“In January, once the new budget is done,” Jenkins continued, “I’ll build in the cost of an impermeable seal. We’ll lay it down in the spring.”
Slater nodded in approval, relieved to see that the job was in such capable hands. What he’d heard about the captain was true.
Once Jenkins had gone to take his seat at the colonel’s table, Kozak said, “At least they used my radar maps for something.” Then, leaning forward, he said, “So? You heard the colonel. If we do not do it tonight, we will not have another chance.”
Groves looked at Slater, appraisingly, while Kozak drummed his fingers on the map.
Colonel Waggoner laughed loudly at something, banging his fist on the table so hard that plates jumped.
“What can they do?” Slater said, pushing his chair back and glancing at his watch. “Court-martial me?”
Chapter 67
The colony was so bright, Anastasia could barely stand it. Even now, long after dark, long after all the day’s activity had ceased, the intruders left their lights on—huge glaring lamps brighter than a thousand crystal chandeliers. What were they afraid of? What did they hope to see? Their green tents glowed from within, their engines hummed all night and day, and their airplanes—strangely shaped machines, equipped with propellers spinning on top like pinwheels—came and went, disgorging yet other machines, trucks and tractors, all of them designed, it seemed, to wreak havoc and destruction.
Already, the cemetery was gone. The posts, into which she had carved her plea for forgiveness so many years ago, had been pulled down. The tombstones had been wantonly swept away, the graves themselves paved over, but she knew, as she crossed the smooth hard surface, exactly whose souls lay beneath her boots at each step. Arkady, the blacksmith, was buried here. Ilya, the woodman, was buried there; his wife rested beside him. When she approached the cliffs, she knew that the remains of the Deacon Stefan had lain below. And just beyond it, at the outermost point, the grave of Sergei had once been located.
Now, the spot was just a jagged scar in the earth.
She stood there, looking out to sea, as she had done for time immemorial, wondering if she would ever be able to join the sleeping souls that she had once known. She had buried the emerald cross with her one true love, but its power over her had persisted. The chains that bound her to the earth still held tight, long beyond any mortal span. Although Rasputin had prophesied just such a curse upon her family if they should be responsible for his death, she alone had lived to endure it. Why oh why had the starets not foreseen that?
Or had he? That was what she pondered in her darkest moments of all.
There were boats out tonight, bobbing in the Bering Sea. Even they had their lights on, regularly sweeping their beams across the rocky cliffs and shoreline. The feeble glow from her lantern was swallowed in their occasional flood of light. At first, she had thought all these intrusions on the island might signal some end to her eternal purgatory there, but now she was no longer so hopeful. She did not know what, if anything, these events might portend. Perhaps they would prove just a passing phase, a random incursion into her solitude, ending again in her abandonment. It would not be a surprise to her.
Only death could come to her as a surprise now.
As she turned back toward her sanctuary, she could hear the soft footfall of the wolves who were her only companions. As the settlers had died, the wolves had proliferated—one, it appeared, for each dead soul. And over the many decades, their number, she had not failed to notice, had neither increased nor decreased. They could not speak, but in their eyes she could see a preternatural intelligence, a yearning to reach across the silent divide between humans and animals. She knew that they, too, were held captive here, isolated as she was, caught in the same spell. Their allegiance to the fallen starets was as unshakeable as their predatory instinct, and the prophet’s power, like Circe’s over her swine, lingered well beyond his own watery grave.
The leader of the pack, with a white blaze on his muzzle, trotted ahead, as if to assure her safe passage. It was a journey they had made thousands of times before.
Even the church, normally dark, was bathed, like everything else, in the glow of the colony lamps; its ancient and damaged cupola shone like a beacon as she approached. People in the old country had often joked that the tops of Russian Orthodox churches looked like onions, but Father Grigori had explained to her when she was a girl that it was meant to represent something holy.
“The dome is shaped like a candle flame,” he had told her, pointing to the top of the imperial chapel at Tsarkoe Selo. “It is meant to light our way to Heaven.”
If only she could believe that. If only, Anastasia thought, she could find such a pathway. Oh, how fast she would climb it, bad foot or no.
But as God had not seen fit to show her the way, and eternal damnation awaited those who attempted to thwart His will by their own hand, all she could do was submit herself and pray for deliverance.
For now, she took leave of the wolves and passed through the secret door that led to her private chamber. Bolting the passageway behind her, she settled her aching bones into this last tiny refuge. Resting the lantern beside her hand, she closed her eyes and willed herself back to other times and other places. Sometimes it was the royal retreat in the Crimea, sometimes it was the garden of the Alexander Palace. Always it was with her family. Like a woodland creature hibernating for the winter, she would enter into a suspended state, a dreamlike trance from which she hoped never to awaken.
And yet, fight it as hard as she might, she always did. The next night, or maybe the one after that, she always found herself awake again, walking the cliffs, lantern in hand and heart as heavy as a millstone.
Chapter 68
Poking his head out of his tent, Slater knew there was simply no way to cross the grounds to the church without being spotted. The colonel plainly believed in lots of lights, all the time.
Slipping his field pack onto his back—one thing he’d learned was to keep his basic supplies, from first-aid kit to syringes on him at all times—he checked his watch. It was just before midnight, and after waiting as a lone sentry stomped across the grounds and off toward the main gate, he sauntered out of the tent, walking briskly between the tents and bivouacs and around the old well. It was a clear night, but frigidly cold—when wasn’t it?—and made worse by a biting wind. Even beneath all his thermal gear, he had to fight back a shiver.
He gave the church a wide berth, swinging wide and keeping to what cover he could, before doubling back to the northern wall. So far, there was no further sign of the night patrol.
Nor was there any sign of Sergeant Groves or Kozak, either … until he heard a low whistle and turned to see them both huddled in the breach of the stockade wall. The professor carried a shovel and Groves had liberated a pickaxe. Waving them over, Slater grabbed the professor by the shoulder and said, “So where’s this crawl space?”
Kozak, moving faster than a man of his girth usually moved, scuttled to a spot a few yards away, got down on his knees, peered at the base of the church, pawed at the snowy ground, and whispered, “Under here—it should be right under here.”
“It should be, or it is?” Slater said.
“It is! It is!”
Groves didn’t need any more instruction than that. He muscled them both aside, and swung the pickaxe at the ground. Fortunately, the dull clang of the blade on the hard ground was muffled by the gusting wind. After several strokes, he paused to let Kozak shovel the loose soil and snow away.
“Yes, yes, it’s here!” Kozak said. “A few more strikes!”
Groves wielded the pickaxe while Slater, crouching, kept watch. When he was done, Kozak quickly brushed the debris aside—slivers of timber and sawdust were mixed with the snow and ice—and ran his flashlight beam back and forth. “Frank!” he urged. “Come!”
Slater reached into his field pack and withdrew the scabbard that housed a nine-inch surgical knife; it wasn’t often that he had had
to use the knife, but once or twice emergency amputations had had to be performed. If its broad blade could saw through bone, he assumed it would do perfectly well with wood.
“Look!” Kozak said, and peering into the hole, Slater could see that the GPR had been right. A veritable tunnel had been dynamited through the earth and it lay there now like an open streambed. The church teetered over it precariously. Still, if the building had managed to remain standing for the past century, what were the chances it would choose tonight to collapse?
Clutching the scabbard between his teeth, Slater shimmied into the hole, flashlight in hand. The passage was wider than he might have expected—good news for Kozak, who was going to have to follow him—but the floor of the church was grazing his head the whole way. The ground was as hard as rock, and his ribs hurt like hell every time he had to pull himself a few feet forward. The air, what there was of it, smelled like the deepest, dankest cellar, and after going only ten or fifteen feet, the tilt of the church made any further progress impossible. Squirming onto his back and aiming the flashlight at the floorboards above his head, Slater found a gap between two of the planks and, removing the knife from its scabbard, wedged the blade into it. As he worked it back and forth, shavings trickled down onto his face, and he had to blow them away. Eventually, a hole opened—a hole big enough for him to put his fingers through. He pulled down, and after several tugs, the wood cracked. He was reminded of the splintering of the coffin lid in the graveyard. He pulled again, but it was hard to get the proper leverage. Taking a breath and turning his face sideways to protect his eyes, he let go of the flashlight and used both hands to pry the board loose. This time it came away, leaving a gap big enough for him to lift his head through like a periscope.
He was in the nave, a few yards in front of the iconostasis.
Ducking again, he squeezed his field pack through the hole and hacked at the neighboring plank until he was able to loosen it enough to push it aside. With considerable effort, he was able to haul himself up into the church, but only barely. Kozak would need more room, and so, before he signaled him to follow, he chopped at a third board until the hole was as wide as a manhole cover. Then, he sat back and took a deep breath, rubbing his rib cage.
From below, he heard Kozak’s voice echoing along the tunnel. “Is it clear? Are you in?”
Slater bent to the hole and whistled through the sawdust on his lips. He could hear a muffled huffing and puffing as Kozak, big but strong, hauled himself along the frozen ground. He imagined this must be what a bear sounded like as it prepared its den for a winter’s hibernation. When he saw his flashlight beam growing bright, Slater slipped his head down into the hole and saw Kozak’s eyeglasses glinting in the darkness. Slater put his hand down, and Kozak grabbed it with his leather glove. Slater pulled, his ribs giving him a jolt, and the professor eventually emerged from the tunnel, scraped, sputtering, and covered with dirt and ice and bits of wood.
“Next time,” he said, “a bigger hole, please.”
Slater smiled.
But as Kozak, his legs still dangling underground, gazed around the church, illuminated only by the feeble glow of the flashlights and the moonlight filtering in through the cracks in the roof beams and the holes in the dome, he looked like a kid at a carnival. “It’s all ours!” he whispered.
“Not for long,” Slater replied. “Let’s go find that sacristy.”
Kozak got to his feet and lumbered across the sloping floor toward the jumble of wreckage concealing the iconostasis screen. “You look at that end, and I’ll look at this,” Kozak said, stepping close to the pile of broken furniture and twisted andirons.
“And what exactly am I looking for?”
“You are at the south end, so you will be looking for the entrance—a door with a picture of St. Michael, the Defender of the Faith.”
“How will I know it’s him?”
“He’ll probably be carrying a sword. I’ll be looking for the exit door, which should show the Archangel Gabriel, the Messenger of God.”
“Which one do we want?”
“Whichever one happens to be open.”
Slater pressed his face toward the screen, trying to peer through the debris. His flashlight picked up flecks of paint—in red and gold and blue—on old whitewashed boards. Here and there, he could even see the outlines of angels and saints and, in one place, what looked like it might have been a painting of Noah’s Ark.
“In grand cathedrals,” Kozak said, while inspecting his own end, “these screens were ornately decorated and went all the way to the ceiling.”
This one went nearly that high, and in its own day Slater imagined that it, too, had been beautiful in its own simple fashion.
“I have found Gabriel,” Kozak exulted, “and he is blowing his horn.”
“To welcome us in?”
“No, the door is nailed shut and boarded over. Very unusual.”
Kozak came down toward Slater’s end. “Maybe we will have better luck with St. Michael.”
Pulling aside the broken refectory tables and cracked barrels, they scoured the wall with their flashlight beams until Slater could dimly make out the frame of a doorway—narrow and arched at the top, with the barest outline remaining of a golden-haired saint wielding a silver sword. On this door, there was a rusted chain, hanging loose, and no boards secured across it.
No words needed to be exchanged. With each of them taking hold of one end of an upended pew, they inched it away from the iconostasis. Then, Slater cleared away some other debris, like cutting tumbleweed away from a fence, until he could get to the door itself. If there had ever been a handle, it had long since fallen off and was probably rolling around in the darkness beneath their feet.
“Let me,” Kozak said, elbowing past him and putting his shoulder against the wood. “If there’s a curse, it should fall on me.”
He pressed his burly shoulder against the door and Slater heard its antique hinges squeak, but hold.
“Russians do good work,” Kozak muttered, putting his head down and pressing harder. After a few seconds, there was a popping sound, as first one hinge, then the other, gave way. The door, its bottom scraping the floor, creaked open.
Kozak stood to one side, and with a sweep of his arm gestured for Slater to enter first. “I do not care what they say in Washington,” he declared. “You are still the head of this mission.”
Slater appreciated the vote of confidence and slid through the open space, pushing the door wider as he went. Cobwebs clung to his head, and the air inside was as cold and still and stifling as a meat locker. He had the uneasy sense of intruding upon something sacred and long inviolate. He swept his flashlight beam around the room, but the rays seemed to be swallowed up by the inky blackness. Here, there were no holes in the roof or cracks in the timbered walls to let in the moonlight, and even the floor, when he turned the light on it, gave off the dull gleam of tar. This sacristy had been sealed like a tomb.
“I would give a great deal for a lamp right now,” Kozak said.
So would Slater. The flashlight only gave him glimpses of what lay all around him—a wooden altar, covered with one red cloth and one white. A few ecclesiastical vessels—chalices and bowls and salvers. Everything thick with dust.
But a candelabra, too—with the nubs of candles still in it.
“Have you got some matches on you?” Slater asked, and Kozak, patting his pipe pocket, said, “Always.”
Slater left his flashlight beam trained on the candelabra, and the professor struck one match after another, trying to find and light the wicks. Eventually, out of six or seven candles, he got four of them lighted, providing a flickering but more diffused light to penetrate the room.
The first thing he noticed was a door, no more than four feet tall, cut flush with the logs in the wall and secured by a crossbar. When he pointed it out to Kozak, he said, jokingly, “I wish we’d known about that in advance.”
“Huh,” Kozak said, running his fingers over his
beard. “A bishop’s door. You find such a thing in the great churches of places like Moscow—places where a bishop might actually wish to make a miraculous appearance. But I would never have expected to find one here.” He rattled the crossbar in its grooves and it moved easily. “And they could hardly have expected a bishop to come to this church.”
“What about a grand duchess?” Slater was beginning to believe what Kozak had translated from the sexton’s ledger.
But Kozak shook his head. “I don’t think even she knew she would end her days here.”
“Who was it built for then?”
“If I had to make a guess,” the professor said, “I would say it was her protector and confessor. The man these settlers came here to venerate. Rasputin.”
Slater glanced again at the rough-hewn door, fitted so skillfully into the wall that it would hardly be noticed if it were not for the bar. They had missed its existence entirely from the outside.
Against the opposite wall, a mirrored cabinet stood open, with two cassocks hanging from its hooks. Kozak reverently stroked the sleeve of the white cassock, saying, “This one was used only for Pascha. Easter.” The other was black, with a scarlet lining, and when he brushed it to one side, he reached into the back of the cabinet, felt the rim of a basin—no doubt the sacrarium used to wash the holy linens after a service—and started to lift it out. There was the sound of pebbles sloshing around in a bowl.
“Frank.” Kozak’s voice was filled with awe. “Frank.”
The professor moved to the altar, holding the bowl in front of him as carefully as if it were the host itself. When he put it down, Slater trained his own beam on it, and it was like he was looking at a kaleidoscope.
The basin itself was made of white porcelain, with a gold rim, but inside it, as if they were a heap of marbles, lay a dazzling mound of gems—bright white diamonds, fiery rubies, sapphires as blue as the crevices in a glacier, emeralds as green as a cat’s eyes. There were rings, too—of gold and silver—and bracelets and broaches—ivory and onyx—and ropes of pearls, coiled and tangled, that had faded to a pale yellow. Kozak dipped his hands in, as if he were tossing a salad, and let the jewels sift back into the bowl between his fingers. They clinked and clattered as they fell, the sound echoing around the sacristy.
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