The Thieves of Faith

by Richard Doetsch

  Julian retired to his library and sat behind his desk with a glass of cognac, sipping it slowly, trying to calm his nerves; his head was throbbing, worse than usual. The medicine no longer helped. It took everything in his being to control the pain, closing his eyes, clearing his mind of anger, of rage.

  He wandered down to the wine cellar and selected a Garrafeira port that he had picked up on his last trip to Portugal. It had a way of calming his frayed nerves. He opened it and poured himself a glass, swirling it around in the Tiffany snifter, staring at its golden-brown color and trying to forget his mounting anxieties. And soon they subsided.

  It was during a routine body scan that his world was turned upside down. He had always been the picture of health, knowing no illness or disease since he was eight years old, his life almost taken from him by an asthma attack. Since that day, his breathing was never troubled again, he never had a cold or a fever, and never knew pain except for the infrequent tension headache. He underwent the physical, including an all-over body scan, for sheer amusement, to see what the inside of his body looked like, never imagining the horror that existed behind the door that he opened. He wished he could somehow close that door, wished that he could just reach back in time and forgo his whimsical decision.

  Julian had seen the PET scans, the interior of his brain; he saw it wrapped about the corpus callosum, with fingerlike tendrils weaving in and out of the brain’s centermost region. An unusual tumor, the likes of which left his doctor more than baffled, but it was a tumor nonetheless.

  And the surgery would prove nothing but fatal.

  Despite all of his money, despite all of his power…

  Julian was dying.

  All of the research, all of his efforts had been for naught; his doctors had moved no closer to finding a cure. They gave him no time frame, they gave him no idea of what the debilitating road ahead held except, ultimately, death. His only hope lay with a miracle inside the contents of the box known as the Albero della Vita.

  When Dr. Robert Tanner gave him the final diagnosis alone in the library, Julian simply smiled. They both rose and walked down to this very room. Julian selected a Shiraz and toasted the doctor for all of his efforts. Tanner gave his deepest condolences. They did not know how long the unusual growth had been there. It could have been months, it could have been years. Tanner prescribed a regime of chemo and radiation but explained that would only buy him time, it would not cure him. They spoke philosophically on life, of its quality, of the obstacles we face and how no one ever truly knows how much time they have, unaware of which morning they would awaken to their final day.

  Julian thanked Dr. Tanner for his efforts and sympathetic words, he toasted life, and then buried him in tomb number 789. It was a place of honor, only three tombs down from his wife and father-in-law.

  Julian had yet to feel ill, but his headaches had become more frequent and he didn’t need a doctor to tell him what that meant.

  Julian stood there looking upon the crypt constructed so long ago, the dark, haunting cavern that held so much death. And the death seemed to float about, lurking in the shadows, in the far-off corners like a rabid animal waiting for its next victim. The darkness, the shadows seemed to suck away what little light there was in the room. And with it, he felt as if it was pulling at him, sucking his life away, drawing out what little hope he had left.

  As Julian looked upon the tombs, upon the victims he had dispatched to achieve his goals, he knew his inevitable fate. He knew his Scripture, he knew there would be no eternal reward for him.

  His death sentence would be forever darkness. For no one knew his sins better than he, the trail of death, the gratification he had taken in ending others’ lives.

  His only real chance, his only true hope, lay within that golden box that lay somewhere deep beneath the Kremlin.

  And his fragile mind reasoned that if he was faced with death, if his chance at survival was stolen from him, then all would feel his fury. If Michael failed, not only would he suffer the death of his father, but the death of his friends and his friends’ families; everyone Michael St. Pierre knew would feel Julian’s final wrath. And Michael would bear witness from this very room, watching as each of them died.

  Chapter 34

  Michael threw the water-resistant kernmantle rope into the raging waters and watched as the orange ball, tied to the end, was sucked under and vanished from view into the ancient pipe under the wall. Michael fed out the line as it was pulled from his hands by the force of the current. The high-tensile-strength rope was marked in ten-foot increments; he paid strict attention to the distance as it accelerated out of his grip. Fifty feet, sixty, seventy, one hundred feet, the line was almost a blur, the friction heating through his gloves. And then it stopped; two hundred and fifty feet. He looked at Susan and then back at the line protruding from the water as it quivered from the current. He tied the line around a large stone pillar and checked it twice to be sure.

  The rocky cavern was aglow with orange lights from the host of fluorescent glow sticks that Michael had cracked and strewn about. The illuminated room was bigger than he’d thought, stretching out for fifty feet. The fifteen-foot ceiling was festered with lime deposits that formed into mini-stalactites, all of which looked like upside-down flames in the artificial orange glow. Michael read his hand-drawn duplicate of the map that he had painstakingly copied and sealed in watertight plastic; he had marked and noted not only the cavern where they now stood but the layout of the Liberia where they were hopefully heading. Michael laid a compass on the map and factored in the distance of the water drain before them. He noted what he hoped was the entrance to the chamber one hundred and twenty feet down the forty-five-degree angled drainpipe.

  Michael emptied out the last of the three duffel bags. He picked up, checked, rechecked, and loaded a set of tools—small drill, screwdriver, crowbar, mini oxyacetylene torch—into a dive bag. He put aside four pony bottles, which held the five minutes of air they would need for their return to the real world. He placed the three small cubes of Semtex along with the three timers into the dive bag and hooked it to his waist.

  Michael unwrapped and laid out the induction field antenna. It was a flat, four-inch-wide strip that was ten feet long. He formed a circle with it and attached his radio. Normal radio signals are absorbed by rock but low frequencies travel better through solid objects; as such, his induction field would be able to penetrate rock for short distances. Busch and Nikolai would only be several hundred feet away on a straight line; it was a precautionary step but a critical one. In the event of a problem they would need to stay in touch.

  Michael hoisted his tank up on his back and tightened his dive vest. He stepped into a climber’s harness and secured it about his waist, its multiple carabiners dangling, two clips attached in the front to a Petzl self-breaking shunt for a controlled descent and an ascender clamp that would help them on their way out. He wore a dive knife on each calf and wore waterproof dive bags on each hip. The black helmet upon his head was equipped with a powerful underwater halogen spotlight, three times stronger than the lamps on a miner’s helmet. He left his fins on shore; he decided they would be more an impediment as he planned to travel feetfirst into the pipe, allowing the suction to provide his locomotion on the way in, and his arms to provide the propulsion up the rope on the way out.

  Susan stepped into her climber’s harness and tied it tightly.

  “I’m going alone,” Michael said, not bothering to look at her.

  “We’ve gone through this.” Susan turned on the valve on her air tank and tested her regulator as she continued to prep for the dive.

  “You see that water?” Michael turned toward Susan. “It’s like a drain, tons of water being sucked down a narrow tube. A pressurized pipe: a massive volume trying to squeeze itself through a hole fifty times smaller. This is more than dangerous. You could get killed.”

  “So could you, especially if you go alone. You know the first rule of diving: never di
ve alone. We’ve got one shot at this and if you die”—Susan hoisted her tank onto her back and cinched up the straps—“then so does Stephen.”

  Michael glared at her. “I can do this by myself—”

  “You may be a good climber,” she cut in, trying to lighten the moment, “but I’m an excellent climber.”

  “In case you didn’t know, we are going underwater, not up K2.”

  “You don’t know what we’ll end up doing. Look, you need me, you don’t realize you need me, but you do.” Susan held up her arm, displaying the watch upon her wrist to Michael. “You see, I’ve got my lucky watch.”

  Michael clipped three supply bags to his vest and turned to Susan. He hated when she was right. “This is a bad idea,” he said as he spun her around, checking her gear, pulling on her tank, checking her regulator. He pulled hard at the climber’s harness, causing her to gasp, but she said nothing. He stuck his regulator into his mouth; two pulls of air and he spit it out.

  “You watch me, you do what I direct you to, if we get into the chamber, you do exactly as I say or I’ll leave you there. Capisce?”

  She nodded and spit into her mask, swirling around her spittle. She leaned down, rinsed her mask in the water, and put it on.

  Michael put a helmet on her head and flipped on the light. He clipped her onto the rope, picked up her regulator, and stuffed it into her mouth. “I lead, you stay five feet back. I know you know how to climb but this isn’t climbing, it will be like carrying one hundred pounds on your back. The force of this water is strong.” Michael hooked his harness onto the line directly in front of Susan, pulling hard, running the breaking sheath up and down the line to test its functionality. He pulled hard on the taut rope, satisfied at the tension and security of its anchor. They both looked at the water, the beams of their headlamps bouncing off the surface, refracting the light around the chamber. And they turned to each other. It was a moment before Michael put his hand on her shoulder. “You OK?”

  She smiled and nodded. There was no fear in her eyes, only confidence. Michael was amazed at her force of will. And though he thought her overly optimistic, he was glad, for if she really knew what she was facing, she would be feeling as scared as he was and he didn’t need to deal with that right now.

  Michael looked at the water, watching the currents ebb and flow around where the rope protruded. He focused himself, stuffed his regulator in his mouth, and jumped in. He pulled his mask down and quickly went under, allowing himself to adjust, to allow the play of the light to cut through the churning waters. The current was strong, pulling against him, sucking him toward the pipe. He wasn’t worried about the trip in as much as he was the trip out. They would have to pull themselves along the rope against these raging waters, something that could prove to be harder than anything he had done before.

  Michael’s harness held him in place as the waters pulled him. The suction was worse than terrifying, it was like he was being pulled to his death and he was letting it happen. Susan jumped into the water, immediately submerging next to him.

  Michael gave her the thumbs-up sign and released the guide line from his left hand while letting it feed through the clip. The water began pulling him, he was going in feetfirst, looking down as he went. He could begin to see the tunnel up ahead. It was sheer blackness against the dark walls. The light on his helmet danced about with his movements. The opening was fifteen feet below the surface and five feet in diameter. Michael could see tiny bubbles and sediment in whirlpool currents swirling into the pipe. Michael looked back. Susan was five feet behind; there was no panic in her eyes, though Michael thought that might change once they entered the tube.

  He continued feeding out his line, moving closer to the entrance, keeping his legs together, his feet pointed. It required no effort, the suction doing all the work. And before he knew it, he was in.

  It was like being in the middle of a tornado; the current was a whirlwind around him. If he didn’t have the rope to steady himself, he would surely have been tossed against the pipe walls, end over end, sucked down to who knows where. He counted off the rope’s ten-foot increments; he had estimated the grate to be one hundred and twenty feet in. Keeping his orientation was difficult at best; there was no way to track your bubbles to see which way was up as they were caught in the vortex.

  He tilted his head back and could see Susan right behind him, keeping pace.

  Forty feet in. Michael slowly played out the rope, fighting the current.

  Eighty feet in. Michael moved his head slowly about, directing the beam of his light around the tube for any sign of the grating.

  One hundred feet in. Susan had maintained the five-foot distance as Michael had directed. Michael continued to look back, concerned about his unwanted companion. Though he considered her an added burden, distracting him from his primary goal, he still respected her confidence, stronger than he had expected.

  One hundred and twenty feet. No sign of the Liberia entrance. Michael slowed up, Susan followed suit. They both looked about, but there was no sign of any passage. Michael fed out his line one foot at a time, his head turning to and fro.

  And then he saw it, up ahead, at the one-hundred-and-thirty-foot point. He inched his way toward it, careful not to overshoot his mark as he knew it would be an effort to fight the current and pull himself back. More important, he had to conserve his energy for the trip out. As he approached, he could see that the opening was three feet square, actually recessed two feet into another tunnel. Michael stopped his momentum and reached up through the current and found a grate. He used it to pull himself into the new tunnel and pulled out his knife. He looked about the grate; there were no screws to loosen, no locks to pry. He wedged himself in the tunnel and pushed the metal obstruction. Without any resistance, the grate gave way, pushing upward on thick hinges.

  Michael looked back at the safety line and up into the new tunnel. With all of his strength, he tugged and pulled on the grate, ensuring its viability, its strength. This was the trickiest and most dangerous part of the whole operation. He knew there was no room for failure. Michael grabbed the edge of the grate and clipped on a new rope, a safety line, securing himself. He then unhooked from the guide line and quickly pulled himself upward.

  Ten feet up he swam. The current here was minimal compared to the torrent he had just left. He played out the rope from his waist as he went, his head finally breaking the surface. He looked around. He was in a cistern. The harsh light from his helmet bounced off the moist walls. The room was large, man-made, of brick and granite with a low ceiling and vacant torch mounts along the wall. A single door on the far side of the room.

  He wasted no time. He dropped back under the water and swam down. Susan looked up at him from the main pipe, the water whipping her body back and forth. Michael gave her a thumbs-up and motioned her to move toward him. She reached up and secured her safety line on the grate, reached back and unhooked from the guide line. The current was still strong; Michael could see her hair sticking out of her helmet swirling around her head.

  Michael offered her his hand but she ignored it. She pulled herself upward toward Michael, up into the tunnel.

  But then, without warning, the iron rod on the grate to which she had secured her line snapped in two. And with that, the suction pulled her back down into the tunnel. Her hands scrambled for a hold, but it was useless. Before Michael realized what happened, she was gone. Sucked into the darkness of the whirlpool pipe.

  Chapter 35

  Busch stood in the middle of the operating theater, his pulse running higher than he had ever felt it, higher even than his most tense moments back on the force. He had never felt farther far from the law than he did right now. Ten stories below the seat of power of the Russian government—about to steal from them—was not where he imagined he would be after retiring from the police force. He thought about Jeannie and his kids and his promise: he would come back unharmed. Though Jeannie had told him not to come back at all, he knew she was s
peaking out of anger; it wasn’t the first time she had figuratively kicked him out. He tucked those thoughts along with his fears in the deepest part of his being and looked around.

  The operating room was truly state of the art: computerized and engineered with precision right down to the auto-directional lights in the ceiling. The cameras, stationed at multiple locations, made the space appear more like the set of a movie than an operating room. It was as if they were about to dissect an alien, not operate on an innocent woman.

  “We’re not sightseeing,” Nikolai said from the doorway, looking at his watch. “We’ve got to move.”

  Busch took one last look at the room and turned to the far wall, where the large window ran nearly the distance of the thirty-foot wall. He stared at his reflection, unable to see in the darkened room beyond, when the lights flashed on. Nikolai entered the audience observation area, its plush red-cushioned chairs sitting upon multiple tiers. Nikolai was saying something, his lips moving, but Busch didn’t hear a sound.

  Busch walked out of the room down the short hall and entered the theater.

  “Give me a hand, will you?” Nikolai said, passing Busch a large roll of tan putty. Nikolai held an end as Busch walked backward, allowing it to play out along the length of the room like a small rope. Nikolai and Busch crouched down and began stuffing the rope of putty into the carpet seam along the wall just under the baseboard. It was a malleable mixture Michael had concocted from potassium nitrate, sugar, and desflurane, all packed around a magnesium wire. Nikolai pulled from his pocket a small box with two prongs. He stepped into the far corner of the room and grabbed a small potted fake fern. He slipped the prongs into the putty where it protruded slightly and moved the fake plant back in place.

  Without warning, the chime of the elevator rang, startling the two men. Nikolai hit the light switch and they both ducked down. Busch quietly closed the door only to hear the click of the latch clang like an alarm, echoing off the theater walls. Nikolai and Busch inched their way up the three stairs and hid behind the uppermost row of seats.