The Thieves of Heaven (54 page)

Finster had the advantage on the American policeman; he was off the dance floor, only twenty meters to the door. He had lost sight of the cop, not that he was of any consequence. No man had ever really created worry in Finster, he was sublimely confident in himself and his abilities. His only thoughts now were on his keys and keeping them out of the hands of the thief and the priest. Ten meters to the door and he hit a wall. A human wall. Busch was there, all two hundred and sixty pounds of him. “Move!” Finster screamed over the music, his voice the sound of breaking glass.

Busch was silent. He stared at this man who so many held in awe. A man who had created such fear in Michael.

“Do you realize who I am? I’ll blind you before you can blink.” Finster could barely contain his verbal rage, yet his body remained calm, without motion.

Busch finally saw the man—not his picture, not some televised broadcast, this was Finster up close. There was something frighteningly unnatural about him, a foreboding in his stillness which contrasted oddly with his boiling wrath. He possessed an aura that felt like a repulsive field around him. And it occurred to Busch when he looked into Finster’s eyes that they were
wrong
. Like nothing he had ever seen before. He couldn’t explain it, but they didn’t lie. They weren’t the eyes of a man; they were the eyes of evil. Against all logic, Busch finally believed what Michael and Simon had fought so hard to convince him of. Whatever one’s religion, this was the embodiment of darkness. But, at this particular moment, he didn’t care. “You can’t blind me. Not here,” Busch replied.

Finster didn’t comprehend: he tried to barge straight through Busch. But the giant wasn’t about to budge.

“You have no idea where you are,” Busch said with confidence.

Finster stepped within inches of Busch’s face. “Out of my way before—”

“You’re on holy ground.” Busch cut him off. “This place”—he waved his hands around—“used to be a church. Consecrated in the name of God. Sanctuary.”

Finster looked around, baffled, and began to seethe. Lo and behold, it was a church. The fifteen-foot windows depicted the Stations of the Cross in stunningly detailed stained glass. At the far end, upon a raised platform, was a marble altar on which the DJ spun his music. The seats: old wooden pews. The balcony: a choir loft. The club’s shape was now obvious: that of a cross.

“Personally, I think it’s sick, but tonight it serves my purpose,” Busch said, cracking the beginning of a Cheshire smile.

“Which is?” Finster’s anger was finally manifesting itself physically, his face going red, his body quivering.

Busch’s arm snapped out, grabbing the older man’s arm, squeezing it tightly to emphasize his point. “To keep you here, blind and powerless.” Finster struggled but couldn’t break Busch’s grip. “You’re trapped in the one place you have been forbidden to enter…and…there is no way out for you.”

Busch smiled ear to ear. He had beaten the one they said couldn’t be beaten.

Michael was fifty feet up and moving through the trees. His movement was effortless but stealth proved difficult. The control he mustered to remain silent within the flexing branches sapped his energy. He was taking advantage of darkness and the distant gunfire to work his way across the treetops. The wound to his arm was minor; only a little blood seeped from it. Still, his fingertips sore, his feet on the verge of failure, he wondered if he would ever get back to getting the keys before Finster returned home.

The sound of crunching leaves rose up from the forest floor. Michael froze. Moving in the shadows below, he could make out the shape of a man, hunkered on the ground, hiding tree to tree. One of Finster’s soldiers. Michael propped himself between two branches, wedging himself silently in place. He drew his rifle off his shoulder and pointed downward. It would have to be the first shot. He needed to preserve his position from any other stalkers. If he gave himself away, he was surely dead; there was no other place to go now that he was up here. Briefly, he debated letting the guy pass and then climbing down. He hadn’t realized how compromised he was. Sitting fifty feet up, he’d become a restricted, stationary target.

The man stopped directly below him. Michael braced himself, aimed at the crown of the guard’s head.

The guard fell where he stood, the bullet careening downward through his skull, through his throat, through his body. Michael looked about. “Two,” he whispered. His personal body count.

He waited a brief moment, then descended. He loved to climb but had gotten so used to brick and stone buildings he had forgotten about the joy of trees from his youth. Terrific handholds, branches for footholds. He thought it would be nice to be a child—then at least he wouldn’t be here. He jumped the last eight feet, landing next to the body. He leaned in to check the soldier.

“Don’t move.” Michael couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. “Hands in the air.” Someone behind him removed the rifle from his back. The butt of a gun crashed his head, tumbling him forward. “How many?” the soldier snarled.

Michael said nothing and was rewarded with another blow to the head.

“Answer me, you son of a bitch.” The soldier’s name was Jax but he never offered it up.

The gun rammed Michael’s lower back, sending him crashing to his knees. Sharp pain shot up from his kidneys. Michael lost his breath. He heard the loud metallic ratchet of the rifle being cocked. The soldier jammed the gun in his ear, pressing him in the dirt, the smell of pine needles everywhere.

“You got ten seconds,” the mercenary spat.

“OK.” Michael’s mind was racing. “I’ll show you where they are.”

“Get up.”

It was an effort, but Michael made it to his feet and headed in what he prayed was the right direction. “Got some operation here, my friend,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. The soldier said nothing. “Must have a whole army in there, huh?” Michael continued, his arms in the air. The mercenary’s footfalls were heavy in his ear. Michael had no doubt that the man would shoot him in the back given the slightest excuse. They emerged in the clearing where Simon had been, but of course, he wasn’t there now. The smell of gunfire hung heavy in the air, shells scattered the ground. You could see the scorched rock where Simon’s rifle had rested.

“Well?” Jax snapped, suspecting he had been had.

Michael looked about, no idea where his partner in mayhem had gone. He looked toward the darkened mansion, nothing more than a monstrous shadow blotting out the night sky.

“Keep moving.” The mercenary jabbed him with the gun barrel in the direction of the house. As they stepped on the drive, others stepped from the shadows. Five of them, armed to the teeth: sidearms and rifles, a survival knife strapped to each of their legs.

“Anyone else?” Jax called out to his comrades.

“Nobody,” some buzz-cut soldier shot back. “Figure there was only one?”

“At least two,” Jax replied grimly.

Michael couldn’t tell who was doing the talking, but none bore the air of a leader. Hope sprang up a little in his heart: at least they didn’t have Simon. Then again, the priest could be lying somewhere swimming in his own blood.

“Where’s the colonel?” Jax asked.

“Haven’t seen him since before the firefight.”

“What’re you going to do with him?” One of the mercenaries pointed to Michael.

“Squeeze him, find out what he was up to, then use him for target practice.” Jax turned to Michael. “So what’s so important about this house that you took on twenty-one of us?”

“It’s not twenty-one anymore, is it?” Michael retorted. As his face hit the driveway, he regretted the macho statement. He didn’t know who hit him, but this time it was more than one. He curled into a ball as the blows rang down. The kicks to his sides were the worst; he could feel the cracked ribs floating about, the pain relived with every excruciating breath. The metallic taste of blood rose in his mouth as he fought to hold on to consciousness. The mercenaries had gathered around him like a pack of ravenous hyenas, laughing and cackling as they took cheap shots at their helpless prey. As Michael barely clung to consciousness, he realized their foolish questions told more about them than they’d ever learn from him.

“How many?”

“Who do you work for?”

“What are you after?”

“Why hit a peaceful businessman?”

They’re clueless,
thought Michael. These men knew nothing of Finster, thinking him the mild-mannered business mogul. They had no idea what sat below the house. Michael craned his neck upward, defiantly staring at Jax, his interrogator. It was a cold face, lifeless, what little hair the soldier possessed fell in gray wisps about his ears. And his eyes…his eyes were a little south of sanity. Michael heard Jax mumble something about a rope and his neck, but it all turned to white noise as he blacked out.

Chapter 32

B
usch and Finster were toe to toe, eye to eye.
Busch’s smile would have done his dentist proud. The entire club was oblivious to their confrontation. The music still pounded, the dancers still gyrated. Busch hadn’t succumbed to Simon’s beliefs earlier and thought Michael’s plan foolish. Yet here he stood, crushing the man’s arm and all Finster could do was struggle uselessly.

A panic had overtaken Finster, one that he had never known in all his years. His mind raced, fruitlessly seeking a solution. He had never felt so weak, so powerless. He was trapped in this oppressive place. The images on the stained glass were screaming at his dark heart, the marble walls were closing in. This huge man’s smile of contempt was choking the life out of him.

And then it hit him. Finster lifted his slumping head in triumph, stared into Busch’s soul…and smiled. And then Finster started to boil. Literally. His eyes flickered, rolling back in his head, nothing but the whites showing. His hands trembled and shook, his mouth fell open, slack-jawed, foam forming on his lips. His body began to quiver violently, like a dance bordering on an epileptic seizure. His head snapped back and forth. And then he was down on the floor. Viciously shuddering like a pad of butter on a hot skillet, fists clenched, head thrashing side to side, slamming against the dance floor. People started to take notice, stepping out of the way, making room for what they thought was another overdose.

Busch’s eyes went from arrogant triumph to utter fear. He didn’t know what to think as Finster spasmed uncontrollably at his feet. A crowd started to gather, forming a circle, some fascinated, some frightened. A woman’s scream cut through the music. Busch was shoved out of the way by three burly bouncers who picked up Finster, carrying the spasming man to a couch in one of the grottoes. This was obviously routine to these guys, probably a few went down each night, overdosed, on the verge of death. Their job was to make sure the death didn’t happen within the club. They could ill afford the questions of an investigation, what with the forms of recreation partaken of here.

The swelling crowd followed them with morbid curiosity to the lounge, fascinated by the poor sod who so entertained and enraptured them earlier. Here was a celebrity in their midst and maybe, if they were lucky, they could say they saw him die. Busch was shoved back and back, farther from the action.

Quicker than Busch could ever have imagined, a stretcher appeared. The bouncers effortlessly lifted Finster and strapped him to the gurney. The crowd was huge now, nearly half the club crammed around; gaping, they stood twenty deep and Busch was the twenty-first out. He shouted to be let through but what could be heard over the still-pounding music was ignored. He was a powerless American cop in a foreign land; he was working without sanction, authority, or jurisdiction, and he could not have been farther away from Finster as they wheeled him out the door. More bouncers materialized out of nowhere, holding back the curious as the medics made way for the famous stricken industrialist.

Busch fought his way through the sea of people emerging onto the street, past the paparazzi, past the throngs of gawking velvet-rope hopefuls, finally reaching the sidewalk only to watch the taillights of the ambulance, and Finster’s limousine right behind it, vanish into the night.