The rosary was lying over by the wall, and Harley couldn’t help but relive the disappointment he’d felt when they’d finally busted into the coffin. Eddie had been afraid to reach in, so it had fallen to Harley again to take the damn thing out. He’d tried not to look at the face of the corpse this time; the last thing he needed was to be haunted by yet another figment of his imagination, like that guy in the sealskin coat. He’d felt around on the upper body and the face and the neck, checking the fingers too for rings, but this was the only thing he could locate or pry loose. Even the string of beads hadn’t come easy; it was as if the corpse was fighting to hang on to it.
When they were done, Harley had shoved the shards of the coffin back into the grave, then covered up the hole with dirt and snow again. He hoped it would snow some more during the night to further conceal his tracks.
Russell belched and popped the top on another beer. Harley was starting to think that the three cases might not last long enough, after all.
Of course it was an open question how long Russell himself would last. The guy was like a ticking bomb ever since he’d come back from the penitentiary, and Harley just wanted to make sure that he was well out of range of the explosion when it happened.
Chapter 27
Standing with her back to the door, Nika fished out her flashlight and played the beam around the interior of the abandoned church. The place was so dark that the light could only penetrate a few small feet of the space at a time. Making things worse, everything was at a slight angle, so that she felt as if she were on a boat listing to one side at sea.
Testing the floor carefully, she advanced a few feet toward some wooden pews. Between them, there was a narrow stretch where the boards weren’t too badly warped and the pews might afford some protection from drafts. For a second, she reconsidered going back to the mess tent, but the thought of giving up on her mission, not to mention listening to Kozak snore all night (and there was no way he wasn’t a snorer) stiffened her resolve. She took off her boots and wrapped her fur coat around them to make a pillow, then unrolled her sleeping bag and slithered down into it.
Even for someone long accustomed to acting as the mayor, tribal elder, Zamboni driver, and general factotum for a whole town, it had been a particularly hard day, and although she couldn’t have predicted that she’d be sleeping in the ruins of an old Orthodox church that night, it wasn’t the first time she’d wound up bunking down under strange conditions. As an anthropologist specializing in the native peoples of the Arctic climes, she had slept in igloos she’d carved herself, in shelters made from walrus gut and caribou hides, in long-abandoned iron mines that had once been blasted from the frozen soil. This was hardly the worst spot she’d ever been in.
But it might have been the eeriest. In fact, she still had that uneasy sensation she’d had ever since setting foot on the island. At first, she’d attributed it to the awkwardness of the situation between Dr. Slater and herself; he’d resisted her coming along, but now that she was there, he seemed to feel that he had some special duty to watch over her. The last thing she’d wanted was to add to his burden—the expedition alone was plenty of responsibility for one man—but she also had to admit that a part of her rather liked it. She was so used to taking care of things herself, whether it was a fishing dispute down at the dock or a municipal shortfall, that she’d forgotten what it was like to have someone else looking out for her. She’d been a lone wolf so long, it was nice to come across another of the breed.
No, her discomfort was from something else, something that clung to the island itself, like kelp to a rock. Nika had always been attuned to such things—her grandmother, who had raised her, had said she’d make a good shaman. Supposedly, her father had had such talents, but Nika hardly knew him, as he had gone missing when she was an infant, and her mother, working the late shift at the oil refinery, had been run off the road by a drunk driver and killed on the spot. For this part of Alaska, the story was not that unusual, and Nika had been determined to change her part in it before it was too late.
Instead of sticking around town and getting pregnant at seventeen by some fisherman, she’d hit the books, hard, and won a scholarship to the University of Alaska at Fairbanks; after that, she’d entered the doctoral program at Berkeley. Her old boyfriend Ben had been planning for the two of them to move to Florida, where he’d just received a job offer—tenure track yet—at the University of Miami. She’d even flown there with him for a week to look around at the campus and check out some apartments, but every palm tree was like a needle in her heart. And for someone who’d seen seals skinned and elk field-dressed, it was alarming how grossed out she’d been by the sight of palmetto bugs scurrying across a kitchen counter.
To Ben’s surprise, if not her own, Nika had returned to the place she’d been determined to escape. Now that she’d made her point and earned her degrees, she decided to come back to Port Orlov, where she could do more for her people than write ethnographic monographs published in scholarly journals that no one would ever read. She could so something concrete. Maybe it was what priests meant when they talked about their calling.
Down toward the nave of the church, she heard a faint rustling sound, and she held her breath. Rats. That would be all she needed. Her hand slipped out of her sleeping bag and made sure her flashlight was within easy reach.
Slater, she thought, showed that same missionary zeal. Although she’d never have admitted it, she’d done a thorough Internet search on him and what she’d read had been very impressive—impeccable academic credentials, an illustrious Army career in the Medical Corps, a number of published papers on epidemiological issues, all of them based on firsthand reports from war zones and trouble spots. But this man who had once been an Army major was now a civilian again, and reading between the lines on the Web, where she could almost see the fingertips of government censors, it looked to her like something had abruptly gone awry. Had he been drummed out of the service? What could he have possibly done? In her estimation, Slater seemed like efficiency incarnate, a model of rectitude, the oldest Boy Scout she’d ever known … but with a world-weary edge to him. And something else, too—a pallor to his skin, a glassy sheen in his eye now and then. It occurred to her that he might have been sick lately. Maybe he still was. But with what?
The sound came again, but this time it was more like little feet pattering across the wood, then something being shifted. Dragged. She wanted to reach down and unzip her bag, but she was afraid the noise would give her away. Damn, why hadn’t she inspected the place more thoroughly before bedding down? Or better yet, just slept in the mess tent?
She started to work her way out of the bag without unzipping it. She had just cleared her shoulders when the dragging sound came again—closer, louder. And this time she could tell there was a live creature of some kind, warm and breathing softly, inching nearer. She didn’t know whether to lie as still and silent as possible, or struggle to free herself from the bag. She craned her head backwards, so she could see into the aisle, and as she did, something slid into view. It was on the ground and only a foot or two from her face. In the moonlight, she could just make out that it was a head, turned toward her. The eyes were wide open, and so was the mouth.
She screamed and turned on the flashlight.
The old man—in an orange life jacket—was staring at her … but just beyond him a pair of fierce yellow eyes glittered like coals in the dark.
The wolf, dragging the corpse by its ravaged arm, stood its ground, not budging an inch.
Nika shrieked at it and waved the flashlight wildly.
The wolf lowered its head, growling. No wolf worth its salt ever released a hunk of meat without a greater threat than this.
She swatted at it with the flashlight, and the wolf ducked, still clenching its prize.
She shrieked again, and a few seconds later there was a clamor at the doors, the sound of running boots and men shouting.
The wolf jerked its head, ripping a hunk
of frozen flesh from the old man’s arm, then lunged back into the darkest recesses of the church.
“Nika! Where are you?”
It was Slater.
Flashlight beams were crisscrossing the air above her.
“Here,” she managed to cry out, kicking her legs free of the sleeping bag.
“Where?”
The boots came closer as she scrambled out from between the pews.
“Watch out—there’s a wolf in here!”
“Where?” This was the sergeant’s voice now.
“It just ran into the back!”
Slater threw a protective arm, tight as a hoop of steel, around her shoulders, then he said, “Jesus Christ,” as he took in the corpse on the floor.
“Get out!” Sergeant Groves was shouting. “Get out now! I’ll take care of the wolf.”
But Slater wasn’t going anywhere. He pointed his own flashlight toward the far end of the church. There was a wooden screen, a few feet high and still adorned with scraps of paint, standing behind a jumble of broken boards and furniture.
Among the debris, a black shadow stirred.
“I see it!” Groves said, and she heard his pistol cock.
“Don’t shoot it!” Nika shouted.
But the sergeant snorted in derision, and the gun went off with a deafening blast. A corner of an old chair flew apart in a spray of splinters, and the shadow leapt behind a pew.
“Let it go!” Nika said. “If we leave, it will go on its own!” She pulled on the sleeve of Slater’s shirt.
Just then, there was a blur of motion as the creature vaulted out of its cover and, to their astonishment, came racing straight toward them.
Groves fired again, the bullet hitting an andiron with a clang, and before he could get off another shot, the wolf, like a gust of wind, went hurtling right past them all, head down, eyes fixed on the open doors. Nika felt its fur bristle against her leg as it charged down the aisle.
The sergeant whirled around, but Slater warned him not to shoot.
And then it was gone, into the night.
“Was there just one?” Groves asked her urgently.
“Yes,” she said, “that’s all I saw.”
The sergeant’s eyes now fell on the corpse, and after taking a deep breath, he looked more puzzled than appalled. “Who the hell is this?”
“One of the lost crewmen,” Slater said, kneeling down, and examining the life jacket in the flashlight beam. In white letters, it read NEPTUNE II.
“Wait—I recognize him now,” Nika said. “It’s Richter. Down at the docks, where he worked, they always called him Old Man Richter.” She became aware that there were several other members of the expedition now, clustered on the steps of the church and peering in through the open doors.
“I guess Harley Vane wasn’t the only survivor of the shipwreck, after all,” Slater said.
“But how the hell did this old guy get up here to the colony?” Groves, holstering his gun, wondered aloud.
“When they have no choice,” Nika said, solemnly, “people can do extraordinary things.” And St. Peter’s Island was plainly the place to do them. No wonder she’d had the heebie-jeebies since getting there. The island had a bad rep, and it was living up to it in spades.
Chapter 28
Slater awoke in the dark, with no idea of the time. He glanced at the fluorescent numerals on his watch, and saw that it was not even 6 A.M. yet. The sun wouldn’t rise, if that’s what you could call it, for hours yet.
All around him he was aware of the others, still asleep—Dr. Lantos on the insulated rubber flooring under the table, Kozak snoring on a pile of the ground mats, and Nika—safely removed from the old church—curled like a cat into her sleeping bag between some unpacked crates. The thought of what might have happened to her earlier that night, alone with the wolf and its frozen carrion, made him shudder. He had never lost a man—or woman—on a mission before, and he was not about to start now.
Especially with someone like Nika.
Rising quietly, he went to the flap of the tent and poked his head outside. The air was so cold that just drawing a breath felt as if he’d swallowed a bucket of ice, and the colony grounds were dusted with a fresh coat of snow—not as deep as he’d dreaded but enough to prove a nuisance with their dig. The Sikorsky was parked a hundred meters away, with Sergeant Groves and his Coast Guard crew bunked down inside. Like the Greeks hidden away in the Trojan horse, Slater thought.
As he watched, the hatchway slid open, and Groves, his parka flapping open and his boots unlaced, stepped out onto the snow with his flashlight on. Slater raised a hand, but Groves didn’t see him as he made his way to the latrines. There was an immense amount of work to do that day, but Slater knew that if anybody could get it all organized and done, it would be the sergeant.
When he ducked his head back inside, he saw that Dr. Lantos was stirring. “Who let the draft in?” she said, fumbling for her glasses, and even the professor had quit snoring and was stretching his burly arms. All he could see of Nika was the top of her head, burrowing deeper into her bag for a few extra minutes of slumber.
The day was officially under way.
Over the next few hours, Groves and his crew got a hot breakfast going in the mess tent and unloaded the remainder of the supplies in the chopper, while Dr. Lantos and the professor checked over their equipment inventories and made sure everything was accounted for and in order. As soon as the sky showed a glimmer of light, and Slater could see that the crewmen, under the guidance of the pilot, Rudy, were erecting the other prefab structures according to the plans he had drawn up, he left them to it and rounded up his own team for the trip to the cemetery. Dr. Lantos wanted to stay behind for now and personally oversee the construction and placement of the autopsy tent, but the others were raring to go. Kozak, both gloves fastened on the handlebars of his ground-penetrating radar unit, looked like he was about to mow a lawn.
“You sure you don’t want to wait until we’ve seen what kind of access we have to the cemetery?” Slater asked, but Kozak patted the bright red handles of the GPR like it was a trusted dog and said, “It has gone everywhere. And until we do the ground study, what else can you do, anyway?”
Slater had to agree. Digging up graves under any circumstances was a harrowing business, rife with potential problems. But digging up graves containing the hundred-year-old remains of victims of the Spanish flu—remains that might have deteriorated, in coffins that might have disintegrated, in graves that might even have shifted their location underground due to geothermal changes—was a task requiring the utmost care and professional expertise.
Not to mention sensitivity. It was no surprise to Slater that he saw Nika lacing up her boots and slipping on her glove liners.
“I don’t suppose I could persuade you to stay out of harm’s way today?” Slater said.
“Thanks, but after last night,” she said, “I think I’ve already had my baptism by fire.”
Sergeant Groves, with a bundle of wire flags under his arm, smiled and shook his head at his boss, as if to say, You were dreaming if you thought she wasn’t coming. And though Slater knew he was right, he had had to give it a try. In addition to all the other considerations, exhumations were often dangerous affairs, and the first thing any team leader tried to do was limit the personnel present.
The second thing was to avoid wasting time on battles with headstrong opponents who were bound and determined to pursue their own agenda no matter what.
The sky was a sullen gray when the team finally passed under the main gates of the colony and started down the cleared slope that led to the grove of trees. Slater spotted a narrow break in the woods that suggested a trail had once begun here, and without a word Sergeant Groves wired a red flag to the nearest bough. As they forced their way through the thick trees and dense underbrush, brambles pulling at the sleeves of their coats and low-hanging branches dropping their load of fresh snow on top of their hoods and hats, Groves continued to place
an occasional marker along the way.
“We’ll need all of this cut away on both sides,” Slater said, over his shoulder, and Groves replied, “I can get a team with power saws down here later this afternoon. You want ramping, too?”
“Yes, wherever the ground is particularly uneven.”
“Yes, please, I will need that,” the professor said, as he struggled with Nika’s help to steer the wheels of his GPR around an especially gnarly root formation.
Slater, seeing the difficulty he was having, resisted saying I told you so. He understood the professor’s impatience to get started; it was a failing, or virtue, in his own nature, too. But years of running epidemiological missions had taught him to rein in his impulses by making a careful plan and following it to the letter.
“What do you want to do about lighting?” Groves asked.
“A halogen stanchion every twenty feet or so, maybe three hundred watts each.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
Slater knew that it would mean running a lot of cables and power from the generators in the colony all the way through the forest, but they were going to have to do that, anyway, to power up the dressing and decontamination chamber.
When they did emerge from the trees again, Slater stopped at a pair of weathered gateposts, with something—some word or two—whittled into the wood.
Nika immediately removed a glove and reverently ran one finger over the faint writing. “It’s Russian.”
And when Kozak stepped forward and leaned close enough to see, he said, “It’s the same thing, over and over again.”
“What?” Groves asked.
“It says, ‘Forgive me, forgive me.’ ”
“I wonder why,” Nika said, softly.
But Slater, surveying the graveyard that extended all the way to the cliffside, wondered who had scrawled it there. Had it been the founder of the sect, who had brought his flock to ruin in such a bleak and unforgiving spot? Had it been the last surviving member of the colony?
The Romanov Cross: A Novel Page 21