The Romanov Cross: A Novel (27 page)

She started to work her way out of the bag without unzipping it. She had just cleared her shoulders when the dragging sound came again—closer, louder. And this time she could tell there was a live creature of some kind, warm and breathing softly, inching nearer. She didn’t know whether to lie as still and silent as possible, or struggle to free herself from the bag. She craned her head backwards, so she could see into the aisle, and as she did, something slid into view. It was on the ground and only a foot or two from her face. In the moonlight, she could just make out that it was a head, turned toward her. The eyes were wide open, and so was the mouth.

She screamed and turned on the flashlight.

The old man—in an orange life jacket—was staring at her … but just beyond him a pair of fierce yellow eyes glittered like coals in the dark.

The wolf, dragging the corpse by its ravaged arm, stood its ground, not budging an inch.

Nika shrieked at it and waved the flashlight wildly.

The wolf lowered its head, growling. No wolf worth its salt ever released a hunk of meat without a greater threat than this.

She swatted at it with the flashlight, and the wolf ducked, still clenching its prize.

She shrieked again, and a few seconds later there was a clamor at the doors, the sound of running boots and men shouting.

The wolf jerked its head, ripping a hunk of frozen flesh from the old man’s arm, then lunged back into the darkest recesses of the church.

“Nika! Where are you?”

It was Slater.

Flashlight beams were crisscrossing the air above her.

“Here,” she managed to cry out, kicking her legs free of the sleeping bag.

“Where?”

The boots came closer as she scrambled out from between the pews.

“Watch out—there’s a wolf in here!”

“Where?” This was the sergeant’s voice now.

“It just ran into the back!”

Slater threw a protective arm, tight as a hoop of steel, around her shoulders, then he said, “Jesus Christ,” as he took in the corpse on the floor.

“Get out!” Sergeant Groves was shouting. “Get out now! I’ll take care of the wolf.”

But Slater wasn’t going anywhere. He pointed his own flashlight toward the far end of the church. There was a wooden screen, a few feet high and still adorned with scraps of paint, standing behind a jumble of broken boards and furniture.

Among the debris, a black shadow stirred.

“I see it!” Groves said, and she heard his pistol cock.

“Don’t shoot it!” Nika shouted.

But the sergeant snorted in derision, and the gun went off with a deafening blast. A corner of an old chair flew apart in a spray of splinters, and the shadow leapt behind a pew.

“Let it go!” Nika said. “If we leave, it will go on its own!” She pulled on the sleeve of Slater’s shirt.

Just then, there was a blur of motion as the creature vaulted out of its cover and, to their astonishment, came racing straight toward them.

Groves fired again, the bullet hitting an andiron with a clang, and before he could get off another shot, the wolf, like a gust of wind, went hurtling right past them all, head down, eyes fixed on the open doors. Nika felt its fur bristle against her leg as it charged down the aisle.

The sergeant whirled around, but Slater warned him not to shoot.

And then it was gone, into the night.

“Was there just one?” Groves asked her urgently.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s all I saw.”

The sergeant’s eyes now fell on the corpse, and after taking a deep breath, he looked more puzzled than appalled. “Who the hell is this?”

“One of the lost crewmen,” Slater said, kneeling down, and examining the life jacket in the flashlight beam. In white letters, it read
NEPTUNE II
.

“Wait—I recognize him now,” Nika said. “It’s Richter. Down at the docks, where he worked, they always called him Old Man Richter.” She became aware that there were several other members of the expedition now, clustered on the steps of the church and peering in through the open doors.

“I guess Harley Vane wasn’t the only survivor of the shipwreck, after all,” Slater said.

“But how the hell did this old guy get up here to the colony?” Groves, holstering his gun, wondered aloud.

“When they have no choice,” Nika said, solemnly, “people can do extraordinary things.” And St. Peter’s Island was plainly the place to do them. No wonder she’d had the heebie-jeebies since getting there. The island had a bad rep, and it was living up to it in spades.

Slater awoke in the dark, with no idea of the time. He glanced at the fluorescent numerals on his watch, and saw that it was not even 6
A.M.
yet. The sun wouldn’t rise, if that’s what you could call it, for hours yet.

All around him he was aware of the others, still asleep—Dr. Lantos on the insulated rubber flooring under the table, Kozak snoring on a pile of the ground mats, and Nika—safely removed from the old church—curled like a cat into her sleeping bag between some unpacked crates. The thought of what might have happened to her earlier that night, alone with the wolf and its frozen carrion, made him shudder. He had never lost a man—or woman—on a mission before, and he was not about to start now.

Especially with someone like Nika.

Rising quietly, he went to the flap of the tent and poked his head outside. The air was so cold that just drawing a breath felt as if he’d swallowed a bucket of ice, and the colony grounds were dusted with a fresh coat of snow—not as deep as he’d dreaded but enough to prove a nuisance with their dig. The Sikorsky was parked a hundred meters away, with Sergeant Groves and his Coast Guard crew bunked down inside. Like the Greeks hidden away in the Trojan horse, Slater thought.

As he watched, the hatchway slid open, and Groves, his parka flapping open and his boots unlaced, stepped out onto the snow with his flashlight on. Slater raised a hand, but Groves didn’t see him as he made his way to the latrines. There was an immense amount of work to do that day, but Slater knew that if anybody could get it all organized and done, it would be the sergeant.

When he ducked his head back inside, he saw that Dr. Lantos was stirring. “Who let the draft in?” she said, fumbling for her glasses, and even the professor had quit snoring and was stretching his burly arms. All he could see of Nika was the top of her head, burrowing deeper into her bag for a few extra minutes of slumber.

The day was officially under way.

Over the next few hours, Groves and his crew got a hot breakfast going in the mess tent and unloaded the remainder of the supplies in the chopper, while Dr. Lantos and the professor checked over their equipment inventories and made sure everything was accounted for and in order. As soon as the sky showed a glimmer of light, and Slater could see that the crewmen, under the guidance of the pilot, Rudy, were erecting the other prefab structures according to the plans he had drawn up, he left them to it and rounded up his own team for the trip to the cemetery. Dr. Lantos wanted to stay behind for now and personally oversee the construction and placement of the autopsy tent, but the others were raring to go. Kozak, both gloves fastened on the handlebars of his ground-penetrating radar unit, looked like he was about to mow a lawn.

“You sure you don’t want to wait until we’ve seen what kind of access we have to the cemetery?” Slater asked, but Kozak patted the bright red handles of the GPR like it was a trusted dog and said, “It has gone everywhere. And until we do the ground study, what else can you do, anyway?”

Slater had to agree. Digging up graves under any circumstances was a harrowing business, rife with potential problems. But digging up graves containing the hundred-year-old remains of victims of the Spanish flu—remains that might have deteriorated, in coffins that might have disintegrated, in graves that might even have shifted their
location underground due to geothermal changes—was a task requiring the utmost care and professional expertise.

Not to mention sensitivity. It was no surprise to Slater that he saw Nika lacing up her boots and slipping on her glove liners.

“I don’t suppose I could persuade you to stay out of harm’s way today?” Slater said.

“Thanks, but after last night,” she said, “I think I’ve already had my baptism by fire.”

Sergeant Groves, with a bundle of wire flags under his arm, smiled and shook his head at his boss, as if to say,
You were dreaming if you thought she wasn’t coming
. And though Slater knew he was right, he had had to give it a try. In addition to all the other considerations, exhumations were often dangerous affairs, and the first thing any team leader tried to do was limit the personnel present.

The second thing was to avoid wasting time on battles with headstrong opponents who were bound and determined to pursue their own agenda no matter what.

The sky was a sullen gray when the team finally passed under the main gates of the colony and started down the cleared slope that led to the grove of trees. Slater spotted a narrow break in the woods that suggested a trail had once begun here, and without a word Sergeant Groves wired a red flag to the nearest bough. As they forced their way through the thick trees and dense underbrush, brambles pulling at the sleeves of their coats and low-hanging branches dropping their load of fresh snow on top of their hoods and hats, Groves continued to place an occasional marker along the way.

“We’ll need all of this cut away on both sides,” Slater said, over his shoulder, and Groves replied, “I can get a team with power saws down here later this afternoon. You want ramping, too?”

“Yes, wherever the ground is particularly uneven.”

“Yes, please, I will need that,” the professor said, as he struggled with Nika’s help to steer the wheels of his GPR around an especially gnarly root formation.

Slater, seeing the difficulty he was having, resisted saying I told you so. He understood the professor’s impatience to get started; it was a
failing, or virtue, in his own nature, too. But years of running epidemiological missions had taught him to rein in his impulses by making a careful plan and following it to the letter.

“What do you want to do about lighting?” Groves asked.

“A halogen stanchion every twenty feet or so, maybe three hundred watts each.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

Slater knew that it would mean running a lot of cables and power from the generators in the colony all the way through the forest, but they were going to have to do that, anyway, to power up the dressing and decontamination chamber.

When they did emerge from the trees again, Slater stopped at a pair of weathered gateposts, with something—some word or two—whittled into the wood.

Nika immediately removed a glove and reverently ran one finger over the faint writing. “It’s Russian.”

And when Kozak stepped forward and leaned close enough to see, he said, “It’s the same thing, over and over again.”

“What?” Groves asked.

“It says, ‘Forgive me, forgive me.’ ”

“I wonder why,” Nika said, softly.

But Slater, surveying the graveyard that extended all the way to the cliffside, wondered who had scrawled it there. Had it been the founder of the sect, who had brought his flock to ruin in such a bleak and unforgiving spot? Had it been the last surviving member of the colony?

Or could it have been the carrier himself, aware of the calamity he had brought upon his fellows?

The chances of their ever finding out were slim, nor could he allow himself to become distracted by such questions. Right now, looking out across the desolate cemetery, with its tilting crosses and broken tombstones, he was assessing the lay of the land. Glancing to his left, he saw a cleared spot covered only by a soft white duvet of snow.

“We’ll build the biohazard prefab there,” he told Groves, who was already sticking more of his wire flags into the ground to demarcate its boundaries. He’d erected such structures before and knew that he
needed a space about eight feet square. These chambers were always a tight squeeze, but the bigger they got, the more chances there were for a sprung seam or a loose flap compromising the whole thing.

Kozak was already trundling his GPR, on its four hard rubber wheels, between the gateposts and onto the grounds of the graveyard. Parking it beside a rotted tree stump, he pounded his boots on the soil, almost as if he were starting some dance, then knelt, pulling off his gloves, and rubbed the snow and frost away from a patch of earth. He sifted a few grains between his thick fingers, then pressed his cheek against the ground as if he were listening for a heartbeat. Slater and Nika exchanged an amused look, but Slater knew that there had to be a good reason for everything he was doing. Kozak was the best at what he did and he could read the earth like nobody else. Slapping the ground several times, then brushing the dirt from his palms and pants, he declared, “The first foot or two is permafrost, but we can cut through. Three or four feet down, there is bedrock.”

For Slater, that was good news. The graves would have had to be shallow ones.

“But I will need to do a thorough GPR survey of the whole area.”

“There won’t be time,” Slater said, thinking of his timetable, and of the winter storms bearing down from Siberia any day now. “Start over by the precipice, where the erosion’s already started. I need to know that the ground we’ll be working on tomorrow is stable.”

At the edge of the graveyard, there was a gouge in the earth, where the overhanging rock and soil had dropped off into the Bering Sea like a broken diving board. As Slater approached the spot, he felt Kozak grab his sleeve and say, “Wait.”

Pushing the GPR like a stroller, Kozak moved slowly past him, all the while intently studying the computer monitor that was mounted between the two red handles. Nika, at his elbow, looked entranced by the shadowy black-and-white imagery appearing on the screen, and Kozak was only too happy to explain what the images, and the accompanying numbers scrolling down both sides of the monitor, conveyed.

“The transducer,” he said, pointing to one of the twin black antennae mounted on the lower part of the carriage, “is sending pulses of
energy into the ground. These pulses, they penetrate materials with different electrical conduction properties and make a kind of reflection, here,” he said, tapping the interface screen. “It is something called dielectric permittivity. And the data, it is all stored in the computer.”