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.

Chapter 5

“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.