The Thieves of Faith (15 page)

Julian looked around at the laughing faces, no one sympathetic to him, no one coming to his aid. Marco jumped on top of him and began stuffing snow down Julian’s shirt, slapping his face back and forth. Julian tried to fight but was completely helpless against the assault, his Sunday school teachings ringing in his ear: “Do unto others…Thou shall not raise a fist…Turn the other cheek…”

And then his eyes fell on Arabella. She was the new girl. She had just arrived two days earlier, his newest sister. She simply stood there, her eyes locked with his as she cradled a small white kitten. She was ten, older and bigger than any of the others, yet she remained silent as Marco continued to abuse him.

And then it happened. Marco did not mean it, he didn’t understand the consequences of his actions; his blows weren’t that hard. Confusion ran through Julian’s face; he couldn’t understand why he suddenly couldn’t breathe. He felt as if he were underwater, gasping for air, gulping for a single breath. But it was to no avail. His face reddened and everyone saw. A hush fell over the juvenile crowd as he grasped his throat, pulling at the invisible restrictor. And then the screams came, the kids started to panic, Marco leapt off him and ran away.

And young Julian realized why. They were watching a little boy die…and he was that little boy. And as the kids scattered it was Arabella who stared at him quietly, without a word, cradling, petting her kitten; she just stood there without trying to help him in any way, shape, or form. And all he thought was that he didn’t want to die.

Darkness was covering his eyes, the world was fading, his lungs felt on fire as he desperately tried to breathe. And all he kept thinking was that he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to die.

Julian lay in bed, his eight-year-old body tucked snugly under the warm blankets. He couldn’t sleep, his young mind racing, paranoid. The winter winds howled so strongly they flickered the flames in the stone fireplace. He stared at the painting on the wall. The angel seemed to stare right back at him. Its enormous white wings filled the canvas as it rose out of a golden tree toward a cloud-filled sky, the golden box in its hand glowing like the sun.

He didn’t know what happened but he wasn’t dead. He awoke on the snowy playground, his mother and an aide standing over him with needles, stethoscopes, and smiles of joyous relief. His asthma attack subsided. They rushed him to the hospital where he was checked out and found to be fine. They gave him an inhaler and sent him home with his mother.

Genevieve walked in the room and closed the door behind her. She smiled warmly as she sat on the bed next to him. “How’s my big boy?”

“I’m OK.”

“Just OK?” She pulled the covers tight, cocooning him even more.

Julian nodded.

Genevieve tucked her black hair behind her ears and lay down on top of the covers next to him. “Sometimes kids can be mean. And it’s how we handle it that makes us who we are. The fact that you didn’t hit back makes me very proud, Julian. Marco is so upset. He didn’t know, he didn’t mean to hurt you so badly.”

Julian said nothing as he listened to his mother.

“He’s really going to miss TV and dessert for the next month.” Genevieve smiled and got a slow smile back.

Julian felt somewhat better knowing that Marco got a punishment that he would dread getting himself.

“Have you seen the new girl, Arabella’s, kitten?” Genevieve asked.

Julian looked up into his mother’s eyes. “No.”

“It’s gone missing. In the morning I need you to help me find it. Except for the clothes on her back, it’s all that she has in the world.”

“She’s mean, Mom. She didn’t even try to help me today.”

“She’s just scared, honey, she’s ten years old and all alone in the world. It’s our job to make her feel loved.”

“Mom.” Julian’s voice was quiet, hesitant. “Why do I keep getting more brothers and sisters?”

Genevieve looked deep into his eyes. “Julian, there are some children in this world that are not as lucky as you. Some don’t have mothers and fathers.”

Julian stared up at his mother.

“It is important to love, it is important to be loved. I know how hard it is to see these new faces. But always remember, you are my special boy.” She nuzzled her nose into his ear. “Who else has their own room?”

Julian smiled at his mom. “No one.”

“Who do I spend the most time with?”

“Me.”

“Who’s my only real child?”

Julian smiled an embarrassed smile.

“OK, I’m glad that’s settled.” She rubbed his head, flicking his blond hair around. “I’ll tell you what, tomorrow, it will be just our day. You and me. Whatever you want to do.”

But he wasn’t listening. She watched his eyes as they stared at the painting on the wall.

“Mom?”

“Yes, honey?”

“What is in the box?”

Genevieve looked at the painting of the angel on the wall. It was a moment, her face lit by the flames of the fire as she became lost in thought. She finally turned back to Julian and softly smiled. She leaned down, kissed him on the forehead, and whispered, “Hope.”

Genevieve walked to the door and turned to Julian. “Sleep tight, I love you.” And she closed the door behind her.

With the click of the door, Julian counted to twenty, flung back the covers, and rolled out of bed. He got down on his hands and knees, reached under his bed, and pulled out a small cardboard box. He lifted the lid and stared in at the small white kitten, nestled sound asleep in a ball. Julian thought of how the new girl did nothing to help, how mean she was to him, how mean so many of the kids were. They called him skinny, they called him creepy, they all treated him as if he didn’t belong in his own house. They were the outsiders but they made him feel a stranger under his own roof. And it made him mad, so mad he couldn’t control himself, beginning to shake, tears running down his cheeks. He could never tell his mother, she wouldn’t understand. He hated the other children more than anything on earth.

Julian looked at the kitten and rubbed its sleeping head, running his fingers through its soft white fur. He smiled, closed the box, and padded across the room to the fireplace. He pulled back the screen and, without a moment’s hesitation, tossed the box in the fire. He watched as the cardboard darkened, as the lid began to pop up and down, as a white paw emerged before pulling back inside. The box began to vibrate and jostle on the flaming logs, teetering to and fro as the sour odor of burning flesh began to fill the room. The cries of the kitten were like nothing Julian had ever heard before. He thought of Arabella, how he wished the shrill cry was coming from her, that it was she who was trapped in the cardboard coffin. Finally, the box turned black and burst into flames, the dancing glow reflecting off Julian’s eight-year-old blue eyes.

And as the cries stopped, the box indistinguishable from the logs, Julian walked across the room and climbed back into bed. He stared at the painting of the angel on the wall, lit by the flames, and smiled. His mind was suddenly free of its anger, of its hate. His mind finally stopped spinning and he fell fast asleep.

Julian bolted upright in his chair, the dreams of his childhood washing away but leaving his heart racing. He looked out over the ocean and after a few moments, his mind began to clear as he heard the screams of Stephen Kelley, the pounding on the door coming from the back of the plane.

And he smiled.

Chapter 15

M
ichael sat back on the couch, the elegant
parlor seeming to collapse in on him. Everything that had occurred in the last hour was wiped from his mind; his only focus was the case before him. He had worked the lock for fifteen minutes, a luxury usually not afforded in the field, where witnesses existed and security systems monitored everything from heat signatures to nasal breath. The small intricate tools Michael always carried protruded from the lock, their thin metal fingers massaging the complex inner organs of the case. Michael commanded the black picks with dexterous fingers and a patient mind. As the last of the twelve springs released, Michael gently lifted the lid of the case and gazed inside.

He had already read through the thick leather folio left by Zivera. Reams of documents on the Kremlin, its history, architecture, and mysteries. Russian historical fact, fiction, and legends. A world rich in beauty, detail, and allure that had been mostly ignored by the West.

Michael studied the first grouping of documents, committing the facts to memory:

At the fall of the Kingdom of Byzantium, the last emperor, Constantine XI, sent his kingdom’s great library and artifacts as a wedding gift with his niece Sofia Paleolog, who was to marry the Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan III. And while it was a magnificent gesture, a wedding gift beyond compare, it was, in fact, an act of extreme subterfuge to send one of history’s greatest treasures as far away from the center of civilization as possible. Russia, at the time, was the farthest edge of European civilization and an ideal place to hide a collection of knowledge and wealth that was being fought over by rulers and religions alike.

Upon arriving in Russia, Sofia found a city prone to treachery, thievery, and fire, and so, to protect her great treasure, she resolved to embark on an architectural journey like nothing seen in history. She summoned the renowned Italian architect Aristotle Fioravanti, the first of many, to introduce the architectural influences of Italy and Byzantium to Russia. Fioravanti’s design and construction of the Assumption Cathedral still stands today within the Kremlin walls as one of the great masterpieces of Russian history. But his greatest achievement, one that far exceeds his reputation, has been seen by only a handful of people. For underneath the Kremlin, Fioravanti designed and built a great multitiered world for the young Russian princess and her library. The design included tunnels, vaults, and elegant chambers carved of white stone. A private sanctum for the princess to not only house but hide away her cherished books and artifacts. It was a cavernous world of mazes and rivers, passageways and crypts accessed through secret entrances known only to select members of the royal family. Upon the completion of his underground masterpiece, Fioravanti requested to return to his Italian home, only to be thrown in prison for fear of the details of the subterranean world leaking out.

The construction of these tunnels, vaults, and passages was continued by her grandson, the first tsar of Russia. The tsar brought in other top designers but his intentions couldn’t have been more different. Torture chambers, prison cells, and secret tunnels in and out of the Kremlin were the preferred design of Ivan IV, or as history has come to know him, Ivan the Terrible. Ivan viewed his design as much more practical and went as far as commissioning a more elaborately designed vault to better hold and hide the family’s legacy.

As Ivan neared death, he saw to it that all who knew of the underground world were killed. He decreed that the Liberia, along with all of its contents, should be wiped from memory, lost to history forever.

As Michael thought on this Russian subterranean world, a world out of a book of myths, he was filled with an unending sense of foreboding, not only because he sensed this library and its contents—including this legendary box—were never meant to be found, but that he had no idea how to get there in the first place.

Michael finally refocused on the black box that he had just cracked. He reached in the case and uncovered a canvas. He withdrew it and opened it up, unfolding it to its five-by-three-foot size to find a depiction eerily similar to the painting he had stolen in Geneva; it was the same size and painted on an extra thick canvas. He held it up: it was truly a work of art, a serene angel rising up from a golden tree, up into the clouds, its enormous wings outspread and in its hand a golden box that seemed to radiate from within.

In a déjà vu moment, Michael drew his knife and slid the blade into the side edge of the canvas, the honed steel easily slipping in. He drew it around the circumference and separated the map from the painting. He put the painting aside and examined the map. It was intricate and an exact replica of what he had destroyed in Geneva. There appeared to be over ten levels, rendered in a clear three-dimensional depiction, all labeled in both Russian and Latin. The rendering portrayed the surface structures, most of which still stood. An intricate sketch of a golden box surrounded in Russian notations dominated the outermost edge. The detail of the top of the box was worthy of masterpiece status in and of itself. Michael studied the elaborate case, committing it to memory. It was enormously detailed, a design upon the cover of such beautiful simplicity. A symbol of elegance, of life, not what he had imagined. Not what anyone would imagine.