by L. Todd Wood
Occasionally when there was no chance of being close to any other ocean traffic or being spotted by satellite, Rafe and Roman were allowed some time on the upper deck, usually under an overcast night sky. They had bonded during the time together. However, both of them were very concerned about what their destination would bring. They hoped they could stealthily enter the U.S. and find their way eventually to their extended family’s community. The future remained a terrible mystery.
Rafe had had enough. Angrily, he sat up and considered puking again. He decided to try to tough it out a little longer and started up a conversation with Roman to block out the misery.
“So what do you think we are up against? Why have they taken my daughter? What do they want?”
Roman stared at the ocean out the small, round window for a while and then spoke. “This group of people have been around a long time, for centuries in Russia anyway. Before that they were involved in other empires, Rome, et cetera. I think it’s safe to say their agenda is not a good one. I don’t pretend to understand their motivation or where they are from, how they originated, but they have fought to keep Russia a backwards state. They have fought progress. They have fought morality and religion. They have fought success and enlightenment. And they helped the Mongol invaders centuries ago. They were instrumental in the fall of Byzantium against the Ottomans. They helped form the Soviet Union for God’s sake. They nurtured the communist, totalitarian evil. They don’t like us because we represent something in their way. We represent the opposite of everything they stand for."
“What do they stand for?”
“Evil, misery, pain, sloth, you name it.”
“Why would they want Clare? Why would they want me?”
“I think it is obvious they wanted Clare to control you for some reason. You are valuable to them. They want something important from you. You have to figure out what that is. I cannot do that for you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t think you are meant to yet. I have a foreboding feeling that everything will become crystal clear to you in due time and not in a good way. Rafe, that is a scary thought.”
“Aren’t we endangering the Old Believers in Alaska by coming to them for help?”
“Well, I know that my brother would want to help us no matter what, and, there is no one else who can help us understand what is going on. We are in a bigger struggle than for just the safety of a few old religious families. But yes, we are endangering them. I have not heard of a temple near their community. So possibly the circumstances will be different. But we have to be aware and be careful. I do not care about my own life. I care about you and the other younger members of our family. My brother’s life is almost over as well. We will meet him away from the others and see what light he can shed. We will see what he can tell us, and then we will take what life gives us and be thankful.”
“Such wisdom. I for one will carry the guilt to my grave for what happened to these people. I came here and this happened to them. I suppose I can learn a lot from you, Uncle,” said Rafe. “I can feel my life changing. I will never be the same again after all of this is over. If it is ever over.”
“Try again to get some sleep,” said Roman. “We may not have much time for it soon.” Rafe laid down again against the hull as the sea had quieted somewhat. Roman sat watching out the window, worry etched into deep caverns across his ancient face.
The sun broke over the horizon, streaming its bright rays across the green landscape of Alaska in the distance. There was something different about this country, something special. It was the last frontier. The colors of Alaska were more vibrant, the smells more sweet, and the weather more dangerous than the boring states of the Lower Forty-eight. If you stretched Alaska from the bottom of the Aleutian Chain to the North Slope, it would be the same distance as from Los Angeles to New York. And, there were less than a million people living in the state. The bush was overrun with wildlife and blessed with magical scenery. Alaska was a land like no other.
Slowly the land came into view. Roman and Rafe were on the bridge, searching with the rest of the crew for the first glimpse of terra firma, although they had passed Kodiak Island some time before. Rafe had seen several grizzlies on the Kodiak shoreline, pawing for fish at a river emptying into the ocean. Kodiak bears were famous for their size as well as their numbers on the island.
"Land ho!" the captain shouted. "Time for you comrades to go below decks and to your respective containers to sneak ashore." Roman and Rafe nodded, thanked the captain, and followed a sailor who led them down to ensure their concealment. Soon they were ensconced within separate containers, hidden behind spare parts for a Russian helicopter, being legally imported into the U.S. The large aircraft were used in certain situations in Alaska, primarily for heavy lift in the oilfields. Helicopters were a bright spot for Russian exports. They had captured a large market share as they were known for their simplicity of design.
The Russian freighter had traveled up the Gulf of Alaska and was now making her way up the Cook Inlet towards Anchorage, a natural, sheltered harbor and the largest city of the state. Anchorage sat nestled against the Chugach Mountains and was therefore protected from most of the severe weather of the interior. Fairbanks, many hours' drive to the north, was not so lucky. The city was annually buffeted by horrendous winter conditions and frigid temperatures.
Hours later, both emerged into the night air as they unhooked the container locking mechanism, which had been rigged for access from the inside. They met towards the south end of the shipyard, which was blackened due to lack of lighting. Soon, they had hopped the fence and were now safely, and illegally, in the United States. They quickly made their way to a local hotel, where Rafe paid cash for a room with two double beds, avoiding any contact with law enforcement. Roman had never been in the United States and was nervous but fascinated at the same time. "Alaska reminds me of Siberia. Possibly because it used to be Russian," he said with a smile on his face.
After ravenously eating a hurried dinner at the local family restaurant, they slept soundly, unafraid of being molested by the police or other dangerous groups. The morning came quickly.
The route to the village near Homer, Alaska, on the southern tip of the Kenai Peninsula, was arduous and took several days. Unwilling to expose themselves to the mainstream population, if there is such a thing in Alaska, the two chose to travel at night and primarily with truckers making their way across the state during the warm summer. Their beards long and their clothes soiled, they fit right in with the local culture of the working man and the loner, living his days in the northern frontier. People didn't ask questions in Alaska; they lived and let live. That attitude sat well with Roman and Rafe, as the less people that knew they were here the better.
Extending down from Anchorage, the Kenai was a large peninsula that punched directly into the Gulf of Alaska. It was famous for its fishing and beauty, as well as its hardy residents. When the salmon were running, combat fishing was the norm. Anglers lined the banks of the Russian River, named for its use by the early Russian settlers, and other waterways by the thousands. Fishermen tried to entice one of the running silver or king salmon to bite. It was easy to snag one of the large fish with a hook and yank it out of the water, but the technique was highly illegal. The park rangers regularly would fish along the banks in disguise, waiting to catch someone snagging a fish. One could lose his fishing gear, pay a large fine, and even lose his car for the offense.
And you also had to watch out for the bears during fishing season. The main threat were brown bear, and there were lots of them, looking to fatten up for the winter on the running fish. If a brown bear made its habitat along the coast, he was called a Grizzly. If he lived in the interior, he was just a brown bear. The best way to avoid a bear encounter was to let them know you were coming. Hikers and campers wore bells on their packs to make noise as they walked. The worst thing you could do upon confronting a bear was to run. The bear then would see yo
u as prey and literally try and eat you. Weapons, unless extremely powerful, were of little use as well. Even if you stopped a bear's heart, he still could run for another ten to twenty seconds, enough time to close the distance with you and do real damage. And bears were fast, known to run at upwards of forty miles-per-hour. Experienced people in the bush usually carried pistol grip shotguns, loaded with alternating buck and slug shells. If you were lucky you could put a slug in a bear's shoulder to cripple him, or a load of buckshot to his face, hopefully blinding him if he charged. If no weapon was available during a bear attack, the best thing to do was to ball up into the fetal position with your hands interlocked behind your neck and let the bear chew on you for a bit. If you didn't move, he might lose interest and leave you alone.
The eighteen-wheeler slowed and stopped with a loud squeal and a blast of air at the outskirts of the village. The onion-domed church could be seen in the distance, announcing to the world the Old Believers were still around. Roman and Rafe opened the door of the cab and jumped to the ground. It was a warm, and the sun was moving towards its peak for the day in the sky. They said their goodbyes and thank-you to the driver.
Once the truck had left, Rafe took out his phone to call Neal. He had not spoken to him in some time, as the shock from the attack on the Old Believer community, combined with the lack of signal on the freighter, prevented him from communicating. However, they had a plan now, and he wanted to let Neal in on their way forward.
"Where in the hell have you been?" Neal screamed into the phone when he realized it was Rafe on the other end.
"I've been quite occupied with events, and you frankly were not my priority," responded Rafe.
"Well, I should be your priority! I've got a lot invested in you, Rafe. So why don't you tell me what the fuck is going on?"
"Let's just say I'm in no mood to take it anymore." Rafe recounted the last few weeks to Neal, including the murders in Siberia and the continuing danger to his daughter from the visitors. Neal listened in shocked silence.
"I can't begin to offer any words that would be helpful or healing in regards to the losses you have suffered," Neal responded. "I can however tell you I am still here to help you, and we have more and more information coming in that may help you in your quest."
"Go on," added Rafe dryly.
"The visitors, as you call them, at least the ones that are frequently traveling to the areas we have identified, are primarily made up of media and academic circles. And the number of people we have confirmed on the list is growing, slowly but surely. That being said, are you safe now? Do you have any protection?"
"From what I have seen, my English friend, there can be no protection." Rafe told Neal his plans, to visit the village and learn all he could from the elders. He promised he would report back in with his future decisions on how to move forward.
Neal hit the red button on his device and terminated the call. For some reason, he was reminded of a line from an old rock and roll song from the seventies "Oh, and it's a hollow feelin', when it comes down to dealin' friends. It never ends." Murder, and children at that. I didn't sign up for this. This is spinning out of control
Roman and Rafe watched their latest hitchhiking benefactor disappear into the distance. The wheels on the large truck generated clouds of dust that rose into the sky like small tornadoes. There were no other vehicles around that they could see. Soon they could no longer even hear the eighteen-wheeler. The two men turned and set off towards the village of Nikolaevsk. As they walked, a bevy of vultures circled overhead, scanning for prey.
Chapter Nineteen
The two of them opened the door to the small church in the village and walked in. The building was simple. It was a rather tiny place of worship and resembled a church in the southern United States except the steeples were replaced with onion domes, two of them. The exterior of the wooden building was bathed in a light blue color. The altar and vestments highlighted the front of the church, and a small number of tapestries were aligned towards the head of the space. There were icons adorning the walls, and gold-leafed religious instruments were everywhere to be seen. Highlighted by the light streaming through the windows was a single elderly man on his knees in prayer at the head of the church. He said nothing nor did he move as they entered and the door slammed shut with a bang. A few minutes later, he spoke without turning to look at them. "I knew you were coming. It is nice to have you here," the old man said.
"Thank you, Brother, it is nice to be here," responded Roman. The man stood and turned to meet the strangers. He walked the short distance that separated them and embraced them both, kissing three times as per the Russian tradition of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost.
"I have felt you were on your way. I have felt what you have been through. We are all in God's hands now."
"Yes, I feel the same way. This is your nephew, Sasha." The old man gave Rafe a hug. "I was very close to your father, and forgive me for saying I was in love with your mother. She was very beautiful Welcome. I am Mikhail."
"Thank you, Uncle," responded Rafe, respectfully. "I barely remember them."
"Come, let us join the others and eat. Have no fear, you are home. I am the priest here now. The village reinstituted the priesthood in 1983. We had been without priests for hundreds of years; however, we thought it was time. Although, it did cause a little bit of anxiety within the community. Some thought it was the wrong thing to do." Rafe and Roman followed Mikhail out into the sunshine and towards the homes of the village. The town was not large but seemed to have everything the population needed in terms of what was required to support the small, rural community; the expected businesses dotted the main street, such as a small grocery store, gas station, et cetera. Rafe guessed three hundred plus people lived there. The buildings were spread out over the tundra and of similar construction to keep out the cold, arctic winters and placed between groves of evergreen trees. Many of the town's residents were clothed in traditional Russian garb, especially the women. They wore brightly colored, hand-made dresses down to their ankles. The men wore embroidered shirts and belts.
After a nice meal of halibut chowder and beer, where Rafe and Roman got to meet many of the families in the town, Mikhail took them on a walk out into the fields behind the church onto the grounds of the cemetery. They walked leisurely on a small path between the graves as he talked. The white Russian Orthodox crosses dotted the landscape of headstones. Rafe listened intently. He had a hard time fully understanding the old man, as he spoke a kind of Slavonic dialect that had been long lost to the ages, except among the community.
"The visitors, as you call them, have been around since the dawn of time. I know this because my grandparents told me and their parents told them before that. The knowledge has been passed down throughout Russian Orthodox history among the leaders of our church. No one knows where they came from or why they exist, but we do know that they are evil. We know that they helped destroy the first Roman Empire of the East. They fostered corruption, greed, and were active in weakening their defenses. They were instrumental in destroying the pillars of their civilization. People became more interested in stealing from their countrymen than serving their country. The peace that had existed in the Roman lands for a thousand years, or the Pax Romana, was destroyed. War flourished and killed millions. The Dark Ages raged, and the human population still doesn't even know what was forgotten that the Romans had learned. Construction techniques, science, astrology, et cetera."
The man who called himself Mikhail stopped walking and faced them. His eyes seemed to be on fire as he remembered events of the past and regurgitated what had been passed down to him through the generations of Old Believers. He seemed now to be unaware of his surroundings as he spoke, as if he was in another place in time, translating to them the things that the younger generation should hear. Roman was nodding as if in agreement but Rafe said nothing. He just listened, hoping to find some tidbit of information he could use to save his daughter.
"Th
e second Roman Empire of the East lasted another thousand years. But it too grew weak with corruption, fostered by the visitors. They lost the will to defend themselves, to focus on their society, their civilization. They created groups of favored subjects, who received the gifts of the emperor ahead of the others; their economy and society suffered. In the end, the empire died, and the visitors laughed. The visitors had succeeded in destroying two great civilizations. Who knows how many they had destroyed prior to that throughout the millennia.
"However, a new empire was growing to the north. The kingdom of Kievan Rus' was the first version of this new great civilization. But the visitors worked with the Mongols, the Golden Horde of the East, to completely destroy this kingdom a few years before Byzantium fell to the Ottomans. But the princes of Rus' moved farther north to the new city of Moscow. They built a grand empire that ruled from the Black Sea to the Nordic lands. Ivan the Terrible was the first tsar to unite all of the eastern Slavic tribes and defeat the invaders from the steppe, the vast plains of Asia. He grew the empire throughout Eastern Europe, and to the eastern coast of Siberia. Pushed on by the Russian Orthodox Church, he strove to create the third Holy Roman Empire. The Christian relics, saved from the Muslim invaders of Byzantium, were held in safekeeping and used to justify this new Christian empire. But the visitors could not let this happen. So they found a way to stop him, to stop Ivan, and to stop the human progress. They knew Ivan loved his wife Anastasia very much, so they had her poisoned. This drove Ivan quite crazy, and he killed his son and his son's unborn baby in a fit of rage. So the Rurik Dynasty was ended. The empire would not live. The follow-on tsars weakened the influence of the church and destroyed the ‘Russianness’ of the new empire. They destroyed what had made her great in order to emulate the West. Peter the Great openly mocked the church and the traditions Russians had developed over the centuries. However, the Old Believers continued on in their traditional beliefs. They continued worshipping in the old ways.