“What about leeching?” Slater asked.
“Should be minimal, and we’re laying concrete on top in the meantime.”
“It’s going to crack.”
“You know that, and I know that, but the oversight committee in Washington wanted concrete, so I’m giving it to them.”
Already, Slater could see that Captain Jenkins was better at the politics than he had ever been.
“In January, once the new budget is done,” Jenkins continued, “I’ll build in the cost of an impermeable seal. We’ll lay it down in the spring.”
Slater nodded in approval, relieved to see that the job was in such capable hands. What he’d heard about the captain was true.
Once Jenkins had gone to take his seat at the colonel’s table, Kozak said, “At least they used my radar maps for something.” Then, leaning forward, he said, “So? You heard the colonel. If we do not do it tonight, we will not have another chance.”
Groves looked at Slater, appraisingly, while Kozak drummed his fingers on the map.
Colonel Waggoner laughed loudly at something, banging his fist on the table so hard that plates jumped.
“What can they do?” Slater said, pushing his chair back and glancing at his watch. “Court-martial me?”
Chapter 67
The colony was so bright, Anastasia could barely stand it. Even now, long after dark, long after all the day’s activity had ceased, the intruders left their lights on — huge glaring lamps brighter than a thousand crystal chandeliers. What were they afraid of? What did they hope to see? Their green tents glowed from within, their engines hummed all night and day, and their airplanes — strangely shaped machines, equipped with propellers spinning on top like pinwheels — came and went, disgorging yet other machines, trucks and tractors, all of them designed, it seemed, to wreak havoc and destruction.
Already, the cemetery was gone. The posts, into which she had carved her plea for forgiveness so many years ago, had been pulled down. The tombstones had been wantonly swept away, the graves themselves paved over, but she knew, as she crossed the smooth hard surface, exactly whose souls lay beneath her boots at each step. Arkady, the blacksmith, was buried here. Ilya, the woodman, was buried there; his wife rested beside him. When she approached the cliffs, she knew that the remains of the Deacon Stefan had lain below. And just beyond it, at the outermost point, the grave of Sergei had once been located.
Now, the spot was just a jagged scar in the earth.
She stood there, looking out to sea, as she had done for time immemorial, wondering if she would ever be able to join the sleeping souls that she had once known. She had buried the emerald cross with her one true love, but its power over her had persisted. The chains that bound her to the earth still held tight, long beyond any mortal span. Although Rasputin had prophesied just such a curse upon her family if they should be responsible for his death, she alone had lived to endure it. Why oh why had the starets not foreseen that?
Or had he? That was what she pondered in her darkest moments of all.
There were boats out tonight, bobbing in the Bering Sea. Even they had their lights on, regularly sweeping their beams across the rocky cliffs and shoreline. The feeble glow from her lantern was swallowed in their occasional flood of light. At first, she had thought all these intrusions on the island might signal some end to her eternal purgatory there, but now she was no longer so hopeful. She did not know what, if anything, these events might portend. Perhaps they would prove just a passing phase, a random incursion into her solitude, ending again in her abandonment. It would not be a surprise to her.
Only death could come to her as a surprise now.
As she turned back toward her sanctuary, she could hear the soft footfall of the wolves who were her only companions. As the settlers had died, the wolves had proliferated — one, it appeared, for each dead soul. And over the many decades, their number, she had not failed to notice, had neither increased nor decreased. They could not speak, but in their eyes she could see a preternatural intelligence, a yearning to reach across the silent divide between humans and animals. She knew that they, too, were held captive here, isolated as she was, caught in the same spell. Their allegiance to the fallen starets was as unshakeable as their predatory instinct, and the prophet’s power, like Circe’s over her swine, lingered well beyond his own watery grave.
The leader of the pack, with a white blaze on his muzzle, trotted ahead, as if to assure her safe passage. It was a journey they had made thousands of times before.
Even the church, normally dark, was bathed, like everything else, in the glow of the colony lamps; its ancient and damaged cupola shone like a beacon as she approached. People in the old country had often joked that the tops of Russian Orthodox churches looked like onions, but Father Grigori had explained to her when she was a girl that it was meant to represent something holy.
“The dome is shaped like a candle flame,” he had told her, pointing to the top of the imperial chapel at Tsarkoe Selo. “It is meant to light our way to Heaven.”
If only she could believe that. If only, Anastasia thought, she could find such a pathway. Oh, how fast she would climb it, bad foot or no.
But as God had not seen fit to show her the way, and eternal damnation awaited those who attempted to thwart His will by their own hand, all she could do was submit herself and pray for deliverance.
For now, she took leave of the wolves and passed through the secret door that led to her private chamber. Bolting the passageway behind her, she settled her aching bones into this last tiny refuge. Resting the lantern beside her hand, she closed her eyes and willed herself back to other times and other places. Sometimes it was the royal retreat in the Crimea, sometimes it was the garden of the Alexander Palace. Always it was with her family. Like a woodland creature hibernating for the winter, she would enter into a suspended state, a dreamlike trance from which she hoped never to awaken.
And yet, fight it as hard as she might, she always did. The next night, or maybe the one after that, she always found herself awake again, walking the cliffs, lantern in hand and heart as heavy as a millstone.
Chapter 68
Poking his head out of his tent, Slater knew there was simply no way to cross the grounds to the church without being spotted. The colonel plainly believed in lots of lights, all the time.
Slipping his field pack onto his back — one thing he’d learned was to keep his basic supplies, from first-aid kit to syringes on him at all times — he checked his watch. It was just before midnight, and after waiting as a lone sentry stomped across the grounds and off toward the main gate, he sauntered out of the tent, walking briskly between the tents and bivouacs and around the old well. It was a clear night, but frigidly cold — when wasn’t it? — and made worse by a biting wind. Even beneath all his thermal gear, he had to fight back a shiver.
He gave the church a wide berth, swinging wide and keeping to what cover he could, before doubling back to the northern wall. So far, there was no further sign of the night patrol.
Nor was there any sign of Sergeant Groves or Kozak, either … until he heard a low whistle and turned to see them both huddled in the breach of the stockade wall. The professor carried a shovel and Groves had liberated a pickaxe. Waving them over, Slater grabbed the professor by the shoulder and said, “So where’s this crawl space?”