Could he have imagined it would be under circumstances like these?
She did not need to ask the next question before Sergei said, “Father Grigori lived in the house you see with two stories.”
It was unmistakable, looming over all the other cottages in the town the way Rasputin himself had always dominated whatever company he was in. Anastasia wondered who lived in it now—she had heard rumors of a wife and young son. But then there had been so many rumors, most of them scurrilous, that neither she, nor the Tsaritsa, to whom they were often whispered, knew what to believe. She was eager to alert her mother, who was still on the train resting her bad back, where they were; she would want to know.
Coming closer than he ever had before, but keeping an eye out lest the other guards grow suspicious, Sergei said, “There are those who still communicate with the starets.”
“What do you mean, communicate with him? Father Grigori is dead. He is buried in the imperial park.”
Sergei’s eyes earnestly bore into hers.
“I put a white rose on his coffin myself,” Ana said. Her fingers, without meaning to, went to her chest and touched the cross beneath her blouse.
“There are those who keep the fire alight,” Sergei said, just before the whistle on the locomotive screeched. Jemmy barked back at it.
“All aboard,” an officer hollered from on top of the royal train car, “and now!” The whistle went off again, and there was an impatient chuffing sound from the engine.
Sergei ostentatiously lifted his rifle barrel and nudged his prisoner in the direction of the train. Anastasia walked back toward the tracks, Jemmy trotting at her heels. Her sisters were already mounting the stairs, followed by her father in his customary khaki tunic and forage cap. He was holding Alexei, identically dressed, by the hand. The engineer was waving a flag.
Anastasia turned around to say something to Sergei, but he was sauntering back to the troop car with a pair of the other guards and pretended not to notice.
Moments later, the train resumed its journey, and as Ana watched from the window, the flowers and fields and whitewashed barns of Pokrovskoe slid from view. She had forgotten to ask which house had been Sergei’s, and deeply regretted that now.
Chapter 25
“Kushtaka,” Nika said, and Slater had to ask her to repeat it, partly to catch this new word again, and partly because he simply liked to hear her say it.
The lights in the mess tent were wavering, as the wind, only partially blocked by the old stockade, battered the triple-reinforced nylon walls with a dull roar. The temporary electrical grid Sergeant Groves had slapped together was still holding, but the lamps, strung up on wires, were swaying above their makeshift dinner table. Tomorrow, Slater thought, they’d have to get the backup generator online, too—just in case.
“Kushtaka,” Nika said. “The otter-men. If you were an unhappy soul, still nursing some grievance on earth, you were condemned to linger here, unable to ascend the staircase of the aurora borealis into heaven. Or maybe you just drowned, and your body could not be recovered and properly disposed of—either way, your spirit could become a changeling, half-human and half-otter.”
“Why otter?” Dr. Eva Lantos asked, as she dunked her herbal tea bag one more time.
“Because the otter lived between the sea and the land, and now your spirit lived between life and death.”
“We have many such legends in Russia, too,” Professor Kozak said, mopping up the last remnants of his stew with a crust of bread. “I grew up with such stories.”
“Most cultures do have something similar,” Nika agreed. “The kushtaka, for instance, were sometimes said to take on the form of a beautiful woman, or someone you loved, in order to lure you into deep water or the depths of a forest. If you got lost, you could wind up becoming a changeling yourself.”
“So if I see Angelina Jolie in the woods,” Kozak said, “and she is calling to me, ‘Vassily! Vassily! I must have you!’ I should not go to her.”
“You might at least want to think it over,” Nika said with a smile.
Kozak shrugged. “Still, I would go.”
Slater leaned back against a crate and surveyed his team like a proud father observing his brood. In only a matter of hours on the island, they had begun to come together nicely as a team. Professor Kozak was an industrious bear, quickly unpacking his ground-penetrating radar equipment and itching to get started the next day. Dr. Lantos had checked all the crates of lab equipment and supplies, and advised Slater on where they should set up the autopsy tent. Sergeant Groves was off on rounds right now, securing the premises (from force of habit, since the island held no hostiles) and getting to know the Coast Guardsmen who had been left to complete the construction of the prefabs, lighting poles, and ramps the next day.
If the weather allowed, that was. A storm was heading their way, and already its winds were scouring the colony like a steel brush. Slater prayed they wouldn’t get a heavy snowfall, which would mean just that much more digging to get to the graves.
And then there was Nika, whose presence here he had so opposed at first, and who was rather like a spirit herself—a friendly, woodland sprite, filled with native tales and history and lore. Slater found himself immersed not only in her words, but in the light that seemed to be captured in her jet-black hair and eyes. Her tawny skin had taken on a positively golden cast in the glow of the lamps, and he noticed that she frequently touched a little ivory figurine, no bigger than a jump drive, hanging outside her blue-and-gold Berkeley sweatshirt. He was grateful when the professor, perhaps noting it too, asked, “Is that a figure of a little kushtaka around your neck?”
“No,” Nika said, holding it out on its thin chain so that they all could see it better. “That would be bad luck. This is a good-luck charm. We call them bilikins.”
Slater leaned closer, his coffee mug still in his hand. Now he could see that it was an owl, expertly carved with its wings furled and its eyes wide open.
“The owl represents the perfect guide because he can see even in the dark of night. The leader of the hunt traditionally wore it.”
“Walrus tusk?” Kozak said, turning it over in his stubby fingers.
“Maybe,” Nika said. “But my grandmother gave it to me, and her grandmother gave it to her, and if the story is true, it’s made from the tusk of a woolly mammoth. They’re frozen in the soil all around here, and every once in a while one turns up.”
What else, Slater couldn’t help but think, was he going to find in the frozen soil of St. Peter’s Island? A perfectly preserved specimen, its viral load stored within the flesh like a ticking bomb, or a decaying corpse, whose deadly contaminant had been leeched away by decades of slow exposure and erosion?
“Yes,” Kozak said, “the topography and geology of Alaska is like Siberia, and is well suited to this sort of preservation.” Now that he knew its provenance, he looked even more impressed by the humble bilikin.
An especially strong gust of wind battered the tent, and the lights flickered again. Slater reached into his shirt pocket and removed several plastic packets, each one containing a dozen blue capsules and a dozen white.
“I think brandy is more usual after dinner, yes?” Kozak said, examining his packet.
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t mix well with these,” Slater said.
Dr. Lantos had opened her packet, and said, “Prophylactic measures?”
“Yes. The blue one’s a standard anti-influenza drug; you’ll need to take it every day for the next six days, whether we’re still working here or not. The white one is a neuraminidase inhibitor that’s shown both preventative and therapeutic results in trials done at the AFIP.”
“I never heard of these trials,” Lantos said, examining the white capsule skeptically.
“The results haven’t been made public yet. And tomorrow,” he said, with a grin, “may be the best field test we’ve ever run.”
“So we are the guinea pigs?” Kozak said.
Slater no
dded and washed one of each of the pills down with the last of his coffee. Kozak and Lantos did the same, but Nika sat silently, waiting.
“Where’s mine?”
Swallowing, Slater said, “You won’t need them.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not coming into contact with any of the bodies.”
“Who said so?”
“The exhumations are a very dangerous and very grim spectacle. There’s no need to subject yourself to any of that.”
But Nika dug in her heels. “Do we really need to go through this again? As the tribal rep, and a trained anthropologist, I insist on being there.” She held out her palm, flat.
Slater glanced at Lantos and the professor, and they both looked at him as if to say, “Not my call.”
Slater dug into his shirt pocket, removed the packet he was planning to give Groves when he got back from his rounds, and plopped it in Nika’s hand, instead; he’d make up another one later for the sergeant. She smiled in victory and held the little plastic baggie up like a trophy, and the others laughed. Slater had to smile, too; no wonder she’d become mayor.
“Now they might make you drowsy,” he advised, “so take them just before you go to bed.”
“And where would that be?” Dr. Lantos said, glancing around the mess tent, one of the few structures erected that day.
“I’m afraid this will have to double as the barracks for tonight.”
“Then I’ve got dibs on this juicy spot under the table,” she said, tapping her foot on the insulated rubber flooring.
“And I will put my sleeping bag on top of that fat pile of cushions,” Kozak said, gesturing at the stack of mats that would be laid down to make a path to the graveyard the next day.
“Nika,” Slater said, “I was thinking that you could—”
“I already know where I’m sleeping tonight,” she said.
“You do?”
“I do.”
As they trudged across the colony grounds, covered with crates and bundles of supplies unloaded from the Sikorskys, Slater continued to argue with her, but Nika would have none of it. She felt it was her duty to make this gesture of atonement to the spirits who had once inhabited this place. There was no explaining such a “metaphysical” view, however, to a man as empirically oriented as Frank Slater. She recognized that it was his job as an epidemiologist to look at things as squarely and objectively as possible, and to keep all other considerations out of the equation.
It was her job, as she saw it, to remain open and attuned to it all—the seen and the unseen, the facts and the faith. She had grown up among the legends and the folklore of her people. Her first memories were of fantastic natural phenomena—the swirling lights of the aurora borealis, the barking of a chorus of seals draped like mermaids on the ice floes, the sun that set for months at a time. You could not grow up on the coast of Alaska, one shallow breath below the Arctic Circle, and not feel both your remoteness from the rest of the world and your oneness with the vast and timeless elements—the impenetrable mountain ranges, the impassable seas—that surrounded you. Instilled within her was a sense of wonder—wonder at humanity’s place in the great scheme of things—and an innate respect for any people’s attempt to create a belief system able to encompass it all.
When they arrived at the church steps, she expected Slater to stop, like a boy dropping off his date at her home, but he started up the stairs instead.
“Wait,” she said, and he turned to look down at her. One of the two doors had fallen off its hinges and left a narrow opening.
“Don’t go in,” she said.
“Why not? The whole place is tilting already—let’s see if it’s safe.”
“I’ll be careful,” she said. What she didn’t say was that she didn’t want his presence to disturb the vibe inside, whatever it might be—and she knew that if she so much as hinted at that, he’d think she’d completely lost her mind. She was surprised herself at how much she already valued his good opinion of her; it wasn’t something she’d experienced in a long time. The dating pool in Port Orlov was meager, to put it kindly.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, grabbing up her bedroll and backpack and sidling past him.
He looked unpersuaded.
“Here,” she said, taking the bilikin from around her neck and dropping it down over his head. “Now you can keep an eye on things even in the dark of night.”
“You’re going to need it more than I do,” he said, glancing toward the church doors.
“It’s the leader of the hunt who’s supposed to wear it.”
For that split second it took her to put the necklace on him, their faces had been very close, and she had felt his warm breath on her cheek. She had seen the stubble on his chin, and a faint scar along his jawline. Where, she wondered, had he come by that? And why did she have such an urge to run her finger gently along its length?
“See you in the morning,” she said, to break the mood. “Put me down for French toast.”
But he still appeared dubious as she slipped between the doors, then flattened herself for a moment against the back of one, with her eyes closed. It was only when she heard his footsteps descend the stairs outside that she opened them again, to a scene of such desolation that she was sorely temped to change her plans.
Chapter 26
By the time Harley and Eddie had found their way back to the cave again, stumbling through the forest with their flashlights and their tools, night had fallen, and the wind had been blowing in their faces the whole time. Even with the black wool balaclava pulled all the way down over his head, Harley’s face stung like it been slapped a thousand times.
Eddie, similarly attired, had done nothing but bitch all the way back.
Especially because their haul had been so disappointing.
The moment they staggered into the cave—about the tenth one they’d tried—Russell had been up on his feet and shouting, “What the fuck? You left me here?”
Harley, trying to get the tarp back in place, had told him to shut up, but Russell was just getting going.
“Where the fuck have you been? I wake up, and I’m ready to go, and you two assholes are nowhere around! Where did you go? Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Because you got so damn drunk last night,” Harley said, gesturing at a few of the beer cans glittering in the glow of the Coleman lamp, “we didn’t have time for you to sober up.”
“You didn’t have time, or you didn’t want to share whatever you got? You went digging, right?” His eyes went to the shovel and pickaxe they had dropped by the mouth of the cave. “What’d you find? You holding out on me already?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said, slumping in a weary heap against the wall. “We’re holding out on you.”
Harley tossed his backpack down, reached inside it and threw a string of crystal rosary beads on the ground. “That’s what we found.”
Russell picked it up, looked at the beads—apparently even he could tell they were pretty worthless—and tossed them away. “What else?”
“What else what?” Eddie said. “It took us hours just to dig up that piece of shit.”
“I don’t believe you,” Russell said, grabbing Harley’s backpack and shaking it out. A cascade of PowerBars, Tic Tacs, Chapstick, Trojans, and the like spilled out.
Harley felt his temper start to rise—this day had been bad enough already—and he was about to demand that Russell put it all back in the bag when he stopped himself. He could tell that Russell was on the verge of losing it altogether, and maybe a little drunk even now. He also knew what was really wigging him out—and it wasn’t the idea that he’d been cheated. It was having to spend the day alone, cooped up in this cave, wondering what was going on and whether or not he and Eddie were even planning to come back at all. Russell would never admit it—Harley knew that damn well—but he was having a panic attack.
After two years at Spring Creek—and several stays in solitary confinement there—Russell had l
ost his talent for solitude, or confinement.
“So what’s the plan then?” Russell said, looming over him but still having to stoop beneath the low roof of the cave. “Do we leave?”
“On what?” Eddie said. “Last I checked, the Kodiak’s on the rocks.”
“The skiff then.”
“In these seas?” Eddie sneered.
“Well what then? Are we gonna dig again tomorrow?”
That was the million-dollar question that Harley had been puzzling over all the way back. As he and Eddie had skirted the colony on their return, he had seen the propeller blades of the Sikorsky rising behind the stockade wall, and he had glimpsed the stark white light of electric bulbs. That guy Slater and his Coast Guard crew were settling in … but for what? If they moved into the graveyard, all he’d be able to do was wait them out.
Or, and this had occurred to him halfway back, he could wait to see if they unearthed anything of value, then steal it from them once they had. It wasn’t as if the Coast Guard thought there was anyone else on the island. Maybe, as a result, they wouldn’t take the normal security precautions. You never could tell.
“What are we eating?” Eddie said, rummaging around in the supplies. “Let’s make something good and hot.”
“Sure,” Harley said, “and while we’re at it, why don’t we hang out a sign that says we’re here? Why don’t we make a big fire, and some smoke, and maybe even attract some animals to the smell?”
Eddie, stymied, rubbed his mittened hands together and waited.
Harley crawled over to the box of canned rations, and tossed them each a couple. The ones he grabbed for himself said BEEF STROGANOFF.
Grumbling, the other two settled into their corners and dug in.
Harley was hungry, too, and after everything he’d been through, even the shit in the can tasted great. That must be how the Army got away with it. Drop a guy into some desert foxhole, and he’ll eat anything, and be grateful for it.
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