hardy guffaw. “Well, it is rough translation, but you get point.”
He finally stepped out of the corner and slowly walked in the boys’ general direction, but made a point at stopping several meters away from them. Because of a large hole on the first floor above them caused by the fire there was some moonlight that filtered down to the basement. Before shining their lights on him, Edward, Julius, and Wayne were able to see some details of him. He was a tall, somewhat slender man, probably around early-forties. His hair, dark brown and slicked back with a part in the middle, medium-length with a few strands of gray blooming on his crown and his beard was extremely long and full, having more grays in it. He wore a black robe that accentuated his height.
Oddly, the man held his left hand just above his abdomen, lightly pressed against his body and his fingers were closed tightly together, but extended across his torso. Perhaps an old war wound, congenital may be even?
“Hey, wait a minute,” Edward said, upon all three of them shining their flashlight on him. His voice had a sense of relief to it. “By the way you’re dressed and that unshaven look about you, I’m guessing you’re the priest of this church.”
The man chuckled. “Not bad, young man…but I am actually the bishop here. We are Russian Orthodox, not Catholic.”
“So, I take it you’ve been here the whole time,” Wayne asked, fidgeting from the guilt and the embarrassment of getting caught.
The bishop, his gaunt eyes slowly moving sideways, nodded. “Oh, you could certainly say that…please, take off your masks.”
Julius and Edward glanced at each other.
“Please,” the Russian man repeated. “I could have called police on you when you first got here, but I did not.”
Well, that was certainly reasonable enough. The three pulled their ski masks off their heads. Edward sighed, still not fully trusting this bishop about his word of not calling the cops.
For his part, the middle-aged man slightly nodded upon seeing their identities. For a short time, Julius wondered if he was a pedophile, given the length of time he looked at them. But then he sensed the man was simply eccentric. Perhaps being tucked away in a church with not much human interaction was catching up with him, Julius reasoned.
“Thank you for not calling the police,” Wayne stated. Edward, having never liked Wayne to begin with, looked at him with loathing. He felt the geek was placating the strange man too much. Never mind the fact that they were pilfering from the church.
“What are your names,” the cleric asked, taking a couple of steps closer to them.
“I’m Julius,” he then pointed to his companions. “This is Edward and this is Wayne.”
The man nodded. “I am Bishop Vilkin. My lay members are quite upset about what happened to our church.” He looked upon them, his eyes narrowing. “Do you think it wise to trespass into a church that has just burnt down? Have you ever considered possibility that police might catch you and accuse you of arson?”
Edward and Julius were frozen, apparently still intimidated by this enigmatic man. That, and they had never thought of the scenario Bishop Vilkin had just laid out to them.
But Wayne, being the good geek that he was, was pondering his words. His face was frowning with concentration and it was not lost on the bishop.
“What is it, young man?” Edward, Julius, and Wayne all noticed that his left hand had not lowered once since talking with this guy.
“What you just said…you speak as though you know we didn’t do it. It’s almost like you’re warning us. I noticed that you did not accuse us of anything since we met you, not even the stealing that we have done…it’s like you already knew all this.”
Edward and Julius looked at Wayne thoughtfully and Bishop Vilkin’s eyes narrowed even more, but this time there was a microscopic smile to go with it. “I give you a break, as they say here in America. You may leave with items you have stolen. Trust me, those little trinkets you took are one of the last things my church is worried about.”
“Bishop Vilkin,” Wayne hastened to say as Edward and Julius began to turn to vacate the basement. They stopped and turned to face Wayne while the cleric patiently waited for Wayne’s question. “I’m sorry but I have this bad habit of being curious about things…what’s in the small door?”
“Wayne,” Edward rebuked from the stairs leading to the first floor.
For a while, Bishop Vilkin didn’t say a word. In fact, he didn’t even move at all. And when he did, it was only his mouth, much of it covered by his beard. “A secret....”
Wayne stood there, expecting to hear more. Even Edward and Julius were askance at the man’s reply.
With that, Wayne got the hint and followed his buddies out of the basement. They slipped their ski masks back on and, with their loot in hand, quietly made their way out of the gutted church and were back outside. They retraced their steps from the backyard of the church and through the same alley, and to Edward’s old car. For a couple of blocks he drove his car with the lights out until they were safely away from the Russian Orthodox Church of Lincoln.
It had been three weeks since Edward, Julius, and Wayne pirated the Russian Orthodox Church and the trio had cashed out quite well off the few items taken. Even though Wayne did not actually rob anything from the church, he still got his share for helping out with his father’s Geiger reader. Despite the fact that the team did not get any treasures from that small door in the church’s basement floor. He was at least able to be on the lookout for any passersby. That had to count for something.
Wayne was known for his book smarts, but Edward and Julius definitely had him on the street smarts. The two knew enough not to put the church items up for sale on Ebay or to go to any of the local museums between Lincoln and Omaha. For there were plenty of people that read the papers and heard the news and would have put two and two together and figured out where the antiques suddenly came from. Especially since some of the looted antiques had some fire damage and Cyrillic written on many of the pieces.
Instead, Julius and Edward manually trolled the Internet for churches, museums, and other institutions on the East and West coasts and auctioned off the items. Unlike some potential Ebay’s customers, most of those academic and religious institutions on the coasts weren’t in the market actively seeking antique, Eastern European artifacts resold from the Midwest…hence, anonymity was safe assured.
Julius was in the middle of his Algebra class, at Lincoln High School in central Lincoln, while Edward was in Spanish when they both had received a very ominous text message from Wayne. It said to meet him in the boys’ locker room, since it was between the next gym class and the last one. Of course, this made it difficult for Edward and Julius to come up with an excuse for them to leave their current courses, but the two managed. They were young, career criminals already; getting out of a math and language class was nothing for them.
When the two had converged at the boys’ locker room, they found their geek friend, pacing among a couple of rows of lockers in the midst of the stench and dirty towels hanging off of various ledges. He had several sheets of paper with him, some of them having pictures, Edward and Julius noticed from the distance.
“Wayne, what’s up with you, dude,” Edward asked with a coating of concern as they walked up to him. H
e glanced at Julius, who also had a worried look on his face.
“Oh, crap,” Julius said as he swacked the side of his own head, something occurring to him suddenly, “did someone find out what we did at that church a few weeks ago?”
Now Edward’s face had gone blank, but Wayne was already waving that off by now.
“No, but it does have to do with that church…” He took a quick look at the papers in his hand, and shoved it toward Edward. “Take a good look at this guy in these archival photos.”
For about a space of half a minute Edward and Julius studied the photocopies and the literature accompanying them. Then it suddenly dawned on Edward. Wayne nodded with quiet satisfaction while Julius was looking back and forth at Edward and the photos, still trying to figure out who was the tall, dark, middle age man in the printout. And then it hit him as well.
“This is impossible,” Julius finally said. Edward’s face hadn’t change while Julius continued. “This can’t be! Wayne, this is—“
“Rasputin, I know. To be more specific, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. Appropriately enough, his surname was Vilkin. As in our bishop friend, Vilkin, from that Russian Orthodox church…I was in my social studies class, doing some research on the former Soviet Union when I ran across this info at the library online.” Wayne’s face was a bit on the pale side. He finally sat down on one of the locker room’s benches before he continued.
“We’ve all heard of the saying that we all have a twin, but this is too close! I was three feet from the guy. I know what I saw.”
“Oh, come on,