The Romanov Cross: A Novel (6 page)

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.

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.

“Glad you could make it,” Dr. Levinson said, as Slater slunk into the conference room twenty minutes late.

Considering everything he owed her, the last thing he wanted to do was to be late to the first meeting she’d requested since the trial. “Sorry, but I had some trouble at the gate.”

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.