The Thieves of Legend

by Richard Doetsch

  Michael turned back to Simon. “And you, the reason KC and I are together is not because of our backgrounds.”

  “I didn’t introduce you because of your backgrounds,” Simon said in protest.

  “That’s a load of—”

  “Hey,” Busch interrupted, his six-foot, four-inch body still squeezed into the small space behind the bar. “No swearing in front of the priest.”

  Simon turned to him and said with a smirk, “That never seemed to stop you.”

  “Or you,” Busch said, running his hands through his blond hair, looking every bit like an oversized surfer. “Mr. Man-of-the-Cloth. I’m thinking my ride to heaven may be a bit easier than yours.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be closing up downstairs?” Simon asked.

  “You two keep it down while I finish up,” Busch said with a laugh as he grabbed his bottle of beer, headed out the door and down the stairs. “And Simon,” his voice came floating back, “don’t even think of trying to pull Michael into anything. He’s going to be getting married soon. He needs to stay alive for his future bride.”

  “Can I at least tell you—?” Simon tried to say to Michael.

  “No.”

  “Okay.” He sank the last ball, turned around, and leaned against the pool table. “It’s in Italy, a private residence. The owner’s an attorney.”

  “I dislike him already.”

  “You’ll like him even less when I tell you the rest. He worked the underworld circuit in Europe and Asia, dealt in every type of contraband: weapons, drugs, stolen art, whatever anyone needed. He had no qualms about who he bought from or sold to.

  “Turned over a new leaf twenty years ago, raised two daughters, became the picture of a family man. Though that wasn’t really the case. He just covered up his dealings, using middlemen, and continued to dabble in arms and artwork. He became a fanatic for ancient weapons, collecting swords, sabers, fancy pistols and revolvers, daggers, katanas. He bought most of them from the most unsavory people, tucking them away in his home.

  “He also became a fanatic for rare books, sea charts, manuscripts—documents that gave him insight into the world of the past. Word came down that he found something very rare, something that combined his two passions.”

  Simon paused.

  “What?” Michael asked.

  Simon smiled, knowing he had his friend’s attention. “Some secret that he was willing to sell to the highest bidder. And that bidder is about as dangerous as they come. Head of a Chinese Triad.”

  “Since when does the church care about the dealings of a Chinese Triad? Are they interfering with Sunday Mass?” Michael half joked.

  Simon hadn’t performed Mass in all the years Michael had known him. Simon was in charge of the Vatican Archives. He was the keeper of the Church’s mysteries, its secrets and history. He employed methods to protect the Church that didn’t always align with a priest’s job description, but then again, even God’s laws were sometimes broken for the greater good.

  “As hard as it may be for you to grasp,” Simon said, “we care about everyone. And I happen to know a bit about what this man is selling.”

  “And?”

  “It’s a three-page document and a red Chinese puzzle box about the size of a brick, currently in a small house on the Amalfi coast.”

  “What’s inside the puzzle box?”

  Simon took a deep breath, then expelled it slowly.

  Michael hated when he did that. It almost always meant that Simon couldn’t say, but the matter was deadly serious. “Why don’t you do it?”

  “Because it’s not what I do. It’s what you do.”

  “Used to do, remember?”

  “I know you, Michael. Playing the businessman—”

  “Playing? I think I’ve done more than play.”

  “Granted. And you’ve built yourself a nice profitable business. But what I’m referring to goes beyond profits, balance sheets, and paychecks.”

  “Simon…”

  “Michael, you know I wouldn’t ask if this wasn’t serious.”

  And Michael understood. Simon was one of the most serious people he knew. In the past, when he’d said something was serious, it had always meant that someone’s life was in jeopardy, not just that some political powder keg was ready to blow, not just that some smoldering Church issue was causing his superiors at the Vatican to fret. When Simon said “serious’” he meant it in every sense of the word.

  “I can’t help you,” Michael finally said. “I promised KC.”

  Simon nodded. “I respect that.” He held up his beer, leaned over, and clinked it against Michael’s.

  “Thanks,” Michael said.

  “Do you mind if I ask KC to do it?” Simon said with a half-smile.

  “Simon,” Michael said, holding up his hand.

  “I’m kidding,” Simon said, his half-smile becoming full-blown.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, Michael ran his thumb over the electronic eye, slipped in his key, and opened the thick metal door of the two-foot-wide safe behind the desk in his library. It was filled with legal papers—his will, the title to his house and car, a half-dozen contracts—an unused Sig Sauer that Busch had given him, still in its box, and a file box for confidential work papers.

  He took several documents off his desk and filed them away. He had arrived home after midnight, and instead of going upstairs to sleep, had opted to finish up a proposal he wanted to take to the office tomorrow morning. As much as he hated admitting it, he was becoming a bit of a workaholic.

  What had started out as a small home security business had grown into a corporate consultancy with thirteen full-time employees who performed security installations for sensitive businesses and high-end private clients who needed to go to unusual lengths to protect their most valuable assets. The only client he did not take on was the government. His felony conviction precluded him from working for the federal, state, or local government. Truth be told, he had no desire to answer to bureaucrats who thought the best-qualified person was the lowest bidder.

  Michael never tried to cover up the nearly three years he had served in Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. The first and only time he was arrested. He’d been caught stealing diamonds from an embassy on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the property of a corrupt ambassador. He had forfeited his success, his freedom, in order to save a woman from certain death. With his prize-filled satchel, Michael had been descending a rope when he’d caught a glimpse of a woman bound and gagged, her assailant standing over her, moonlight glinting off his knife. In Michael’s mind, it was a fair trade.

  His honesty about his past career more often than not endeared him to his clients, for who could understand security better than a man who truly knew how to compromise it? Michael’s business had grown from a small alarm shop to a small warehouse in Byram Hills, New York.

  Tucking the folder into the safe, he glimpsed a small blue Tiffany’s box on the rear shelf. It had been sitting there for months now, next to his old, battered wedding ring. He had worn the gold band on a chain around his neck for over a year, finally removing it when he met KC, when his heart began to heal.

  He had bought the diamond ring at Tiffany’s on Fifty-seventh Street in Manhattan. KC had quietly admired the ring every time they stopped by the store. She did not gush over it, or even ask to try it on. She simply gazed at it and became lost in her thoughts for a few moments. And that was all Michael needed to know.

  He thought of Busch’s words, of Simon’s hints about marriage. It wasn’t the first time his friends had brought it up. Michael didn’t like being told what to do, or being backed into a corner. He knew his own feelings for KC and didn’t doubt them. As he looked at his gold ring, he thought of Mary, thought of her death and what he had put her through, thought of the pain he’d endured when he lost her, and the fear he had of going through such a loss again. He looked at the blue box once more and closed the safe.

  IT WAS AFTER midnight when Michael crawled i
nto bed.

  KC rolled over and looked up at him with her warm green eyes. She wore the red silk top Michael had given her the previous Christmas, the buttons loose, her long blond hair spilling around her.

  “Hey,” she whispered in her soft English accent.

  “Hey back.” Michael smiled.

  Michael kissed her gently, running his hand along her cheek. He settled in beside her, wrapping his arms around her, holding her as they both found a familiar position, their bodies pressed against each other, sharing their warmth. No more words were needed to convey their feelings.

  KC tilted her head and kissed Michael again. In a single moment, passion rose up as he returned her kiss, deep and heartfelt, any thought of sleep slipping away.

  IT HAD BEEN just over a year since Michael had met Katherine Colleen Ryan on the basketball court, an impromptu blind date arranged by their mutual friend Simon. She had almost kicked his ass, not only with her athletic ability but with her distracting long, lithe legs. Their month-long courtship had been interrupted when Michael learned that she, too, was a thief, and he’d rescued her from a man named Iblis, who had not only trained KC but had grown obsessed with possessing her, only to finally die at Michael’s hand in the high mountain reaches of India.

  They had returned to Byram Hills and had fallen not only in love, but into a natural friendship, listening to each other as much as talking, taking comfort in the silent moments when just the other’s presence was enough.

  Every night they would lie in bed and talk, warm in the embrace of the moment after, the sheets tangled about their feet. They had each experienced the death of loved ones and were aware of the fragility and preciousness of life. They revealed their pasts to each other, pasts that were filled with exploits that were slightly to the left of legal, slightly to the right of moral. Each was a thief who had found a moral barometer and had committed crimes that in some cases had served the greater good.

  They spent their weekends reveling in head-to-head athletic competitions. While KC was superior in tennis and Michael had the edge in golf, their athletic passions ran more toward basketball and kayaking. They had competed in triathlons; he was the superior swimmer, leaving her behind, though she caught up and passed him on the bike, with the final leg, the 10K run, an all-out lung-burner to the finish line. No matter the sport, no matter the outcome, there was no question: Each was happiest when the other was around.

  But with their type-A personalities, their occasional fights were spectacular. Usually they started over something mundane, like her forgetting to buy white bread or his blindness to the overflowing garbage in the kitchen, and ended with Michael’s marching out the door to cool off at Busch’s bar in downtown Byram Hills. The anger would usually last a day, sometimes two, but it would always resolve itself with apologies, warm embraces, and incredible make-up sex.

  They told each other of their past crimes, sharing things neither had ever spoken of to anyone else. In an odd way, this, too, became a competition, as if they were trying to top each other: Michael’s daytime theft at the Vatican, KC’s evening grab from the Louvre, Michael’s adventure beneath the Kremlin, KC’s retrieval of a stolen painting from an African warlord. They had each secretly loved what they used to do: overcoming security and unexpected obstacles, outsmarting the establishment, sometimes feeling the satisfaction of righting some wrong—often at the behest of the man who would eventually introduce them, Simon Bellatori.

  They would talk of hypothetical thefts—the White House, Buckingham Palace, MI6—pounding their chests, displaying their ingenuity, each correcting the other on the foolishness of their hypothetical plans.

  It was on a warm fall day, two months ago in September, that they had headed into Manhattan to see all the sites the tourists see, the ones the locals rarely ever approach except to show to their out-of-town relatives.

  They went to the top of the Empire State Building, looking down on the vast city, standing in the same place where Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr had stood. They visited the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Central Park; they had lunch in Chinatown.

  They finally ended up at the United Nations building on the East Side of the city. They took the ten-cent tour, shuffling along with a group of tourists as they were escorted through the General Assembly and ancillary spaces. Throughout the tour they were the couple in the back whispering, not paying much attention to the guide or their surroundings until they arrived at a special exhibit.

  They looked in a glass case filled with artifacts and stones, a display of treasures and jewels from around the world representing what various cultures held dear. There were diamonds from Africa, emeralds from South America, rubies and sapphires from India, gold from Alaska, and in one corner, sitting in sharp contrast to all the glitter, a small black polished stone from a Pacific isle. It made Michael think that what is precious to one person is but a rock to others. What one person finds alluring in a mate could be considered dreadful by another. An objects—or a person’s—value was all a matter of perspective.

  “You know,” Michael said, as he looked around the room, “the security is pretty tight in here.”

  KC smiled. “You’re not proposing what I think you’re proposing, are you?”

  “Don’t you think this is a romantic place to propose?” Michael smiled, playing on her words.

  “I didn’t mean…” KC laughed, though his suggestion made her feel awkward.

  Michael took her in his arms and looked at the case of jewels. “I’d steal all that for you.”

  “Really? I was thinking of something a bit more simple,” KC said. “Besides, I don’t need you getting caught. Conjugal visits just don’t have the same appeal.”

  “Caught?” Michael laughed. “They’d never even know I was here.”

  “Really? And how would you do it?” KC said, taking Michael’s hand and walking toward the exit.

  “I could build a device that would—”

  “Build? You don’t always need to build something. What is it with men and their tools?”

  “Oh? And how would you do it?”

  KC smiled and paused a moment before answering. “I just need a pen knife, a pair of flats, and my feminine wiles.”

  ONE WEEK LATER they were back in the city. Michael took KC to lunch at Smith and Wollensky, and afterward detoured her over to First Avenue, where they found themselves once again standing before the UN under the colorful array of international flags waving in the breeze.

  “Michael?” KC asked suspiciously. “Why are we back here?”

  Michael simply smiled and led her to the tourist entrance, paid the fee, and joined a tour. As the tour guide yammered on, they once again didn’t hear a single word. Staying at the back of the group, KC pressed Michael about what was going on but he said nothing until they once again came to the display case of jewels.

  Michael looked at KC, reached in his pocket, and pulled out a small box wrapped in a white ribbon. He placed it in KC’s hand.

  “You didn’t,” KC said.

  Michael laid his hand upon hers.

  “Is this—?” KC stopped herself and looked over at the case of jewels.

  “It’s not a ring,” Michael said softly, a note of regret in his voice. “Please understand—”

  KC put her fingers to his lips. “I know.”

  “But do you know that I would do anything for you?”

  “Michael, tell me you didn’t pay a little nocturnal visit here? If you had gotten caught—”

  “But I didn’t.” Michael stared at her. “And they don’t even know it’s missing. No one pays attention to that little black stone. To some it represents nothing, to people on that Pacific island it means wealth, but to me it means you.”

  “Aren’t you sweet,” KC said, mocking him. “And it meant a challenge. Were you showing off for me?”

  “You never even knew I’d left the house.”

  “When?”

  “Monday. You were out cold.”

&
nbsp; “I was tired,” KC said. “Did you make one of your little contraptions to get in here?”

  Michael tilted his head in the affirmative and looked at the small box. “I hid that in the back of my sock drawer all week.”

  “Really?” KC asked.

  “I said I could do it.”

  “I can’t believe you did it, though—kind of a stupid risk.” KC challenged, “I would have done it with more style.”

  “Is that so?”

  KC pulled the ribbon on the small jewelry box, gazing up at Michael, smiling. But when she lifted off the top and looked inside, she found it empty.

  She looked up at Michael and saw confusion wash over his face. He took the box from her and stared inside. The moment lingered as his mind spun. And then KC smiled, a knowing smile. She took him by the hand and led him to the display case.

  And there inside, among all of the precious jewels, was the small black stone in the corner as if it had never left.

  “Thursday night,” KC said. “You were out cold.”

  Michael stared at her a moment then laughed. “I was tired.”

  AS THEY WALKED to Grand Central Station to board the train home, their conversation turned serious, both understanding their foolish ways.

  “You know, for a minute there when I saw the jewelry box…” KC whispered.

  “I know,” Michael said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, but promise me something?”

  “Of course.”

  “No more showing off. We can’t be foolish.”

  “We’ll make a vow then,” Michael said. “To each other.”

  KC looked deep into Michael’s eyes. “Agreed.”

  “WELL, NOW I’M awake,” KC said, mock annoyance in her voice after they had made love.

  “So sorry about that,” Michael apologized with a smile.

  “How was Paul?”

  “He’s good. Giants won.”

  KC nodded. “At least we won’t endure a week of his Monday-morning quarterbacking.”

  “Simon’s in town.”

  “Really? I didn’t know he was coming. How long will he be here?”