“Talk about a king’s ransom,” Slater said.
“No,” Kozak said. “A Tsar’s ransom.”
It was more than Slater had ever imagined finding. He had gone along with the professor’s scheme more out of curiosity than conviction—not to mention the pleasure of defying Colonel Waggoner’s orders—and now they had stumbled upon a long-lost and legendary treasure. They had found what remained of the Romanov jewels.
The candles guttered on the altar, and one threw a spark that drifted, glowing, toward the back of the room. Slater followed it first with his eyes, and then, as he thought he discerned something in the shadows, with the beam of his flashlight.
Kozak was still absorbed in the gems, but Slater took a step or two toward the rear of the chamber.
A chair—no, it was more like a throne—had been placed in the darkest recess, atop a sort of dais. It had huge, clawed feet that protruded from under a long, gossamer-thin canopy draped from the roof. It was so grand that it made its own small enclosure. Had this, too, been designed in anticipation of Rasputin’s arrival?
It was only as he got closer that he thought he saw the tip of a small boot poking out from under the cloth. It couldn’t be. He took hold of the canopy and lifted it a few inches—enough to see that the boot was heavy and black, laced high and built with a thick heel, as if it had been molded to a deformed foot. Lifting the faded cloth higher, he saw the ragged hem of a long skirt—dark blue wool, homespun.
“Vassily,” he said, “come here.”
“Can’t you see I am busy?” Kozak joked.
“I mean it.”
Kozak ambled over, his broad back temporarily obscuring the candlelight, and upon seeing the canopied chair, said, “And that is called a Bishop’s Throne. They must have been expecting Rasputin, after all.”
Slater directed his gaze to the boot and skirt, and the professor immediately grew still. “My God,” he breathed.
Slater drew the canopy to one side, gently, but even so it began to shred and tumble from its hooks, releasing a cloud of dust that made them both turn away, coughing and closing their eyes. When the dust had settled and Slater turned back again, what he saw stunned him. His first thought was of the mummies found in the high Andes.
The old woman in the chair was sitting as erect as a queen, her eyes closed, her long gray hair knotted into a single long plait that hung over one shoulder of her cloak. Under it, she was wearing several layers of clothing—he saw the collar of a worn blouse, a jacket made of some hide, even the bottom of a richly embroidered corset.
But it was her skin that was the most entrancing. Her face looked like an old, withered apple, lined with a thousand creases, and her hands, which lay on the armrests of the chair, were brown with age; her fingers looked as brittle as twigs. One hand cradled the base of an old-fashioned kerosene lantern.
“Do you think …” Slater said, but before he could finish, Kozak had said, “Yes. Even the boot confirms it. Anastasia’s left foot was malformed.”
For at least a minute, they both stood in respectful silence, wrapped in their own thoughts. Slater was already wondering how he would broach these discoveries to the colonel, who had strictly confined him to quarters. Waggoner could rant all he wanted, but confronted with the proof itself—a bowl full of gems and a frozen corpse—he would have no choice but to alert the higher authorities in the Coast Guard, the AFIP, and Lord knows how many other agencies.
“What do we do now?” the professor finally said, and Slater switched himself back into the scientific mode. If it weren’t for the astounding, even unbelievable, nature of what they had just discovered, he asked himself, what would he have normally done? Under more logical circumstances, what would the next order of business be?
Evidence, and the systematic gathering of it. On any epidemiological mission, the first objective was to collect all the available data and evidence at the site, and that’s what he needed to do here and now—even before notifying the colonel. Once Waggoner was apprised of the situation, Slater was not at all confident that he would be given any further access. In all likelihood, he would be put under guard and whisked off the island as fast as the first chopper could take him—and in handcuffs, if the colonel had his way. No, this, he recognized, might well be his only chance to do any science at all.
Slater took off his field kit and opened it, planning out the task ahead. Unlike all the others on the island, Anastasia plainly had not died of the flu—she was immune, as was he, after weathering the storm at the hospital in Nome. But he did not forget that it was she who had carried it here, nearly a century ago. As a result, it was critical that he still observe the necessary and standard precautions—especially in regard to the bystander Kozak.
Digging out a gauze face mask, he told the professor to put it on and to stand back by the altar.
“Why?” Kozak said. “What are you planning to do?”
Donning another mask himself, Slater said, “Provide your friends at the Trofimuk Institute with a little DNA evidence, if all goes well.”
“Yes, thank you,” Kozak said, slipping the elastic bands behind his ears. “I think they would rather have that than the royal jewels.”
Slater lifted the lantern off the arm of the chair and placed it on the dais beside her boot. Puzzlingly, there was moisture there, and even the hem of her long skirt looked damp; he assumed he must have been dripping melted snow from his coat.
Then he surveyed the corpse, deciding on the best area from which to draw the sample. The hair could provide some DNA, especially if he made sure to capture the follicle, too—the shaft would provide only mitochondrial evidence—but it was terribly degraded and might not do the job. Her bony wrist, on the other hand, lay perfectly exposed, and if he could suction up some petrified skin and blood cells from a vein, he would get the richest and most viable sample possible.
Laying his own flashlight on the opposite arm of the chair, he reminded Kozak to remain at a distance, “But try holding up the candelabra. I need all the light I can get.”
Kozak raised the candles, and in their flickering glow, Slater located the vein—a barely perceptible blue line under the mottled brown skin—and took an empty syringe out of his kit. To get a better angle, he turned the hand slightly—it moved more easily than he expected—drew back the plunger, and touched its tip to the skin.
Then he depressed the plunger.
And the hand flinched.
Slater recoiled, leaving the syringe stuck.
Even Kozak must have seen what had just happened. “Mother of God,” he intoned.
Slater stepped back, first in astonishment, and then in horror.
The woman’s eyes opened—they were a pale gray—and she looked at him as if she were still asleep—asleep and unwilling to wake up. She stirred in the chair, like a dreamer merely turning in bed, and her boot inched the lantern off the dais, where it shattered on the floor. Rivulets of kerosene ran in all directions, soaking the fallen canopy.
“Mother of God,” Kozak said again, stumbling backwards, the candelabra shaking in his hand. A lighted candle, toppling from its perch, dropped to the floor.
There was a crackling sound, as the flame caught the kerosene and raced across the floor of the sacristy.
Slater could not believe his own eyes.
The old woman herself looked bewildered, but oddly unafraid. Nor did she move to avoid the erupting flame.
“We have to get out!” Kozak shouted, and Slater could hear him fumbling with the crossbar that secured the bishop’s door.
The fire grazed the edge of the canopy, and the dry old fabric went up like a torch. The licking flames snagged the hem of the altar cloths and they, too, ignited, engulfing the sacrarium like a ring of sacred fire. The rubies glowed like coals, the diamonds blazed, the bowl itself blackened and cracked, spilling the gems all over the altar.
“Come on!” Kozak shouted, as Slater heard the crossbar thump onto the floor. The tar was heating up, melting.
But he couldn’t leave the old woman—whoever she was—to die here.
“Now!” the professor shouted, throwing open the bishop’s door. A gust of icy wind roared into the room, as if it had been eagerly awaiting its chance, and before Slater could make a move, the whole sacristy was suddenly aswirl with fire and ash, smoke and snow. The old woman never budged from the dais, and Slater could swear that she even opened her arms to the maelstrom, as if she were welcoming a long-lost lover. He even thought that he heard her calling out a name—“Sergei!”—again and again.
The kerosene around her feet sent tendrils of flame shooting up her body. As her hair exploded in a crackling corona of fire, Slater felt Kozak’s heavy hand on his collar, dragging him out of the church.
Outside, Kozak rolled him onto the ground; he hadn’t even noticed that his pants were smoldering and his boots were sticky with hot tar. Groves appeared and patted him down with handfuls of snow, all the while pushing and pulling them both away from the mounting inferno.
“What’s going on?” a guard shouted, running toward the billowing smoke. It was Rudy, with a rifle that he quickly turned away when he saw who it was. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Rudy looked into the sacristy, just as Slater did, but it was like looking into the belly of a blast furnace. The flames were white-hot now, hissing and spitting, and they had soared up into the onion dome, its holes and cracks making it glow like the candle flame it was meant to represent. The whole church began to collapse in on itself with a thunderous clatter and crash, throwing sparks and streamers of fire into the night. Carried on the wind, they landed on the wooden cover of the old well, the roof beams of the neighboring cabins, the old blacksmith stall.
Coast Guardsmen and men from the work crews were tumbling out of their Quonset huts, pulling on parkas and boots and gloves, shouting and running helter-skelter across the grounds of the colony.
First one structure caught fire, then another, until it was as if the whole stockade was forming a ring of orange flame. Slater and Kozak and Groves scrambled down the hill toward the main gates, colliding with Colonel Waggoner, his coat open, his boots unclasped, his hair wild. He took them all in for a second, but it was enough for Slater to know that he’d figured out who was responsible. Slater’s pants were scorched black and flapping around his legs.
“We’ve got a hose going, Colonel!” a Coast Guardsman hollered to him, but Waggoner looked around at the looming wall of flame and waved the man toward the gates.
“Just get out! Get out now!” He stumbled up the hill a few yards, but the smoke was getting thicker by the minute. “Evacuate!” he shouted to anyone who could still hear him. “Evacuate the colony!”
With the sergeant plowing a path for them, Slater and Kozak joined the others jostling toward the main gates, and by the time they reached the safety of the cliffs and turned around, breathless, to see, the colony was nothing but an immense bonfire, teased by the treacherous winds off the Bering Sea and filling the sky with a cloud of smoke and cinders. Slater could feel the ash settling on his bare head and shoulders.
The church had long since fallen off its foundation, and there was nothing left of it to be seen. Somewhere under the towering pile of burning debris lay the Romanov jewels—and their last rightful owner … the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Of that, Slater was now sure, though no one else but Professor Kozak would ever know, or ever believe, it.
Nor would he ever tell anyone—not even Nika. It was better if the ground was considered barren and sere, better if the last of the Romanovs was allowed to rest in peace, free from ghouls and treasure-hunters like Harley and Charlie Vane. She had waited a very long time for this, and whatever spell had kept her here on this lonely island, long beyond any ordinary human span, Slater hoped that it, too, had been extinguished at last.
Let the bulldozers and the organophosphates, the concrete and the impermeable seal, come, and let the colony be buried forever. Let Anastasia’s grave remain unmarked, undisturbed, unknown.
But not unmourned. From all over the island, the wind carried the baleful howl of the black wolves … a keening that lasted all through the night.
The fire burned until the next morning, and it was only then—though it was still dark out—that the colonel pulled together an exploratory crew to venture back into the smoky grounds and assess the situation.
When Slater volunteered to lead the team, Waggoner glared at him, and spitting his words out like bullets, said, “I should never have let you back on the island.”
And for once, Slater thought he had a point.
Chapter 69
The helicopter didn’t even cut its engines. It simply touched its runners to the ice of the hockey rink, and as soon as the hatch was opened, Slater, Kozak, and Sergeant Groves were virtually ejected from the cabin, along with their backpacks and gear. The professor’s GPR was rolled out of the cargo bay, and a moment later, the propellers, which had never stopped turning, lifted the craft back into the night sky. Slater watched as it headed back toward the devastation on St. Peter’s Island, his heart filled with a sense of deep regret—nothing in his life had ever gone so terribly wrong—mingled with an undeniable relief.
It wasn’t his problem anymore.
The debriefing he had been scheduled to undergo that morning had been canceled due to the conflagration, and Colonel Waggoner had asked him only one question.
“Was the fire deliberate, or accidental, Dr. Slater?”
“Accidental,” Slater replied. What use was there in denying it?
The colonel, whose hands were full as it was, told him he could keep his notes and records, and file a full report from Port Orlov, “or anywhere else you go. Personally, I don’t ever want to lay eyes on you again, and trust me on this, they feel the same way at the AFIP offices in Washington.”
Indeed, he’d been right about that. Frank had made one last call to Dr. Levinson, who’d listened coldly as he gave her an edited account of what had happened at the site—omitting any mention of the gems or, God forbid, their owner—and when he’d stopped to take a breath, she had informed him that Rebekah Vane had also succumbed to the Spanish flu, while being treated at the biohazard facility in Juneau.
“I thought she had been stabilized,” he mumbled.
“So did I,” Dr. Levinson said. “We were both wrong.”
He could hear the disappointment, and even dismissal, in her voice.
“Have there been any other breaches,” he asked, dreading the answer, “or casualties?”
“Not so far. We think we got there in time and established a suitable quarantine zone.” There was a pause on the line. “Needless to say, your report will be classified top secret. You, and the remaining members of your team, are under a strict information embargo.”
“Understood.”
“Is it, Dr. Slater? Because nothing else on this mission seems to have been.”
He took the shot. He deserved it.
“I’ll look for your report in one week. And oh,” she said, icily, before abruptly hanging up, “don’t expect any references.”
If it hadn’t been so painful, he might have laughed. But given what his plans were now, he doubted that he would need any.
“So what do you say?” Groves asked him. “Should we drop off our stuff at the community center and head into town for some grub?”
Slater nodded and the three of them trooped wearily off the ice.
Inside the center, they found Geordie holding down the fort all by himself.
“Yeah, I figured that chopper might be bringing you guys back,” he said. “But if you’re looking for the mayor, she’s already at the celebration.”
“What celebration?” Kozak asked.
Even Slater had forgotten that it was scheduled for tonight.
“The rededication of the totem pole,” Geordie said, as if it were world news. “You remember how it was crooked? Some people in town, and some of the stores, have gotten together to h
ave it fixed up again.”
“How come you’re not there then?” Groves asked, and Geordie glanced at the clock on the wall. “City hall officially remains open until six P.M. I’ve got almost a half hour to go.”
The men shared a chuckle, and Slater said, “I admire your work ethic, but if everybody’s at the party, who’s gonna call?”
Geordie mulled it over for a second or two, then grabbing his coat from a chair, said, “Come on—you don’t want to miss this!”
On the way, they passed the Arctic Circle Gun Shoppe, and stopping for a moment to look down the alley, Slater could see Harley Vane’s old trailer. No lavender light was shining through the blinds anymore, and a FOR RENT sign was hanging forlornly from the door handle. What a lot of trouble had come up in his nets that night, Slater thought, and what a lot of lives, including Harley’s own, had been lost as a result.
Front Street was lighted up from stem to stern, and the Yardarm was doing a land-office business. Although the totem pole itself was shrouded in a canvas sail prior to its unveiling, it did appear to be standing erect.
“I wish they had let me do a ground study first,” Kozak muttered, as Groves peeled off toward the busy bar. “If it is not done properly, it will tilt again.”
A flatbed truck was parked between the pole and the harbor docks, and two huge speakers in its bed were blaring the Black-Eyed Peas. Maybe a hundred people were milling around, rubbing their hands together over blazing trash cans, guzzling beer from ice-cold cans or hot cider from steaming mugs, laughing and shouting at each other over the music. A few were dancing to try to keep warm.
Lifting the earmuff on one side of Geordie’s hat, Slater leaned close and said, “Where’s Nika?” and Geordie turned around, pointing at the harbormaster’s shack.
The Romanov Cross: A Novel Page 47