The Romanov Cross: A Novel

by Robert Masello

  Slater had to hand it to the kid. It was a very persuasive and well-put summation … even if he hated the part about the malaria. It wasn’t the malaria that made him throw that punch or call in the chopper. Right now, sitting comfortably in the courtroom, his illness at bay and his thoughts as clear as the blue November sky outside, he would have done exactly the same things all over again. And it wasn’t just the little Afghan girl that had done it—she was just the proverbial straw that had broken the camel’s back. This explosion had been building for years. He had seen too much horror, he had witnessed too many deaths, too many barbarities. He had flown to too many desolate corners of the earth, armed with too little to offer in the way of aid or relief. Under a mosquito net in Darfur, by the light of a bright moon, he had finally gotten around to reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and he had quickly understood why that volunteer from Oxfam had so urgently pressed the book on him. Maybe, without his noticing it, he had been turning into the mysterious character, Kurtz, a man who saw so much of the cruelty that man can inflict that it had finally driven him mad.

  When Lieutenant Bonham had finished his appeal to the court, the general in charge of the tribunal ordered the room to be cleared so that the judges could deliberate, and Slater was taken back to a holding cell, where he was given a Coke, a bag of chips, and an egg salad sandwich wrapped in plastic.

  “You hungry?” he said, sliding the sandwich toward his lawyer.

  “Yes, but not that hungry.”

  “What do you think our chances are?” he said, popping open the Coke.

  “Guilty on all counts—that goes without saying.”

  Slater knew he was right, but it still wasn’t exactly pleasant to hear.

  “But there’s a lot of mitigating factors in your favor, so the sentencing could be light. And I think Colonel Keener has a certain reputation as a prick. That could help, too.” Gesturing at the bag of chips, Bonham said, “But if you’re not going to eat those …”

  “Help yourself.”

  Slater pushed his chair back and stared out the narrow window placed high in the wall and covered with chicken wire. It was about a foot and a half square. Nothing bigger than a beagle could have ever made it through.

  Bonham checked his BlackBerry for messages, sent a few texts, then put it away. He polished off the potato chips and brushed his fingers clean with a hankie.

  “There’s no reason to stick around in here on my account,” Slater said.

  The lieutenant said, “Not much I can do anywhere else.”

  “How long do you think it’ll be?”

  “No telling.” Bonham drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “But maybe I could try to pry some news out of the bailiff.”

  “You do that,” Slater said. But before the young lawyer closed the door behind him, he added, “You did a good job.”

  Unexpectedly, Bonham glowed. “You think so, Major?”

  “Yeah,” Slater said. “You just had a lousy case.”

  Alone in the cell, Slater sipped the Coke and waited. A couple of rooms away, his fate was being decided by five judges who’d never even laid eyes on him before. It was a hard thought to hold in his head—that in a matter of minutes, maybe hours, he would learn, from the lips of a retired general, what the dire consequences of his actions might be. Reflecting on it all now, a month later and a world away, Slater couldn’t fault himself for what he did in trying to save the girl’s life. What else could he have done and still been able to face himself in the mirror? As for the punch … well, that was ill-advised, to say the least. And it wasn’t the first time his temper had gotten him into trouble. But whenever he remembered the look on the colonel’s face, the smug tone in which he’d announced the girl’s death … well, his fist went right back into a ball and he wanted to slug him again. Only this time he wanted to stay completely awake and aware the whole time.

  The question was, would he still feel that way after serving five years in a military prison?

  There was no clock in the holding cell. There was no phone, or TV, or magazine rack. The walls were cinder block, the door was steel. There was nothing for a prisoner to look at, nothing to do, except sit there and contemplate his destiny, which was something Slater had been doing everything he could to avoid.

  He slumped forward and put his head down on the table—the wood was worn and scarred and the smell reminded him of his grammar-school classrooms—and closed his eyes. At night he could never sleep, but during the day his weariness often overwhelmed him. A few nights before, he had called his ex-wife, Martha, in Silver Spring. She hadn’t sounded all that happy to hear from him—and that was before he told her why he was stateside again. Once he had, he could hear her sigh, mostly in sympathy, but there was also a note of relief in it—relief that she had severed their relationship when she had, and that this latest act of self-immolation was not her problem anymore.

  “Where are they keeping you?” she asked, and he had explained that he was free on his own recognizance until the trial began—though without a passport, he wasn’t going to go very far.

  “Do you want me to come and see you?” she said. “Would that help?”

  But he really didn’t see how it would. He had only called to let her know what was up, in case she ever got curious about his whereabouts … or the Army notified her that her portion of his Army pension would be severely diminished.

  Not that she needed the money.

  Her new husband was a partner in a lobbying firm on K Street, and her own dermatology practice was going strong. He had seen ads for it in local magazines, and once or twice he had seen her interviewed on the local news about Botox and collagen. She had gotten what she wanted out of life … and he had got what he deserved. Or so he figured most people would see it.

  When his lawyer came back to get him, he didn’t know how much time had passed. He had nodded off, and his cheek bore the impression of the cracks in the wood. At the front of the courtroom, all the judges were sitting stiffly in their chairs, but there was one thing different. In the back, on a plastic chair, was Dr. Lena Levinson, chief of the pathology institute, with a thick folder in her lap and a stern expression on her face. When he nodded in her direction, she glared back at him reproachfully, then answered a call on her cell phone.

  “Will the defendant please stand?” the general said, and Slater stood up beside Lieutenant Bonham. He was surprised to find his knees a little weaker than he’d planned.

  Clearing his throat, the general continued. “On the several charges brought by this court-martial against Dr. Frank James Slater, Major in the United States Army, the verdict of the court is as follows.” Slater braced himself, as did Bonham, who looked so pale it was all Slater could do not to put an arm around his shoulders.

  “Guilty” was the one word Slater distinctly heard, over and over again. But then he had expected that.

  It was the sentencing he dreaded.

  And that, too, was going as badly as possible. He was stripped of his rank, then dismissed—dishonorably—from the Army. All pay, all allowances, and all benefits were forfeited, now and in perpetuity. It was only when the question of imprisonment came up that the general paused, while Slater waited with bated breath for the hammer to come down.

  “On the subject of incarceration, which these charges normally carry, the court has heard outside counsel, and read an amicus curia brief submitted only hours ago.” His eyes flitted toward Dr. Levinson. “In view of Dr. Slater’s long and valuable service to this country, and in the national interest, the court has unanimously elected to forgo all such punishment at this time.”

  No prison time? And in the national interest? Slater was stunned, and even Bonham looked confused.

  The general read some summary remarks into the record—names, dates, articles of the military code adjudicated—then looked around the room, as if leaving time for any objections before saying, “This court-martial is hereby concluded.”

  Slater—suddenly a ci
vilian, even if a disgraced one, after thirteen years—could hardly believe his ears. Bonham was clapping him on the back, and even the general threw him a glance that was less condemnatory than rueful. On his way out, Slater found Dr. Levinson standing beside the door.

  “I can only assume,” he said, “that your testimony here today had something to do with my reprieve?”

  “It did.”

  “Thank you,” he said, from the bottom of his heart. She was a tough old buzzard, but he knew that they had always understood, and appreciated, each other.

  “And now we have to talk, Dr. Slater.”

  “About the national interest?”

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, “yes.”

  Chapter 4

  Harley Vane had become what you’d call a local celebrity. All the papers in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington State had carried his miraculous story of courage and survival, and he’d even received some national attention from an assortment of radio shows and a couple of TV stations.

  At the hospital, where he’d recuperated for the first three days after his rescue, the nurses had treated him like a rock star, and Angie Dobbs had even come by to visit him. She said his drinks would be free at the Yardarm, and the way she said it made him think something else might be coming his way, too. At last.

  This morning, the docs had promised him he’d be allowed to go if his numbers all checked out. Harley knew they would; he felt fine again, and he needed to see his brother Charlie. According to the nurses, Charlie had already come by, just a few hours after the Coast Guard cutter had picked him up, but Harley had been too disoriented to remember anything about it. There was a big blank spot in his memory, and there were plenty of times when he wished it were even bigger.

  He remembered all too well barreling down the stairs to the hold. On the way down, he had pulled on a life vest, stuffed a flare in its pocket, then grabbed the emergency fire axe off the wall and stuck its handle in his belt. Water was gushing in from some unseen hole that had been ripped in the hull, somewhere beneath the holding tanks for the crabs. Thousands of them were suddenly loose again, scuttling up the walls, clinging to the ceiling, or paddling around on the rising tide. Old Man Richter was up to his knees in freezing water, trying to get the pumps working again.

  “They won’t start!” he shouted. “They won’t start!”

  “Get out!” Harley said. “Get out now!”

  But Richter turned around and went back to work; he was the kind of guy, Harley knew, who would plan to go down with the ship.

  Harley didn’t need that right now. He waded through the icy water, crabs nipping at his boots and thighs, and grabbed Richter by his bony shoulder. “I’m telling you to go on deck—now!”

  “You shoulda let me get these serviced before we left port,” Richter said. “I told you they needed work!”

  Another wave hit the ship broadside, and Richter tumbled into the water. His hand shot up, and Harley snatched it. He dragged the Old Man onto his feet again, but there were crabs all over him already, their pincers grasping at his wet clothes, or snapping furiously in the air. A big one, pink as bubblegum, was crawling up his chest, and Harley batted it off.

  “Get out,” he screamed at the Old Man, “or I’ll drown you myself!” With a hard shove, he sent him toward the stairs. And then he sloshed through the debris to the coffin, still lashed to the conveyor belt. With fingers so cold they were almost numb, he fumbled at the ropes, but then gave up and chopped at them with the axe. The ropes and tarp fell away, and Harley took aim at the rusty hasps holding the lid closed. It took him several swings to knock each one loose, but when the last one went, he stuck the blade of the axe sideways into the groove and pried the lid up. It came up slowly, with a groan, and Harley had to push hard before it opened all the way and fell of its own momentum into the water. There was a splash, then the lid was bobbing like a surfboard around the hold.

  The water was up to Harley’s thighs, and he was beginning to freeze. The lights flickered, but they stayed on. Inside the box he saw what looked like a mummy—a petrified face, all teeth and hair, grimacing with empty eye sockets, the hands folded to touch its own shoulders. Still, it was recognizably the corpse of a young man, maybe nineteen or twenty, and dressed in what looked like the frozen remains of a woolen tunic, with a rounded, Cossack-style collar, and black sealskin coat. But around the young man’s neck he saw what he had come for. It was one of those old Russian crosses, the ones with three sideways beams of different lengths, but embedded in it there were several old stones, glinting green in the dim light. He tried to pull it loose, but it was still on its chain. Much as he loathed the idea, there was nothing to do but reach down and lift the corpse’s head. Touching it felt like touching a bag of old shells and crumpled paper; the skin rustled and the skull weighed on his hand like an empty, fragile egg.

  But the cross still wouldn’t come loose.

  The chain was entangled in the boy’s long brown hair, and it was only after he had yanked at it several times, hard enough that the head was nearly severed from the spine, that it came up and over the crown.

  He stuffed it deep into the inner compartment of his anorak, then zipped the pocket firmly closed. A couple of crabs had already clambered over the end of the coffin and spilled onto the corpse. Their claws were shredding the remains of the fabric and probing the hard flesh. One was worrying a toe and would have it loose in no time.

  Let ’em have it, Harley thought, and the sooner the better. The water was still rising. It was up to his waist now, and the ship was so canted over that he could barely keep his balance as he reached for the stair railing. He hauled himself up, hand over hand, as the water surged behind him, and as something—hard and persistent—batted at his calves. Glancing back, he saw that the coffin lid, carved with the saint or angel or whatever it was, was floating up the stairs with him, like a faithful hound nipping at his heels.

  On deck, everything was chaos. The howling wind was ripping at the lines and the pots, and the lifeboat had already been launched. Fuck you, too, Harley thought, looks like it’s every man for himself tonight. He wondered who had made it on board and who hadn’t. A flare went up from the water, and in its dead-white glow he saw the lifeboat, cradled between two mighty waves off the starboard side. The deckhands were trying to put some distance between themselves and the Neptune, lest they be sucked under when it sank. Harley thought he could make out Farrell at the tiller and Lucas clinging to the oarlocks, but over the wind blasting in his ears he heard a voice—Richter’s—shouting from somewhere down the deck.

  The Old Man, in an orange life vest, was clinging to the mast.

  Harley couldn’t hear a word he was saying—what could it matter?—but he saw him lift one arm and point out to sea, toward the looming black mass of St. Peter’s Island. It was big as a mountain now, and through the spray and the waves Harley could see the jutting rocks sticking up like spikes and barricades all around its shoreline.

  Another flare rocketed into the sky, this one leaving a phosphorescent green trail, and in its light Harley saw the lifeboat spinning around and around in a whirlpool, before it suddenly broke free and was dashed against the rocks. The crew spilled out like jelly beans from a jar, and the splintered timbers of the boat flew in every direction. Before the green light had dissipated, Harley saw the bobbing vests of his deckhands caught in the eddies and the swirls, each one of them being sucked under and lost beneath the angry black tide.

  As he looked up at the wheelhouse, a blue computer screen came crashing through a window, and the lights went black. The deck lurched under his feet, and he was sent sprawling into the crab pots. The cages were still full; when the boat went down with the cages still sealed, the captured crabs would have to eat each other until they died.

  Harley’s mind was racing, wondering whether to stick with the wreckage of the boat or try making it to the crew cabin to retrieve a raft, when a wave crashed over the bulwarks on the port side and carried
him, head over heels, into the ocean. He plunged in an instant into the icy water, the breath nearly knocked from his lungs, the salt stinging his blinded eyes. He was struggling to regain the surface, but the water was churning so hard, he couldn’t tell which way was up. He tried to stay calm enough to let the oxygen in his chest, and the air in his life vest, right him and send him upward again, but it didn’t seem to be working. He panicked and kicked out, pumping his arms. He collided with something, a rocky outcropping, and used it to push himself away. Gasping, he broke the surface of the water, and reaching out in the darkness, clutched something floating nearby. It was wood, and as he grappled it more tightly in his arms, he could feel its rough carvings. And he knew it was the coffin lid.

  He managed to pull himself halfway on top of it, then wrapped his arms around its sides. The waves lifted him up and threw him down, over and over again, eventually pushing him through a narrow passageway between the jagged rocks, with the sea boiling all around him. He could barely see where he was going, and his arms were so numb he wondered how much longer he could hang on. But when he felt his knees scraping on the rocks and shells of the shoreline, he somehow managed to stagger to his feet, then struggle through the pounding surf until he reached the beach. There, he collapsed in a shivering heap, with the cross, still lodged in his pocket, poking him in the ribs.