought to be the essence of spiritual humanity, was blackmailing Michael with the life of his father, a father Michael never even knew. Well, Michael was his best friend and Busch was just as determined to help find the man and bring him back as Michael was. Busch excelled in these situations: it was a skill developed over years as a detective. Busch loved the hunt. But now he was the one on the run in a foreign city with a foreign language. And he hated being on this end of the chase.

Busch had exited the Russian military truck, leaving Nikolai gasping for breath. Busch half expected to be shot in the back as he ran, but the shot never came. He did his best to pinpoint the source of the sirens and found them only two blocks from where they had been sitting in traffic. All congregated around the ambulance that had raced out of the Kremlin.

Busch watched the mass of soldiers holding back the onlookers while their brethren held their quarry at bay in the middle of the street. Michael was surrounded by at least fifty soldiers who remained a good twenty feet back from him. They were all waiting. No one moved. And then a single man parted the group and approached Michael. There was no doubt in Busch’s mind who the man was. He had seen him up close. Though they did not formally meet, they would know each other on sight at any time. They had stood less than ten feet apart, face-to-face. The man was muscular; his silver-flecked black hair didn’t move in the breeze. His sleeves were rolled up, he carried two monstrous pistols as he walked toward Michael. His tattooed arms were the surest of giveaways. He was the man dressed as a doctor. He was the man in the gas mask who shot his way through the bulletproof glass, out of the smoke-filled operating theater. There was no doubt in his mind that this Russian would do nothing short of removing Michael from this earth.

Busch stood there, trying to blend into the crowd of onlookers. His heart raced for Michael’s safety; he couldn’t bear to watch his execution, but remained riveted nonetheless. He couldn’t hear their exchange of words and almost shouted as he watched the man raise his arm to strike. Busch thought Michael was surely about to die but breathed a warped sigh of relief as he was only knocked unconscious. They loaded Michael into the back of one of the trucks and drove out of there to what Busch thought could only be one place: the Kremlin.

Busch remained until the crowd dispersed and then fell into the pedestrian traffic along Viskya ulitsa. He was alone, on his own, and his best friend was now in danger of being killed behind the secretive walls of the seat of the Russian government. His thoughts of saving Michael’s dad, of finding Genevieve, of ensuring the safety of the box, all became secondary to the impossible task before him. He had get to back into the Kremlin to save Michael; he didn’t know how, but he would find a way.

Chapter 46

M
ichael awoke in a darkened room. A single
low-wattage bulb hung from the ceiling. He was on a springless cot; the smell of death and urine rising out of the thin mattress assaulted his senses. The room was at least thirty feet square, formed of stone block walls, with a narrow off-center door at the far end with a small barred window to what he imagined to be a hall filled with similar accommodations.

Iron chains, thick with rust, hung from the ceiling, their manacles wide open, waiting for a new captive. A wooden cross, its thick timbers adjoined at the center by heavy rope, was propped against the wall, its arms darkened with ancient bloodstains. A large wooden head press lay before a chair, caked in centuries-old human remains.

There was no doubt where Michael was; it was well marked on Genevieve’s subterranean map but he had no reason to seek it out. Its location had been thought lost till this day. But that obviously was not the case. As Michael looked around at the devices, he thought of the men and women who were subjected to the most heinous of acts, many of which were perpetrated for the simple pleasure of the room’s designer. Ivan the Terrible’s torture chamber had attained mythic status, but what Michael was looking at was no myth.

His head throbbed from where Raechen struck him and from the swirling memories of betrayal: how he saw the warning signs too late, how he didn’t question Fetisov’s true allegiance from the beginning. As he ran the events over again in his mind, it had to be Fetisov. He had to be the one who had Genevieve. He had sent Lexie into the cistern to find the golden box ahead of them; Fetisov was the one that said he knew where the ambulance was going; he told Michael where to go; he knew the contents of the decoy emergency vehicle. God only knew where Genevieve was or if she was even alive.

And then one thought erased all the others: Susan. If they had him they might be going for her, and that he couldn’t bear. There was no doubt in his mind that if someone stole Genevieve from them, they were surely also going for the box. What type of salvation could be hidden in something so small that it was worth killing for?

He prayed that by some miracle Susan would somehow manage to get out of Moscow; that Busch was still free; that Martin had the wherewithal to spirit them away before the harsh forces of Russia came down. But somehow he knew that wasn’t the case. The fear, the anticipation, was killing Michael. Susan was in the greatest of dangers. He had to get out of here, but realized the chances were slim to none. He knew firsthand that things could be hidden away in the Kremlin for five hundred years without ever being found.

He heard footsteps in the hall, coming closer, a lone individual. Michael sat up on the cot, his neck stiff and aching. He ran his hands up his face and through his brown hair as if it would somehow clear his mind and make room for a solution to be found, but none came.

The lock of the cell door jostled and the door creaked open. Standing there was the man who struck him down, who had rendered him unconscious: Raechen.

“Do you realize you have killed my son?” the tall Russian said as he walked into the room.

Michael looked at him standing there in the subtle glow of the dim light. A deep sorrow matched the rage in his eyes. And Michael knew that was the worst of combinations. It made a man desperate, relentless, without sympathy. Michael had known the same feelings, brought about when his wife, Mary, was taken ill. He stopped at nothing to save her.

“I don’t understand,” Michael muttered as he stood up.

“He is six years old and he is dying. You stole his last hope, the only chance he had.”

Michael looked at the Russian, confusion on his face.

“Those doctors you shot down, those doctors that you and your partners so ruthlessly killed in cold blood, were the only ones who could have saved him. He is my joy, he is the only good I see in this world and you stole his last chance, his and my last hope.”

The suffering on Raechen’s face became almost unbearable. Michael was overwhelmed by his words. He began to see the passion that drove the man before him; it was the same passion that had driven him to save Mary.

“I’m sorry…I would never intentionally hurt your son.”

Raechen grabbed Michael by the throat. “When you killed those doctors you killed my son.”

“We didn’t kill anyone,” Michael gasped. Busch had said things had gone wrong but he never said anything about—

Raechen slammed his fist into Michael’s face, knocking him back onto the cot. Michael knew fighting back would be a useless action, accelerating the timetable of his death.

Raechen looked about the cell. “This chamber, this room, could tell stories of agony that would stop a man’s heart. I thought to employ some of Ivan’s devices on you but my time is short and I have a far better method than these five-hundred-year-old pieces of machinery.”

The Russian grabbed Michael by the arm and dragged him out of the cell into a long stone hallway. The battleship-gray floor was covered in dust, evidence of lack of use. The halls were lit by intermittent bulbs strung from the ceiling in a makeshift manner, casting this forgotten world in heavy shadows. But for two metal chairs, a table with a boiling pot of coffee on it, and a half-empty bottle of vodka, there was no sign of civilization.

Raechen pulled Michael down the long, dim hallway past several more cells until they arrived at an open elevator. Two guards flanked the door, rifles held across their chest as they stared straight ahead. Raechen said nothing as he thrust Michael into the elevator cab, and hit a button. Michael kept his head down but was committing everything to memory: the size of the cell hallway, the size of the guards, the weapons they carried. The elevator floor buttons were marked in Russian numbers, eight of them, all subterranean, Michael imagined. They rose three levels and exited into a bright, harshly white hall lined with conference rooms and offices. Michael was led into a room filled with security monitors, computers, and electronic equipment. He realized that but for the two guards that had flanked his cell, he hadn’t seen another soul.

Raechen threw Michael down into a hard-backed wooden chair, quickly handcuffing him to the solid oak arms. A television, tuned to static snow, sat in front of him. Raechen hit a button and suddenly there were images of mayhem. Doctors, men and women in white coats and surgical scrubs, quivering, spasming as their bodies were riddled with bullets. Though the sound was off, Michael imagined their screams. There was a lone gunman, his gun flashing and jerking with every shot. Michael grew nauseous, his stomach turning over at the sight of these innocents’ slaughter. He didn’t need to see the assassin’s face, he knew who it was: Nikolai Fetisov.

“That’s not me,” Michael said.

Raechen stepped in front of Michael, his eyes cold, boring into him. The Russian tilted his head, and withdrew a knife and a lighter from his pocket. “You may not have pulled the trigger, no. But that doesn’t excuse you from guilt.”