The Romanov Cross: A Novel (12 page)

But this was exactly what Harley meant about the weird new vibe he got in town. At first it was all like, thank God the sea had spared even one, but then it started to be something else. People who knew him—and who didn’t in a town the size of Port Orlov?—looked at him sideways. Harley started to think that they didn’t believe him—at least not entirely. And when Lucas Muller’s dad had bumped into him at the lumberyard, he’d stared him down. Harley figured it was because he’d laid the blame on Lucas for the shipwreck. Harley had tried to stare back just as hard, but he lost. Then Muller handed him a leaflet that said there would be a memorial service for all the lost crewmen on the coming Sunday, at the town church.

“I expect they’ll want you to say a few words,” Muller said. “You think you can do that?”

He sounded like he didn’t think so, which was why Harley said, “Sure. No problem.”

The only reason the service had been put off so long was they were waiting to see how many bodies they could recover first. They’d found three—Lucas, Farrell, and that Samoan. Two others, Kubelik and Old Man Richter, were still missing.

Harley spotted Angie coming their way. She had a bowl of unshelled peanuts and three beers on the tray.

“Bring ’em on!” Eddie said, snaring two bottles and putting one of them aside for Russell, who was now back to shooting.

Angie handed the last one to Harley and said, “I hear you’re talking at the church next Sunday.”

“Yeah,” Harley said, “everybody’s been asking me to.” He threw ten bucks onto her tray.

“I’m getting off tonight at nine.”

“That right?” he stammered.

“Uh-huh. And my mom’s got little Mick.”

Why she’d named the baby after that creep, who hadn’t even stuck around long enough to see it get born, never failed to baffle Harley.

“I could come over,” she said.

“Sure,” Harley said, trying not to sound too eager. “I think I’ll be around.”

“Hey, Angie!” one of her customers called, waving an empty bottle. “We’re dry over here!” It was Geordie Ayakuk, who worked at the Inuit Community Affairs Center. Harley had never liked him, and liked him even less for breaking up his moment.

But once Angie was gone, and Eddie and Russell had tired of playing pool—with no money left to wager, they got bored fast—Harley was able to work his way around to what he’d come to talk to them about. At a table jammed between the jukebox and the men’s room door, they huddled over their beers and a bowl of unshelled peanuts while Harley did his best to pitch them his—or, more accurately, his brother Charlie’s—idea.

“I saw it myself, with my own eyes,” Harley said, as the two men listened closely. Eddie’s work shirt smelled like he hadn’t changed it since his last plumbing job, and Russell’s sleeves were rolled up to show the tattoo he’d given himself when he was in solitary at the Spring Creek Correctional Facility. It was supposed to be an eagle, but it had come out looking more like a bat.

“If you saw jewels, why didn’t you take them right then?” Russell said. “Before the ship went down?”

“Because I didn’t know that the ship was going to go down,” Harley explained, for the second time. “Obviously, if I’d known that, I’d have taken the damn thing then and there.” He did not consider it wise to let on that he’d actually snagged the cross; if he did, he’d have Eddie and Russell trying to rob him next.

“And you say it was what?” Eddie asked. “A necklace with emeralds in it?”

“Maybe. But like I said, it was hard to get a good look ’cause the crack in the lid wasn’t very big.”

“Maybe that was all that there is,” Russell said, cracking open another peanut. “What makes you think there’s more out there?”

“I don’t know,” Harley said. “I’m not making any promises. But if there’s other coffins popping out of the ground like this one did, then who knows what they’ve got inside?”

While Russell remained dubious, Eddie, Harley could see, was starting to get excited. “Didn’t you guys ever hear the stories?” Eddie said. “My uncle used to tell me about how there were these crazy Russians, a long time ago, who’d escaped from Siberia and settled out on the island because nobody could ever get to them there. They had a secret religion and lived there without any contact with the mainland.”

“How’d they get away with that?” Russell said. “That’s American territory.”

“Actually, it belonged by treaty to the fuckin’ natives around here,” Harley explained, “who saw enough wampum and said you can have it. And nobody’s gone there since because it’s got such a bad rep.”

“You mean because they all died out there?”

“Yeah,” Harley said. “And those black wolves don’t help any, either.” He could still see that alpha wolf, leaping up at his foot as the Coast Guard chopper hauled his frozen ass up off the beach. “Even the Inuit don’t go there because they say the place is haunted.”

“What a load of shit,” Russell said.

“Exactly,” Harley said, as convincingly as he could. “Exactly.” That yellow light could have been a total illusion. “It’s all bullshit. The real reason nobody goes out there is because it’s a bitch and a half just to find any way onto the island. Those rocks have fucked me up once already, and I do not mean to get fucked again.”

“You guys need another round?” Angie said, stopping at their table with a fresh bowl of peanuts. “I’m going off duty in an hour,” she added, throwing a significant look at Harley.

“Yeah, sure,” Harley said, “I’m buying.”

“Be right back.”

“I hear she’s got a ring through her nipple, too,” Eddie observed, “just like the one through her lip.” Harley could hardly wait to find out.

“How much do we get again?” Russell asked.

“Because it’s my idea, I’m taking seventy-five percent of whatever we find,” Harley said. Half of that, he knew, he would have to give to Charlie. “The rest of it you two can split.”

Russell was plainly mulling it over while Eddie was already counting his money. “I bet we can use the
Kodiak
,” he said, referring to his uncle’s runty old trawler. “Half the time he’s too drunk to go out fishing anyway.”

“And we’ll need some shovels, maybe a hacksaw and a blowtorch, too,” Harley said. “Even if the coffins are only a foot or two down, it’s going to be a nightmare getting through the permafrost.”

Angie plunked the beers down, and Harley paid again. He had half a mind to take the bar bill out of their cut.

They fell silent until Geordie Ayakuk had finished lumbering past their table to the men’s room, then Harley said in a low voice, “So, do you want to do this thing or not?”

“Definitely,” Eddie said, slapping his palm on the table and scattering peanut shells everywhere.

Russell still looked dubious.

“What’s bothering you?” Harley asked.

Russell stirred in his seat and rubbed the tat on his forearm. “We’re diggin’ people up. Dead people, in their graves. That’s not right.”

“We’re not going to take them out, for Christ’s sake,” Eddie expostulated. “Two minutes and they’re all covered up again, just like always.”

Geordie came out of the men’s room, and as he passed Harley he chortled, “You been on
Dancing with the Stars
yet?”

“Stay tuned,” Harley snarled. Then, to Russell, he said, “So?”

“Come on,” Eddie wheedled. “It’ll be a blast. Think of how many propane deliveries you’d have to make to get this kind of money.”

“If you don’t come in on it,” Harley said, “you have got to keep your mouth shut.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Russell said. “I just don’t want to wind up back in Spring Creek.”

“You won’t,” Harley said. “All we’re doing is … prospecting. It’s an
old Alaskan tradition. The gold mine just happens to be a graveyard this time.”

Eddie liked that, and laughed so hard it made Russell start to smile. That’s when Harley knew he had him. He put out his hand, fist clenched, and Eddie bumped his knuckles against it. Then, a few seconds later, Russell slowly lifted his hand and bumped him, too.

When Harley left the Yardarm a few minutes later, in time to go home and throw a fresh sheet on the bed, there was a powerful wind blowing from the northwest—the direction of St. Peter’s Island. For a second, he thought he could hear the baying of the wolves. He put up his hood, drew it tight, and looked up and down the deserted street. This was going to be his lucky night. Angie Dobbs, at last. And, to get the good times rolling, he stepped to the curb, took out the hunting knife he always carried in the back of his belt, and jabbed it into the front tire of Geordie Ayakuk’s jeep.

The wind around St. Peter’s Island was even stronger than usual, but instead of dissipating the fog that clung to the rocky shores, it had whipped it into a milky stew. It howled around the old wooden buildings of the Russian colony like a pack of wolves, and whistled through the breaks in the stockade wall.

Old Man Richter could hear the gusts tearing at the roof timbers, but the ramshackle church, with its onion dome, had stood for many decades, and he doubted it would collapse tonight. And tonight was all he needed.

He would be dead by morning.

He wasn’t terribly afraid of that anymore. He’d had plenty of time to get used to the idea. Ever since he was swept off the
Neptune II
, he had been cheating death at one turn or another … first by clinging to a piece of the shattered lifeboat, then by crawling ashore and climbing a flight of stony steps, no more than a foot wide, that led him to higher ground … and into the ruins of the old colony.

He had collapsed in this church, under a pile of petrified furs, for a day, maybe even two. In his dreams, he’d heard what sounded like helicopters and foghorns, but he’d been unable to awaken, unable to
move. And who would believe that anyone, much less Old Man Richter, could ever have survived a shipwreck like that? He was sure that no one else had.

He prayed that that idiot Harley Vane was the first to drown.

He had hoped to restore his strength with sleep, and maybe some food, but all he found in his pockets were a couple of waterlogged candy bars that he’d been rationing out to himself. There was nothing in the church but some old straw that he’d chewed on like a horse, and a pool of rainwater that had dripped through a hole in the dome. Even to get to that puddle, he’d had to drag himself along on his elbows. His feet were frostbitten, and they’d gone from blue to purple to black, the discoloration inexorably rising up his legs. For days, he had drifted in and out of consciousness, astonished each time that he’d managed to awake at all.

And, truth be told, disappointed, too.

He wanted it to be over. He’d lived long enough, and he wasn’t much interested in being rescued now, when they’d only have to cut off his legs—and a few of his fingers, too, now that he couldn’t feel them either—and leave him to wither away in the corner of some nursing home. He was only sorry to be so alone. He would have liked to see one more human face before he died. He’d have liked to have someone there to say good-bye to. Someone who might even have held on to his frozen old paw while he went.

It was dark, so dark he wasn’t sure he was actually seeing anything at all, or just pictures made up in his mind. He kept seeing his wife, and she’d been dead for twenty years now. And a horse he had when he was a kid. Brown, with a white nose. Named Queenie. Why couldn’t he remember what had happened to her? He took a train once, when he was a thirteen-year-old boy, from Tacoma to St. Paul, and it was the best time he’d ever had in his life. The porter took him up and down the train cars, showing him how everything worked. He’d always liked to know how things worked.

There was a window in the church, with half a shutter still covering it. That half a shutter had been banging all night. Richter wondered
how it could have stayed on at all, and for so long, loose like that. It banged again now, and a blast of wind swept into the church, stirring up the dirt and straw.

Another picture crossed his mind … of a lantern, burning bright.

It was as if it had just gone by the window outside.

His thoughts returned to the train car. He remembered how entranced he was by all the gauges and switches in the engineer’s compartment, and how he had asked what each one did. It was like entering Aladdin’s cave.

There was a creaking sound over by the door, the door that Richter had wedged shut days ago. It was opening now, and a light—a yellow light—was coming inside. Richter turned his head on the stiff old furs, and just past the corner of a pew he saw what looked like one of those old kerosene lanterns floating through the air.

He heard a shuffling sound—like a bad foot being dragged along the boards—and coming closer down the nave.

“I’m over here,” he croaked. “On the floor.”
Was he going to get his wish? Was he going to be spared a solitary death?

The lantern came even closer, and as he squinted up into the darkness, he could start to make out who was holding it.

He saw a face, a woman’s face, gaunt the way his wife’s had been when the cancer had done its worst. Long gray hair, and a toothless smile … a smile that made him feel colder than ever before.

The lamp came down farther, and a hand slipped under the fur and took hold of his own. Now he wished to Christ that he had never prayed for company. Her fingers felt like twigs.

She said something—it sounded as if it was meant to be a comfort—in a language he could not understand.

He wanted to cry out, but he didn’t have any breath left in him. His blood felt like it had stopped in his veins. He gasped once or twice. Her hand gripped him tighter, and he died with his eyes wide open, staring into the lanternlight, and with his mouth frozen in a silent scream.

The woman repeated her words, then let go of his hand and hobbled away.