The butt of a gun came down on the back of his head. Sharp, brutal. Stephen fell to the floor in a lump, barely conscious. He rolled over and looked into the eyes of a man who carried no emotion. His bony face bore the appearance of someone who knocked people out as part of a daily routine, as common and boring as taking out the garbage. The man was shaped like a feral dog: long, lean, and muscular, his head shaved under his mesh security hat.
The guard placed his left foot squarely on Stephen’s throat and pressed. Not enough to crush his windpipe but enough to make him aware that he could. Stephen instinctively grabbed the man’s foot but quickly let go as the guard applied enough pressure to restrict his airway.
The man thumbed the microphone strapped to his right shoulder. “Command, this is Nash.” The man’s accent surprised Stephen. It was American, Southern; he figured in the vicinity of Georgia. Almost as an afterthought, the guard flipped the snap on his holster and withdrew his pistol.
“Go ahead, Nash.” The voice squawked back.
“I’ve got a white male, fifties, playing dress-up down here in the rec house. Figuring this is who the all-points was for.”
“Copy that. Stand by.”
Stephen lay on the floor, his head throbbing but his wits returning. And he didn’t appreciate the lucid thought, for it only confirmed his dark situation. He was captured not fifteen minutes into his escape. He imagined they would drag him back to his room to wait out his time before they executed him. He belonged in a courtroom, a place where he could control perception, where he could control people. Not have people controlling him.
“Nash?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We do not wish to disturb anyone on the compound. Do you have your silencer?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please use it. You are instructed to kill him without delay.”
Chapter 50
Michael ran up the gangway to the jet, Busch and Simon right behind him, the engine’s whine already deafening as it wound up, ready for their departure.
“Martin, where can I put my dive bag?” Michael asked, ready to leave the murky waters beneath the Kremlin behind him for good.
“Stow it in the back,” Martin said as he paid off the last of the Russian guns for hire, adding an extra fifty thousand for their continued silence.
“I need my camera,” Michael continued, his heart still racing from their escape through the Kremlin underground.
Hours earlier, Michael, Simon, and Busch had made it down the elevator of the Arsenal, through the medical facility, and disappeared into the Kremlin underground. They had followed Michael along his bread-crumb path, racing deeper and deeper into the earth away from soldiers and guards, bullets and death. Michael grabbed the gray spray can that they had left by the air vent and covered their orange-dot path as they went.
They arrived at the confluence of the rivers, the Grotto of Tsars, but bypassed their planned route of escape as they were sure Fetisov would have posted men at the river’s emergence point as a precaution.
They trudged through tunnel after tunnel for three hours, lost, practically consigned to never escaping the subterranean Russian world, when they smelled food. They happened upon a series of vents that led to a series of under-dwellers, and finally a set of stairs that emerged into the basement of an apartment building two miles from the Kremlin in Kitai Gorod. Two miles distance from any guard or soldier who wanted nothing short of their heads.
They grabbed a cab to the terminal where they were greeted by a surprised Martin.
“So how did you find him?” Michael asked Busch, pointing Simon’s way.
“I found him,” Simon said as he threw down his large bag. “I arrived two days ago. I actually came here to stop you.”
“Stop me?” Michael asked as Martin handed him his large dive bag.
“You never questioned once what you were doing in finding that box, in planning to turn it over to Zivera.” Simon’s mood darkened. “You have no idea of the danger, of the risk of it being out in the open.”
“Then what the hell is in the box?”
Simon paused. “Hope for one. Despair for most.”
“Either way, there was no need to question what I was doing,” Michael said as he riffled though his bag before finally zipping it up. “A life was on the line; my father’s life.”
“A man you just met,” Simon said in a dismissive tone.
Michael froze, he turned slowly to Simon. “Fuck you,” Michael said, though his mind was spinning with Simon’s accurate statement. He never had stopped to think about what drove him. Was he doing this for the memory of his dead wife, fulfilling her dying wish, or was he truly looking to save his father, a man that he had only just met, whom he knew nothing about beyond what Susan had told him? There was no paternal bond, no father-son relationship built over time to base this quest on. But then Mary pulled him back to the moment as she so often had when she was alive. It was her letter and the words that she had written:
Family has a way of making us whole, filling the emptiness that pervades our hearts, restoring the hope that we think is forever lost.
And what Michael realized in that moment was that he wasn’t just chasing his father, he was chasing hope, the hope that he lost with the death of his wife. He was afraid that if he lost Stephen, if he lost his father before ever getting to know him, his chance for finding hope again would be lost forever.
“This isn’t what Genevieve wanted,” Simon said.
“Then why entrust me with the painting and the map?” Michael shot back. “She knows me, she knows my past. Hell, she’s the reason this whole mess started: having me steal Julian’s painting in Geneva. If she left me out of her problems my father would be safe, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
“So you should have turned your back on her?”
“I didn’t say that. We just almost lost our lives trying to save her,” Michael shot back. “Genevieve left me the map for a reason. She trusts me. She wants that box destroyed,” he said defensively.
“She did say that,” Busch interrupted, nodding his head, praying he could mediate this moment back to calmness.
“It’s pretty hard to destroy something you don’t have, isn’t it?” Simon said.
“All right, enough.” Busch stood up. “How did you know we were here?”
“I know all about the Liberia. Genevieve revealed its secrets to me before I helped her disappear.”
“You knew she was alive as I stood graveside mourning her?” Michael exploded.
“It was the only way for her to truly disappear; it’s what she wanted, Michael. And when she resurfaced, when she came to you, I knew there was only one thing that would compel her to do so.” Simon paused, his eyes darkened. “We have to get that box back.”
“You help me get my father and Susan, and I’ll help you get back the box and destroy it.”
Simon stared at Michael. “And Genevieve.”
“And Genevieve.” Michael nodded, as the exhaustion from the day seeped into him.
“What about you, you going to tag along?” Simon said to Busch, knowing how to push his buttons.
“Tag along? You would both be breathing out of holes in your chests right now if it wasn’t for me. Tag along.” Busch stood, skimming his head on the jet’s ceiling.
“Really,” Simon said as he sat down, “you would still be dialing the Vatican for help if I didn’t find you.”
Busch closed his eyes as he tensed up, trying not to explode.
Michael threw his bag over his shoulder, picked up Simon’s bag out of the aisle, and headed to the stateroom at the back of the plane. “You guys fight it out, I need a shower so I can think straight.”
Martin emerged from the cockpit and pulled the cabin door shut. “Do you have a heading, sir?”
“Corsica, Martin,” Michael said. “We have to get to Corsica.”
Chapter 51
Stephen lay on the floor of the guardhouse, the Southerner’s boot
pressing into his throat. His blood ran cold as he stared up into the barrel of a gun. In all of his years, he never imagined that this was how he would die. Alone, not knowing what country he was in. They would never find his body; the grave plot next to his wife and Peter would sit vacant for all eternity. He thought of Michael and what might have been, of a son he thought he had lost forever, of the promise of hope for a new beginning that would never come. And the despair kicked Stephen’s mind into overdrive: survive at any cost. Though his hands were free, there was nothing he could grab. All he had in his pocket was the map and a pen.
“You’re American, aren’t you?” Stephen gasped through his constricted throat, his hands passively at his side. “I’m putting you as a Georgia boy.”
The guard stared at him a moment and cocked his head. “You’re an American?”
“Yeah, Boston,” Stephen said, keeping eye contact with the guard. With his right hand, he slowly slipped the pen from his pocket.
The guard looked at Stephen. There was some activity going on behind the Southerner’s eyes. Maybe he got to him, maybe there was some American camaraderie left in the man.
“Boston, huh?” The guard smiled a moment and let it slip into a scowl. “Fucking Yankee.” He chambered a round.
Stephen clutched the pen in his right hand. Without another thought, with all of his might, he jammed the pen into the right calf of the guard, the calf that had been pressing on his windpipe. He drove the pen clear through the guard’s pants, into his flesh and muscle before it finally hit home into the bone. The guard drew back his foot as he shrieked in agony. Stephen rolled right, he held tight to the pen that was embedded in the guard’s leg and tugged on it, pulling the guard to the ground. The gun fired with a muffled phut. Stephen grabbed the man’s gun hand and twisted the pistol away. With every ounce of energy that he could draw upon, Stephen began hitting the guard: hard, deadly blows to the face, throat, and body, punches like he hadn’t thrown since his sparring days. Stephen knew how to fight, he knew how to hit, but most important, he knew where to strike to cause the most incapacitating damage.
The guard fell into unconsciousness but Stephen didn’t let up for three more blows, his adrenaline churning, getting the better of him. He hadn’t felt a bloodlust since his teens. He checked the man’s pulse; still alive.
“Don’t ever call a Red Sox fan a Yankee.” Stephen grabbed the man by the arms and dragged him into the coat closet. He stripped him of his belt, holster, radio, and ammo. He checked the guard’s pockets and took his ID, car keys, a small wad of cash, and the answers to his prayers: a cell phone.
He tucked it all in his pockets, covered the man in a pile of coats, and closed the door. He turned, picked up the gun, and quickly holstered it.
There was a sudden roar over the building, shaking the very foundation of the structure and the nerve right out of Stephen. It grew louder until it finally died a bit before a loud squeal came from outside. Stephen calmed himself as he realized it was a plane landing on the adjacent airstrip.
He pulled out the map one more time, checked his location, and left the security building. He walked across the walkway to a small parking lot filled with cars. He pulled the guard’s car keys from his pocket, pointed, and pressed the alarm button. A blue Peugeot chirped and flashed its lights in response.
Stephen drove the vehicle across the lot and stopped next to the airstrip. The same Boeing Business Jet that had brought him here taxied to a stop. A ramp was pushed up to the front passenger door. A square box of a man exited the plane with two women and a handful of soldier types; Stephen couldn’t make out their faces as they were quickly hustled into a waiting SUV, but wrote them off as Julian’s people.
He waited a moment, watching as the vehicles drove off in a convoy. He hoped whoever had arrived had done so of their own accord. He knew the security would be tripled once they found he had escaped.
He paid the activities no more mind and drove off through the compound past a series of office buildings and houses before the road became encased by a dark forest. The road wound downward for two miles, not a streetlight or vehicle along the entire route, the dark world around him accenting his fear that he would be caught.
As Stephen approached the main guardhouse, he saw the gate. It wasn’t a small wooden gate that could easily be run through but a large three-rail metal design. There were two guards standing outside, talking. Stephen thought of his two options: try to talk his way out or run the gate. Both were fraught with danger. He was on the run again, but he had no idea where he was running to. He didn’t know where he was and for all he knew, it could be one hundred miles to any sign of civilization, or worse: he could be on an island. The guardhouse was one hundred yards off and the guards began to take notice of his approach. They broke off their conversation and turned their attention to him.
Stephen began to accelerate. He checked the pistol that he now clutched in his hand against the side of the door, out of sight.
The guardhouse was twenty yards off now. One of the guards slipped into the house while the other continued to watch Stephen.
And much to his surprise, the gate rose. The lead guard waved and headed back into his hut. All of Stephen’s fear, all of his anxiety, washed away as he waved back and drove off into the night.
Chapter 52
The Bombardier Jet leapt off the runway into the blue evening sky, climbing out of Russia as fast as she could fly. Michael sat in one of the thick leather chairs, ice packs on his head and each arm. Busch and Simon were on the couch, an open bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the seat between them.
“I hate vodka,” Busch said as he downed his glass of whiskey on the rocks.
“How’s the head?” Simon asked Michael.
“Fine,” Michael said softly as he looked out the window at the city below. He considered the canvas map that lay in his dive bag and thought of the lost Russian history it exposed. He considered turning it over to the Russian government but decided he would let its existence remain lost in time. The mysteries of Russia would remain just that for years to come, maybe for eternity. It was a world so beautiful, so filled with promise, but like most countries it was in the hands of the government, and that was not always a good fate.
He had come in with the hope of saving his father, but was leaving with his tasks unaccomplished and even more lives placed in the hands of Julian Zivera. Along with Genevieve, Susan’s fate was added to his conscience.
Somehow, she had touched him, her dark eyes cutting through his wall to warm his closely guarded heart. A woman who on first impression had infuriated him had found a way in. And of all times to have his heart open up again…He had briefly seen that he could move on with his life without tarnishing Mary’s memory. But now…
Martin emerged from the back of the plane. Simon watched as the attorney continued forward and entered the cockpit. With as much privacy as they were going to get, Simon turned to Michael. “Michael, there is something you need to know about Julian Zivera.”
“Before you deliver any more bad news,” Michael said with a forced smile, “thanks for saving my ass. If you didn’t show, I’d be dead or shoveling snow in some gulag by now.”
Simon nodded, acknowledging Michael’s appreciation.
“You’re welcome,” Busch cut in.
“Oh, yeah, you, too.” Michael smirked at his friend before turning back to Simon. “So, what didn’t she tell me?”
Simon settled in, centering himself. “Julian Zivera’s motives are not what you think; this is not about power, money, greed. Julian kidnapped your father as a means to save himself.” Simon paused. “He has an inoperable growth on his brain. He is dying and looks to the box as his only hope. He’s exhausted all avenues for a cure: the latest cutting-edge therapies, new age herbal regimes, ancient remedies, experimental drugs. All his money, all his power cannot buy him a cure. He, like all of us, cannot buy back time, cannot forestall death with a large cash payment. His greatest loves, his money
and his power, have proven useless in his quest for survival. And it has left him desperate, grasping at straws. Unfortunately”—Simon paused again—“there is some validity to this straw.”
“Excuse me while I get another drink.” Busch stood from the couch and headed for the bar, bringing the bottle with him. “This maudlin love fest for a psychotic is making me thirsty.”
Michael sat there a moment, getting lost, losing focus with all of the complications and revelations, and tried to get back to the most basic of things. “Simon, my father and Susan are being held by Julian. If I have any hope of saving them, I need to know.” Michael paused. “I need to know everything.”
“I think we’ve heard enough stories,” Busch said as he sat back down and refilled his glass of Jack Daniel’s. “I say we break into his compound and pluck them out. Let the authorities deal with the cleanup.”
Michael turned to Busch, taking a deep breath. “Please, we are thirty-five thousand feet in the air; no place to go. I need to hear this.”
Simon looked at Michael, stood, and walked back to the bar. He took his time as he poured more ice in his glass, topping it off with some whiskey. The plane was deathly quiet but for the dull whine of the jet engines as he returned to his seat. He settled back in his chair, looked at Michael, and began. “Since the beginning of time, man has sought eternal life. All of mankind—bar none—seeks to live forever, whether it be in some celestial realm or on terra firma, spiritually or physically. Alexander the Great sought it; it was the reason Ponce de León sailed in search of Bimini; gunpowder was discovered by the Chinese in their quest to find the elixir of life. Even in the simplest ways, in our everyday life we all seek it out. We modify our diets, we exercise, we take vitamins, all in hope of living longer. Modern medicine’s sole purpose is to conquer disease, to cure us, so we may live. The quest for immortality is universal and similarly represented. Every religion, every faith, seeks eternal life in one way, shape, or form. We forget, the promise of eternal life is the primary motivator behind religion’s appeal. The theme of Christian Scripture, God’s promise, He who believes in Me shall have eternal life. The avoidance of our end is part of the human condition. To survive is our instinctual programming.” Simon paused a moment, looking at Michael and Busch, their eyes fixed on him, waiting on his every word as he fell to a hushed tone.
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