Slater waited. “Well?”

“It reads,” Kozak, said, stroking his silver beard and holding Slater’s gaze, “ ‘Anastasia, Grand Duchess of All the Russias.’ ”

Chapter 66

Sitting with Kozak and Groves in the mess tent that night, Slater felt like a mutineer. All around them, the Coast Guardsmen and techies who had been brought in to deal with the cleanup of the colony were chowing down, boisterously trading jokes and telling stories, piling their plates high and unwinding from another trying day, while Slater and his own team were huddled over an aluminum table in the corner, partly concealed by stacked crates, and speaking in low tones about things no one would ever believe.

“But I thought all those stories about Anastasia were bull,” Groves said, mopping up the sloppy joe gravy with a crust of bread. “She died along with everybody else in her family.”

“Not necessarily,” Kozak replied. “There were always rumors that one of the sisters had survived.”

“How?” Groves asked. “Unless I’ve got my history wrong, they were executed at close range.”

“According to some accounts — and these were given by the assassins themselves — the bullets bounced off the girls’ bodies. The killers became frightened, thinking that the young duchesses might be divine, after all. It was only later, when the bodies were stripped at the coal mines and the corsets were taken off them, that the jewels were found in the lining.”

“So it was like they had body armor on,” Groves said, a little less skeptically now.

“Yes. And there is also a story of a sympathetic guard who helped to smuggle Anastasia to safety.”

“That’s a lot of speculative leaps you just made,” Slater said. Despite what had been written in the sexton’s journal, he could not accept it all as readily as Kozak had. Maybe Kozak had misinterpreted something; maybe it was a hoax — or the entry of a woman who had gone justifiably mad. “For one thing, haven’t all the bodies been recovered?”

“Not necessarily,” the professor declared. “There are still questions. Eleven people were shot in that cellar, but the physical remains of only nine, maybe ten, were ever identified with some degree of certainty. Remember, the bodies had been mutilated, dismembered, burned, and saturated with acid; they had also been moved from one place to another to avoid detection. It was all a great jumble of broken bones and rotting teeth, scattered in several places.”

“But what about DNA analysis?” Slater asked.

“By the time the burial sites were revisited in 2008, the decay had been substantial. Also, please remember that six women were killed there, and four of them were sisters, close in age. Even if a bone could be identified as that of a young woman, it was difficult to know whose it was. Was it Anastasia, or simply a piece of Maria or Olga or Tatiana?” Kozak leaned back in his chair, dabbing a napkin at his beard. “No, my friends, it has never been a settled question. It never will be,” he said, “unless we settle it.”

“And how is breaking into the church tonight going to help settle it?” Groves asked.

“Everything precious that the colony contained would have been kept in its sacristy, the altar room behind the iconostasis. There should be two doors that lead through it, one at either end. The deacon’s own records are undoubtedly inside, listing all the members of his congregation. Is there some evidence of Anastasia there? Who knows what we might find?”

“But that’s if we could get in,” Groves said. “Have you noticed that they’ve roped the place off, padlocked the doors, and plugged the hole in the side wall? The colonel’s even got a sentry doing laps around the place.”

Kozak smiled and unfolded a topographical map between their plates. “The beauties of GPR,” he said, pointing to a dip in two of the lines.

“What am I looking at?” Groves asked.

“To prepare a foundation for the church and to level the ground, the settlers set off dynamite. The same way they prepared the graveyard. Then they sank the corner supports, and built the church with a small gap underneath it.”

“A crawl space?” Slater said.

“Yes, and the tilting of the church has left it wider right here, under the northern side. It is probably big enough for us to get through. Then we pry a hole up through the floorboards; most of them are rotting, anyway.”

“Is that a treasure map you’ve got there?” Slater heard a derisive voice booming from the entryway. Looking up, he saw Colonel Waggoner and his retinue stomping the snow off their boots and unzipping their parkas. Slater’s first impulse was to conceal the chart, but that would only call more attention to it. “Better use it fast,” Waggoner said. “Your flight leaves tomorrow, gentlemen, at noon sharp.”

One of his lieutenants said something Slater couldn’t make out, and Waggoner, laughing, replied, “What more harm could they do?”

Then he marched on toward the table reserved for the commander, with all but one of the others in tow. Slater didn’t recognize him, but he wore a captain’s uniform under his coat and, after nodding hello to Kozak and Groves, extended his hand.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Dr. Slater.”

“This is Captain Jenkins,” Kozak said.

“AFIP,” Jenkins added. “First thing I had to do on this job was read through all your files in D.C. If you don’t mind my saying so, you’ve done some spectacular work.”

“Tell that to your boss,” Groves said, lifting his chin toward Waggoner’s table.

“Jenkins!” the colonel hollered. “No consorting with the enemy!” He laughed, as if it were a joke, but no one was fooled.

“He makes a lot of noise, but don’t worry,” Jenkins confided. “So far, he’s let me run my own show. We used the professor’s ground-fracture maps to pump undiluted organophosphates to a depth of two meters.”

“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.