The Thieves of Faith

by Richard Doetsch

  Michael had given Fetisov a list of supplies and, true to his word, Fetisov obtained them all without excuse. Each wore a knapsack on his back and was equipped for caving, diving, and the unanticipated. Fetisov never questioned Michael’s need but simply arrived at five in the morning with the three packs and the simple map that led to the confluence of the seven rivers. Michael never questioned him on his resources or the bit of blood in the left-hand corner of the hand-drawn map.

  Fetisov, Michael, and Busch had walked for miles through clouds of steam, water spray from broken pipes, and dry winds from ventilation shafts. It took an hour, though Michael had completely lost track of time. They had passed countless groups of people who remained in the shadows appraising the three intruders as friend or foe. Some were dressed in little more than the dirt and grime that marred their bodies while others wore expensive clothes that appeared only hours old. While some bore the eyes of the mentally ill, most had their wits about them and many seemed more than educated. But they all possessed one characteristic, one thing in common: they were all on guard as if ready to run, as if they were expecting the arrival of gods or demons. And while the populace was initially large, after a series of jogs and turns, ladders and stairs, the three found themselves alone.

  “All right, this is the Grotto of the Tsars, the intersection of the seven canals. We are just outside the southwest wall of the Kremlin,” Nikolai said as he brushed his night-black hair out of his eyes. “All the tunnel rats know about it, even the Soviets knew about it back in the fifties but it never led them to the Liberia or anywhere, for that matter, except a series of dead ends. Now, do you mind telling me where you got your map?”

  Michael was intently studying a two-by-three-foot piece of paper. It was a map, but it wasn’t the map, the one that Genevieve had left for him. He thought that map more precious than gold: a detailed depiction of a subterranean world that held a far greater value than the riches in the city above. Michael had copied only what he needed onto the large paper that he now held spread out in his hands.

  “Yes,” Michael finally answered. Nikolai would never learn about the map. Michael studied the seven canals that led off into seven separate tunnels, paying particular attention to the third from the right, the darkest of them all. He looked back at his map and again at the tunnel. “All right. This room is our staging point. And that’s our exit.” He pointed at the third tunnel.

  “How are we going to get the woman out of here if she is sedated?” Fetisov asked.

  “Leave that to us. You just do what you’re told,” Michael said. He stole one last glance at the large grotto, looked at his compass, and silently led the group forward, assuming the lead from Nikolai.

  “You sure you know where you are going?” Nikolai asked.

  Michael reached into the side pouch of his knapsack and withdrew a spray can. “No, but I’m hoping the author of the map was sure.”

  Michael removed the cap from the can and sprayed an orange dot on the wall.

  “What’s that for?” Nikolai asked.

  “Bread crumbs,” Michael said as he continued to mark their path every twenty feet.

  The three continued their trek along the bank of the canal, which soon lost its brick embankments, to be replaced by natural rock outcroppings and muddy pathways. The ceiling height rose and fell at random, occasionally forcing them to their knees and even their bellies. They were continually presented with divergent paths that ran off in every direction; Michael was sure if he lost the map they would be forever adrift in this underground maze and would slowly go mad once their light batteries died, trapped in darkness with no one to come looking for them. And so he continued to intermittently mark their trail; in the event that the map did get lost, they wouldn’t.

  Michael was careful to keep the map out of Nikolai’s line of sight. He had no intention of letting this man with the affable demeanor and disarming smile get a glimpse so he could eliminate Michael and Busch and take over the operation in its entirely.

  After what seemed like hours, trekking over uneven terrain through tunnels and caverns, they came to a raging pool of water that sat within a large cavern, its high ceiling dotted with stalactites. The thirty-by-thirty room had a single outcropping six inches over the water that jutted out four feet. The three of them stood at the water’s edge watching it lap against the far walls, worn smooth by the river’s flow over time.

  “Dead end,” Nikolai said.

  Michael looked around the room and didn’t want to admit it, but there was no way out except the way they came in. The path that they had followed for over thirty minutes had come to an abrupt stop. There was nothing but a smooth wall of stone across the water on the far side of the room. No doorway or passage.

  “There has to be a way to get to the other side of that wall,” Busch added.

  Michael focused his headlamp on the map, studying his handwriting. He had copied the map to a T, careful not to neglect any detail. He looked about the cavern for a telltale sign, a hidden doorway, but there was nothing. As he studied the map he knew he was less than two hundred feet from the Liberia, but now…he might as well have been a thousand miles.

  Michael’s thoughts ran to Stephen, to his father and how his life would not be in danger if it wasn’t for him. And while the guilt resumed in Michael’s heart, it focused him on the task. He leaned down and examined the raging waters: they flowed in rapidly from the underground river but seemingly disappeared at the far side where could be seen ebbing and flowing whirlpools attesting to the water’s unseen exit. Michael reached behind his back, pulled out a glow stick from his knapsack, cracked it, and threw it in the water. He watched as the yellow light danced on the surface, floating along toward the far wall like a ship out of control. As it reached the dead end, it began to bob up and down and suddenly it was gone. Its yellow light disappeared, sucked under the surface.

  Michael looked up at Busch, who was watching the same sight.

  “No way,” Busch said as he read Michael’s mind.

  Michael took off his knapsack, placed it on the stone ground, reached in, and pulled out a dive mask, fifty feet of rope, and another glow stick.

  “There is no way you’re going in that water,” Busch said as he walked over to Michael.

  “Why, would you rather go?” Michael didn’t bother looking up as he tied the rope around a rock outcropping. He took the other end and tied on the glow stick. He cracked the stick and watched as the chemical mix began to glow an intense yellow. He pulled on his mask and a climbing harness, and clipped onto the rope.

  Nikolai watched the exchange between the two friends, smiling broadly. “You are such a cowboy. I wish I had a pair of balls like you.”

  “This has nothing to do with balls,” Busch said as he glared at Michael. “It has everything to do with stupidity. You have no idea how strong the suction is, it could rip you under and out of here before you could even think.”

  “Relax, I just need to know how wide the mouth is.” Michael pulled out an underwater flashlight and coiled up the rope.

  “How wide the mouth is?” Busch exploded. “What if you get sucked—”

  But Busch never got to finish the sentence as Michael clutched the coiled rope and leapt into the water. He clung tightly to the line with his left hand while feeding out the coiled end with his right, the glow stick affixed and floating upon the surface. He slowly fed it out, allowing it to be drawn along the top of the water toward the far wall. And like the first yellow light, it, too, disappeared, sucked under by the rip current, but this time Michael held on to the rope so as not to allow the stick’s escape. Michael took a deep breath and, holding tightly to the rope with his left hand, slowly submerged twenty feet from the far wall.

  Before him he saw the stick dancing underwater at the end of the rope, desperately trying to break free like a mad dog on the end of a leash. Its ghostly light illuminated the far wall and, five feet below the surface, a five-foot-wide pipe. Michael continued t
o hold tightly to the rope with his left hand but released the other end, allowing the glow stick to ride the current, watching as it slowly entered the tube, tumbling about in the churning torrents. The mouth of the pipe was aglow as the stick entered then disappeared. Michael flipped on the flashlight and could see that the pipe tilted downward at a forty-five-degree angle. Before long, the yellow of the glow stick began to fade, consumed by the darkness.

  Michael surfaced and, hand over hand, pulled himself along the line back to the rock outcropping. As he began to climb the rope out of the water, Busch grabbed him by the collar and yanked him up and out of the pool, tossing him on the ground. “You’re such an ass.”

  Michael lay there soaking wet, catching his breath before he rolled over and smiled up at his friend.

  Chapter 27

  God’s Truth was founded in the early seventies by Yves Trepaunt, a doctor who couldn’t reconcile himself to Church’s rejection of scientific fact. He was a lapsed Catholic seeking to continue his beliefs in God while embarking on a career in medicine, but had found the Church’s unwillingness to stray from pure creationism suffocating.

  Trepaunt was the only child of Jacques Trepaunt, a behind-the-scenes player in the Vichy government and the French connection for weapons manufacturing. He left his two-hundred-million-dollar estate to his son, who subsequently rejected a promising career in medicine and poured the fortune into his religious pursuits. Yves purchased the Corsican monastery, formerly the seaside castle of the Genoan ruling family, and its surrounding twenty-five thousand acres. He only left the compound to sail his one-hundred-forty-foot sloop, God’s Truth, around the Mediterranean.

  Yves had found that there were many like himself who saw a chasm of disparity between scientific fact and Christian doctrine and, as such, he began an unplanned career as a Church father. He built up a following of more than ten thousand and he based the Church out of the abandoned castle monastery on the rocky cliffs of Corsica.

  At the age of twenty-one, fresh out of college, Julian Zivera had embraced Yves’s message and had sought an audience. He arrived at God’s Truth with a handful of degrees, a photographic memory of the Bible, and a plan. He and Yves became fast friends and within two years Julian became his confidant, his spokesperson, his right hand, using his oratorical gifts to expound Yves’s interpretation of the Bible and God.

  And Julian became something even more to Yves.

  Yves’s daughter, Charlotte, was all of nineteen when she fell for Julian. She was at first infatuated with his strong, handsome face, his straw-blond hair, and his crystal-blue eyes. He possessed such a commanding, charismatic presence it intimidated anyone he encountered, all but her. To Charlotte, it was cause for primal attraction. But it was more than a physical infatuation, far more than lust. He was brilliant, with a grasp of Christianity like she had never seen; he knew not only his Scripture but its underlying meaning and possessed a gift for insightful interpretation that inspired her.

  It was a relationship that was allowed to grow, to blossom, maturing with baby steps. Julian never pushed, was never the aggressor, their first kiss not coming for three months, but once it did, there was no question that they were destined to spend the rest of their lives together.

  Unlike Yves, the couple traveled the modern world, their month-long honeymoon spent traipsing through London, Paris, Hong Kong, Monaco. They rarely saw the light of day, entwined in each other’s arms, lost in a tousle of bedsheets. Julian put Charlotte before everything. She never imagined such a love could exist. She would awaken to find him staring at her, he would leave little gifts planted in her purse, flowers on her pillow at bedtime. He anticipated her every need, her every want. Her favorite wine and cheese on the side table after her massage, the shoes she had merely glimpsed, fallen in love with but passed up, wrapped with a bow in her closet. They would drive off in the evening to a destination unknown only to arrive at her favorite restaurant, a private room lying in wait. They would finish their meal and be whisked off to a private beach where a sea of pillows and blankets were laid upon the sand under the star-filled sky. Charlotte had found love, she had found a best friend, and she had found a husband.

  And Yves, Yves found a son. They were not only a triumvirate of religious inspiration to their faithful but an example that love and money, God and science, could work and exist as one.

  And the ranks of their followers grew. Through the Harvard MBA playbook, Julian introduced modern business, finance, and marketing to their pious world. They quadrupled their flock within a year and watched it grow steadily for the next two.

  But in order for their Church to prosper, they needed continual funding; they couldn’t wait for a collection basket to be passed. And so, unlike other Christian religions, they charged a fee. As distasteful as it sounded, religion was a business that required a balance sheet to exist in the modern world. The Catholic Church’s vast wealth did not arrive through divine intervention. Jewish synagogues charged a membership fee; Baptist and Methodist ministries would use gentle persuasion to coax the funds out of their parishioners, guilting them where necessary.

  Of course, Yves and Julian’s approach was subtle, tastefully done, and very successful. The vast majority of their followers were highly educated, and as such some of the wealthiest in the world. The ten thousand dollar per year fee was hardly burdensome to the now one hundred and fifty thousand members. Yves’s two-hundred-million-dollar investment was estimated to have grown to over three billion dollars just a few years after Julian’s arrival.

  At Julian’s urging, Yves returned to medicine, setting up research labs in the compound. He and Julian reasoned that each must take advantage of his strengths, that each must use his God-given talents for the reason God gave them. Julian’s was running the Church while Yves’s true calling was medicine. Yves’s desire to cure had reawakened. It was his goal to find treatments, to find remedies for disease and suffering and give them to the world, not seek to leverage the medical misfortunes of others to build wealth. He left the Church’s work to Julian and Charlotte and hired the finest doctors and biomedical experts—many of whom were members of their Church. He lured them with the promise of unlimited resources, unheard-of salaries, and a pressure-free environment that was unbe-holden to stockholders or banks.

  God’s Truth had truly become a unique religious conglomerate of the modern world, a faith where scientific discovery was viewed as uncovering the mysteries of God, not as a weapon to counter his existence. They were constantly recognizing the presence of God within nature, within science, within their hearts and everyday lives. As Yves had always said, God’s Truth will always put God first.

  On a Sunday evening, Yves and Charlotte went for a sail in Yves’s sloop. It was a ritual, one that father and daughter had shared since she was little. It had bonded them after Charlotte’s mother passed away. They were both expert sailors, alternating at hoisting sails and manning the helm. Yves had passed on his nautical knowledge to his daughter so well that he was convinced she could sail the one-hundred-and-forty-foot yacht by herself. When Julian entered their family, they invited him to become part of their Sunday evening routine, but he deferred, insisting that Yves should continue their tradition as it had remained for twenty years. Julian had already stolen Charlotte away from Yves, the least he could do was share her for a few hours once a week.

  Yves and Charlotte set sail at four-thirty; the sky was clear, the September waters calm, with a light breeze coming out of the southwest. They sailed off as the late summer sun began its slow descent. Father and daughter looked at each other, living in the moment, never anticipating the future of this world that they lived in, one filled with happiness, love, and, above all, God. They both looked ahead at the open sea as the broad white sail caught the wind and carried them away.

  They never returned.

  The next day the sloop was found capsized five miles out, its torn sails floating upon the sea. Investigations were launched, speculations were tossed
about, and the search for the bodies continued without result. The weather had been ideal, two experts upon the water, no calls of distress, no signs of struggle on God’s Truth once it was righted and towed back to port. The world was left with nothing but questions as to the disappearance of Yves and Charlotte, expert sailors lost at sea. The investigation concluded, their deaths ruled accidental.

  Julian gave what was said to be a heart-wrenching eulogy to ten thousand attendees at the outdoor cliffside service. He was beyond distraught, the world seeing the anguish of the twenty-six-year-old as he stood alone upon the outdoor altar that overlooked the Mediterranean.

  And Genevieve was there. She knew the pain of losing a spouse and would stay however long he needed, she would be there to comfort him, to provide the steady care that only a mother could render. She had been so proud of him, of his accomplishments, of the fact that he used his degree for God. She had been overjoyed that he had found love and stability, that he had made a life for himself, all of it now torn from him like a cruel trick, an assault on his heart.

  But after the sermon, after the memorial for the souls whose bodies were never found, was over, Genevieve left without saying a word. She had recognized a change in her son, a coldness she hadn’t seen since he was a child, when her adopted daughter Arabella’s white kitten went missing after Julian had been beaten up on the playground. She knew what Julian did then…and she knew what he did now. She took one look in her son’s eyes and knew the truth.

  No trace of Yves or Charlotte was ever found because everyone had looked in the wrong place. Their broken bodies were buried next to the monks in the crypt deep below the mansion, the former monastery.

  As the sun fell toward the sea that Sunday evening, Julian had emerged from the ship’s hold, much to the surprise of Charlotte and Yves, as a speedboat pulled alongside. With a smile on her face, Charlotte ran into her husband’s arms, joyful at another of her husband’s surprises.