The Thieves of Faith

by Richard Doetsch

  Kelley stood there, stunned. He was alone; Martin was gone, dead somewhere out in the night. And worst of all, Michael was walking into a trap. Stephen reached in the safe and took out one of the two remaining pistols and a box of ammo. Somehow, he would get back into the compound that he had escaped from not twenty-four hours earlier; he had to get to Michael before it was too late. He ejected the clip from the nine-millimeter and loaded it up, slamming the cartridge back in place.

  He gathered his thoughts and turned to leave when the cold barrel of a gun pressed up against his temple.

  Chapter 59

  Michael, Simon, and Busch sprinted through the woods that ran adjacent to the mansion. Simon had slipped the guard outfit on and had the radio earpiece in his left ear. They each carried two pistols, a rifle, and a knife, plus Simon had the two guns they had taken off the guards. There had only been routine chatter on the radio, nothing indicating they had been spotted. Though Michael had protested, Simon had tossed the other body over the edge into the waiting sea. They couldn’t afford anyone finding a corpse; it would bring the cavalry out and on the hunt. Simon explained it was despicable but necessary.

  The enormous castle-like structure stood silhouetted upon the cliffs, its moonshadow seeming to stretch forever. Michael couldn’t help thinking of Susan trapped inside the grand stone structure that presented itself as the house of a holy man, but, in actuality, was the antithesis. He prayed they’d find her in time. He checked his compass and was moving them northeast toward the guard shack. He had committed the compound’s map to memory and was hoping the map would prove accurate.

  They came upon the runway. Zivera’s jet sat idle and dark, the lone jet on the airstrip; but for a few trucks, the place was deserted.

  They moved up through the hedges to the stucco building that sat just behind the runway. The structure was designed to replicate an eighteenth-century farmhouse, but that was where the similarity ended. Michael peered through the window; it was a segmented great room: a TV was on in the corner, three guards were slumped upon a large L-shaped couch, the other corner was strictly business. Michael could just see the glow of the security monitors and the guard at the console. He turned back to his friends and held up four fingers.

  Simon glanced through the window and turned back. “I’ll get the three on the right.”

  “The one at the desk is mine,” Busch said.

  They moved through the shrubbery to the door. They each checked their pistols, tightened up their silencers, and chambered a round. Looking at each other, they nodded. Busch lifted his leg and kicked in the door.

  Simon rolled into the room, coming up in a crouch position, his silencer-equipped gun already firing. The three guards sat there stunned as bullets tore into their heads and punctured their chests. They were dead before they hit the ground.

  Busch took aim at the desk jockey, but the guard was quicker, already turning with his gun in hand, beginning to open fire.

  Busch spun left and with a single bullet, shot the man in the right arm, his gun hand falling limp at his side. Busch and Simon were on him in seconds, wrestling him to the ground, strapping his arms and legs behind his back, shoving a gag in his mouth.

  Simon leaned over him. “You are going to answer me, or you are going to die.”

  Michael turned away, unable to handle what he knew was coming.

  “Where are they holding the American woman?” Simon asked as he pulled the gag from the man’s mouth.

  The guard stared at him defiantly and turned away.

  “Wrong answer.” Simon shoved the gag back in the man’s mouth, placed his gun against the guard’s right shoulder and pulled the trigger. The bullet tore straight through the man’s muscle and shoulder and buried itself in the floor. The muffled scream from behind the gag pleaded for mercy as the man frantically nodded his head. But Simon just looked at the man, shook his head no, and jammed the red-hot barrel of his gun in the man’s open wound. The man screamed anew.

  “Now, I am going to ask you one more time,” Simon said. “And if you don’t tell me what I need to know, I’ll work my way through your entire body.”

  The man violently nodded, sweat pouring off his brow as Simon removed the gag.

  “The business side of the mansion.” The man gasped between his words. “Third floor. Southwest corner.”

  “How do I know you are not lying?” Simon lay the gun against the guard’s other shoulder.

  “Stop, stop.” The man struggled to stand, wincing in pain. “I’ll show you.”

  Simon helped him to his feet and seated him back in the chair. “I need my hands,” the man said as he alluded to his computer keyboard.

  Simon glared at him. “One act of aggression or non-compliance and it will be the last time you use those hands.” Simon cut his bonds.

  The man began typing with his left hand as his right hung dead at his side, both wounds crimson through his shirt, blood running down his arm, dripping onto the floor. And an image rose up on his monitor; Michael and Busch watched it come into focus.

  And then she was there, her face as beautiful and defiant as Michael remembered. A sudden relief came over him. The thought of her death before his arrival had sat in the back of his mind, but here she was, alone in a room tapping her foot, looking about.

  Michael sat down at the adjacent computer and started to work. The security system ran through a large communication mainframe on a dedicated server. The system stored three days of digital video from the compound’s cameras. Michael checked for a live Internet feed and found two T1 lines. It took Michael less than two minutes to reprogram the computer and begin feeding out the data he would need via the Internet.

  Simon spun the guard about in his chair. “And where is Julian’s mother?”

  “Who?”

  Simon raised his gun to the man’s head.

  “No, no, no. I…Medical lab, lower floor.” The man worked the keys again and a lab came into focus.

  “Where?” Simon asked as he looked around the lab.

  “She is in that freezer.” The guard pointed to a large box on the far side of the room.

  “Freezer?”

  The man looked at Simon as if stating the obvious. “She’s dead.”

  Simon’s face hid his emotion but Michael couldn’t conceal his grief, his anger.

  “I don’t believe you,” Simon said, as if he was questioning a simple fact.

  “I swear she is in there, she is scheduled for a full autopsy tonight.”

  “Why an autopsy?” Busch said with disgust.

  “Not anymore,” Simon said as he hit the man at the base of his neck. The man fell forward, unconscious on the desk.

  They retied and gagged the guard and pulled him out of the way. Michael regained focus, frantically riffling the keys again, and found the routing configuration for security cameras, all labeled by location. He found the medical lab and brought up the image of the vacant room on the monitor before him. The image was static, no movement. But that changed as Michael was able to rewind the recorded image. Suddenly, it was hours earlier, two people in the room. Michael allowed the recorded image to play. And he saw her, Genevieve, strapped to the gurney, an IV in her arm. Julian stood at her side, his hand around the IV drip, he brought his face in close to hers, standing just above her, their eyes locked upon each other. The silent image haunted Michael as he saw them converse without hearing a word, watching her struggle against her binds, imagining what was coming. Busch turned away, unable to watch the inevitable, but not Michael, not Simon. They couldn’t tear their eyes away as Julian thumbed down the plunger of a syringe, injecting something into the IV. Genevieve’s body went suddenly rigid in contorted agony, her eyes wide as her mouth formed a silent scream. The moment seemed to hang on for eternity before she finally went limp. And throughout the entire ordeal, Julian continued to stare at his agonized mother, his eyes only inches from hers, his face an emotionless slate as he watched the life violently ripped from her.<
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  Not a word was said as Michael, Simon, and Busch internally dealt with the repulsive matricide. As Michael turned and looked at Simon, he had no doubt what he would do. Simon would kill him, and neither Michael nor Busch would stand in his way.

  The computer beeped with the completion of the file transfer, pulling Michael back to the moment. Michael turned his attention back to the monitor with Susan on it. She was at a conference table covered in food; she sat there quietly without emotion or fear. Michael tore himself away from her image and crouched down under the desk. He found the wire going to the computer and traced it to a large cabinet at the far end of the workstation. He found two servers, both humming and alight with diodes. Michael pulled a memory stick from his pocket, reached around the back of the server, and inserted the stick in the USB slot. Within seconds, the program entered the system; it would shut down the entire server and all of its correlating functions in ten minutes. It was his favorite homemade virus and it never failed to erase his tracks with utter certainty.

  “We can go,” Michael said quietly as he closed up the computer cabinet.

  A somber air had fallen over the room with Genevieve’s death. The three of them moved to the door.

  “My plans have changed,” Simon said.

  “You can’t go after Julian until we get Susan out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving Genevieve’s body to be dumped somewhere.”

  “Simon, we can’t carry her out of here.”

  “She was murdered, Michael. She asked, and I always promised, that when she passed I would fulfill her final wish.”

  “Which is?”

  “You’ll see.”

  As much as Michael wanted to argue, he knew there was no changing Simon’s mind. “You’ve got fifteen minutes and we’re out of here.”

  “You sure you can get to Susan?” Simon asked.

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Bullshit,” Busch said. “I say we stick together.”

  “We don’t have time. Go with him,” Michael said to Busch as he pointed at Simon. “If one of us fails at least the other one may be able to succeed. You guys do your thing with Genevieve; God rest her tortured soul. Fifteen minutes. No more.”

  They poked their heads out the door. And without looking back, they disappeared into the night.

  Chapter 60

  The medical lab was a quarter mile down the drive from the main house. It was orginally the carriage house, accommodating an oversized stable and riding ring built from the same fieldstone as the monastery. While the exterior had maintained its original European manor design, the interior had been entirely gutted and updated as a state-of-the-art medical lab, designed not only for twenty-bed hospital care and emergency treatments, but also possessing a cutting-edge research facility in the rear quarter and sublevels.

  Dr. Lloyd and three associates left their offices and convened in the research lab where the refrigerated containment units had been installed for Vladimir Skovokov’s experiments. In addition to the morgue-like refrigerators, a special cooling system was installed in the actual operating room, sustaining the temperature at precisely thirty-three degrees Fahrenheit, one degree Celsius. In this way, body decomposition of the subjects would be minimized during the numerous research procedures.

  Lloyd opened the three-by-three door and slid out the tray, thinking of too many parallels between a morgue and a restaurant kitchen. Genevieve Zivera’s body was mercifully covered in a sheet, while her face remained exposed to the world. He averted his eyes and blessed himself, hoping it would somehow diminish the nightmares he knew her serene, innocent face would cause him for years to come.

  They had been charged by Julian to cut the body before them, to harvest the organs for medical research, a directive that created a momentary pause. After all, this was his mother they were working on, yet Julian showed no sign of sorrow, no signal of emotions for the woman who had raised him, for the woman he had killed while trying to get her to reveal the secrets of the box not an hour earlier.

  Unlike with the box, they were told nothing about this woman beyond the fact that she was Julian’s mother. Birth mother or adopted mother, they couldn’t tell. They had all known he was raised in an orphanage, but were not privy to any details of his life beyond what was published by God’s Truth. They knew his story was embellished. They had all read their fair share of corporate and medical puff pieces where poetic license had been taken to enhance appearances, and Julian was no different. But the reasoning behind the autopsy and the harvesting of his mother had not been broached.

  Lloyd and his team stood over Genevieve. They marveled at her flawless skin, without blemish, freckle, or scar. Her teeth bore no sign of cavities and looked as new and white as the day they emerged from her gumline. She was strikingly beautiful, Lloyd thought, and it filled him with a sense of pity. Here was a woman who possessed the potential for a long life yet died during an interrogation. It reminded him of the people who had exercised vigorously, avoided all vices, and ate nothing but the blandest of health foods to ensure a long life, only to be struck down without warning by a bus. All of their pleasures sacrificed in hopes of extending their days for naught. A forgoing of the indulgence of the senses for an existence of quantity over quality.

  Lloyd watched as his breath coalesced in the frigid air and was glad for the extra sweater he had put on before donning his scrubs. But no matter how many sweaters he wore, nothing could warm the chill that ran through his system. She was beyond perfect in his mind and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was desecrating her soul, stealing her essence without her knowledge. He felt as if he was violating God.

  But as so often happens, his scientific mind pulled his heart back, soothing his conscience. Justifying in his own mind that he was simply doing his job.

  He looked at his fellow doctors and smiled. “Gentlemen, shall we begin?”

  Chapter 61

  Michael stood in the woods across from the business wing of the mansion, not far from the cliffs overlooking the sea below. The elegant addition was shaped like an enormous C with two outer wings growing out of the main section. Added only two years prior, they enhanced the already grand structure, burnishing its reputation as a modern-day castle. The four-story stone exterior held centuries of history. Its Corsican architects never imagined the path it would take, from king’s castle to monastery to megalomaniac’s abode. The windows on the new wing were enormous, double-paned, resembling the building’s original design; the mortar was fresh and new, unmarred by rain and time. It was a representation of grandeur seldom exhibited anywhere in the world.

  There were two guards, armed and on alert, posted at the sole entrance. Not the casual demeanor of people going through the motions like everywhere else on the compound: they had something to protect.

  Michael worked his way around the building to the side. It backed up to the woods. Unlike the rear of the structure, there were no balconies to provide easy access, or a quick, painless ascent. There were no doors to breach, no locks to pick, and the windows of the first two floors were narrow and tall, no more than a foot wide. The third floor, however, held promise: the windows were large and ornate, but more important, big enough for Michael to pass through.

  Michael looked at the exterior: the mortar joints were recessed half an inch between the large stones. He dug his fingers in and began his ascent. It was actually an easy climb, the stone providing notched finger-and toeholds within the rocky seams. He reached the third floor in less than a minute. The window was double-paned, vacuum-sealed to retain heat; and it was latched. Even on the third floor, Zivera’s design team had taken every precaution: it was wired to the alarm system, the small red L.E.D. confirming its activation. The window’s security point was a low-voltage contact; once the contact was broken, the system would be activated.

  Michael pulled out his knife and slid it through the seam at the midsection of the window; he ran it along the interior and flipped the latch. Michael
held tight to the window ledge, his fingers and toes growing cramped from his precarious position. He checked his watch: ten seconds. He looked at the red light on the window contact. And it flashed off. The virus Michael had introduced into the mainframe crashed the compound’s security system right on time.

  Michael opened the window and slipped through, landing silently on the marble floor. He quietly moved down the hall, peering through heavy wood and glass doors into elegant offices appointed with polished mahogany furniture, thick velvet window treatments, and fresh flowers. This was no humble display of religion, no vow of poverty here. This was the base of Zivera’s religious operations, the face that he showed to the world, where their fictional history was written, where glossy brochures for membership were created, leaving his more nefarious pursuits hidden away.

  Michael looked through the last door in the hall and found the conference room. His heartbeat rose in anticipation. The table was covered in open containers of food and newspapers. A TV silently tuned to CNN hung in the corner. Michael took a breath and opened the door.

  But Susan wasn’t there.

  Suddenly, the lights went out, the room falling into darkness. Michael dived to the floor, pulled his pistol, and prayed for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light.

  The door exploded open, and eight guards poured in the room, each of their rifles trained on him. He knew he could get off a few shots but it would be fruitless; he would be dead in an instant, which would leave Susan no hope of survival. He released the pistol from his hand and lay there prone as the guards surrounded him.

  Two of the guards reached down and manhandled him into a chair. The lights flashed back on and Julian walked in the room. His hair was as perfect as the day Michael had met him, not a strand out of place; his jacket was crisp and pressed as if he had just put it on. He wore a broad smile on his face, but it wasn’t a smile of joy: it was a smile of triumph, of victory. “I told you I would kill her if you deviated from my instructions.”