The Thieves of Faith

by Richard Doetsch

  “Paul, Bob Delia. Sorry to bother you so late.”

  Busch sucked in his anger and paused a moment. “That’s all right, Captain.”

  “Looks like a car went through the rail of the Kensico bridge.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Too long. There were no witnesses but we’re figuring at least an hour.” The captain paused as if to acknowledge whoever may have met their death in such a horrible fashion. “Listen, the Bennett brothers are up in Maine for the week and we’ve got no one else to dive that deep.” He let his unasked question hang in the air. “And, Paul, if we wait until morning the press will be here and God knows they’d be drooling and disrespectful. I don’t want to see the poor souls pulled from the water on the morning news.”

  Busch had known Captain Delia twenty years now. They were never close but held a mutual respect for each other dating back to their beat-cop days watching each other’s backs.

  “If there was anyone else I could have called…”

  When Busch was on the force, he was the lead diver and handled the department’s boat whenever it was needed. He much preferred it to his usual police and parole work but the need for a marine unit was slim to none; he could count on one hand the number of times the boat was called out. “I’ll be down there in five. Do me a favor, though.”

  “Name it.”

  “Call Michael, tell him to bring his gear and meet me there.”

  Delia said nothing, the moment hanging in the air. Busch expected the reaction, as he always did. Michael had been one of Busch’s parolees and they subsequently became best of friends. It was Busch who flew off to help Michael on a job in Europe, a deed that stood in contrast to everything Busch stood for. But Michael was his best friend. When Busch had returned to the States battered and bruised, Delia looked for any excuse to throw Michael in jail and Busch along with him. But Busch stood by his friend, swearing to his innocence. Delia let it slide, out of deference to Busch’s years of service, but still held a deep suspicion of Michael.

  “Cap, you know I can’t dive alone,” Busch said.

  “I know.” The police captain relented with a sigh.

  Michael and Paul waded out into the reservoir, giant klieg lights sixty feet above on the bridge illuminating the waters around them. The bridge was blocked off from both sides and covered in emergency vehicles. There were no witnesses to the accident, but the thirty-foot-long skid marks ending at the section of missing guardrail left an obvious question mark.

  Michael had driven over the four-lane bridge thousands of times, enjoying the placid view of the wide-open waters ringed in thick forests. It had always offered a respite for him on troubled days, but now…As he looked at the moonlit waters, he knew it would never provide that solace again. He couldn’t stop imagining the car plummeting downward, its passengers screaming in terror for help that never arrived.

  Paul and Michael each wore a full complement of summer diving gear: single air tank, mask, fins, a buoyancy control vest. They each carried a knife, compass, dive bag, and large underwater high-intensity light.

  “I haven’t swam here since, God, it must be twenty years.” Michael looked up into the blinding klieg lights above as they kicked out. A small crowd had gathered on the bridge, watching in suspense.

  “And he thought we’d never work together again.” Paul waved to Captain Delia, who was on the shore with his deputies, an EMT, and an angry look on his face. “It had to kill him to ask for your help.” Paul adjusted his regulator. “What did he say?”

  “He said the only reason he was calling was he needed your help and, as a result, you needed my help. And not to infer that he was asking me for a thing.”

  “And…?”

  “I said, ‘What if I say no?’”

  Paul smiled. “Then…”

  “He told me to piss off and slammed down the phone.” Michael smiled ear to ear as he spit in his mask, rubbing the saliva about in the lens. “This is one way to cool off.”

  Paul and Michael tried to keep their humor up in preparation for what might lie ahead; it was a way to keep them focused and still their minds to deal with the eyes of the dead that they might momentarily be facing.

  They swam out to the car’s estimated point of entry into the lake, checked each other’s gear for the third time, nodded to each other, and started their descent. As Michael broke the surface, he flipped on his light, cleared his ears, and kicked down through the cool, fresh water. The Kensico Reservoir was the main feeding body to New York City, a man-made lake the result of flooding the town of Kensico back in 1915. Evidence of her former world could still be found haunting the bottom: ghostly trees, leafless arms reaching out to snag the unwary swimmer. Her silt-covered streets and brick buildings silently stood awaiting the return of their former inhabitants. A ghost town sitting in silent darkness. As Michael and Paul touched down at the bottom they set up a grid and methodically combed each section. As Michael swam due east, his light lit up the old brick police station, the bars on the windows covered in slime, fish swimming effortlessly through.

  He continued on and the hulk of a car emerged from the darkness. Michael pulled his knife, tapped on his tank to signal Paul, and made his approach. The Buick sat at a forty-five-degree angle propped up on a large rock, the driver’s-side door hanging open, the deployed air bags eerily floating about like specters. Michael took a moment and crossed himself, praying for whoever was inside and never had a chance, praying that whoever rode to their death was not a child. He shined his light through the open door and the tension he was feeling was suddenly released. He checked and rechecked, looking on the rear seat, along the floor, at the trapped bubbles dancing along the ceiling, and finally emerged from the vehicle, thankful there were no occupants. He worked his way around to the passenger side and tried the door. It wouldn’t budge, pinned in by some rocks. He swam back around and noticed something protruding from under the seat. He reached under and pulled out a tan leather purse. He shined his light upon it, unzipped it, and was more than surprised to find it almost empty. It was the absence of the usual that emphasized the importance of the single object. There was no comb or brush, no makeup, no wallet, credit cards, or cash, not even a nail file. Nothing inside but a single business card. Thankfully the water had not managed to wash away its ink.

  Michael floated above the lake bed, abruptly aware of the silence but for his now heavy Darth Vader–like breathing through his regulator. He didn’t recognize the name Stephen Kelley and took a closer look. As he shined his light upon it, a chill raced up his spine and grabbed hold of his mind. The air rushed from his lungs as if his tank had suddenly run dry. A panic overtook him; he forced himself not to hyperventilate. The address was clear under his light, under the ninety feet of water. The address was in Boston, an address that he had memorized not six hours earlier. The exact address written in Mary’s handwriting. 22 Franklin Street, Boston.

  Chapter 6

  Ilya Raechen sat in the corner of his motel room contemplating complications. He picked through his box of sweet-and-sour pork, running the last eight hours through his head. He had spent three months searching the globe for Genevieve Zivera and finally picked up her trail. The intel he was provided alluded to Westchester County, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts. The locations were somehow linked but he had failed to find the connection. He had debated about how to pick her up: whether to perform a snatch-and-grab or just wait until she arrived at her destination, cuff her, and go.

  His task weighed heavy on him. He needed to get home; he had promised his son he wouldn’t be gone more than a day. He had never broken a promise to him in all his years. And now, of all times, he couldn’t let him down. For his only son, Sergei, lay in bed, his condition deteriorating. He was all of six.

  When Raechen received the call, he protested, but his former superiors would hear nothing of it. They appealed to his pride, his duty, his honor. But what turned him, what brought Raechen out of retirement and back into t
he fold, was the appeal to his heart. They explained that if he was successful they would find a way to save his son from fate’s deadly hand.

  Raechen stood six two, the muscles on his fifty-two-year-old frame as strong and taut as when he was a twenty-six-year-old captain in the Red Army. His black hair had gone silver at the temples but his gray eyes were as sharp as in his youth. He had a hard Slovak look that came courtesy of his mother’s side of the family; his features were sharp and craggy, which only managed to repel and create fear. It was an appearance that served him well but had not worked out for his sisters.

  The man was a legend in the worst of circles. His reputation at covert activity on behalf of the USSR was thought to be fiction, for the deeds he performed for his superiors were nothing short of frightening. He was an assassin, adept at the extraction of information; he possessed the gift of languages, and was honored many times for his infiltration into foreign governments. Rumors of his death had persisted for years, but were obviously premature; word was he was assassinated for his change of philosophy. Instead the man without a conscience married and, with the birth of his son, developed a heart. But it seemed that heart had lately reverted to its prior state, as evidenced by his recent return.

  He put down his food and picked up the file on Genevieve Zivera. His orders were simple: find her and bring her in. While Raechen possessed the requisite skills for deeds far in excess of kidnapping, he much preferred to keep those abilities retired. He hadn’t killed in seven years and his mind was mercifully allowing the faces of his victims to fade from his nightmares. He had every intention to bring her in quietly, without incident, alive.

  Raechen had tailed Genevieve out of Boston, through Connecticut, and down into Westchester. When the two trucks sped by him, their lights off and horns blaring, his stomach tied itself in knots with a premonition. He helplessly watched the two Ford pickups race by his mark and come to a skidding halt on the other side, disgorging two armed men.

  He yelled out to no one as the events unfolded before him, as the woman tried to turn the Buick only to lose control and crash through the guardrail. He slammed on his brakes and watched as the car sailed out into the night sky, hitting the surface of the reservoir in an explosion of water. He couldn’t help thinking that hope for his son was vanishing along with the vehicle.

  He looked back at the two trucks only to see nothing but shadows as they sped off into the darkness.

  Raechen pulled his car along a dirt path well off the road, raced down through the woods, and dived in the lake hoping against hope that she was somehow still alive. He swam as fast as his arms would take him toward the bobbing car, only the trunk visible above the surface. He slid around the vehicle, fruitlessly trying to gain purchase. The water swirled about him as the hot engine steamed and the escaping air bubbles conspired to churn up a murky froth. He reached under the dark water, grabbing hold of the driver’s-side door handle only to be yanked under as the last bit of the car slipped beneath the surface.

  Down he went into the blackness, the car slowly descending, accelerating like a locomotive building up a head of steam. He held tight as he was sucked down with the three-thousand-pound wreck. His lungs burned until he saw stars, until he was on the point of blacking out, his eardrums ready to burst from the increasing pressure. Raechen buried his suffering, knowing that hers was far worse as she headed for the lake bottom trapped in a four-wheel coffin.

  He gripped the handle with both hands, his feet gaining purchase on the depth-diving car, as he wrenched open the door against the negative pressure. He reached into the mass of air bags, fumbling over Genevieve’s unconscious form, and released the seat belt, pulling her free as the car rode down into oblivion.

  Raechen sat in the motel picking through the last of his Chinese food, his gaze locked on Genevieve’s unconscious form upon the bed. She was out cold but alive. Two ribs broken, a contusion on her forehead. She would feel as if she had been caught in a stampede of elephants when she woke up twelve hours from now, but she would be alive. He withdrew a small brown bottle of halothane from his pocket and poured a teaspoon-sized amount onto a small towel. He tucked the resealed bottle back in his pocket and gently laid the cloth across Genevieve’s face, the general anesthetic ensuring the continuation of her unconscious state. He looked at her lying there peacefully. The pictures that he had studied of her had made her as familiar as family. There was an innocence to her that filled him with a momentary shame at the violation he was committing but he quickly shook it off, allowing his son’s suffering to replace the dishonor, to fill him with the most personal determination he had ever known.

  Raechen suspected who the shooters were that caused the accident, who were also after Genevieve. If they showed again, he would have to bring his old talents out of retirement. No one was going to stop him. Genevieve Zivera wasn’t going to slip through his fingers after what he had just gone through.

  He wouldn’t fail his superiors, he wouldn’t fail his country, but most of all he wouldn’t fail his son. There was still hope.

  Chapter 7

  Alec Michael St. Pierre stood in his shop. It was really a garage but he had converted it to a fully outfitted workshop for wood, metal, and plastics. While so many fathers spent their time under the hoods of muscle cars or swinging a three wood time and time again in pursuit of the perfect game, Michael’s father found comfort in creation. Shaping and forming, carving and honing; he turned wood into furniture, metal into art, and plastic into whatever his heart moved him to. Michael would watch his father concentrating, lost in his creations, seeming to leave the room—while not in body, surely in mind—for nothing seemed to break his dad’s concentration when he was lost in his projects. He was amazed at his father’s dexterity with such stubby fingers.

  By the time Michael was fourteen, they couldn’t have been more different. Michael was thin and muscular, his dad short and heavyset. Michael had the long curly hair of a teenager, while he had yet to meet anyone old enough to remember his dad when he had hair. His father was cerebral; Michael, while smart, leaned to the physical. But as so often occurs, opposites attracted. Michael would sit patiently with his dad every Saturday morning before heading off to play whatever sport was in season. They would sit and talk about everything and nothing. His father would subtly try to interest Michael in working with his tools, building and creating. He insisted that Michael had such a creative mind, if he was only to hone it a bit he could create anything he desired. But like so many teenage boys, he just wasn’t attracted yet to the things his father was. Michael didn’t think it was rebelling, he just had sports on the brain. And while Michael would listen and play along, he really didn’t find much enjoyment in building, though he never said a word, knowing it was his dad’s passion.

  While his father never played organized sports, you would never know it from his vocabulary. Alec read up on every sport that Michael was interested in to the point it seemed he was a grizzled veteran.

  “Hold this,” Alec said, holding out a metal gear.

  Michael took it, leaned over his father, and looked into the complex inner workings of the six-foot grandfather clock that was nearly complete. Each piece was built from scratch: the wooden case, the chimes, clock wheel, gears, even the face.

  “Ready for the game today?” his dad asked without lifting his head from his work.

  “Think so, we’ve got a few new plays. Stepinac is a pretty good team, though.”

  Alec didn’t respond, seemingly lost in the moment. But then, after a good minute, he spoke as if it had only been seconds. “Yeah, but they don’t have a quarterback that can read a nickel defense like you.” Alec looked up, their eyes connecting. “You know how lucky you are that you don’t have your mother’s and my genes?” Alec patted his stomach.

  “Did you play when you were a kid?”

  Alec smiled. “I was the kid who felt lucky even to be picked last,” he said with an outstretched hand. “Let me have that gear back.”
<
br />   Michael passed it.

  “Actually, why don’t you place it right there?” Alec pointed at a small metal stem. Michael looked in the clock box and slid the gear over the spindle. His dad placed an impossibly small cap on the pin-sized rod and closed up the back of the box. He wrapped his short arms around the six-foot case and motioned to Michael to do the same. Michael took up position at the base of the clock.

  “On three, now.” Michael’s father looked at him. “And…three.”

  They hoisted the clock off the workbench and into the air, placing it upright on the floor. Alec opened up the glass cover over the face of the clock. “Time?” he asked, his index finger on the minute hand.

  Michael glanced at the clock on the wall. “Eight fifty-nine.”

  “Perfect timing, if I do say so myself.” He set the clock and opened the glass door over the pendulum. “If you would be so kind.”

  Michael reached in, and with a gentle grip, lifted the pendulum back and let it swing.

  Tick…tick…tick… The elaborate timepiece spoke in the common language of clocks. Michael watched as the numerous gears clicked and spun, the second hand sweeping around. And with a sudden thunk the main gear activated and the chimes rang out nine times.

  Michael caught himself, mesmerized by the steady beat of the clock, its timing still as perfect as the day it was made twenty-some-odd years ago. He stared at the enormous timepiece, wishing he could wind it backward. Michael missed those mornings talking with his dad, who always had a way of seeing things so clearly. Michael had never fully appreciated the value of wisdom, of experience. Like so many, he took his father’s unconditional love for granted, never grasping how much he needed him. Michael’s father had passed away a few years back. It was sudden, brought about by complications from diabetes; his mother followed shortly thereafter of a broken heart. Michael wished that he could have had one more week with his dad, even one more day to ask all those questions he never got around to asking; always thinking that there would be time for them, always thinking there would be a tomorrow, always concerned with the future, forgetting to live in the moment.