The Romanov Cross: A Novel (15 page)

“But my own time is fast approaching,” he said, the candlelight glinting off the pectoral cross.

He turned his head without turning his body, and despite her reverence for the holy man, Anastasia was reminded of a snake sinuously twisting its neck around. His eyes were smoldering in their sockets.

“I shall not live to see the New Year,” he said. “I have written it all down in a letter I have given to Simanovich.”

Simanovich, Anastasia knew, was his personal secretary, a slovenly man who reeked of tobacco juice and sweat.

“But it is for your father to read one day. If I am killed by common assassins, by my brothers the peasants, then you and your family have nothing to fear; the Romanovs shall rule for hundreds of years.” Then he raised a finger in warning, his beard bristling as if with electricity. “But if I am murdered by the boyars—if it is the nobles who take my life—then their hands will be soiled with my blood for twenty-five years. Brothers will kill brothers. If any relation to your family brings about my death, then woe to the dynasty. The Russian people will rise against you with murder in their hearts.”

The blood froze in Anastasia’s veins. She had never heard him speak in such apocalyptic tones, and for the first time she drew back from him in fear.

“That is why you must take this,” he said, grasping the emerald cross on its chain. “You must wear it always.”

He lifted the cross over his head, then draped it over hers, turning it so she could see the back. Their heads were so close she could smell the liquor on his breath and see the dead-white skin beneath the zigzag part in his long black hair. “It was to be my Christmas present to you. Look, my child, look.”

There was an inscription now, but in the flickering light of the votive candles, it was too hard to read.

“See? See what it says?” he implored. “ ‘To my little one.’ ”
Malenkaya
. “ ‘No one can break the chains of love that bind us.’ ”

It was signed, she could see now, “Your loving father, Grigori.”

“It is time you knew,” he said. “Although I will not be here in body, I shall always be watching over you in spirit. This cross shall be your shield.”

“But why me?” Anastasia said, her voice quavering to her own surprise, “and not the others?” She wished that her mother—or anyone, for that matter—would intrude on the private chapel and break this awful spell she felt being cast. “Why not my sisters? They’re older and”—she hesitated, ashamed, then blurted out what she was thinking—“more beautiful than I’ll ever be.”

Rasputin scoffed and reared back. “You are the one most beautiful in the sight of God,” he said, raising his own gaze toward the stained-glass ceiling.

“But what about Alexei? He’s the one who will rule Russia one day.”

“Hear me,” Rasputin said, before lowering his own voice and eyes. “The blood of your family is poisoned; the Tsarevitch is poisoned. It was
matushka
who carried the taint.”

He often called the Tsar and Tsaritsa by the traditional endearments
matushka
and
batushka
, terms that suggested they were the loving mother and father of their people. And though Anastasia had indeed learned about the curse of hemophilia being hereditary—she had heard her own mother one night wailing in her boudoir that it was she who had brought this suffering upon her son—she had never heard the monk utter anything so blunt and damning.

“This curse you carry in your veins will be your own salvation one day. A plague shall overwhelm the world, but you shall be proof against it.”

Anastasia thought he was babbling now, caught in the throes of some holy trance, and all she wanted was to break away. She deeply regretted ever leaving the ballroom.

“Thank you, Father, for the gift,” she mumbled, touching the cross—it was heavier than she might ever have imagined, and beautiful as it was, she wished that she did not have it. “I should go and look in on my brother now.” She drew back slowly, like a rabbit keeping a stoat in its view.

Rasputin’s gaze did not waver, nor did he move, as she edged toward the door. In his black cassock, framed by the dull glint of the holy icons in the candlelight, he looked like a pillar of smoke.

Not knowing what to say, she murmured, “The blessings of Christmas upon you, Father.”

“Pray for me,” he said.

And then, just as she put her good foot out behind her and stepped from the confines of the chapel, she heard him mutter, “For I am no longer among the living.”

Perched atop the hard seat of the Zamboni, Nika Tincook wrestled with the sticky gears. The machine was probably thirty years old by now, so a little trouble was only to be expected. Besides, the city budget of Port Orlov did not allow for any new expenditures. No one knew that better than she did.

Wrapped in the beaver-skin coat her grandmother had made for her, topped off with a Seattle Seahawks stocking cap, Nika shoved the gearshift again, and this time it caught. Under the lights of the hockey rink, she steered the old Zamboni in wide, slow sweeps, cleaning and resurfacing the ice. She always found the job relaxing, almost like skating with her hands folded behind her back. No one else was out there—everybody was home making dinner—and she could be completely alone with her thoughts.

Which was all the more reason why she was annoyed at the increasing noise she began to hear. At first, she thought something had gone wrong with the Zamboni again, and she actually bent forward in her seat to hear the motor better, but then she realized the commotion was coming from somewhere farther off. And it was coming fast.

Looking up at the sky, she saw lights approaching—red and white ones—but not spread apart the way they would be on a bush plane.
They were concentrated, and two bright beams were searching the ground as the craft got closer. It was a chopper—a long and weirdly articulated one—and as it clattered into view above the town’s community center, she realized with horror that the beams were now moving in her direction and fixing on the rink. She was bathed in a blinding white glow, and a bullhorn started issuing orders from on high.

“Please move the Zamboni off the ice,” the voice announced.

“What the—” But she was already turning the wheel and gunning the engine up to its full ten miles per hour. The racket from the chopper was deafening, and bits of snow and ice skittered every which way across the rink.

As soon as she’d driven down the ramp and into the municipal garage, where the city kept everything from its snowplows to its ambulance, she switched off the engine and raced back outside.

The helicopter, its wheels extended like an insect’s legs, was lowering itself onto the ice that she had just finished polishing. What could this possibly be about? Please God, not another news crew dispatched to recap the
Neptune
disaster and interview the sole survivor, Harley Vane. Like a lot of people, she didn’t even believe Harley’s account, but the truth, unfortunately, lay somewhere at the bottom of the Bering Sea.

The rotors were turned off, and as they wheezed into silence, the hatchway opened, and a burly man with glasses stepped out. He slipped on the ice and landed with a smack on his rump. Laughing, he was helped up by another man, lean and tall, who guided him toward the steel bleachers. Nika crunched across the hard-packed snow and hollered, “Who are you?”

The two men noticed her for the first time. The tall one had dark eyes, dark hair, and reminded her of long-distance runners she had known—and dated—in college. He moved across the slippery ice with a becoming assurance and agility, but he didn’t reply.

“And who told you,” she went on, “that you could land on our hockey rink?”

Pulling off a glove, he extended his hand. “Frank Slater,” he said,
“and sorry about the rink. But we were low on fuel when we saw your lights.”

“Lucky there wasn’t a game on.”

“And I am Vassily Kozak,” the professor said, bowing his head, “of the Trofimuk United Institute of Geology, Geophysics and Mineralogy. It is a part of the Russian Academy of Sciences.”

Now Nika was more puzzled than ever.

“We’re here on some important business,” Slater said, and though she ought to be used to it by now, her back went up at the slight hint of condescension in his voice. Because she was a woman, and young, and, to be fair, had been caught driving the Zamboni, he was just assuming she was some underling.

“I need to talk to the mayor of Port Orlov,” he said, showing her a bulky sealed envelope addressed to the city hall. “Could you show me where to find him?”

“Is the mayor expecting you?” she said, as sweetly as she could muster.

“I’m afraid not.”

“You came all this way, in the biggest chopper I’ve ever seen, without making an appointment?”

“There wasn’t time.”

“Right,” she said, skeptically. “Email is so slow these days.”

The professor was looking around with interest, and he said to them both, “Would you forgive me if I went for a short walk? I would like to stretch my legs.”

“No problem,” Nika said. “It’s hard to get lost in Port Orlov. The street’s that way,” she said, pointing off to one side of the big clumsy buildings, raised on cinder blocks, that comprised the community center. To Slater, she said, “You can follow me.”

They picked their way across the hard, uneven ground and entered the center. Geordie, her nephew, was sitting at a computer console, plowing his way through a bag of potato chips.

“Why don’t you bring us some coffee?” she said. “And knock off the chips.”

She led Slater down the hall, past the community bulletin board
covered with ads for craft workshops and used ski gear, and into an office with battered metal furniture and a ceiling made of white acoustical tiles, several of which were sagging.

“Have a seat, Mr. Slater,” she said, shrugging off her coat and hat.

“Actually, it’s Dr. Slater,” he said, in an offhand tone that carried a welcome touch of humility. “I’m here from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, in Washington.”

If she hadn’t guessed already, now she knew that this was a serious matter.

Geordie waddled in with the cups of coffee and a couple of nondairy creamers.

“You can just leave those there,” she said, clearing a space on the desk by shoving stacks of papers around. Slater took off his own coat and put the envelope down on a free corner.

“I should warn you,” he said, “another chopper will be arriving tomorrow morning, so if there’s anyplace in particular you’d like it to land, just let me know.”

At least he was being accommodating, she thought, despite all the mystery. But two helicopters?

“So what’s all this about?” she said.

“It’s best, I think, if any information was disseminated from your own mayor’s office.”

“In that case,” she said, picking up the envelope, and using a whalebone letter opener, “let’s see what we’ve got.”

He started to protest, even raising one hand to take the envelope back, but the smile on her lips must have given her away.

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “You’re N. J. Tincook—the mayor?”

She pulled out the folder inside. “Nikaluk Jane Tincook, but most folks just call me Nika. Nice to meet you,” she said, though her eyes were fixed on the official warnings, and top secret clearance stamps, on the cover of the report. The title alone was enough to knock her out of her chair. “AFIP Project Plan, St. Peter’s Island, Alaska (17th District): Geological Survey, Exhumation, Core Sampling, and Viral Analysis Procedures.” And the report attached, she saw from a quick
riffle through the pages, must have been sixty or seventy pages long, all of it in dense, single-spaced prose, with elaborate footnotes, indices, charts, and diagrams. The last time she’d had to wade through something like this was in grad school at Berkeley. “You expect me to read this now?” she said. “And make sense of it?”

“No, I don’t,” he said.

“Then why didn’t you send it on in advance?”

“Because, as you’ve seen from the cover clearances, we’re trying to stay under the radar as much as possible.”

“Why?” She was starting to feel exasperated again, and it looked like Dr. Slater could see it. He sipped his coffee, and then, in a very calm and deliberate tone, said, “Let me explain.” She had the sense that he had done this kind of thing many times before, that he was used to talking to people who had been, for reasons he was not at liberty to explain, kept in the dark.

As he laid out the case before her, her suspicions were confirmed. The stuff about the coffin lid and Harley Vane she already knew, just as she knew most of what he told her about the old Russian colony. She had grown up in Port Orlov; everyone there knew that a sect of crazy Russians had once inhabited the island and that they’d been wiped out in 1918 by the Spanish flu. She even knew that the sect had been followers of the mad monk Rasputin, who was said to have bewitched the royal family of Russia, the Romanovs, in the years before the Revolution. But out of politeness, and curiosity about where all this was going, she let him run on. As the grandma who raised her had always said, God gave us only one mouth, but two ears. So listen.

Truth be told, she also liked the sound of his voice, now that he was talking to her like an equal.

“Rasputin’s patron saint was St. Peter,” Slater explained.

And see
, she thought,
that was something she hadn’t known
.

“The coffin lid bore an impression of the saint, holding the keys to Heaven and Hell. That’s one way we knew where it came from.”

“But apart from Harley Vane’s washing up there, nobody’s set foot
on that island for years. It’s got a very bad reputation among the locals. How do you know for sure?”

“We did a flyover an hour ago. We could see where the graveyard had given way. The permafrost has thawed, and the cliff is eroding.”

Nika’s phone rang, and she hollered, “Pick it up, Geordie! No calls.”

“That’s why we have to set up an inspection site there, exhume the bodies, take samples, and make sure that there is no viable virus present.”

And it suddenly dawned on her, with full clarity, why this had all been kept so secret. My God, they were talking about doing something that was, first of all, a serious desecration of old graves—the sort of thing her own Inuit people would take a very dim view of—but even worse, they were talking about the potential release of a plague that had wiped out untold millions. That was one lesson that no native Alaskan escaped.