The coffin lid, gleaming in the moonlight, skimmed to a stop on the pebbles and sand.
How long he lay there he didn’t know. Cold and hard as the ground was, it felt like a warm blanket compared to the icy sea. He took deep breaths, coughing out the salt water and the gravel that now clung to his lips, but he knew that if he lay there much longer, he’d die of exposure. Rolling onto his back, he gazed up at the night sky, where even behind the banks of angry, scudding clouds, he could see the dazzling pinpricks of the distant stars. Shaking himself from head to foot like a dog throwing off water, he sat up and stared out at the sea. There was no sign of the Neptune II, or any of the other crewmen. Even their flares had long since disappeared from the sky. Harley prayed that the Coast Guard was on its way.
Fumbling at the straps of the life vest, he yanked its straps off, then groped for the flare he’d stuck in its pocket. He didn’t want to use it too soon, but he didn’t know how long he could survive in the state he was in, either. He searched the length of the beach for any kind of shelter, but there was nothing. Not even a rock large enough to huddle behind.
The only alternative was to scale the cliff somehow, and that would have been impossible even in broad daylight, with all the proper ropes and gear. Harley had always harbored nothing but scorn for climbers. It was bad enough to risk your ass crabbing, but at least there was money in it. Why do it for the glory of getting to the top of a pile of rocks?
The wind tore at the sleeves of his anorak, and the ocean spray forced him to shield his eyes and squint. He strained to hear anything besides the roaring of the wind, to see any sign of rescue.
But there was nothing. He was going to freeze to death on this island—all those fucking legends were true, and he was going to wind up as one more of the miserable souls that haunted the place—and to make it even worse, he was going to die with the first piece of good luck he’d had in ages jammed into the pocket of his anorak. He could feel the Russian cross, with the emeralds embedded in it, prodding his ribs.
Hunching down to get out of the wind and placing the flare between his soaking boots, he reached inside the coat, fumbling at the zipper, and took the cross out. It was a heavy thing, silver, with emeralds on one side, and, when he turned it over, some sort of inscription on the back. Even without knowing anything more about it, Harley knew it would be worth a fortune. Charlie would know, or Voynovich in Nome.
If they ever found his body, that is.
Once more, he scanned the night sky, and this time, far in the distance, he thought he saw a flashing light.
Just for a second.
A flashing red light.
But then he saw it again.
He rammed the cross back in his pocket and leapt to his feet with the flare in hand. He ripped the safety cap off, held it high, and yanked the cord.
The flare rocketed up into the sky, leaving a trail of white sparks, before blossoming—high, high above him—in a shower of green phosphorescent light that bathed the beach in its glow.
“Here!” Harley shouted, jumping up and down and waving his arms. “Here!” He knew he couldn’t be seen, he knew he couldn’t be heard, but it was enough to get the blood pumping again. “I’m here!”
There was no way they could have missed the flare, he told himself, no way in the world.
And even as the green streamers began to break up and scatter in the wind, Harley saw the red lights turning toward the island, and heard—or was he just imagining it?—the roar of the helicopter’s propellers.
Good Christ, he was going to make it. Maybe that cross was his good-luck charm, after all.
Or not.
No sooner had his heart lifted than he caught, out of the corner of his eye, a movement at the far end of the beach.
Just a shadow, prowling onto the sand and gravel.
The green glow in the sky was nearly gone, but in its fading light he saw the shadow joined by another. They were moving low, and slowly, as if drawn by the flare, but beginning to find something of even greater interest.
Harley stared out to sea again and saw the chopper’s lights coming closer.
Then looked back down the crescent of the beach, and saw that the two shadows had become three.
Then four.
His impulse was to shout and make himself plain to the Coast Guard pilot, but at the same time he dreaded attracting the attention of the beasts only a few hundred yards away. He knew what they must be—the black wolves indigenous to the island.
Or, if you believed the stories, the lost souls of the long-dead Russians.
He didn’t know what to do, but instinctively ran toward the pounding surf line. If he had to, he’d wade back into the sea and try to cling to one of the nearest rocks. Wolves weren’t swimmers.
But they were trackers, and as he watched in horror, they appeared to pick up his scent and raise their snouts to the wind. Harley searched for a weapon. The coffin lid lay nearby, but he could barely lift it, much less wield it in a fight. He pried a stone loose from the beach, and then another, and gripped them tightly in his hands.
The helicopter was hovering closer, but clearly feared getting its blades too close to the cliff, especially in such a driving wind.
A blazing white searchlight suddenly swiveled in his direction, sweeping first the rocks and shoals, then arcing toward the beach and centering on the coffin lid. Harley ran into its beam, waving and screaming, and a booming voice, distorted by the wind, said, “We see you!”
They were the best three words Harley had ever heard.
But glancing down the beach, he could see that the wolves had seen him, too.
“Move as far from the cliffs as you can!”
The spotlight still trained on him, Harley splashed into the water up to his ankles.
A wire basket was being lowered from the chopper, swinging on the end of a long, thick, nylon cord. The cord was unspooling rapidly, dropping the basket like a spider skittering down its own web.
But not as fast as Harley wanted it to. The wolves were picking up speed, scrabbling across the slick rocks and wet sand.
“Come on, for Christ’s sake!” Harley shouted. “Come on!”
The basket was swinging wildly, caught in the crosscurrents whirling around the beach.
The lead wolf was running headlong now—how could it have missed him framed in the spotlight like he was?—and Harley was racing back and forth trying to figure out where the basket would come down.
“Drop it!” he screamed. “Drop it!”
The basket swung like a pendulum just above his head, but when Harley jumped, his heavy boots stuck in the mud and sand.
The basket moved away, and the wolf pack got closer. The leader was splashing along the shoreline.
Harley kicked his feet free of the sand, and when the basket swung back, he leapt again, and this time he was able to grab the mesh of the basket.
“Strap yourself in!” he heard from above. “And hold on tight!”
Harley didn’t need to be told to hold on tight. He slammed his butt into the basket, threw the strap around his waist and fastened its buckle to the clamp, then clutched the rope for dear life.
The leader of the pack lunged at him just as Harley felt the winch tighten and the basket lift. He kicked a boot out and caught the wolf on its snarling muzzle. The basket swung out over the surf as the chopper maneuvered away from the cliffs.
Harley saw the rocky beach fall away beneath him, the wolf pack, denied their prey, milling around the coffin lid now. Close, but no cigar, he thought with jubilation.
Up, up he went, swinging in the frigid air, the wolves and the beach itself disappearing in the darkness. But just before he was gathered into the belly of the helicopter, he thought he glimpsed, on the top of the island’s highest cliff, a yellow light, like a lantern, hovering in the gloom.
Chapter 5
“Glad you could make it,” Dr. Levinson said, as Slater slunk into the conference room twenty minutes late.
Trouble he should have seen coming. Monday-morning traffic in D.C. was always bad, but today was the first time since his court-martial that he’d tried to enter the Walter Reed Army Medical Center through the STAFF ONLY gate on Aspen Street. His officer status, he learned, had already been revoked—the Army could be efficient as hell when they wanted to be—and though the guards knew him well, they had been obliged to hold him for clearance before letting him pass. Especially as he was attached to the AFIP—the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology—where some of the country’s most highly classified work on deadly contagions and biological warfare was done. Dr. Slater, as he was now simply known, was given a day pass, a new decal for his windshield, and instructions to enter the grounds through the Civilian Employee Gate on 16th Street from now on.
The soldier at the gate said, “Sorry, sir,” as he finally raised the crossbar.
And Slater said, “No reason to be—and no reason to call me sir anymore, either.”
“No … Doctor.”
Slater drove his government-issue Ford Taurus onto the huge campus, wondering when the car would be repossessed, then looped past several of the other buildings, including the old Army Medical Museum (now the National Museum of Health and Medicine), before parking in his reserved spot on the A level of the institute’s garage. They couldn’t take that away from him—he did still have a job as a senior epidemiologist for the Division of Infectious and Tropical Disease Pathology. And according to Dr. Levinson, his expertise was now required on a subject of national interest.
At the moment, however, all he saw was a conference table, with Dr. Levinson squinting hard at an open laptop in front of her.
“How are you feeling?” she said, but it was more than just a courtesy question. “Have you had any recurrences of the malaria?”
“I’m fine,” he said, working to keep his voice even and his gaze level. Shrugging off his overcoat—he’d rushed straight upstairs without stopping at his office—he took a seat at the table. The blue suit he was wearing hung loose on his frame; he’d lost weight in Afghanistan.
“Don’t lie to me, Dr. Slater. It’s important.”
“Whatever you need,” he said, trying to dodge the question, “I am available.”
Whether or not she believed him, or was just too intent on gaining his services to push it any further, he did not know. But leaning back in her chair and surveying him carefully, she said, “We all have a certain number of chips we can call in, and frankly, I used up most of mine at your trial.”
“I understand that,” he said, “and I appreciate it.”
“Good, I’m happy to hear that. Because now I’m going to tell you how you can pay me back.”
“Shoot.”
“We have a problem.”
So far no surprise. Slater’s job was nothing but dealing with problems.
“In Alaska.”
Now that was a surprise. Slater had been dispatched to some far-flung spots, but seldom anywhere in the United States.
“First, I want you to see some things.” She tapped a few keys on her laptop, and a slide appeared on a screen that had lowered behind her. It was a shot of a snowy road, with a long line of telephone poles running along one side, but all of them were teetering at odd angles.
“This shot was taken a few days ago, outside a town called Port Orlov.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“No one has. It’s a tiny fishing village, on the northwest tip of the Seward Peninsula. This shot was taken there, too,” she said, tapping again, and bringing up a picture of an A-frame house that had slipped off its foundation.
“And here’s the Inuit totem pole that has stood in the center of town since 1867, to commemorate the Russian sale of the Alaska territory.” Miraculously, the old wooden column, with faded paint on the faces of eagles and otters, was still standing, but at an angle that reminded Slater of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Plainly, the ground was shifting, but that was a problem for the geologists, was it not?
“Earthquake activity?” he asked, and Dr. Levinson shook her head.
“We’ve checked all the seismological data, and no, that’s not it.”
She tapped again, and a series of shots came up, of mailboxes that had fallen over, of concrete steps that had cracked, of wharves that had buckled.
“It’s climate change,” she said. “The average air temperature’s rising, the offshore currents are getting warmer … and the permafrost is starting to thaw.”
Okay, that sounded like a perfectly reasonable conclusion. But he still didn’t see how any of it fell into his bailiwick.
As if she could guess what he was thinking, Dr. Levinson clicked on the next slide. “And then this turned up,” she said.
At first he thought it was just an old dark door, or maybe an antique dining table, but then he looked more closely and saw that its surface was elaborately carved and depicted a classical figure, maybe a saint, in a flowing robe, and holding a set of keys on a ring. A long crack ran down one side of the wood.
“I assume it’s the top of a coffin,” Slater said, and when she didn’t correct him, he added, “but who’s that on top?”
“St. Peter, holding the keys to Heaven and Hell.”
“Where did it come from?”
“The Coast Guard retrieved it. A fishing boat had pulled it up in the nets, and when the boat hit some rocks and went under, one of the crew was able to hang on to it long enough to get to shore.”
“He sounds like Ishmael.”
“His name’s Harley Vane, and from what I’ve read in the initial reports, he’s a piece of work. He’s claimed the lid as salvage, and he still has it.”
That seemed a bit strange to Slater, but maybe if he’d had occasion to hitch a ride on a coffin lid, he’d feel attached to it, too. “Where’s it from?”
“Our best guess is that it came from the cemetery on a place called St. Peter’s Island, a few miles west of Port Orlov.”
Another slide came up. An aerial shot of a hulking black island, with a bank of fog clinging to its shores.
“The island is nearly impregnable, but a sect of religious zealots, most of them from Siberia, did manage to settle there around 1912.”
“Don’t tell me anyone’s still there,” Slater said, though one look at the forbidding island was enough to make him wonder how anyone could ever have chosen to call it home in the first place.
“No one alive,” Levinson said, and now she leaned forward on the table, her arms folded and her expression grave. She looked at him over the top of her bifocals. “They all died, in the space of a week or two. In 1918.”
The date was a dead giveaway, and now he could see where this had all been going. “The Spanish flu?”
Levinson nodded.
It was all coming together. “So the same disturbances to the ground in Port Orlov are showing up on the island, too.”
She remained silent while he worked it out.
“And as the permafrost thaws, things that were buried are coming to the surface. Things like old caskets.”
“The graveyard was built on a cliff, away from the settlement itself,” she said, filling in another piece. “But now the cliff is giving way.”
And shedding coffins … coffins filled with victims of the flu. “Is the concern,” he said, thinking aloud, “that the Spanish flu virus might still be viable in the frozen corpses?”
“It’s a remote possibility,” she conceded, “but it’s a possibility that we have to deal with, nonetheless.”
As an epidemiologist, Slater did not need to be told what could happen if the Spanish flu was ever released again into the world. In a few short years, the Spanish flu pandemic had swept the globe, and although there were still disputes about the final death toll, the figure of 50 million was well a
ccepted. In his own view, Slater had always thought that the casualty count on the Indian subcontinent had been vastly understated. What was not in dispute was that the Spanish flu had been the most devastating plague ever to hit the human race, and that to this day no one had ever completely figured it out, or discovered a way to combat it. Its victims died the most excruciating of deaths, literally drowning in a froth of their own blood and secretions, and although some of the most thorough research into mapping its genetic structure had been done right here, at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the scientific community was still no closer to a cure.
“And this man Harley Vane,” Slater said, continuing his train of thought. “Was he ever exposed to a body from that coffin?”
“He says no,” Dr. Levinson replied. “He says the lid alone came up in the nets.” She said it as if she wasn’t sure if she believed it. “And all the other crew members died at sea.”
A slab of wood, even one that had been part of a coffin a hundred years ago, was not going to carry any contagion; Slater was certain of that. But he was also certain of what Dr. Levinson uttered for the both of them next.
“We need to secure the cemetery,” she declared, “before any more caskets pop up, and we need to do it as expeditiously, and with as little hoopla, as possible. That kind of quick and thorough work is your specialty, Dr. Slater.”
He accepted the compliment without comment. It was a fact.
“And then we will need to exhume one or more of the bodies, take all the usual core samples, and have them meticulously examined and analyzed, under Biohazard 3 protocols.” She pursed her lips, and waited. The only sound was the low hum of the air-filtration system that serviced every inch of the institute’s offices and laboratories. Her words hung in the air, awaiting a response, but there was only one that Slater could give.
“When do I leave?” he asked.
“Yesterday.”
Chapter 6
TSARSKOE SELO, 1916
The Romanov Cross: A Novel Page 5
