by Glenn Meade
“She was an imp, that one, full of life, a real tomboy, and we children loved her. The family affectionately called her Kubyshka, meaning ‘dumpling.’”
And now here I was, part of an international archaeological dig, spending my summer in jeans and grubby sneakers in a walk-in tent on the outskirts of Ekaterinburg. Absurdly, it seemed as if my family’s past had come full circle.
My curiosity eating me, I pressed the harness control block. The motor whirred. The harness lowered me into the pit and I was devoured by shadows.
At first I descended into blackness, but after about twenty feet the shaft’s sides were lit by electric lightbulbs. Here and there, I kicked against the walls with my worn Reeboks to keep from hitting the sides.
Below me I saw a blaze of light and suddenly Roy gripped the harness. “Okay, baby, you’re at rock bottom.”
I let go of the rope and my feet hit a floor of muddied wooden planks. I maneuvered out of the harness and shivered. It felt intensely cold. I rubbed my arms. A cube of aching blue light shone down from the shaft mouth.
Nearby, a couple of powerful halogen lights illuminated the chamber floor, which expanded for at least twelve feet in all directions, wider than the shaft. Some of the chamber was lost in deep shadow and it felt eerie. Roy had engineered a lattice of struts and beams to prevent a cave-in but that didn’t comfort me—I hated enclosed spaces, especially tunnels, which in my profession didn’t help.
A heavily built man with a thick gray mustache and wire-rimmed glasses was busy hacking away at the icy peat of one of the chamber walls, using a lump hammer and a broad chisel. He stopped hammering and grinned. “Hey, Laura, how’s it going?”
Tom Atkins, from Boston, had a toolbox open at his feet and his breath clouded in the chilled air. He wore a thickly padded Columbia ski jacket, heavy woolen gloves, and earmuffs. Next to him was a trestle table covered with an assortment of tools and brushes, as well as a couple of powerful electric flashlights. He removed the earmuffs.
“You came prepared, Tom.” I nodded toward a pile of unopened Budweiser and Heineken beer cans stacked in a corner.
“Hey, don’t knock it, this place is better than my refrigerator.”
“So what have you two found besides the perfect place to chill beer?”
“Take a look over there first.” Tom nodded to a wire sifting tray.
I picked it up. In a corner of the tray was a collection of badly tarnished military brass uniform buttons. I saw some copper kopeks and silvered rubles and could just make out the dates: 1914, 1916, and one 1912. There was a yellowed comb made from ivory and the remains of a luggage clasp. The sight of a child’s hair band sent a poignant shiver down me.
During the Red Terror—the revolution’s purge designed to keep a grip on power and instill fear—the Bolsheviks were known to execute entire families. I shook my head. “Sad, but interesting.”
“The real jackpot’s over here.” Tom jerked a thumb toward the side of the chamber he was working on. “Better take a deep breath, Laura.”
“Why?”
“It’s kind of uncanny. Macabre almost.”
I picked up one of the flashlights from Tom’s table and moved deeper into the chamber. I shone a powerful cone of light onto the frozen soil and experienced a moment of pure terror. A human hand protruded from the permafrost. The flesh was intact, bleached white, the fingers lightly caked in mud, the fist tightly clenched. It appeared to be clutching something. “What the … !”
“You ain’t seen anything yet. Look right there.” Roy pointed to the permafrost wall.
And then I saw it. Connected to the hand was a body—a woman’s face stared out grotesquely from the peaty earth. Her clothes were exposed, some kind of pale-colored blouse and a dark woolen top that looked from another century. “Jeepers.”
Tom said, “Creepy, isn’t it? The permafrost’s acted like a deep freeze.”
Roy added, “Baby, it doesn’t surprise me. They’ve found woolly mammoths intact in this kind of soil. Take a look over to the left.”
I did, and saw the remains of a dark, coarse jacket protrude from the rich brown earth, about a foot of the cloth exposed, and what appeared to be the vague shape of a small human torso underneath the fabric.
Roy said, “There’s another body in there. We can’t be sure if it’s a child or an adult, but it’ll take us some time to get it out. We’ll concentrate on the woman first.”
I turned my attention back to the woman, shivered, and peered closer. The preserved head was plainly visible. Her eyes were closed. I could see her nose and lips, ears, and cheeks, locks of dark hair curled across her features and forehead. She had good cheekbones. I shone the flashlight on her alabaster face and it was a disturbing experience. I knew I was looking at one of the most remarkable finds ever discovered at Ekaterinburg. “It’s astonishing. I wonder who she was?”
“Heaven only knows. But there’s something else,” Roy offered.
“What?”
“Take a look at what’s in her hand.”
I shone the light on the still clenched bones, held firm for how many decades? It appeared that she was clutching some kind of metal chain. “What is it?”
“Looks like a piece of jewelry,” Tom said.
“I’ll take your word for it. Anyone want to try to pry the hand open?”
Roy grinned. “We thought we’d leave that to you.”
“Thanks a bunch.”
“You’re the boss, baby.” Roy handed me a pair of disposable surgical gloves.
“Here, hold the flashlight while I try.”
Roy held my light and shone it on the clenched hand. I slipped on the gloves, steeled myself, closing my eyes a moment, and then I went for it. I gripped the index finger and the wrist and pulled gently, trying to open the hand.
The flesh felt marble cold and solid.
I was afraid that I might tear the skin apart or the entire hand would shatter like delicate porcelain. To my surprise, the bones uncoiled silently, just a fraction, but enough to see what it held. “Aim the torch here.”
Roy shone it on the open hand. In the palm’s bleached white furrows I saw a chain and locket.
It looked nothing extravagant or expensive like some of the jewelry found at Ekaterinburg, hidden away by royal relatives or the wealthy merchants who were executed here. I lifted out the locket and wiped it gently with my fingers. I could see it had some kind of raised image on the front, but the locket was part covered by peaty earth, the chain fragile.
Roy offered his penknife. “Here, try this.”
I took the knife and scraped away caked dirt. There was no mistaking the raised Romanov family seal in gold, inlaid in front. It showed the double-headed imperial eagle. I could tell there was an inscription on the locket’s rear, but it was obliterated by corrosion. My heart skipped.
Tom said, elated, “You think we got lucky?”
“Great minds think alike. I wish I knew.”
Roy said, “Hey, baby, you think maybe we’ve found Romanov remains?”
I didn’t reply, just stared at the locket, mesmerized.
Tom rubbed his frozen hands as if trying to set them on fire with friction. “Who knows? But we better inform the Russians. We’ll have to cut her out of the permafrost. Hopefully a closer look can tell us if her body suffered any trauma and how she likely died.”
The Russians had control of the dig. An inspector came out every other day from Ekaterinburg to check on our progress. But that was barely on my mind as I stared at the locket, my mind on fire. “No, don’t do anything, or inform anyone officially. Not just yet.”
Tom frowned, and Roy said, “Why not?”
I stared again at the remains of the two bodies and I felt stunned, filled with excitement. I looked up toward the gaping mouth of the shaft. The blue light that shone down at me that moment felt like an epiphany. I clutched the locket. My heart raced.
Roy must have seen the excitement in my face and said, “What’s
wrong?”
I crossed back to the harness and strapped myself in. “Someone get me photos of the body. I want them from every angle. And get a hair sample; we need to carry out a DNA test. I want to know if this woman could be a Romanov, or a blood relative.” I pressed the motor control switch and the seat began to ascend.
“Hey, where are you going, baby?” Roy asked, confused.
“To book a flight. And don’t ask me to where. You’d never believe me.”
Some events in our lives are so huge in their impact upon us that they are almost impossible to take in. The birth of your first child. Or a hand slipping away from yours as you sit by a loved one’s deathbed. The mystery of the bodies in the permafrost was on the same seismic scale. For the next eighteen hours my mind was a blur and I hardly slept. What I do remember is that after flying from Ekaterinburg to Moscow it was the afternoon of the following day when I landed at London’s Heathrow airport.
The first thing I did was check the phone number written in my diary and I called it again from my cell phone. The number rang out. I tried again six more times, but with the same result. A generic voice asked me to leave a message. It was my sixth since that morning.
I felt exhausted but I hoped that the answer to the enigma of the Ekaterinburg bodies was another short flight away.
Dublin is barely a sixty-minute skip out over the Irish Sea and as my Aer Lingus plane began its descent, I saw the bright green Irish coast, spattered with huge dark patches of rain cloud.
By the time I’d hired a car and consulted a map, another hour passed. I drove north through relentless heavy rain showers, eager to reach my destination.
Sullen bands of charcoal clouds did their best to keep the sun at bay, but soon after I passed a huge modern bridge near a town called Drogheda, the sunlight burst from behind the cloud. Farther on I saw the Irish coastline and the rugged Mountains of Mourne, a striking patchwork of intense green shades, the colors so vivid my eyes ached.
All I had to do now was find the village I was looking for and the man I hoped would help solve the mystery.
The signpost said Collon. I pulled my rented Ford into a village square. It was deserted, neat, and tidy, with hanging baskets of flowers. It looked quaintly Victorian, an old blacksmith’s premises with a horseshoe-shaped entrance dominating the square.
I crossed the street to a local grocery store and asked for directions and found the red granite Presbyterian church and graveyard at the southern end of the town. Below the bell tower was chiseled in stone the year it was built: 1813.
The burial ground looked even older, the church magnificent, the stained glass windows works of art. I wandered between the grave sites, some of them hidden by undergrowth and wild bramble. I glimpsed a rusted metal cross with an inscription dated 1875—Elizabeth, aged three and Caroline aged six, their sweet and gentle presence never forgotten, they have gone to lie in the arms of the Lord. My heart felt the haunting echo of a long dead grief.
As I moved on, my cell phone rang and the harsh jangle of music seemed to violate the silence. I answered my phone, half-expecting a call back from the number I’d tried to ring. “Laura?” It was Roy, the line clear despite our distance. “Where are you?”
“Ireland.”
“Ireland?”
“It’s a long story. I don’t want you to think I’m crazy dashing out on you, but I may be on to something. It has to do with the bodies and the locket. If it pans out, I’ll let you know.”
“Baby, you’ve got me interested. And if it doesn’t?”
“This could be an enormous waste of time and money. What about the DNA?”
Roy wasn’t getting all the answers he wanted and I could hear his frustrated sigh. “They’re working on it. I can tell you from the preliminary forensics it’s likely that the woman was Caucasian, between seventeen and twenty-five. We haven’t even got to the second body yet, we’ve been too busy with the first.”
“Anything else?”
“She hasn’t thawed out enough to tell what trauma she might have suffered, but remember the coins we found? The latest was 1916. We think we’re dealing with roughly the same period, give or take a few years. The woman’s dental work suggests she was reasonably well-to-do. So we’re in the right ballpark for the Romanovs. Any luck with the inscription?”
With great care I plucked the locket from my purse and turned it over in my palm. I’d spent most of the last nine hours of flying time studying it and managed to clean away more of the dirt. But the rest of the inscription was eaten with corrosion and stubbornly defied deciphering. “I still can’t make out what it says.”
A cautious tone crept into Roy’s voice. “The Russians aren’t going to be happy. They’re already asking where you’ve gone. I told them some urgent family business came up and you had to leave. Gee, Laura, taking a piece of their history could be construed as theft. I don’t even like talking about it over the phone. What if they throw you in prison when you get back?”
I carefully slipped the locket into my purse. “Don’t worry, the locket will be returned. I’ve only borrowed it in the hope that I can identify its origin.”
“How?”
“We’ll talk again.”
“Hey, baby, don’t keep me in suspense.”
“Sorry, I’ve got to go. And don’t worry about the Russians, I’ll handle them. Call me as soon as you have anything.”
I flipped off my phone as I saw an old man come toward me among the graves.
He halted near a cluster of tombstones. I noticed that they were Russian-style crosses with double crossbeams and Cyrillic inscriptions, and they looked odd among a landscape of Anglo-Christian and Celtic crosses.
The man waited by one of the graves. I could make out the name inscribed in Russian on the polished granite stone: Uri Andrev.
The man stood studying me as he rested his right hand on a blackthorn walking cane. His skin was a jaundiced yellow and looked thin as crepe paper. He stood tall and dignified but with a slight stoop, and he spoke English but I thought I detected a Russian accent. “So, you came at last. It’s Dr. Pavlov, isn’t it?”
I stared back at him. “How did you know?”
“I finally got your phone messages. I never carry a cell phone, as you Americans call it. Forgive me, but I’ve been a hospital patient these last few days.”
“Nothing serious, I hope?”
He offered a faint smile. “The usual problems of old age, I’m afraid. Forgive me, I didn’t call you back but your message said you’d meet me at the church. I had my housekeeper drive me and saw you from the road. I recognized you from your photograph in the professional journals. You’re an outstanding scientist, Dr. Pavlov.”
“You’re too kind.”
The man offered his hand, the backs of his palms freckled with liver spots. “Michael Yakov. It seems we share an obsession, doctor.”
“Pardon?”
“The Romanov era. I’ve long been interested in your work.”
“And I’m suddenly very interested in yours.”
“I believe your message said you found the woman?”
“Yes, Mr. Yakov. We found her. Just as you predicted. There may be other bodies, including what could be a child, but at this stage I can’t tell you any more than that.”
Yakov sucked in a breath, as if my confirmation had struck a nerve. “I very much hoped that you’d find her. You dug in an area where I believed she might be buried.”
As I stood there listening to this old man talk, I couldn’t help but think how absurd all of this was.
I had never met Michael Yakov, but he wrote to me constantly over a period of about a year. In fact, for a time I started to think he was stalking me. His letters came every few months, inquiring after my work in Ekaterinburg. And now here I was, hoping he’d solve my mystery.
“Mr. Yakov, ever since it became public knowledge that I intended to work at Ekaterinburg, you’ve written to me at least a dozen times. In almost every letter
you suggested that I might find the remains of a young woman in the sectors where I was digging, and if I did, to contact you. You seemed particularly anxious to mention the woman.”
He nodded. “Yes, I did.”
I looked him in the eyes. “You even mentioned the possibility of finding the locket in your correspondence. But you never once offered to explain the woman’s identity. And when I wrote to inquire why you were so interested in this dig, and why you seemed so convinced that I might locate the bodies, I received no reply. To tell you the truth, I had you down as a crackpot. Which is why I stopped answering your mail months ago.
“Until yesterday. Yesterday, when we found the woman, I began to wonder if you were a clairvoyant. Do you mind telling me what’s going on?”
Yakov let out a sigh that almost sounded like a cry of pain and his eyes watered. “It’s a very personal story, Dr. Pavlov. One that was told to me by my father.”
“It’s personal for me, too. You’ve involved me.”
Yakov didn’t reply as he reached out to touch the polished headstone. His fingers caressed the granite, then he blessed himself with a sign of the cross, as if paying his respects to the dead.
I said, “It seems a strange place for a Russian to be buried—among Celtic crosses.”
“Do you know this country?”
“I’ve visited Celtic sites here on several occasions.”
Yakov glanced around the cemetery, as if he was familiar with every stone and plot, every overgrown bush and blade of grass. “Quite a number of Russians are buried in this region, which is not as strange as you might think, Dr. Pavlov.”
“Why?”
“There was once a strong commercial trade between Russia and Ireland, in flax and horse-breeding. Many Russian families came to live here after the revolution, some of them in this area, about the same time as the Irish fought for their independence from the British. They went straight from the frying pan into the fire, so to speak.”
“I never knew. Was this man one of them? Did you know him?”
Yakov’s fingers caressed the grave’s smooth granite. “You could say that. I met him shortly before he died. Uri Andrev was a truly remarkable man, Dr. Pavlov. Someone who changed history. What’s even more remarkable is that hardly anyone knows of him. His name is lost in the fog of time.”