The Thieves of Faith (60 page)

“Comrade?” the voice said from behind him.

“Shto?”

“Kak ti mozehesh?”

“How could I what?” Fetisov asked.

And the twin barrels smacked the back of Fetisov’s head. “Let him go.”

Michael looked back and saw the tall Russian standing there, his tattooed forearms flexed as he squeezed the guns in each of his hands. Raechen stood motionless, his eyes cold, dead; his face was drawn. There was detachment to his voice.

Fetisov released Michael and dropped his gun. “You came all this way for me?”

Raechen maneuvered Fetisov three steps back. His eyes didn’t waver to anyone else, his entire focus on his fellow Russian as if the two of them were alone in a locked room.

Michael stepped away from the two men. Everyone was frozen, fixed on the moment. Michael didn’t know if the situation just got better or worse as he saw the detachment in Raechen’s eyes.

“You stole hope from me, Nikolai, you stole hope from my son,” Raechen said as if Fetisov had literally reached into his son’s chest and ripped out his heart. “You betrayed your uniform, your country. You are a man without honor,” Raechen said.

“And you, Comrade Raechen, you are an expert on honor?”

“No, Nikolai, you know what I’m an expert in.” And without another moment’s hesitation, Raechen let loose both barrels, exploding Fetisov’s square head into pieces.

Raechen stood there, his twin guns moving back and forth between Michael’s friends.

Michael turned and stared him in the eye. “Did you come here for me, too?”

Raechen said nothing.

“Let them go,” Michael said, pointing at his friends. “Let this be between us.”

“Is that your father?” Raechen asked, indicating Stephen who lay with a bullet wound on the ground.

Michael nodded.

Raechen studied Stephen, then looked back at Michael. “Take care of him.”

Michael looked at his father lying there, Susan pressing on the wound. He turned back to Raechen but he was already gone.

“Who the hell was that?” Stephen asked.

“A kindred spirit with a bigger grudge.” Michael raced to his side. “How bad?”

“As long as we stop the bleeding, I’ll be fine.” Stephen stood, keeping his hand pressured on the wound.

Michael turned to Busch and Simon with a knowing look.

“What?” Busch asked with a sense of resigned dread in his voice.

“We have to get back to the mansion.”

“What?” Busch asked. “Why?”

Simon didn’t need an explanation; he was already gathering up the guns that were scattered about the ground. “You brought it here? After everything I said?” Simon’s voice was steady and soft, but there was no mistaking the rage. “Where is it?”

“Third floor.”

Simon tossed a rifle to Busch and a pistol to Michael.

Michael turned back to Stephen. “Can you move?”

“I could fly if I had to.”

“Where is what?” Susan asked. “What is he talking about?”

Stephen turned to Susan as the five of them charged off toward Julian’s mansion.

“The real box, the Tree of Life, is in the mansion.”

Chapter 67

J
ulian stared at the medical lab’s image on his
computer’s monitor. The static snow had been preceded by a bright orange flash. Moments later the rumbling thunder of the explosion wafted up to the mansion. He sat there for all of three seconds before erupting out of the chair, his anger overtaking his emotions as he realized he had been tricked. He picked up the phone and called down to the medical facility. But the phone just rang. There was no doubt that something was wrong there also. He slammed down the phone. Everything was falling apart. He thought himself so wise luring Michael into a trap, only to be fooled by the thief, denied his goal, denied his success and with it his very life. He stared up at the portrait of his mother and raged.

Julian tried to regain his composure, his thoughts, his frame of mind. Michael
had
stolen the true box from under the Kremlin, there was no doubt about that. Martin had confirmed it. But Michael had engaged in a shell game, a game of three-card monte, moving the box about, leading everyone astray from its true location. A location that was probably more obvious than anyone realized, probably sitting somewhere in plain sight.

Michael was far smarter than Julian had estimated him to be; while he tricked Susan and even Martin with false boxes, Michael had to still possess the true one, and since he seemed to trust no one—not even the security of an airplane safe—he would never let it go far from his person.

Julian cleared his thoughts, willing himself to think what he would do if he was in Michael’s position. He calmed himself and thought of the box, of what it looked like, of its shape, its texture, of the best place for it to be hidden.

It was a moment before the clarity hit him. And without another thought, Julian ran from his library and raced up the stairs to the third floor. He charged down the hall to the conference room, burst in, stared at the table, and smiled. And as his smile grew ear to ear, he finally erupted in laughter at the cleverness of it all. Of the way the mind has a tendency to overcomplicate things, to look for solutions that were far more complex than necessary.

Julian picked up Michael’s medical kit and turned it about in his hand. He reverently walked out of the room back down to his library and laid it on his desk. He absentmindedly sat down, lifted up the lid, and stared at the medical supplies. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered as he scooped out the gauze, cotton, and bandages in the small recess to reveal a false bottom.

He pulled a letter opener from his desk drawer and pried off the false plastic top and sides to reveal the golden box. Though mottled with orange, its design was clear; there was no doubt that he was looking at the Albero della Vita, the Tree of Life etched in its lid.

He sat back in his desk chair, picked up his phone, and quickly dialed the intercom to every phone line. “I need every available hand armed and up here now. I want everyone, from cooks to doctors, whoever can be found, to take up defensive positions within the house. Guard every door, every window, from the inside.”

Julian absentmindedly laid the phone in its cradle as he continued to stare at the box. His breathing became rapid as he realized he was on the precipice of saving his own life. The box before him held the answer to life, he could feel it. It was the box in the painting that had hung across from his bed. It was a myth, a fable that was lost to the ages, now found and before him this very moment.

Though the lab was destroyed, Julian knew it could be rebuilt. It wouldn’t take long; the specs, the design were complete. One month, tops. He would spare no expense on building the facility to penetrate the mystery before him.

Julian looked at the lock…and then he looked at the lock again. It was different than the others, not a simple slot. It was circular, overlaid with a perfect X. It looked familiar but he couldn’t place it.

Julian was lost in the moment when the room flooded with guards, fifteen strong, their guns raised, pointing directly at him. He smiled briefly before realizing they did not share his humor. Julian was suddenly taken aback; fear ran through his veins before it was replaced with anger. “What the hell are you doing?” he screamed.

But there was no answer. Each of the guards stood there, their rifles to their shoulders, their fingers on the triggers, their lips sealed as they continued to aim, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

Julian stared at each of them, his eyes moving down the line of guards, uncomprehending their motive. But then he felt it—it was a presence, silent yet close—and realized the guards were not aiming at him. He slowly looked back to see a tall man, his eyes filled with wrath, as he stood there with two pistols an inch from his head.

And the air rushed from Julian’s lungs. He was in the middle of a Mexican standoff and he was the target. He never heard the man enter, he never heard a sound. The man stood with his back to the wall, his twin guns trained on him; Julian gripped the box trying to steady his mind, caught between an assassin and fifteen trigger-happy guards.

“Know this.” The voice was Russian, only inches from his ear. “When they shoot me, I will pull both triggers. You have no chance of surviving.”

“Reachen?” Julian said as the realization hit him.

“Good, you will be able to tell the Devil who delivered you to him.”

Julian sat there, the box still in his hands, its gilded case shining under his eyes. He looked down at it, wondering what was truly within its walls. Could its contents have saved him? It was an answer he knew now would be forever denied him. He was so close to his goal.

“My son is dead,” Raechen whispered. “This false hope started with you and it is going to end with you.”

Julian had nowhere to go as the sweat began to run up his spine and down his neck. He tried to control his hands but they wouldn’t stop shaking. He hadn’t known fear like this since that day on the playground. Since childhood cruelty had caused an attack and he was enveloped in darkness, the air torn from his lungs. The memory was as clear as it had ever been; he had died that day as the other children looked on. He was terrified of the void, of the nothingness that lay before him, until he was abruptly pulled back to consciousness. Now, with his diagnosis, he would once again be faced with that void. And so he searched out life, he had stopped at nothing to find the key to terrestrial eternity, he chased myths and legends, all of them the insane quest of a madman. All except one, and it lay in the box before him now.

And as he felt the two guns press against either side of his skull, Julian was overcome with desperation, his mind seeking a solution, an answer to how he could overcome this deadliest of situations, this extreme instant that was pulling him back from the moment of his greatest triumph.

And then he remembered where he had seen the lock on the box before him. He reached in his pocket and pulled out his mother’s cross necklace. He looked at it: it wasn’t a cross at all. It was a sword. She had always worn it about her neck, it had been there since his earliest childhood memory. He had torn it violently from her neck not more than two hours earlier. And as he examined it, he noted the blade: its tip was a perfect match to the lock on the box. For all these years she had carried it, he thought it to be her reverential expression of her faith. But only those who held the box would realize that it was, in fact, a key. The key to unlock the mystery before him.

“You have ten seconds to make your peace with God,” Raechen said.

Julian held the miniature sword tightly, squeezing it as if it would somehow deliver him from this horror. For there was no way out. He felt the cold metal of the gun barrels pressing his skull. He stared out at his contingent of guards, their rifles pointing at Raechen, all of which was a useless gesture, one that could not prevent the inevitability of his certain death.

The pain of unanswered questions welled up inside him. He would die without knowing the true contents of the box, of its mysteries, hidden away by Ivan the Terrible, hidden away by his European ancestors before him, lost from the collective consciousness of man. Julian would be denied the answers he had sought. Was it truly eternal life as the legend had spoken, was it death as so many had warned? Would God be revealed, would his whisper be heard, or would the box release death, in its worst, most painful of forms?

And then, without thinking, as if his body was detached from his mind, Julian inserted the key in the box. It was a moment. He had no choice; he needed to sate his curiosity, he needed for the box to reveal its truth to him. And if it held death, he was going to die anyway, and if that was so, he was going to take the life of the assassin and as many others with him as he could.

He turned the key. The lock clicked. Julian Zivera lifted the lid of the Tree of Life.