The Romanov Cross: A Novel

by Robert Masello

  Too fast, as it happened.

  Harley suddenly felt the rope jerk tight on his tool belt, and a second later, he was staggering toward the cliff. Eddie was screaming, already sliding backwards down the icy slope. Harley flailed around, trying to grab hold of anything in reach.

  “Help me!” Eddie shouted, and Harley managed to snag a low-lying branch heavy with snow. The knife dropped to the ground.

  But even as he hung on with one hand, his gloves stripping the snow and then the needles right off of it, the branch slid free, and he crashed to his knees. He heard the crunch of test tubes breaking in his pockets, and a moment later the sharp pain of broken glass cutting into his thigh. He was being dragged off the edge of the cliff, too, by the weight of Eddie on the rope.

  “Christ Almighty!” Eddie hollered in terror, his boots scraping the rock for any kind of ledge or crevice.

  Harley dug his fingers into the snow and ice, and found a ridge in the earth, a solid bit of frozen tundra, maybe three or four inches deep, and hung on for dear life, but the nylon cord was pulling him down, twisting the belt around his waist like a tourniquet. His underarms were burning from the drag on the sleeves of his coat.

  He reached for the buckle on his belt, but it was pulled so tight he couldn’t loosen it.

  “Pull me up, Vane! Pull me up!”

  But he didn’t have that kind of purchase, and he knew his own strength was going to give out fast. His collar was choking him, the binoculars were digging into his chest. Clinging to the soil with one hand, he used the other to grope for the knife, lying only inches away, and then wedged its blade under the straining cord.

  “I can’t hang on here!” Eddie grunted. “The rope’s killing me!”

  With fumbling fingers, Harley sawed at the cord. It was taut as a piano wire, but he felt a thread start to frazzle. He sawed again, harder.

  “Pull!” Eddie huffed, sounding as if the very air was being squeezed from his lungs.

  Harley’s parka was wrapping itself around him like a python, and in a few seconds he wouldn’t even be able to move at all. Awkwardly, he worked the blade back and forth, back and forth.

  “Pull!”

  And then, just as he thought he would pass out, he heard a sharp twang, like a banjo string breaking, and all the pressure, all the weight on him, instantly stopped. The cord whizzed across the snow, while his fingers still held tight to the ground. And then he heard Eddie’s terrified cry, fast diminishing and swallowed in the wind. If there was a splash, it was lost in the storm.

  Putting his face down, he felt the cold snow bathing his hot skin, and he simply lay there, breathing slowly, in and out, telling himself, over and over again, that he was still alive, he was still alive.

  It was a long while before he had the courage, or the strength, to raise his head, look around, and see that the old woman was gone, too. He was all alone in the dark.

  Chapter 40

  Improvisation was the name of the game. Any epidemiologist worth his salt knew that you had to be able to turn on a dime when circumstances changed—and in the field, circumstances always did.

  In a matter of less than an hour, Slater had managed to get a temporary quarantine tent rigged up inside the nave of the church, with everything from an overhead lamp to a powerful space heater, and he had put the wounded and half-delirious Lantos on a pair of IV drips; one contained a broad spectrum antibiotic to guard against the sepsis that was sure to follow from the slash of the wolf’s claw, and the other a concentrated solution of Demerol that had kept her sedated enough to allow him to do what he had to do. What he really needed was an anesthetist, but when he came to the island, he hadn’t planned to perform surgery on anyone still alive.

  Groves and Rudy had been deployed to seal up the windows of the church to guard against any drafts or exposure, and Nika had been enlisted as head nurse. After her reaction to the work he’d had to do in the graveyard—drilling specimens from the deacon’s corpse—he wasn’t sure she’d be able to handle it, but to her credit, she hadn’t even balked at his request. In fact, she’d looked happy for the chance to redeem herself.

  “Just tell me what to do,” she said, “and I’ll do it.”

  And so she had. He’d had her suit up in everything from gloves to goggles, and now she was standing on the opposite side of the gurney, behaving as if she’d been in operating rooms all her life. When he’d needed her help to set up the IV lines, she took his instructions perfectly, and her nimble fingers did the job without hesitation. When he asked for an instrument, she instinctively seemed to know which one he meant, and when he needed her to hold a sponge, or even put her finger on a suture while he pulled the thread through the wounded flesh, she didn’t blanch—or if she did, he couldn’t see it behind her protective gear.

  “You’re doing a great job,” he said, his voice muffled by his own face mask.

  “Then why am I sweating so much?”

  “We all do. It’s why we burn these damn suits afterward.” It occurred to him that she’d have made a fine country doctor—and from what he’d gathered in town, Port Orlov needed one.

  His fears for Lantos, however, were rapidly mounting. She had been slipping in and out of consciousness, and though he’d tried to knock her out enough to perform the necessary surgery without causing her unbearable pain, it was a fine balance he was trying to achieve. He had to keep her unconscious and immobilized, but without depressing her respiratory function any further than necessary.

  The work was more extensive than he had anticipated; the wolf, an expert at gutting its prey with a single swipe of its claws, had wreaked havoc in her abdominal cavity, and in addition to that there was the ever-present, and far worse, threat of a viral component having come into play. The autopsy chamber had been filled with bowls of blood and organs, and Lantos had sustained a large and open wound. The Spanish flu was an airborne disease when transmitted by its living hosts, but it flourished in the blood and bodily fluids of its victims. If any of the samples they had taken were viable, then Lantos could have become directly infected, and even now, as she lay on the table breathing feebly through her own face mask, she could be functioning as a veritable flu factory.

  Plainly, the entire situation was becoming untenable. Lantos was going to need to be evacuated to a proper hospital, and soon—and the biological materials left exposed in the lab tent were going to have to be gathered up, with the utmost care, and safely destroyed. In their frozen state, the specimens taken in situ from the grave itself had been dangerous enough. But once the body had been thawed for the autopsy and the harvesting of additional tissue, there was no telling what had happened to any virus that might still have been preserved in the flesh and viscera. Most probably, it had been inert, or rendered that way by the thermal change.

  But there was always the chance that, for even a short window of time, it had been alive … and communicable.

  Lantos stirred on the table, and her hands twitched. Slater had been in such a hurry to attend to her injuries that he hadn’t had time to arrange for any of the usual restraints. He nodded at Nika, and told her how to increase the Demerol drip. Their work was not yet done … even if he was only running on fumes and adrenaline at this point.

  In fact, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could maintain the intense focus he needed, or keep his hands steady enough to do the delicate repairs Lantos required. As it was, he knew that he was just doing stopgap work—enough to stop the hemorrhaging and hold things in place—until a more skilled surgeon, in a fully equipped operating room, could do it right.

  But how long would that be?

  He heard the doors of the church creaking open again, then Sergeant Groves’s voice just outside the sealed flaps of the tent.

  “Sorry to report this,” Groves said, “but no luck with the Coast Guard. One chopper’s grounded for repair, and the other’s already on a rescue mission off Little Diomede.”

  “So what about sending a boat?” Slater said, his ey
es still focused on his patient.

  “They say the sea’s so rough, they doubt they can get in close enough right now. They’ve got to wait the storm out.”

  “Which means how long?” he asked impatiently, pulling another suture through.

  Lantos moaned, her head twisting on the table.

  After a pause, Groves admitted, “No telling. But Rudy said the forecast’s not good.”

  Even in the tent, Slater could hear the howling of the wind, tearing at the old timbers of the church, and he could only imagine the pounding of the sea on the rocks and shoals surrounding St. Peter’s Island. Small wonder the strange Russian sect had chosen to take refuge here; it was one of the most impregnable and unapproachable spots in the world. Of all the hellholes Slater had been to—and he’d been to plenty—this one felt cursed even to him.

  “Get back on the radio,” he snapped, more irritated and distracted than was wise, “and tell them this can’t wait. It’s a life-or-death emergency.”

  “Frank,” Nika said.

  “Find out who’s in charge—go as high up the chain as you can—”

  “Frank, the bleeding just got worse—”

  “And tell them to call Dr. Levinson at the AFIP if they need to get a top security clearance. I guarantee—”

  “Frank!” Nika insisted.

  And when he looked at Nika, and saw what she was bowing her head at, he could see that there was an upwelling of blood, as if from a layer of the dermis that had been insufficiently closed, seeping between the sutures. Lantos groaned, and though she should have been rendered unconscious by the drip, her hands swung loose, perhaps in involuntary contractions. Nika grabbed at one of them, and missed, and Slater said, “Let me do it—just stand back.”

  But Nika fumbled across the table in an attempt to snag the other hand—a breach of protocol that a trained nurse would have known not to do—and before either one of them knew how it had happened, Nika flinched and said, “Ouch,” as the tip of the suturing needle pierced the palm of her glove. For a split second that seemed like an eternity, the needle stayed there, before Slater yanked it out, and looked through his visor at Nika. She was studying the tiny puncture in her glove, from which a dot of her own blood was now oozing, and then she looked up at him, her dark eyes full of disbelief … and questions.

  Exactly as he feared were his own.

  Chapter 41

  Sergei was pushing a wheelbarrow back toward the Ipatiev house when he heard the sound of gunshots. For days, there had been the rumble of distant artillery, but this was small-arms fire, and much closer to home.

  It sounded like a string of firecrackers.

  The wheelbarrow was filled with several gas cans. Commandant Yurovsky had sent him into town with orders to siphon the fuel out of every vehicle he could find, and if anybody asked any questions, to refer them to the Kremlin. This was not the sort of duty the Bolsheviks had promised him when they came to his village and dragooned him the previous spring.

  The shots were coming one at a time now, and Sergei stopped in the middle of the dark road, fear gripping at his heart. Who was doing all this shooting, in the dead of night, and why?

  Pushing the wheelbarrow as fast as he could over the bumps and ruts in the dirt road, he arrived at the sharp-staked palisade surrounding the house, and when the sentry called out who was there, he said, “It’s Comrade Sergei Ilyinsky. With the gasoline.”

  “Bring it around back.”

  In the courtyard, Sergei found a truck waiting, and the stench of gunpowder in the air … and blood. His eyes shot to the iron grille covering the basement window, but it was dark inside and he couldn’t see a thing.

  Yurovsky, stepping out of the house, saw the gas canisters and said, “That’s all?”

  “There aren’t many tractors in Ekaterinburg,” Sergei said, careful to keep any emotion out of his voice.

  “Go upstairs and get the sheets and blankets.”

  Sergei mounted the back steps and found the house in commotion. Other guards were trooping up and down the stairs, their arms filled with linens, their mouths crammed with food, a couple swigging vodka from a jug. By the time he got to the room Anastasia shared with her sisters, the four cots had already been stripped bare. Books and diaries, combs and shoes, were scattered around the floor. Arkady, one of the Latvian guards who had recently been brought to the house, was stripping some curtains from the whitewashed windows.

  “What’s going on?” Sergei said. “Where are they?”

  Arkady looked at him quizzically, and said, “In Hell, if you ask me.” Then, tossing the curtains to Sergei, he said, “Take these to the basement.”

  His arms clutching the curtains, Sergei stumbled down the stairs, his mind refusing to accept the awful reality of what must have just happened, then across the courtyard and down to the cellar. The acrid smell of smoke and death grew stronger with every step he took, and Sergei’s heart grew as heavy as a stone. At the bottom, Yurovsky, in his long coat, was holding a lantern and directing the operation.

  The floor was so awash in blood that the soldiers trying to roll the bodies up in the sheets and drapery kept slipping and sliding.

  “Just get them out of here!” Yurovsky was barking. “The truck’s right outside.”

  Sergei scanned the carnage; he saw Dr. Botkin’s gold eyeglasses gleaming on his bloody face, he saw Demidova with a bayonet still stuck in her chest. He saw the Tsar’s worn old boots sticking out of a sheet, and his young son Alexei—one side of his face obliterated by a close gunshot to the ear—being wrapped in a tablecloth, like a shroud.

  But where was Anastasia?

  “Don’t just stand there!” Yurovsky said, smacking him on the shoulder. “Get to work.”

  Sergei stepped into the morass, searching for Ana, and found her beneath the corpse of her sister Tatiana, soaked in blood, her little dog crushed beneath her. Her hair was caked with blood, her clothes were ripped to shreds, her hands were clutching something under her bodice.

  Sergei felt the anger and the bile rise in his throat, and if he could have done it, he’d have killed Yurovsky and every other guard in the house on the spot. The House of Special Purpose—that’s what the Ipatiev mansion had been officially called, and Sergei had always taken it to mean imprisonment.

  Now he knew that it meant murder.

  He laid the curtains on the floor—they were the color of cream, and imprinted with little blue seahorses—and gently rolled Ana’s body onto them. He looked at her face, smeared with blood and ash and tears, then closed the ends of the curtains over her as if he were wrapping a precious gift.

  “Move along,” Yurovsky shouted, “all of you!”

  Sergei could hear the truck engine idling in the courtyard. The Latvians were throwing the remaining bodies over their shoulders like carpets, and carting them out. Sergei picked up Anastasia in his arms, as if carrying a child to bed, and leaving the cellar he heard Yurovsky joke, “Careful not to wake her.”

  Sergei was numb with shock and grief, and when the guards told him to toss the body into the back of the truck with all the rest, Sergei simply climbed inside instead, and slumped against the side wall with the body between his knees.

  “You always were sweet on that one,” a guard cracked. “That’s why the commandant sent you into town tonight.” He slammed the half panel at the back of the vehicle shut. “Now you can help bury her.”

  He banged on the side of the truck, and the engine was put into gear. With a jolt, the truck lumbered across the courtyard, out through the palisade, and onto the Koptyaki road. The pile of corpses—Sergei counted ten others in all—gently swayed and rocked, as if it were all a single creature, at every bump and pothole in the road. The Tsar and his valet, the Tsaritsa and her maid, their daughters, the heir to the throne, the cook, the doctor … all tangled together in an indiscriminate mound of blood-soaked linens.

  Sergei wondered where the truck was headed … and what he would do when he got there.

/>   An old car, crammed with shovels, gasoline, and Latvians was jouncing along behind them.

  For at least an hour, they forged through the forest on old rutted mining roads. Sergei could hear tree branches on either side scratching at the sides of the truck and the tires squelching in the mud.

  And then—unless his mind was playing tricks on him—he heard something else, too.

  He bent his head.

  It came again.

  A moan.

  He pulled the cream-colored curtain away.

  “Ana,” he whispered, “are you alive?”

  Her eyes were closed, and her face twitched like someone still caught in a nightmare.

  “Ana, be still!”

  Her face was wrenched in agony, her lips parted, and she started to cry out.

  Sergei pressed his palm to her mouth, and said, “Ana, don’t make a sound. Do you hear me? It’s Sergei. Don’t move.”

  She tried to scream again, and again he flattened his hand on her lips.

  “If they know you’re alive, they’ll kill us both.”

  Her eyes opened, filled with panic, and he leaned even closer so that she could see him better. Despite all that had passed between them, in looks and words and flowers, the bounds of propriety had never been crossed. Until this night, Sergei would no sooner have dreamed of holding a grand duchess of Russia than he would have imagined himself becoming the Tsar.

  Even as his heart soared—the love of his life was cradled in his arms!—Sergei’s mind raced. How had she survived the slaughter? Was the blood covering her body her own—or her sister’s?

  And how could he ever spirit her away from this caravan of death?

  The truck was going up a hill, the gears grinding, when he heard the thundering of hoofbeats and wild shouts coming through the forest. The brakes squealed, and even as the truck stopped, Yurovsky was leaping like a demon from the car behind, cursing and brandishing a long-muzzled Mauser.