Sergei knew that the four brothers referred to the stumps of four towering pine trees that had once stood where nothing but coal pits and peat bogs now lay. Was this how Yurovsky had planned to dispose of the bodies? By throwing them down the abandoned coal shafts?
“I promised my men that they’d have some fun with the duchesses,” the man complained. “And I planned to have the Tsaritsa myself.”
“Shut your trap, Ermakov, and do what I tell you.” Yurovsky was struggling to remain in command of the rowdy horsemen; that much Sergei could tell from the strained pitch of his voice. “Unload the bodies, and the first man I see stealing anything, I’ll shoot.”
What would they steal, Sergei thought? The rings on their fingers? But even as he heard a few of the men dismounting, and the Latvians clambering out of the car, he knew that this might be his only opportunity to save Ana. As soon as the back panel was dropped flat again, and he saw the faces of the peasants leering in at the bloody cargo, he stood up, teetering a little as if he were drunk, and said, “Take them away, comrades.”
A few dirty hands reached in, grabbed the dangling arms and legs of the dead and dragged them out of the truck. Sheets were pulled aside, and one man called out, “I’ve got a duchess, but I’m damned if I know which one.”
There was laughter, topped only when another man shouted, “And I’ve got the queen bitch herself!”
Picking up the body of Anastasia, and handling it with deliberate carelessness, Sergei stepped over the corpses of the maid and the cook and hopped down onto the ground. The road was illuminated by the headlights of the car, but the forest was thick on both sides, and as the hay carts were brought around back, Sergei carried his bundle past one wagon, and then another, and when a cry went up at the discovery of the Tsar—“Who wants to spit in the face of Nikolashka himself!” Ermakov exulted — Sergei pretended to drunkenly stumble off the rutted path and into a pile of brambles.
But no one called out after him, and no one noticed. Everyone was so intent on defiling the corpse of the Tsar that they didn’t see him disappear, and hoisting the girl over his shoulder like a sack of grain — and how many times had he done that very thing in the fields of Pokrovskoe? — he trotted into the dense and pitch-black woods. Ana groaned, and all he could say was, “Hush, Ana, hush.” She was heavier than he thought she would be, and her body was harder and stiffer, but in all the hubbub and confusion, the Reds might not even notice that one of the duchesses was missing until they assembled all the bodies at the Four Brothers. By then Sergei planned to be miles away, hidden in the one place he knew would provide a safe refuge for the lone survivor of the imperial family.
Chapter 42
Harley had just spent the worst night of his entire life, and he was not about to go through another one like it. He’d broken into Russell’s remaining stores of beer and drifted off into sleep for half an hour here and there, but every time he did, he’d awakened again with a start, expecting to see that old lady from the cliffs, or Eddie, bruised and bloodied, cursing him out for cutting the rope.
Or that mangled guy on the autopsy table in the tent.
As far as he was concerned, St. Peter’s Island was even worse than all the stories and legends he’d ever heard about it. It was one big haunted house, fit for nothing but the dead and anyone else who felt ready to join them. He needed to get off of it while there was still time.
If there was still time.
As soon as the storm abated enough to let a little daylight shine, he’d ventured out of the cave to see if the trawler Kodiak had been freed by the surging tides.
Freed wasn’t the word. Scuttled was more like it. The boat had settled deeper into the cove, and he could see pieces of it drifting away on each icy wave. The groaning he had heard the night before was its hull being scraped on the rocks, its cabin flooding, its masts and doors and gangways being rent by the pounding surf.
As for the skiff — not that he could ever have made it back to Port Orlov in that flimsy thing, anyway — it had been dragged down by the tide and reduced to a pile of splinters and sawdust.
There was really only one option left to him — the RHI that he’d spotted down on the beach below the cemetery, where the Coast Guard must have left it for an emergency evacuation.
Well, if this wasn’t an emergency, then what the hell was?
Trekking over that way again was about the last thing in the world he wanted to do — that black dude with the rifle was never far from his thoughts — but he just didn’t see any way around it. He also knew that if he debated it much longer, he’d lose the few hours of daylight he had left. Earlier, he had emptied his coat pockets — vials, icon, and all — willy-nilly into his backpack, and now he threw in some Power-Bars, a bottled water, and the handgun Russell had been kind enough to leave behind. He’d have liked to take more, but he wanted to be sure he was traveling light. He wasn’t feeling up to par and wouldn’t have been surprised if he was running a bit of a fever. By the time he got back to his trailer, he’d probably be sporting a full-blown cold.
Walking back toward the beach and the stone steps leading down to the inflatable boat, he saw that his tracks from the day before had already been obliterated. Alaska had a way of doing that. Every sign of human life was soon wiped away by nature, and the stuff that lasted at all — like the colony — just wound up being a reminder of how empty, short, and hollow life really was. Sometimes, like right now, Harley thought it might have been a good idea to go and live someplace else, after all. He should have done it the day Charlie had moved his two crazy women into the old house.
As he approached the rear of the stockade, Harley could hear the cawing of crows and noticed that a pair of red hawks were circling lazily in the sky. If he could have avoided cutting through the colony again, he would have, but the wind on the cliffs was so strong — and his memories of the specter he’d seen there so fresh — he felt the risks were better just scuttling across the campground and out through the main gates. Despite the bitter cold, he was sweating inside his parka.
There were even more birds circling in the sky above the side of the old church, and a whole flock of them on the ground strutting and pecking around a spot close to a jagged hole in the foundation. A snowdrift had been blown up against one wall, but just as Harley crept past, the birds reluctantly took flight, and he could see that there was something lying there, mostly hidden under the crust of snow. It appeared that other animals had been burrowing into the drift, too, and he could see that the snow had a faintly pinkish cast … and that what he’d thought was a twig sticking up was actually the toe of a boot. He moved a little closer, and with the tips of his glove brushed some snow away. He didn’t need to see anything more than the torn shreds of a propane company work shirt to know that these were the remains of Russell, and that the local critters had been heartily chowing down.
Just as the crabs had probably made the most of Eddie by now.
It wasn’t that he was completely heartless — after all, he’d known these guys a long time — but it couldn’t help but occur to him that whatever the diamonds in the icon were worth (and it had to be plenty), he’d now be splitting the money only two ways, instead of four. Charlie would probably claim it was all the hand of God at work.
Staying low to the ground, he hurried past the colony tents, through the main gates, and over to the side of the cliff. The mist that clung to St. Peter’s Island was lying a hundred yards offshore, but on the beach below he could still see the yellow RHI, firmly tied and clamped between makeshift davits made out of driftwood logs. It was just about the first piece of luck he’d had since this whole damn nightmare had begun, he thought.