The Thieves of Faith

by Richard Doetsch

  But he wasn’t listening. She watched his eyes as they stared at the painting on the wall.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “What is in the box?”

  Genevieve looked at the painting of the angel on the wall. It was a moment, her face lit by the flames of the fire as she became lost in thought. She finally turned back to Julian and softly smiled. She leaned down, kissed him on the forehead, and whispered, “Hope.”

  Genevieve walked to the door and turned to Julian. “Sleep tight, I love you.” And she closed the door behind her.

  With the click of the door, Julian counted to twenty, flung back the covers, and rolled out of bed. He got down on his hands and knees, reached under his bed, and pulled out a small cardboard box. He lifted the lid and stared in at the small white kitten, nestled sound asleep in a ball. Julian thought of how the new girl did nothing to help, how mean she was to him, how mean so many of the kids were. They called him skinny, they called him creepy, they all treated him as if he didn’t belong in his own house. They were the outsiders but they made him feel a stranger under his own roof. And it made him mad, so mad he couldn’t control himself, beginning to shake, tears running down his cheeks. He could never tell his mother, she wouldn’t understand. He hated the other children more than anything on earth.

  Julian looked at the kitten and rubbed its sleeping head, running his fingers through its soft white fur. He smiled, closed the box, and padded across the room to the fireplace. He pulled back the screen and, without a moment’s hesitation, tossed the box in the fire. He watched as the cardboard darkened, as the lid began to pop up and down, as a white paw emerged before pulling back inside. The box began to vibrate and jostle on the flaming logs, teetering to and fro as the sour odor of burning flesh began to fill the room. The cries of the kitten were like nothing Julian had ever heard before. He thought of Arabella, how he wished the shrill cry was coming from her, that it was she who was trapped in the cardboard coffin. Finally, the box turned black and burst into flames, the dancing glow reflecting off Julian’s eight-year-old blue eyes.

  And as the cries stopped, the box indistinguishable from the logs, Julian walked across the room and climbed back into bed. He stared at the painting of the angel on the wall, lit by the flames, and smiled. His mind was suddenly free of its anger, of its hate. His mind finally stopped spinning and he fell fast asleep.

  Julian bolted upright in his chair, the dreams of his childhood washing away but leaving his heart racing. He looked out over the ocean and after a few moments, his mind began to clear as he heard the screams of Stephen Kelley, the pounding on the door coming from the back of the plane.

  And he smiled.

  Chapter 15

  Michael sat back on the couch, the elegant parlor seeming to collapse in on him. Everything that had occurred in the last hour was wiped from his mind; his only focus was the case before him. He had worked the lock for fifteen minutes, a luxury usually not afforded in the field, where witnesses existed and security systems monitored everything from heat signatures to nasal breath. The small intricate tools Michael always carried protruded from the lock, their thin metal fingers massaging the complex inner organs of the case. Michael commanded the black picks with dexterous fingers and a patient mind. As the last of the twelve springs released, Michael gently lifted the lid of the case and gazed inside.

  He had already read through the thick leather folio left by Zivera. Reams of documents on the Kremlin, its history, architecture, and mysteries. Russian historical fact, fiction, and legends. A world rich in beauty, detail, and allure that had been mostly ignored by the West.

  Michael studied the first grouping of documents, committing the facts to memory:

  At the fall of the Kingdom of Byzantium, the last emperor, Constantine XI, sent his kingdom’s great library and artifacts as a wedding gift with his niece Sofia Paleolog, who was to marry the Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan III. And while it was a magnificent gesture, a wedding gift beyond compare, it was, in fact, an act of extreme subterfuge to send one of history’s greatest treasures as far away from the center of civilization as possible. Russia, at the time, was the farthest edge of European civilization and an ideal place to hide a collection of knowledge and wealth that was being fought over by rulers and religions alike.

  Upon arriving in Russia, Sofia found a city prone to treachery, thievery, and fire, and so, to protect her great treasure, she resolved to embark on an architectural journey like nothing seen in history. She summoned the renowned Italian architect Aristotle Fioravanti, the first of many, to introduce the architectural influences of Italy and Byzantium to Russia. Fioravanti’s design and construction of the Assumption Cathedral still stands today within the Kremlin walls as one of the great masterpieces of Russian history. But his greatest achievement, one that far exceeds his reputation, has been seen by only a handful of people. For underneath the Kremlin, Fioravanti designed and built a great multitiered world for the young Russian princess and her library. The design included tunnels, vaults, and elegant chambers carved of white stone. A private sanctum for the princess to not only house but hide away her cherished books and artifacts. It was a cavernous world of mazes and rivers, passageways and crypts accessed through secret entrances known only to select members of the royal family. Upon the completion of his underground masterpiece, Fioravanti requested to return to his Italian home, only to be thrown in prison for fear of the details of the subterranean world leaking out.

  The construction of these tunnels, vaults, and passages was continued by her grandson, the first tsar of Russia. The tsar brought in other top designers but his intentions couldn’t have been more different. Torture chambers, prison cells, and secret tunnels in and out of the Kremlin were the preferred design of Ivan IV, or as history has come to know him, Ivan the Terrible. Ivan viewed his design as much more practical and went as far as commissioning a more elaborately designed vault to better hold and hide the family’s legacy.

  As Ivan neared death, he saw to it that all who knew of the underground world were killed. He decreed that the Liberia, along with all of its contents, should be wiped from memory, lost to history forever.

  As Michael thought on this Russian subterranean world, a world out of a book of myths, he was filled with an unending sense of foreboding, not only because he sensed this library and its contents—including this legendary box—were never meant to be found, but that he had no idea how to get there in the first place.

  Michael finally refocused on the black box that he had just cracked. He reached in the case and uncovered a canvas. He withdrew it and opened it up, unfolding it to its five-by-three-foot size to find a depiction eerily similar to the painting he had stolen in Geneva; it was the same size and painted on an extra thick canvas. He held it up: it was truly a work of art, a serene angel rising up from a golden tree, up into the clouds, its enormous wings outspread and in its hand a golden box that seemed to radiate from within.

  In a déjà vu moment, Michael drew his knife and slid the blade into the side edge of the canvas, the honed steel easily slipping in. He drew it around the circumference and separated the map from the painting. He put the painting aside and examined the map. It was intricate and an exact replica of what he had destroyed in Geneva. There appeared to be over ten levels, rendered in a clear three-dimensional depiction, all labeled in both Russian and Latin. The rendering portrayed the surface structures, most of which still stood. An intricate sketch of a golden box surrounded in Russian notations dominated the outermost edge. The detail of the top of the box was worthy of masterpiece status in and of itself. Michael studied the elaborate case, committing it to memory. It was enormously detailed, a design upon the cover of such beautiful simplicity. A symbol of elegance, of life, not what he had imagined. Not what anyone would imagine.

  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 portraya
l 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 a
nd 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—”