Now, the spot was just a jagged scar in the earth.

She stood there, looking out to sea, as she had done for time immemorial, wondering if she would ever be able to join the sleeping souls that she had once known. She had buried the emerald cross with her one true love, but its power over her had persisted. The chains that bound her to the earth still held tight, long beyond any mortal span. Although Rasputin had prophesied just such a curse upon her family if they should be responsible for his death, she alone had lived to endure it. Why oh why had the starets not foreseen that?

Or had he? That was what she pondered in her darkest moments of all.

There were boats out tonight, bobbing in the Bering Sea. Even they had their lights on, regularly sweeping their beams across the rocky cliffs and shoreline. The feeble glow from her lantern was swallowed in their occasional flood of light. At first, she had thought all these intrusions on the island might signal some end to her eternal purgatory there, but now she was no longer so hopeful. She did not know what, if anything, these events might portend. Perhaps they would prove just a passing phase, a random incursion into her solitude, ending again in her abandonment. It would not be a surprise to her.

Only death could come to her as a surprise now.

As she turned back toward her sanctuary, she could hear the soft footfall of the wolves who were her only companions. As the settlers had died, the wolves had proliferated — one, it appeared, for each dead soul. And over the many decades, their number, she had not failed to notice, had neither increased nor decreased. They could not speak, but in their eyes she could see a preternatural intelligence, a yearning to reach across the silent divide between humans and animals. She knew that they, too, were held captive here, isolated as she was, caught in the same spell. Their allegiance to the fallen starets was as unshakeable as their predatory instinct, and the prophet’s power, like Circe’s over her swine, lingered well beyond his own watery grave.

The leader of the pack, with a white blaze on his muzzle, trotted ahead, as if to assure her safe passage. It was a journey they had made thousands of times before.

Even the church, normally dark, was bathed, like everything else, in the glow of the colony lamps; its ancient and damaged cupola shone like a beacon as she approached. People in the old country had often joked that the tops of Russian Orthodox churches looked like onions, but Father Grigori had explained to her when she was a girl that it was meant to represent something holy.

“The dome is shaped like a candle flame,” he had told her, pointing to the top of the imperial chapel at Tsarkoe Selo. “It is meant to light our way to Heaven.”

If only she could believe that. If only, Anastasia thought, she could find such a pathway. Oh, how fast she would climb it, bad foot or no.

But as God had not seen fit to show her the way, and eternal damnation awaited those who attempted to thwart His will by their own hand, all she could do was submit herself and pray for deliverance.

For now, she took leave of the wolves and passed through the secret door that led to her private chamber. Bolting the passageway behind her, she settled her aching bones into this last tiny refuge. Resting the lantern beside her hand, she closed her eyes and willed herself back to other times and other places. Sometimes it was the royal retreat in the Crimea, sometimes it was the garden of the Alexander Palace. Always it was with her family. Like a woodland creature hibernating for the winter, she would enter into a suspended state, a dreamlike trance from which she hoped never to awaken.

And yet, fight it as hard as she might, she always did. The next night, or maybe the one after that, she always found herself awake again, walking the cliffs, lantern in hand and heart as heavy as a millstone.

Chapter 68

Poking his head out of his tent, Slater knew there was simply no way to cross the grounds to the church without being spotted. The colonel plainly believed in lots of lights, all the time.

Slipping his field pack onto his back — one thing he’d learned was to keep his basic supplies, from first-aid kit to syringes on him at all times — he checked his watch. It was just before midnight, and after waiting as a lone sentry stomped across the grounds and off toward the main gate, he sauntered out of the tent, walking briskly between the tents and bivouacs and around the old well. It was a clear night, but frigidly cold — when wasn’t it? — and made worse by a biting wind. Even beneath all his thermal gear, he had to fight back a shiver.

He gave the church a wide berth, swinging wide and keeping to what cover he could, before doubling back to the northern wall. So far, there was no further sign of the night patrol.

Nor was there any sign of Sergeant Groves or Kozak, either … until he heard a low whistle and turned to see them both huddled in the breach of the stockade wall. The professor carried a shovel and Groves had liberated a pickaxe. Waving them over, Slater grabbed the professor by the shoulder and said, “So where’s this crawl space?”

Kozak, moving faster than a man of his girth usually moved, scuttled to a spot a few yards away, got down on his knees, peered at the base of the church, pawed at the snowy ground, and whispered, “Under here — it should be right under here.”

“It should be, or it is?” Slater said.

“It is! It is!”

Groves didn’t need any more instruction than that. He muscled them both aside, and swung the pickaxe at the ground. Fortunately, the dull clang of the blade on the hard ground was muffled by the gusting wind. After several strokes, he paused to let Kozak shovel the loose soil and snow away.

“Yes, yes, it’s here!” Kozak said. “A few more strikes!”

Groves wielded the pickaxe while Slater, crouching, kept watch. When he was done, Kozak quickly brushed the debris aside — slivers of timber and sawdust were mixed with the snow and ice — and ran his flashlight beam back and forth. “Frank!” he urged. “Come!”

Slater reached into his field pack and withdrew the scabbard that housed a nine-inch surgical knife; it wasn’t often that he had had to use the knife, but once or twice emergency amputations had had to be performed. If its broad blade could saw through bone, he assumed it would do perfectly well with wood.

“Look!” Kozak said, and peering into the hole, Slater could see that the GPR had been right. A veritable tunnel had been dynamited through the earth and it lay there now like an open streambed. The church teetered over it precariously. Still, if the building had managed to remain standing for the past century, what were the chances it would choose tonight to collapse?

Clutching the scabbard between his teeth, Slater shimmied into the hole, flashlight in hand. The passage was wider than he might have expected — good news for Kozak, who was going to have to follow him — but the floor of the church was grazing his head the whole way. The ground was as hard as rock, and his ribs hurt like hell every time he had to pull himself a few feet forward. The air, what there was of it, smelled like the deepest, dankest cellar, and after going only ten or fifteen feet, the tilt of the church made any further progress impossible. Squirming onto his back and aiming the flashlight at the floorboards above his head, Slater found a gap between two of the planks and, removing the knife from its scabbard, wedged the blade into it. As he worked it back and forth, shavings trickled down onto his face, and he had to blow them away. Eventually, a hole opened — a hole big enough for him to put his fingers through. He pulled down, and after several tugs, the wood cracked. He was reminded of the splintering of the coffin lid in the graveyard. He pulled again, but it was hard to get the proper leverage. Taking a breath and turning his face sideways to protect his eyes, he let go of the flashlight and used both hands to pry the board loose. This time it came away, leaving a gap big enough for him to lift his head through like a periscope.