The Thieves of Heaven (40 page)

Chapter 22

T
he street outside the little stone church was
relatively empty, relatively silent. This twist of fate wasn’t lost on Michael as he stood looking out through one of its stained glass windows. Alone in this silent place which smelled of incense and wax, he couldn’t help but remember a time when it all meant something to him. When he could recite the Mass like it was something out of his high school football playbook, mouthing the prayers spoken by Father Damico, the stooped old priest with the penchant for gnocchi and sambuca. Entering his parish church had once provided Michael with a sense of relief, of comfort, of somewhere he could always come to pray, to ask for help or a favor, or just to talk. There he had spoken to God. And He listened. As a child, Michael could swear He had even talked back. It had been his own little private miracle.

But as Michael had gotten older, he found that God didn’t listen much anymore. In fact, from what he had seen, He didn’t listen at all. As his world opened up and he saw it for what it really was, he had felt betrayed: he had never experienced a miracle. What he thought was God’s voice had just been his own subconscious, talking back to him, producing the answers that he already knew deep down.

Everything he was taught as a child, everything he believed in growing up, was a lie, like those titans in Greek mythology or the Norse tales of Thor and Odin. God was just another fairy tale that the fearful clung to in times of need, giving them a phony anchor to hold on to, providing slick answers to the unexplainable. All the pomp and circumstance, all of the holier-than-thou attitudes of the priests: they had become the very essence of the hypocrisy to him, they were just the manifestation of the lie, perpetuating a cruel myth like all other myths in an uncaring world. Everyone was so sure that their God was true, that they were the righteous ones, that they and their followers were the only ones on the planet who would find peace and comfort in the afterlife.

But then he had met Mary and he’d indulged her beliefs, never daring to tell her his true feelings. He was in love and, well, the things we do for love. He would sit through weekly Masses not in prayer but in thought, his own little ritual, time to think about Mary and life, children and work. He went through the motions he had learned so well as a child, all the while keeping his opinions to himself. But when he had learned of her diagnosis, he could pretend no longer. He was right. God didn’t exist.

Yet, here he sat. In church. Running from something, from someone, he couldn’t explain. He reached up and fingered Mary’s gold cross. He felt nothing spiritual in it, but he did feel
her
. The little gold trinket was Mary’s and she had asked him to wear it, had begged him never to take it off. And he wouldn’t: not because he believed in what the cross stood for, but for what the necklace meant. It was Mary’s. And maybe it would protect him, not because of any divine meaning, but because it would remind him why he was sitting here in Germany, hiding here in this church: for love. Here, not because what he believed, but for what Mary believed.

Noon. A few of the daily faithful had come in throughout the morning, lighting candles, kneeling in silent thought and prayer. Michael worked his way behind the altar and found the red neon exit sign eerily out of place in the two-hundred-year-old sanctuary. He slowly eased the door open. No one around. He headed down the stairs.

There was a vendor on the corner selling pretzels and soda; it had been ten hours since his last bag of airplane peanuts. He was hungry, thirsty, and tired. Sleep could wait but his stomach couldn’t. A little one-block detour wouldn’t be of any consequence.

He never even made it across the street. A dozen police cars screeched to a halt in front of him, disgorging trigger-happy policemen—
Polizei
—of all shapes and sizes. They encircled him screaming in German, waving their nine-millimeter custom-SIG-Sauers. Michael didn’t need a translation. It was pretty clear in his mind what they wanted. He raised his hands in surrender.

Hotel Friedenberg overlooked Tiergarten Platz. Sixty years old, she’d fallen into utter disrepair in 1961. When the Berlin Wall went up, she went down. The Omega Group had purchased her in ’90, spent close to ten million in refurbishments. Not real fancy but nice: spacious rooms, big swimming pool, health club, and room service. The minibars were stocked with liquor, nuts, and those little five-dollar Cokes that you end up cracking open at three in the morning, and which you completely regret when you get the bill.

The business-class suite was broken into separate sleeping and working areas. Two king-sized beds were set toward the back of the room, while near the door was a small conference table, desk, and seating area. The room was tastefully decorated for a hotel room, but you wouldn’t remember the muted maroon, brown, and yellow leaf pattern four minutes after you checked out.

“Michael?” Simon called out as he heaved five large duffel bags on the bed; the double-tip would never compensate the bellboy for his ruined back.

Simon opened the blinds, stealing a moment to soak up the sun as it poured in on his face. He checked the phone: no blinking light, no messages. He grabbed his briefcase off the bed, sat at the table, and pulled out the hand-drawn plans of Finster’s house that Michael had labored on during their flight. Simon could barely focus. He was beyond exhausted, it had been at least twenty-four hours since he’d slept. He had so much work ahead of him; if he couldn’t stay sharp he would fail. It would be his first failure but in what he did, you failed only once. And a failure now would not only reap consequences for himself.

He debated. Study the plans? Unpack? Sleep? He would do it all but not necessarily in that order.

After buying all the crosses in the tiny religious shop, Simon had found Stingline’s right where the nice shopkeeper had said it would be. He had frequented the place several years back when in need of “certain” equipment. Today, he was in need again. Stingline’s was a gun shop but it was also a Gun Shop. The kind that you went to when the other gun shops wouldn’t or couldn’t sell you something. The display cases were filled with hunting rifles, bows and arrows, and, for the military wannabes, fatigues. The real stuff, however, was kept out of sight. Herr Stingline was ex-Red Army, Baader-Meinhof, or IRA, depending on who you spoke to. Word was he was fifty-two. Simon knew for a fact that he was sixty-eight; he always put together a thorough dossier before dealing with unknowns. And whether Stingline was fifty-two, sixty-eight, or eighty-five, the man could still kick the lungs out of you before you even had a chance to breathe. The German was soft-spoken and oddly hairless. The fever took his hair when he was eight and the taunting he’d received had been enough to make him tough as a junkyard dog by the age of nine. He had operated since ’86, which meant that he had to have some kind of quid pro quo with the former East German government and their enforcers, the Stasi. The Stasi were the secret police, the East German form of the KGB, poking their noses in everyone’s lives. Privacy was not a factor in the former Republic; it simply didn’t exist…anywhere. Meaning that Stingline’s op was known and probably even supplied by the government. But as long as Simon had known him, since just after the fall of the Wall, the old man was never a snitch.

He didn’t ask how, but Stingline had pulled together Simon’s shopping list in less than fifteen minutes: four hands-free radios, four nine-millimeter Glocks with custom silencers; fifty boxes of ammo; two Heckler and Koch PDWs that fired eighteen rounds per second; two Israeli Galil sniper rifles; four head-mounted nightscopes, four bowie knives, six stung grenades, and a box of Power Bars. Simon always bought in fours and twos and he always paid in euros—the least traceable currency at the moment. He’d left Stingline’s with everything he wanted and without a question asked or answered.

The knock at the door pulled him back to the moment. “Yeah?” He quickly headed for the bags on the bed.

“Room service.”

Simon pulled out one of the Glocks and a box of ammo, no time to check the weapon; he just loaded a couple of rounds and prayed. He hugged the wall, working his way carefully to the door. He didn’t bother with the peephole: no sense in turning his eye into a bull’s-eye. He swung open the door to slowly reveal…

A busboy with a cart of food. The kid couldn’t have been more than nineteen, the cover-up Clearasil barely hiding his acne. “It is our custom to present each new guest vith a complimentary food and beverage cart,” the kid said in a thick accent. He fidgeted with the silver cart, his sweaty palms leaving fingerprints.

Simon stared at him while slipping his gun into his back waistband. He motioned him inside, leaving the door open. “Sorry. I’m a little tired. This really isn’t necessary.”

“Sample vines and cheeses for your pleasure, sir.” The busboy rolled the cart into the room, uncovering a selection of soft and hard cheeses, some smoked sausage, fruit, and two bottles of red wine, which on closer inspection Simon found to be of decent vintage. Maybe a glass wouldn’t be a bad idea after unpacking; it might at least help him sleep.

“May I open the vine for you?” The boy smiled, pleased that his English was being understood.

“That’s OK, I’ve got some work to do first, I can manage.” Simon slipped the kid a couple euros and led him toward the open door.

And that’s when it happened. The door slammed shut. The shutters smashed closed. The blinds came crashing down. The room was instantly drenched in blackness. As Simon looked around, he cursed his eyes, trying to force them to adjust to the absence of light. He crouched low and rolled away from the last spot he’d seen the busboy. Unsure if anyone else had entered, he held his breath, reaching out with his mind, trying to feel. How many were there? He strained his hearing; there was no further movement. Slowly his pupils grew, shadowed images started to appear, the conference table, the couch…Across the room, near the desk, a crack of light squeezed through the shutters. Obscured in shadow, the busboy stood gaping at him as if the room was lit with two-hundred-watt bulbs. The kid knew exactly where Simon was, but made no move.

Seconds, long as hours, ticked by. Neither said a word. Simon could now make out more than shapes, he could see enough to move freely, enough to see the young boy’s face. And suddenly as if the shadows and light were playing tricks, it was the face of Finster.

Reflex took over. Simon fired both rounds, emptying the gun, hitting Finster square in the left eye.

Simon stepped up and back from his crouch. Finster was bleeding, of this Simon was sure. Blood and gore poured down his face like buckets of scarlet tears. Yet the German didn’t fall. He didn’t move at all.

And in a casual motion Finster reached up…and reached into his eye. His forefinger and thumb plucked first one then the second bullet from his mutilated socket. Where once an eye stared out at Simon, there was now nothing more than torn flesh and splintered bone, a crevice awash with blood. An opaque fluid separated itself from the redness, the pupil within still reacting to the light. The bullet should have passed clear through his brain but he was still standing.

Simon watched as the wounded man placed the two nine-millimeter slugs on the conference table and pushed them toward Simon.

“Please,” Finster said, politely. “Keep them.”

A sound softly rumbled. It was a sickly, moist sound, a flesh-on-flesh rubbing and tearing sound from somewhere deep inside Finster. It was his eye—it was reforming and Finster acted as if this were a nonevent, like hair growing back on a shaved head, a severed limb rejuvenating on a newt.

And suddenly it was whole. His two eyes again fixed on Simon, never blinking, never moving, always terrifying.

“How are those secrets, Simon?”

The emptied gun flew out of Simon’s hand, ripped away by some unseen force. The power was everywhere, filling the room, Simon could feel it, growing, overwhelming him like an electrical charge at maximum voltage. He looked around desperately for his duffel bag, the big blue one, the one filled with the crosses. He should have unpacked first….

“That’s right. You should have unpacked first,” Finster said, as if reading his mind, “instead of nodding off, losing focus.”

“You will not have my—”

“Soul?” Finster cut in with a laugh. “But I already do, Simon. You forfeited your soul long ago. Those hunched-over, Bible-thumping men in white collars couldn’t come close to offering someone like
you
absolution.” He raised a finger, as if sharing something precious. “Little hint here, Simon, my friend, kind of a trade secret: you must be
sorry
for your sins to receive
forgiveness….

“But I digress, that is not why I’m here. Your soul is not the prize I seek. My realm is nearly filled with the pitiful souls of this world. I’m returning to whence I came. I am going home.”

With that, Simon charged Finster, slamming into him, unleashing blow after blow to his body, to his face. Finster turned his head away and when he turned back, he was an old man, his clothes in shreds, his wrists bleeding from some kind of constraints. Grotesque white scars covered his face, some barely healed. Abruptly, Simon stopped his barrage of fists. He recoiled from the old man in fear. He gasped as if struck by a mighty fist.