The Romanov Cross: A Novel (36 page)

And then the wolves had descended all at once, in a bristling fury of fangs and claws.

Russell was so disoriented—and panicked now—that he hardly knew which way to turn. But he did know that the cave was still far off, while the old Russian colony was close. He could give himself up to the Coast Guard, claim he was just some stupid kayaker that the storm had washed up on the shore. Maybe that guy Dr. Slater could even take a look at his ankle, and better yet, give him something for the pain.

The colony, as best he could make out, was off to his left, in the direction of the strait. Keeping a close eye on the brush, and moving as quickly, but as cautiously, as he could, he cut a trail through the trees. The snow was swirling more thickly than ever. Remembering something his uncle had once told him, he thought of breaking the end of a branch here and there as a way of marking his progress, but he knew it was too dark for him ever to find the broken bits again. It would only be possible the next day … and he was beginning to doubt he would live that long.

Something leapt over a fallen trunk on his right, and he caught a glimpse of sleek black fur.

And then, from his other side, he heard a yip.

A short one, a signal to its mate.

Which was responded to with the same sound.

He picked up his pace, his heart pounding in his chest. He clenched the end of the stave, his only weapon. His eyes strained to see ahead, to catch sight of the colony. His breath was coming in bursts, and he told himself to breathe more evenly, more deeply. The essential thing was to keep moving. They would only move in for the kill if they thought he was helpless and had given up … or if they had already acquired a taste for human flesh.

Focus
, he told himself, forging ahead.
Focus
. And through the trees, down a slope, he saw a spot of something bright green. And glowing.

A tent! One of those colony tents!

It was behind what was left of the stockade wall. Christ, it felt like a hundred years ago that he had first seen this damn place. He swung the stave through the brush, clumsily trudging down the hillside, and then exulting as he shimmied through a gap in the timbers.

He was behind that old church, but when he turned, he saw that the wolves—and there were four of them, not two, all black, and their yellow eyes gleaming—were slinking between the logs, too. Their heads were lowered, their hackles raised, and they showed no signs of quitting their hunt.

He swung the stave in a wide arc, but only one of them backed off. The others stood their ground, snarling now, saliva dripping from their jaws.

“Help!” he shouted, but the wind was roaring in his ears. “Somebody help me!”

He could feel the wolves spreading out around him, cutting off any retreat. He swung the stave again, and this time the alpha wolf, in front of the pack and with a blaze of white on its muzzle, snapped at the end of the stick, nearly managing to yank it from his hands. He could feel the heat of its body; he could smell its rank breath.

Whirling around, he saw a hole in the foundation of the church, not much bigger than a manhole cover, but big enough. He backed up toward it, poking the stave at whichever wolf got closest. When the alpha lunged at it again—and gripped the stick between its teeth—he suddenly let go, turned around, and scrambled into the hole. The wood was jagged, and splinters cut through his gloves, but he was pulling himself in with all his might, wriggling his body in after. He was jackknifed into the gloomy interior when something snagged the bottom of his boot. He pulled the leg harder, praying he had caught his shoe on a shard of wood, but the foot was only jerked back even harder.

And now he could feel the bite, the fangs sinking right through his boot and heavy woolen sock … and into his skin.

He pulled again, but to his amazement he felt himself being hauled backwards. His hands scrabbled at the thick wood of the wall, trying
to find any purchase, but all he got was a handful of splinters and sawdust. He shook his leg, and kicked his foot out. He heard his pants ripping, and felt his own hot blood soaking through his sock.

He screamed again, his cry echoing in the empty church.

And then there was another set of fangs, fastened like a vise on his other foot.

Like a snake being yanked out of its den, he slithered backward, out of the hole, and flopped onto the ground. Turning over to punch at their snouts, he saw above him a frenzy of yellow eyes, black fur, and open, dripping jaws. He tried to lift his hands to fight back, but the alpha had already nuzzled its head under his chin, seeking, and swiftly finding, his jugular. Its teeth felt as long and fine as knitting needles as they sank into his neck.

The electric chandelier was ablaze with light, and Jemmy, who usually slept soundly on her feet, was stirring. Anastasia rubbed her eyes and said, “What’s going on?”

Her father was standing in the doorway in his nightshirt. “The commandant has asked us to dress and go down to one of the lower rooms.”

“Why?” Olga asked from her cot.

“He says that there is some unrest in the town, and it will be safer for us if we are not on the upper story.”

All four of the girls hastily exchanged looks, wondering what this really might portend, but Anastasia prayed that it was the first news of their deliverance. Sergei had said telegrams had been flying back and forth from Moscow and that something was afoot. Maybe the White Army was indeed within reach. Even now, the night wind carried the faint rumble of distant guns.

The girls sprang out of bed and had no sooner started dressing than their mother appeared and reminded them to put on their special corsets—the ones with the royal jewels so laboriously sewn into all of the linings.

“We have to be ready for anything,” Alexandra said. But there was a note of hope in her voice, too, a note that Ana had not heard for so many months of their captivity. “We might not be coming back to these rooms.”

Even though they had spent countless hours working on the corsets, the girls had never actually worn them yet, and Ana found that hers weighed much more than she might ever have imagined. It was hard to get on, and with the emerald cross from Father Grigori hanging around her neck, too, she felt like a walking jewelry box.

Like her sisters, she put on a long dark skirt and a white blouse, and by the time they were out in the hall the family’s companions in exile had also assembled there—Dr. Botkin, polishing his gold-rimmed glasses; her father’s valet, Trupp; her mother’s personal maid, Demidova; Kharitonov the cook. Tatiana asked what time it was, and Dr. Botkin consulted his pocket watch.

“Nearly one o’clock.”

Her mother came out next, clutching one of the pillows that also contained a cache of jewels inside it (Demidova had the other), then her father emerged, carrying a sleepy Alexei in his arms. Her father was not a tall man, but he had a broad chest and strong arms, and somehow he always managed to carry his son as effortlessly as if the boy were made of feathers. Ana carried Jemmy, who was strangely, but blissfully, silent for a change.

With Nicholas leading the way, the family trooped down the creaking stairway to the foyer. Yurovsky was waiting at the bottom, stroking his black goatee and wearing a long overcoat far too warm for the July night.

“This way,” he said, guiding them out into the courtyard—Ana was so glad of the chance to see the stars and breathe the fresh air, perfumed with lilac and honeysuckle, that she almost cried aloud for joy—then back down a set of stairs that led to the cellar. “You will please wait in here,” he said. “It won’t be long.”

The room was not much bigger than the girls’ bedroom upstairs, and the walls were covered with peeling wallpaper in a pattern of yellow
stripes. There wasn’t a single piece of furniture in the room—Ana wondered if Yurovsky hadn’t already started his looting of the place—and a single electric bulb, with no shade, hung from a string, casting a harsh white light around the barren space. Just before the commandant closed the double doors behind him, Alexandra said, “May we not have some chairs?”

Ana knew that her mother’s back was very bad, but she also knew that it was Alexei she was most concerned about.

“Of course,” Yurovsky said, and closed the doors. Ana assumed that they would never see the chairs, any more than they saw the powdered sage or anything else that the commandant promised, but to her surprise, he kicked the doors open a minute later and dragged in two wooden chairs.

Alexandra sat down on one of them, casually placing the pillow behind the small of her back as if for comfort, while Nicholas sat down on the other with Alexei cradled in his lap.

“The capitalist newspapers have been circulating stories,” Yurovsky said. “They claim that you have escaped, or that you are not being kept safe. We need to take a photograph to put an end to these rumors once and for all. You will please arrange yourselves so that you may all be seen.”

Having had their portrait taken a thousand times, the royal family obligingly fell into their customary spots, with the parents and Alexei in the middle and the girls spread out on either side.

“Yes, yes,” Yurovsky said, directing Dr. Botkin and the others into a single file against the wall behind them. “Exactly. Everyone stay right where you are.”

Then, he popped back out the door again. There was nothing to look at and nothing to do. Ana fidgeted in her corset, stifling not only from the weight but the heat of it. Who knew that diamonds and rubies could be so heavy? Olga put a hand on her mother’s shoulder, and Alexandra kissed and squeezed it hopefully.

Ana wondered where Sergei was, and if he knew what was going on. There was only one window, crossed with iron bars, opening onto
ground level, but it was placed high in the wall and she couldn’t see anything outside. How many officers, she wondered, were riding to their rescue even now?

Time seemed to stand still in the airless cellar as they held their positions and waited for the photographer to come in with his tripod and his camera and his black cloth. Jemmy squirmed in her arms, but she didn’t want to put him down for fear he’d get into some trouble. The commandant had made plain, on previous occasions, that he had no use for dogs.

When the doors did open again, Yurovsky came in, with his long coat unbuttoned and nearly a dozen guards jostling to join him inside. Reading aloud from a sheet of paper he held high in his hand, Yurovsky announced that “in view of the fact that your relatives and supporters have continued their attacks on Soviet Russia, the Executive Committee of the Urals has decided to execute you.”

Ana thought she could not have heard him correctly, and her father, after looking quickly at his family assembled around him, turned back to Yurovsky in disbelief and said, “What? What?”

The commandant quickly repeated the sentence, word for word, then drew from his belt a revolver and shot the former Tsar directly through the forehead. Ana saw her father pitch backwards in the chair, dropping Alexei to the floor. She saw her mother fling up a hand to cross herself, and her sisters shrink back against the wall. She heard Demidova cry out and Botkin protest, then everything became an awful blur.

The Red Guards pulled out their own guns and all Ana remembered was a deafening roar as the shots rang out and the room filled with choking smoke and screams for mercy and the hot splash of blood, blood flying everywhere. Jemmy turned into a limp soaking rag in her arms, and as the bullets clanged and ricocheted off the gems in her corset, Ana toppled over and fell beneath the crush of dead and dying bodies … and still the firing continued. The lightbulb in the ceiling exploded, and the last thing she saw, as she clutched at the emerald cross beneath her blouse, was the looming phantom of
Rasputin himself rising before her, as if his black beard and cassock were fashioned from the swirling smoke and gunpowder. In her ear, she heard the deep rumble of his voice whispering, as he once had done at the Christmas ball, “I shall always be watching over you, little one.”
Malenkaya
.

Lantos, accustomed to working under optimal conditions at M.I.T., was having to make some adjustments. She wasn’t used to her feet sticking to damp rubber mats on the floor, for instance, or to Arctic blasts battering the walls of her lab. Nor was she accustomed to the constant roar of the wind, like a ceaseless pounding surf, or the lamps swaying overhead.

The Tyvek suit and rubber apron she was wearing weren’t exactly comfortable, either. With her fingers encased in latex, her mouth and nose covered by a face mask, and her eyes protected by oversized goggles designed to accommodate her glasses, she had to move more slowly, and with greater deliberation, than her nature dictated. But she knew that this mission had to yield some answers, and quickly. What were they dealing with—the dead remnants of an extinct plague, or the dormant, but still viable, vestiges of the greatest killer the world had ever known?

For hours she had done nothing but study the specimens taken from the various organ sites of the young deacon, whose body still lay, like a disassembled engine, in the autopsy chamber at the rear of the lab tent. She didn’t like leaving it like that, not only because it presented a hazard but because she always tried to be respectful in her
work. As soon as Slater got back from the graveyard, where he and Kozak had gone to figure out which grave to open next, she would enlist his help in putting the body back together.