Slater took off his field kit and opened it, planning out the task ahead. Unlike all the others on the island, Anastasia plainly had not died of the flu — she was immune, as was he, after weathering the storm at the hospital in Nome. But he did not forget that it was she who had carried it here, nearly a century ago. As a result, it was critical that he still observe the necessary and standard precautions — especially in regard to the bystander Kozak.
Digging out a gauze face mask, he told the professor to put it on and to stand back by the altar.
“Why?” Kozak said. “What are you planning to do?”
Donning another mask himself, Slater said, “Provide your friends at the Trofimuk Institute with a little DNA evidence, if all goes well.”
“Yes, thank you,” Kozak said, slipping the elastic bands behind his ears. “I think they would rather have that than the royal jewels.”
Slater lifted the lantern off the arm of the chair and placed it on the dais beside her boot. Puzzlingly, there was moisture there, and even the hem of her long skirt looked damp; he assumed he must have been dripping melted snow from his coat.
Then he surveyed the corpse, deciding on the best area from which to draw the sample. The hair could provide some DNA, especially if he made sure to capture the follicle, too — the shaft would provide only mitochondrial evidence — but it was terribly degraded and might not do the job. Her bony wrist, on the other hand, lay perfectly exposed, and if he could suction up some petrified skin and blood cells from a vein, he would get the richest and most viable sample possible.
Laying his own flashlight on the opposite arm of the chair, he reminded Kozak to remain at a distance, “But try holding up the candelabra. I need all the light I can get.”
Kozak raised the candles, and in their flickering glow, Slater located the vein — a barely perceptible blue line under the mottled brown skin — and took an empty syringe out of his kit. To get a better angle, he turned the hand slightly — it moved more easily than he expected — drew back the plunger, and touched its tip to the skin.
Then he depressed the plunger.
And the hand flinched.
Slater recoiled, leaving the syringe stuck.
Even Kozak must have seen what had just happened. “Mother of God,” he intoned.
Slater stepped back, first in astonishment, and then in horror.
The woman’s eyes opened — they were a pale gray — and she looked at him as if she were still asleep — asleep and unwilling to wake up. She stirred in the chair, like a dreamer merely turning in bed, and her boot inched the lantern off the dais, where it shattered on the floor. Rivulets of kerosene ran in all directions, soaking the fallen canopy.
“Mother of God,” Kozak said again, stumbling backwards, the candelabra shaking in his hand. A lighted candle, toppling from its perch, dropped to the floor.
There was a crackling sound, as the flame caught the kerosene and raced across the floor of the sacristy.
Slater could not believe his own eyes.
The old woman herself looked bewildered, but oddly unafraid. Nor did she move to avoid the erupting flame.
“We have to get out!” Kozak shouted, and Slater could hear him fumbling with the crossbar that secured the bishop’s door.
The fire grazed the edge of the canopy, and the dry old fabric went up like a torch. The licking flames snagged the hem of the altar cloths and they, too, ignited, engulfing the sacrarium like a ring of sacred fire. The rubies glowed like coals, the diamonds blazed, the bowl itself blackened and cracked, spilling the gems all over the altar.
“Come on!” Kozak shouted, as Slater heard the crossbar thump onto the floor. The tar was heating up, melting.
But he couldn’t leave the old woman — whoever she was — to die here.
“Now!” the professor shouted, throwing open the bishop’s door. A gust of icy wind roared into the room, as if it had been eagerly awaiting its chance, and before Slater could make a move, the whole sacristy was suddenly aswirl with fire and ash, smoke and snow. The old woman never budged from the dais, and Slater could swear that she even opened her arms to the maelstrom, as if she were welcoming a long-lost lover. He even thought that he heard her calling out a name—“Sergei!”—again and again.
The kerosene around her feet sent tendrils of flame shooting up her body. As her hair exploded in a crackling corona of fire, Slater felt Kozak’s heavy hand on his collar, dragging him out of the church.
Outside, Kozak rolled him onto the ground; he hadn’t even noticed that his pants were smoldering and his boots were sticky with hot tar. Groves appeared and patted him down with handfuls of snow, all the while pushing and pulling them both away from the mounting inferno.
“What’s going on?” a guard shouted, running toward the billowing smoke. It was Rudy, with a rifle that he quickly turned away when he saw who it was. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Rudy looked into the sacristy, just as Slater did, but it was like looking into the belly of a blast furnace. The flames were white-hot now, hissing and spitting, and they had soared up into the onion dome, its holes and cracks making it glow like the candle flame it was meant to represent. The whole church began to collapse in on itself with a thunderous clatter and crash, throwing sparks and streamers of fire into the night. Carried on the wind, they landed on the wooden cover of the old well, the roof beams of the neighboring cabins, the old blacksmith stall.
Coast Guardsmen and men from the work crews were tumbling out of their Quonset huts, pulling on parkas and boots and gloves, shouting and running helter-skelter across the grounds of the colony.
First one structure caught fire, then another, until it was as if the whole stockade was forming a ring of orange flame. Slater and Kozak and Groves scrambled down the hill toward the main gates, colliding with Colonel Waggoner, his coat open, his boots unclasped, his hair wild. He took them all in for a second, but it was enough for Slater to know that he’d figured out who was responsible. Slater’s pants were scorched black and flapping around his legs.
“We’ve got a hose going, Colonel!” a Coast Guardsman hollered to him, but Waggoner looked around at the looming wall of flame and waved the man toward the gates.
“Just get out! Get out now!” He stumbled up the hill a few yards, but the smoke was getting thicker by the minute. “Evacuate!” he shouted to anyone who could still hear him. “Evacuate the colony!”
With the sergeant plowing a path for them, Slater and Kozak joined the others jostling toward the main gates, and by the time they reached the safety of the cliffs and turned around, breathless, to see, the colony was nothing but an immense bonfire, teased by the treacherous winds off the Bering Sea and filling the sky with a cloud of smoke and cinders. Slater could feel the ash settling on his bare head and shoulders.
The church had long since fallen off its foundation, and there was nothing left of it to be seen. Somewhere under the towering pile of burning debris lay the Romanov jewels — and their last rightful owner … the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Of that, Slater was now sure, though no one else but Professor Kozak would ever know, or ever believe, it.
Nor would he ever tell anyone — not even Nika. It was better if the ground was considered barren and sere, better if the last of the Romanovs was allowed to rest in peace, free from ghouls and treasure-hunters like Harley and Charlie Vane. She had waited a very long time for this, and whatever spell had kept her here on this lonely island, long beyond any ordinary human span, Slater hoped that it, too, had been extinguished at last.