“Hey,” he said. “Somebody in here?”
But there was no reply.
“McDaniel?” he said, thinking it might be the owner of the lumberyard trying to catch him red-handed. “That you? It’s Harley.”
Still no answer, but definitely the sound of a footfall.
“I just needed to borrow a shovel to clear the ice off my trailer hitch. Hope that’s okay.” But knowing the reputation the Vane boys had around town, he added, “I was gonna put it right back as soon as I was done.” And for once, Christ, it was almost the truth.
With a spade still in his hands, he crept gingerly to the end of the pile, expecting maybe to see McDaniel, or even that Inuit kid who worked as his assistant, but what he saw instead, going in and out of the light, was more like some scrawny scarecrow. At first he even thought it might be a mannequin.
But then it blinked.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said, but even as he asked, he recognized him.
The wet brown hair, hanging down onto the gray tunic with the banded collar. The long black sealskin coat. The big dark eyes, the petrified skin, the yellow teeth protruding from the drawn lips.
It was the body from the coffin he’d found in the nets.
And as he looked on in horror, the creature extended his hand, as if expecting to be given something.
“What do you want?” Harley said, backing up but clutching the spade for dear life. “Get the fuck out of here!”
The young man opened his mouth — and Harley could swear that, even from ten feet away, he got a gust of the foulest air he had ever smelled — and said something in what sounded like Russian. But Russian spoken as if by someone still in the act of drowning, the words gurgling and slurred.
Harley lifted the spade and cocked it back over one shoulder, like a baseball bat.
“Don’t come any closer!”
He could hear the Rottweiler next door going crazier than ever, and for once he did wish the damn dog had gotten loose.
The man repeated whatever he’d said, and even lifted a hand — the fingers were nothing but stark white bones, with long, curling nails — and touched an area of his chest.
Right about where the emerald cross had hung.
Jesus Christ. If Harley had had it on him, he’d have thrown the damn thing right back at him.
“I don’t have it!” he shouted. And then, as if it would make any sense, “Charlie’s got it!”
But the man didn’t look like he understood a word of English, and when he took a step forward, Harley found himself backed up against the rear wall of the shed. He brandished the spade, but the man took no apparent notice. He came closer and Harley swung the spade at him, catching him on the shoulder and flinging him like a bundle of sticks and rags into a pile of loose timbers and shavings.
Screaming, Harley leapt over the spot where he had been standing, and with the spade still clutched in his hand, ran toward the door, knocking the wheelbarrow over on its side, then out into the alleyway. The Rottweiler was going crazy, barking in a frenzy and foaming at the window. Looking over his shoulder, Harley suddenly collided with something, or someone, and went sprawling on the ground.
Standing above him, looking pissed and confused, was McDaniel.
“What the hell are you up to, Harley?” His eyes flicked to the spade. “You planning to shovel my driveway?”
“I just needed to borrow this,” Harley said, still trying to catch his breath and keeping an eye on the open doors to the shed. Was the damn thing going to come out after him?
“Borrow it?” McDaniel said. “Yeah, right.”
He stomped into the shed before Harley could stop him, and after a minute or so, Harley saw the light go out and McDaniel came out again, none the worse for wear.
“You need to borrow some tools,” he said, “all you have to do is ask.”
“Got it,” Harley said, standing on his own two feet now. But what had happened to that corpse in the sealskin coat? Had McDaniel missed it somehow? Or was it just … gone?
“That was a pretty good speech you made in the church.”
Was it ever there in the first place? Harley wondered if he was losing it.
“Now don’t go fucking things up by stealing stuff again.”
Harley nodded, and shuffled off toward his trailer, leaving the spade propped by the steps. His hands were so cold and unsteady he had trouble getting the key in the lock. And when he did finally turn to close the door behind him, he saw McDaniel still watching him and shaking his head.
Chapter 18
Tonight, Prince Felix Yussoupov thought, I am going to change everything. Not only the way the world regards me, but history itself.
Oh, he was well aware of the figure he cut in cosmopolitan society. For years, he had deliberately gone about shocking everyone he knew — showing up in the finest women’s fashions and draped in his mother’s jewels, at cafés and restaurants and parties. He had hosted wild parties — orgies, to be frank — at one or another of his family’s many palaces in Moscow, St. Petersburg, or the countryside. He had enjoyed the favors of girls and boys alike, actresses and opera singers and dashing young sailors. And to cap it all off, he had married one of the Tsar’s own nieces, the Princess Irina, celebrated for her unparalleled beauty. In truth, he thought he was just as good-looking as she was, but she was a very sought-after match, and together he had to admit that they made a perfect pair.
Tonight, however, the princess was safely ensconced hundreds of miles from St. Petersburg, in the grand Yussoupov hunting lodge in the Crimea. He wanted her nowhere near the Moika Palace tonight, on this fateful New Year’s Eve. It was enough that she had served as bait for the trap.
Yussoupov had promised Rasputin that if he came to the palace at midnight, there would be a private party at which the monk would be introduced, at long last, to this famous beauty. “The princess has heard so much about you,” Yussoupov told him, “she insisted that I arrange for her to meet you in person.” The man’s rapacity was exceeded only by his vanity. “I have promised her you would be there.”
The prince had sent his own motorcar — the black Bentley with the family crest on the doors — to pick up Rasputin and bring him to the palace. Checking his gold pocket watch, he saw that the car should be arriving any minute. From the upper floor, he could hear the gramophone playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy”—a very popular tune among Russian society these days — and the sound of his coconspirators’ voices, simulating the merriment of a party in full swing.
Snow was falling on the flagstones of the court outside and sticking to the thin sheet of ice that covered the canal beyond the gates. Downstairs, in the vaulted chambers where the deed was to be done, all was in readiness. The dainty cakes, laced with cyanide, were arrayed on silver salvers. The Madeira, also poisoned, was decanted and waiting only to be drunk. And when Yussoupov saw Dr. Lazovert, disguised as a chauffeur, pilot the car through the iron gates, he stepped outside to greet his guest.
“Welcome!” he shouted, throwing open his arms, as Rasputin disembarked.
“Felix!” Rasputin replied, grasping him in a bear hug.
For the mad monk, he was positively presentable tonight. Yussoupov could tell the man had bathed — the scent of cheap soap clung to his skin — and he was wearing an intricately embroidered silk blouse and black-velvet trousers. Even his leather boots were shined and clean.
But the pectoral cross that usually dangled around his throat, its emeralds reputedly imbued with some mystical powers of enchantment — for how else could a brute like this have risen to such eminence and power? — was nowhere visible. Yussoupov took it as a stroke of luck, like entering the lists against an opponent with a broken lance.