The Romanov Cross: A Novel

by Robert Masello

  Harley didn’t care how close to St. Peter’s he got. If this was where the damn crabs were, this was where he was going.

  For the next half hour, the Neptune II steamed ahead, throwing strings of pots and bucking the increasingly heavy seas. A chunk of ice broke off the crane and plummeted onto the deck, nearly killing the Samoan guy he’d hired in that waterfront bar. But every time Harley heard one of the deckhands shout into the intercom, “290 pounds!” or “300!” he resolved to keep on going. If this could just keep up, he could return to Port Orlov in a couple of days and not hear a word of bitching from his brother.

  And then, if things really went his way, maybe he’d be able to convince Angie Dobbs to go someplace warm with him. L.A., or Miami Beach. He knew that he wasn’t enough of a draw all by himself—ten years ago, Angie had been runner-up for Miss Teen Alaska—but if he could promise her a free trip out of this hellhole, he figured she’d take it. And maybe even give him some action just to be polite. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been around—Christ, half the town claimed to have had her, and Harley had long felt unfairly overlooked.

  “Skipper!” he heard over the intercom. Sounded like Farrell, probably about to complain about the length of the shift.

  “What?” Harley said, unhappy at the break in his reverie.

  “We got something!” he shouted over the howling wind.

  “Yeah, I’ve been watching. You got the best damn catch of the season.”

  “No,” Farrell said, “no, take a look!”

  And now, lifting himself up from his seat to get a better view of the deck, Harley could see what Farrell, the hood thrown back on his yellow slicker, was wildly pointing at.

  A box—big and black, with icy water cascading down its sides—was tangled in the hooks and lines, and with the help of a couple of the other crew members, it was being hauled over the railing. What the hell …

  “I’ll be right down!” Harley called before turning to Lucas and telling him to hold the boat in position. “And do not fuck with the course.”

  Harley grabbed his anorak off a hook on the wall. As he barreled down the narrow creaking stairs, he pulled a pair of thermal, waterproof gloves out of the pocket and wrestled them on. Just a few minutes out on deck unprotected and your fingers could freeze like fish sticks. Yanking the hood up over his head, he pulled the sliding door open, and was almost blown back into the cabin by the driving wind.

  Forcing his way outside, the door slamming back into its groove behind him, he plowed up the deck with one hand clinging to the inside rail. Even in the gathering dusk, he could see, maybe three miles to starboard, the ragged silhouette of St. Peter’s Island sticking up out of the rolling sea. That one island, with its steep cliffs and rocky shoals, had claimed more lives than any other off the coast of Alaska, and he could see why even the native Inuit had always given it a wide berth. For as long as he could remember, they had considered it an unholy place, a place where unhappy and evil spirits, the ones who could not ride the highways of the Aurora Borealis up into the sky, were condemned to linger on earth. Some said that these doomed souls were the spirits of the mad Russians who had once colonized the island, and that they were now trapped in the bodies of the black wolves that roamed the cliffs. Harley could almost believe it.

  “What do we do with it?” Farrell shouted as the great black box swung in the lines and netting overhead.

  It was about six feet long, three feet wide, and its lid was carved with some design Harley couldn’t make out yet. The other crewmen were staring at it dumbfounded, and Harley directed the Samoan and a couple of others to get it down and onto the conveyor belt. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to lose it, and whatever might be inside it, he didn’t want the deckhands to find out before he did.

  Farrell used a gaffing hook to pull the box clear of the railing, while the Samoan guided it onto the deck. It landed on one end with a loud thump, and a crack opened down the center of the lid. “Quick!” Harley said, lending a hand and pushing the box toward the belt. Harley guessed its weight at maybe two hundred waterlogged pounds, and once they had securely positioned it on the belt, Harley threw the switch and watched as it was carried the length of the deck, then down into the hold below.

  “Okay, show’s over,” he shouted over the wind and crashing waves. “Haul in those pots! Now!”

  Then, as the men cast one more look over their shoulders and returned to their labors, he went back toward the bridge. But instead of going up to the pilot’s cabin, he stumbled down the swaying steps to the hold, where he found the engineer, Richter, studying the box.

  “What the hell is this?” Richter said. “You know you could have busted the belt with this damned thing?” Richter was usually just called the Old Man, and he’d worked on crab and cod and swordfish boats for nearly fifty years.

  “I don’t know what it is,” Harley said. “It just came up in the lines.”

  Richter, pulling at his bushy white eyebrows, stood back and surveyed the box, which had come to rest at the end of the now-stationary belt. Mutilated crabs, most of them dead but some of them still twitching, lay all over the wet floor. The overhead lights cast a sickly yellow glow around the huge holding tanks and roaring turbines. The air reeked of gasoline and brine.

  “I’ll tell you what I think it is,” Richter said. “This damn thing is a coffin.”

  Harley had reluctantly come to the same conclusion. It wasn’t built in the customary shape of a coffin, but the general dimensions were right.

  “And you don’t want to bring coffins aboard,” Richter grumbled over the engine noise. “Didn’t your father teach you a goddamned thing?”

  Harley was sick to death of hearing about his father. Everybody from Nome to Prudhoe Bay always had a story. He ran a hand over the lid of the box, brushing off some of the icy water, and bent closer to observe the carvings. Most of them had been worn away, but it looked like there was some writing here. Not in English, but in those characters he’d seen on the old Russian buildings that still remained here and there in Alaska. In school, they’d taught him about how the Russians had settled the area first, way back in the 1700s, and then, in one of the colossal blunders of all time, had sold it to the United States after the Civil War. This looked like that kind of writing, and in the dim light of the hold he could also make out a chiseled figure. Bending closer, he saw that it was sort of like a saint, but a really fierce-looking one, with a long robe, a short beard, and a key ring in one hand. He felt a sudden shudder descend his spine.

  “Get me a flashlight,” he told the old man.

  “What for?”

  “Just get me one.”

  Moving his head this way and that, trying to avoid throwing a shadow onto the box, Harley peered through the crack in the lid, and when Richter slapped a flashlight into his hand, he pointed the beam into the box and put his nose to the wood.

  “God will punish you for what you’re doing.”

  But Harley wasn’t listening. Although the crack was very narrow, he caught again a glimpse of something glistening inside the box. Something that glinted like a bright green eye.

  Like an emerald.

  “The dead oughta be left in peace,” Richter solemnly intoned.

  On general grounds, Harley agreed. Still, it didn’t mean they got to hang on to their jewelry.

  “What did you see in there?” the Old Man asked, finally overcome by his own curiosity. “Was it a native or a white man?”

  “Can’t tell,” Harley replied, snapping off the flashlight and leaning back. “Too dark.” Nobody needed to know about this. Not yet. “Get me a tarp,” he said, and when the old man didn’t budge, he went and got one himself. He threw it over the box, then lashed it in place with heavy ropes. “Nobody touches this until we get back to port,” he said, and Richter conspicuously crossed himself.

  Harley climbed the slippery stairs to the deck level, then up to the wheelhouse, where Lucas was still holding the course as ordered. But with Harley
back, he couldn’t hold his tongue any longer.

  “St. Peter’s Island,” he warned. “It’s less than a mile off the starboard prow. If we don’t steer clear of the rocks right now, they’re gonna rip the shit out of the boat.”

  Harley took off his soaking gear and resumed his chair. In the pale moonlight, the island loomed like a gigantic black skull rising up out of the sea. A belt of fog clung to its shores like a shroud.

  “Take us ten degrees west,” Harley said, and Lucas spun the wheel as fast as he could.

  “What was that thing in the nets?” he asked, as the ship was buffeted by another crest of freezing water.

  “You worry about the course,” Harley said, staring out at the dark sea. “Leave the rest to me.”

  “I was just thinking, if it’s salvage of some kind, then it has to be reported to—”

  The ship suddenly juddered from bow to stern, shaking like a dog throwing off water, and from deep below there was the sound of metal groaning. Lucas nearly slipped off his feet, as Harley clung to the control panel in front of him.

  “Ice?” Harley said, though he already knew better. Lucas, wide-eyed and white with fear, said, “Rocks.”

  A second jolt hit the ship, knocking it to one side, as waves swept the deck and the crab pots swung wildly in the air. One of them hit the Samoan, who, windmilling his arms in an attempt to regain his balance, was carried by the next surge over the side. Farrell and Kubelik were clinging desperately to the mast, the crane, and the icy ropes.

  “Jesus Christ,” Harley said, groping for the hand mike.

  Lucas was draped across the wheel as if it were a life preserver.

  “Mayday!” Harley shouted into the microphone. “This is the Neptune II, northwest of St. Peter’s Island. Man overboard! Do you read me? Mayday!”

  From belowdecks, there was another grinding sound, like sheet metal being crumpled in an auto yard, and the engineer, Richter, was bleating over the intercom. “The bulkhead’s breached! You hear me up there? The pumps won’t handle it!”

  “We read you, Neptune,” a Coast Guard voice crackled over the mike. “You have a man overboard?”

  “Yes,” Harley said, “and we’re taking on water!” He rattled off their position, then tossed the mike to Lucas, as he slipped off his stool.

  “Don’t leave me here!” Lucas said, his voice strained and trembling.

  “Handle it!” Harley shouted.

  “Where the hell are you going?”

  “Down below!” Harley answered, as he lurched toward the gangway. “To check the damage!” And something else.

  As Lucas clung to the wheel, Harley scrambled down the steps. But he could tell already, just from the tilt of the deck and the terrible racket in the hold, that the ship was lost. He’d be lucky to escape this night alive. They all would.

  Maybe Old Man Richter had been right about that damned box, after all.

  Chapter 3

  FORT LESLEY MCNAIR

  Washington, D.C.

  For a court-martial so hastily convened, Major Frank Slater thought things were moving along pretty smoothly.

  Seated beside his Army-appointed lawyer—a kid with a blond crew cut and the look of someone who had seen more action in a Hooters than he had on any battlefield—Slater had nothing much to do besides sit there in his nice clean uniform and listen to the damning testimony that he neither denied nor apologized for.

  Colonel Keener, whose duties in Afghanistan had been deemed too important to send him back to D.C. for the court-martial, testified against Slater by Skype. The computer monitor had been set up on a trolley in front of the panel of five military judges, and Slater and his attorney, Lieutenant Bonham, listened closely as the colonel related the various crimes and infractions that the major—“an epidemiologist,” Keener explained, as if he were labeling him a child molester, “who has no more business being in the Army than my dog does”—had committed in Khan Neshin.

  Assaulting a superior officer—which fell under Article 128 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Slater learned—was a slam-dunk for the prosecution. After Colonel Keener had made his initial statement, he was asked to stand by while corroborating evidence was supplied. That, too, was easy. A nurse had happened to be down the hall in the med center, and although she had been too far away to hear what the colonel had said to Slater just before the altercation, she had been flown back to the States to testify that she had indeed seen the major throw the punch that had decked the colonel.

  “Just one punch?” the head judge, a retired general, asked.

  “That’s all it took,” the nurse said.

  Slater thought he saw a tiny smile crease the general’s lips.

  “And then I called the MPs,” the nurse went on.

  “And you have no knowledge of what transpired just before?” the judge asked.

  “I found out later on,” she replied. “The little girl had died in the O.R., and the doctor—I mean, Major Slater—just lost it.” Hazarding a sympathetic glance at the defendant, she added, “It seemed like a really momentary thing … like he’d tried so hard to save her, and then, finding out that it was all for nothing, it just sort of tipped him over the edge.”

  The general made a note, and the four other judges, all officers, followed his lead and did the same. Because it was a general court-martial—more serious in nature than either a summary or special trial—all told there were five officers deliberating, including three other old men and a woman who looked as if she’d swapped her spine for a ramrod. The prosecutor offered into evidence an X-ray, taken at the med center, of a fracture to Colonel Keener’s jawline. When it was shown to Slater for confirmation, he said, “It’s a good likeness.”

  “What was that?” the general asked, cupping his ear.

  “My client,” Lieutenant Bonham cut in, before handing the X-ray back to the bailiff, “says that he does not contest this exhibit.” Then he shot Slater a murderous look.

  But once the assault and battery charge had been duly noted and the evidence entered into the records, the court moved on to what was considered—from the Army’s point of view—the even more serious charges. While punches got thrown all the time, especially in war zones, it wasn’t often that a commissioned officer issued an order that he knew to be a lie, and in so doing jeopardized a helicopter and its crew. When Slater had called in the mission from the rice paddies, he had not only made a False Official Statement (Article 107 of the code)—punishable with a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for a period of five years—but he had put military property and personnel at risk. (Article 108, among others.)

  For Slater, the worst part of the proceeding wasn’t hearing all the charges leveled at him. That much he expected. No, the worst part was having to watch as his friend and right-hand man, Sergeant Jerome Groves, was forced to take the stand. Slater had already ordered Groves to tell the truth and let the blame fall entirely on his commanding officer, where it belonged, but he knew it would be tough. He and Groves had a long history together.

  When the prosecutor leaned in and said, “Sergeant Groves, it was you who called in your exact coordinates to the air rescue—is that correct?” Groves hesitated, and Slater nodded at him to go on. No point in denying facts that were indisputable.

  “Yes. But Major Slater was simply trying to save the—”

  “And you knew,” the prosecutor went on, twirling his eyeglasses in one hand, “that the purpose of the mission was to airlift a civilian, not a member of the armed forces, to a medical facility?”

  “All due respect, sir, but it was a kid,” Groves said. “What would you have done? She’d been bitten by a viper and she’d have—”

  “I repeat,” the prosecutor interrupted again, “you knew it was not U.S. Army personnel?”

  “I did.”

  “And yet you remained a party to the deception?”

  “On my orders!” Slater barked, lifting himself out of his chair. He
was afraid that Groves was not going to muster enough of a defense. “The sergeant only did what I told him to do as his commanding officer. What I ordered him to do.”

  Predictably, Slater was ordered to sit down and shut up, in pretty much those words, or he would be removed from his own trial. After he sat back down, Lieutenant Bonham rose from his chair and conducted his own interrogation of the witness, advancing more or less the same argument, but in a legally reasoned, and more dispassionate, manner. Slater had given him explicit instructions to see to it that Groves was exonerated on all charges.

  When the sergeant had been dismissed from the witness stand, he slunk by Slater’s chair and muttered, “Sorry, Frank,” as he passed.

  “No reason to be,” Slater said.

  The general in charge of the tribunal demanded again that there be no communication between the witnesses, and after shuffling his stack of papers, asked the lawyers to proceed to the summation.

  The prosecutor, who looked confident that he had a winning hand, went through the litany of charges and all the articles of the military code that Slater had managed to break—even Slater was surprised that he’d managed to commit so many infractions in such a short space of time—before sitting down again with his hands folded over his abdomen like a guy waiting for the soufflé to be served.

  Lieutenant Bonham stood up with a lot less confidence and proceeded to make his own arguments in defense of Major Slater. A lot of it was legal jargon, but Slater also had to sit still for a long recapitulation of his own military and medical accomplishments.

  “May it be entered into the record that Major Slater enlisted in the United States Army thirteen years ago, with a medical degree from Johns Hopkins, a specialty in tropical and infectious diseases, and an advanced degree in statistics and epidemiology from the Georgetown University Program in Public Health. Those credentials have served him—and this country—exceptionally well in some of the most dangerous and hotly disputed scenes of engagement, ranging from Somalia to Sarajevo. He has earned three special commendations, a Purple Heart, and attained the rank of major, which he holds at the time of this hearing. He is also a victim of an especially chronic strain of malaria, to which he was exposed in the line of duty but which he has never allowed to interfere with the assignments given him by the United States Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, here in Washington, D.C., where he is based. This disease, I would argue, should be considered a mitigating factor for any possible misconduct. Among its symptoms are fevers, hallucinatory episodes, and insomnia—which in and of themselves can contribute to acts of an irrational and impulsive nature. Acts which Major Slater, if he had been wholly in control of his behavior, would never have countenanced, much less committed.”