The Thieves of Heaven
Page 23
Michael wanted to stop this torture. Telling his story was clearly killing Simon. But Michael couldn’t find the words; his throat was frozen in compassion.
“I spent the next four months tracking down the son of a bitch who destroyed my mother. Found him in his hole in Rome. Tied him up, tortured him till he told me why. He wanted to know the secrets, he said. He had recently discovered his god and he wanted to devote his life, the way my mother had devoted herself. Said he needed to know the secrets that would make his “god” great.
“When my mother wouldn’t answer his questions, he’d raped her. When she refused to talk, he used his knife on her over and over again, upside-down crosses—and still she never made a sound—so he burned it into her. Again and again, till she was covered in them. His god’s number: six-six-six.”
Michael sat there in total shock; he had seen horror in his lifetime but always from afar. But this…This was the first time he had seen how horror affected the ones closest to the victims, the ones left behind.
“The fact that the monster before me used to hold me in his arms as a child did not deter me. He was no longer my father, the man who had raised me, the only man my mother ever loved. He had become possessed by things I didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand. All I knew was what he had done to my mother, the woman whom he had called his wife.
“They arrested me for his murder. I was only sixteen, the judge took pity, said I’d been driven temporarily insane. But I wasn’t insane.” For the first time that evening, Simon looked directly into Michael’s eyes: “I knew exactly what I was doing.
“I was nineteen when I got out of prison. My dad was dead, my mom…My mom had chosen a family over God and she’d been punished for it. When I entered prison, her mind shattered just as her family had. She wished only for escape from this world, so she could find peace in Heaven. She hung herself just before my release.
“Do you know that when you commit suicide, it’s an unforgivable sin? The Church refuses to bury you. My mother was buried in a pauper’s grave, without the Church’s blessing. After devoting her life to the Church, the Church denied her her eternal reward.
“I had nothing, nowhere to go, no family. Went to pick up my things from the place I’d once called home—”
“In Vatican City—” Michael said.
“The priests took pity on me,” Simon continued as if Michael had not spoken. “Asked me to stay with them, to seek comfort in God. But I sought my comfort elsewhere: I joined the Italian army, received special training. I had skills, the officers said, skills that could be honed razor-sharp. I traveled a bit in the name of peace but what I did was anything but peaceful. Each kill I made was like a cleansing of my mind, my soul. Every time I pulled the trigger or inserted the knife, I saw only my father’s face, not that of the real victim. My commanding officer said that I was killing to protect my country, but he was wrong: I was doing it to protect my sanity. After two years I felt no different; killing provided no release from the neverending nightmare of my mother’s scarred body and mind. I requested and received my discharge.”
The only sounds were of the jet’s droning whine. Michael sat riveted.
“I returned to my mother’s apartment in the Vatican. Several priests with whom my mother had been close sought me out. They wanted to know if they could assist me in any way. They knew full well what I had done, not only to my father but while I was in the army. They felt responsible for me, in light of the Church abandoning my mother to an unsanctified grave. They forgave me my sins and saw me often. These priests became the only friends I had. They provided me work and a home and the closest thing that I would ever have to a family.
“These priests had worked with my mother for many years and were part of a small group of clerics that answered only to the Pope. Though not publicized, there had been an increase of crimes and violations against the Church. Not only crimes of greed and hate, but crimes meant to destroy Catholicism. These priests approached me with an offer that they warned would require a lifetime of devotion. It was a path that, they cautioned, I could never leave, but one for which I was uniquely qualified. I agreed to pledge myself under one condition: special dispensation for my mother….
“She received her proper burial. In the Church. A private ceremony, performed by the Pope himself.”
Simon turned to Michael; he was no longer looking inward, reliving his tormented life. He was facing the world, facing Michael. Although he had revealed himself to be vulnerable and pitiful, he was now back to the man that Michael had first encountered in his apartment: resolute, determined, and hard. “In my new job, I was permitted to perform whatever service was required to do my job, to protect the Church.
“I became the keeper of the secrets, Michael. The guardian of all the things you don’t want to know.”
The plane cut through the night sky, its black shadow riding the waves of the inky moonlit ocean below. It would be dawn soon. The whine of the engines sang like sirens in the darkened cabin. Simon was fast asleep, exhausted, perhaps, from reliving his tormented past. Michael, on the other hand, was wide awake, afraid of the dreams that would rise up from the horrors he’d just seen through Simon’s eyes. How could anyone possibly remain sane with such a devastating childhood? But at last he had a deeper understanding of the sleeping man beside him. His suspicions about Simon’s ability to kill had been confirmed. The balance of Simon’s mind was another matter. Michael had pondered the man’s grip on reality and now, judging by not only his actions and history but his parents’ mental instability, the possibility of the man being insane was vastly probable.
Michael looked out at the black sea, her depth and mystery, thinking of the dangers hidden just below her shiny beautiful surface. It reminded him of Finster. He opened the compartment above him in search of a blanket. Finding none, he satisfied himself with his jacket. He huddled in his seat, wrapping the sport jacket tightly around himself; he could still catch a hint of Mary’s perfume on it. As his mind wandered to her smile, he felt something in the pocket. He pulled out an envelope and tore it open.
Dearest Michael,
For years, this has protected me and kept me safe. I know you found it foolish at times and downright exasperating when we made love. But now I ask that you keep it with you at all times. It has delivered me through many a troubled day. I ask only that you wear it now so it may deliver you home to me safe and sound. Wear it not as a representation of your faith but as a reminder of my unwavering faith in you.
I love you with all my heart—
M.
Mary must have slipped the note in the pocket of the jacket while he had stepped out to make a call and fetch her some ice water. Even in her illness she had found the strength to continue the gestures he loved so much.
Michael poured the contents of the envelope into his hand. And it all came flooding forth as he stared at his palm, all of the emotion, all of the pain of the past month. Tears stung his cheeks. He took a quiet comfort in his grief, something he hadn’t allowed himself until this moment, hoping that it would help clear his mind for what lay ahead.
Finally—not out of the fear that Simon had instilled in him this night; not out of a newfound devotion to God and religion, but because of his belief in Mary—he slipped her golden cross around his neck as a reminder of his promise to return to her. He grasped the religious object in his hand as he had seen Mary do so many times before, then released it, letting the cold metal dangle against his chest, the irony of the moment fully in his mind. Without saying a word, Mary somehow knew what he was facing. She had sent her belief in her husband with the cross that now hung around his neck. She had uttered no words of protest or anger at being abandoned by him. She had given him only one simple sentence that would support him in whatever he must do: that she had always had faith in him. She was the single reason why he was heading across the world to enter what he could only imagine to be the manifestation of Hell.
Chapter 20
He and Michael cleared customs without incident. To Michael’s surprise, Simon spoke fluent German, explaining to the customs agent that he and Michael were there on a trip of both business and pleasure; they had nothing to declare. He requested that they be hurried through, as they had an appointment to keep.
Michael had finally fallen asleep in the last hours of the flight. It hadn’t been a restful sleep, but at least it got him away from Simon. Michael pitied Simon and yet he feared him. While the horrific loss of a mother would surely be devastating to any child, particularly when the loss came at the hands of his father, this loss had created Simon. And while Simon hid behind the veil of the Church, he was surely even further from salvation than Michael. The enigma that Simon posed baffled Michael. He knew the Church was like any other government. Any religion with over one billion followers wielded enormous power and sought to protect that power no matter the cost or the means. Simon had become the means of the Church. In order to protect it, he would break any and all of the commandments; this man upheld his law by breaking it.
“Meet me at the hotel,” Simon told him curtly, passing an envelope to Michael as he hailed a taxi from the virtually empty lot outside the airport terminal. “I need to pick up some supplies.”
“Don’t be late,” Michael warned.
Simon hopped in the cab and took off without replying. Supplies, Michael thought. God knew what that meant. Certainly not a bunch of prayer books. He slung his bag over his shoulder and jogged across Lehrter Strasse. His body felt fatigued from the flight, from being cramped for six hours. It felt good to give it a stretch.
The traffic was light, so it wasn’t hard to pick out the limo: about one hundred yards off, headed up the street in Michael’s direction. He didn’t pay it much mind. Instead, he continued down Wastin Hagen Platz. The limo—a black stretch Mercedes—continued to approach. Michael cut down Silberstrasse, a shop-filled street to his left. He was probably just overreacting. It was lack of sleep and too much stress. He was just being paranoid.
The limo turned down the road behind him. Coincidence. That was all. Michael attempted to ignore the car. Michael, slowing to a leisurely pace, looked in the shop windows. All were closed but their keepers could be seen milling about inside, readying for a busy day. As the limo pulled alongside, he saw its dark reflection in the plate-glass storefront of a butcher shop: the rear passenger window was coming down. He strained to see the outline of a face within. He quickened his pace.
So did the limo. This was no coincidence.
Michael took off.
The car screeched out in pursuit, its back end shuddering as it spewed gravel and black tire smoke. It was gaining fast, fishtailing around the turn. Michael’s legs were pumping; the adrenaline surged through his muscles. He had no idea where he was headed, the street signs were all in German. The jet-black car was a blur as it cut the distance to him. The vehicle was intent on running him down, of this Michael was sure. The throbbing of the engine grew louder in his ears. Somewhere in the distance he thought he heard someone scream. He needed a plan and he needed it now. It was only seconds until his death. The black German auto was almost on him. And that’s when the question hit him: If he died, what would become of Mary?
Michael cut right. He was in an alley, garbage-filled, medieval and dark. Too narrow for the limo. He heard the tires scream, grabbing the pavement. He didn’t look back. Seconds later, the twisting sound of bending, crunching metal echoed through the narrow street. Michael hurled himself atop a garbage bin, two cats scattering as he did so. He vaulted to the adjacent fence. And as he flung himself over it, he stole a glance back down the alley. There was nothing there. Only daylight at the other end. The limo had vanished.
He landed in a patch of wildflowers on the edge of what appeared to be a large city park. There was a lake at its heart, a lush meadow off to the left, a playground in the distance. And there were people. Lots of people. The up-before-dawn crowd, out for their morning jog, strolling with their newborns, enjoying a walk with their loved ones. People in their daily routines. This was a place where Michael could blend. A place he could get lost in.
He finally stopped running at the pond’s edge, slumped back against a huge weeping willow. It was an ideal surveillance point. Two means of egress at opposing ends led back out into the city, tall cast-iron gates anchored in white polished marble propped open, affixed to the twenty-foot wall that seemed to run the circumference of the park. Michael wondered whether the original architectural intention of foreboding concrete enclosures and enormous gates was to keep people in or keep people out. He couldn’t shake the impression that if the gates were closed, the park would become a grotesque nature preserve, humans trapped within its confines for all the world to view.
Catching his breath, he replayed the last two minutes in his mind. Mercedes limo, German plates. It had picked him out at the airport. It had known his arrival time. It had waited for Simon to leave, had pursued Michael only when he was alone. When the window slid down he had glimpsed the passenger inside. An older man, he couldn’t make out his features, they seemed to melt into dense shadows within the car. But Michael had no doubt. The man in the limo had been Finster.
It was one minute after ten and Anna Rechtschaffen was ready to close for the day, maybe the week. Ten minutes earlier, the tall, dark, handsome hero of her latest lust novel had walked in and Anna swore that if she wasn’t seventy-seven years old she would have hurled her one-hundred-and-eighty-pound frame on him for a roll in the hay. She hadn’t had a six-thousand-mark sale since the Pope visited in ’86.
The man never said why, just that he would take the entire lot, all of them. The gold ones, the silver ones, antique and wood, even the cheap plastic ones she’d bought from the little Spanish man two years earlier that nobody wanted. Didn’t matter if they were to be hung from the wall or from someone’s neck. He bought every single one in the store. She never asked him why and he never offered an explanation. In fact, he hadn’t said much, nothing worth remembering except for that last question. The one right after he paid in cash and thanked her. The man with no name had asked if Freudenshaft was one or two blocks down. When Anna asked him what he was looking for, he smiled and answered, “Stingline’s.” She’d pointed him in the right direction and helped him load the boxes into his car. As he drove off, she couldn’t help but wonder what a man who had just purchased every holy cross in her store would want with a gun shop.
To everyone else they appeared to be two friends out for a jog in the park, mixed in with the other volk, approaching from the southern gate. But the two men stirred something in Michael’s stomach and he had learned long ago to trust his instincts. Both men were six-foot-plus. Both wore sweat suits, ran with a sense of power, like professionals, with a military precision. They coasted along the jogging path toward Michael, never removing their eyes from him, maintaining an even pace, he was sure they could run around the world without running out of breath. They were a quarter of a mile off. It was half that distance to the gate ahead of him.
Michael broke into a full-out run, racing for the gates. Against his better judgment, he looked back. The two men had increased their pace to a sprint, their four legs moving in perfect rhythm. And the fuckers weren’t even breathing hard.
Michael was only fif
ty feet from freedom when the black limo reappeared on the street. Its front grill was shattered but that didn’t seem to affect its performance, its engine revving like a lion ready to spring.
Michael ran harder, through and out the gate. The limo window was coming down but this time he didn’t bother looking inside. He raced along a large mall, vacant and bordered on either side by gleaming, glass-tower office buildings. He could taste bile in his dry mouth. His lungs seemed at the point of bursting.