The basin itself was made of white porcelain, with a gold rim, but inside it, as if they were a heap of marbles, lay a dazzling mound of gems — bright white diamonds, fiery rubies, sapphires as blue as the crevices in a glacier, emeralds as green as a cat’s eyes. There were rings, too — of gold and silver — and bracelets and broaches — ivory and onyx — and ropes of pearls, coiled and tangled, that had faded to a pale yellow. Kozak dipped his hands in, as if he were tossing a salad, and let the jewels sift back into the bowl between his fingers. They clinked and clattered as they fell, the sound echoing around the sacristy.
“Talk about a king’s ransom,” Slater said.
“No,” Kozak said. “A Tsar’s ransom.”
It was more than Slater had ever imagined finding. He had gone along with the professor’s scheme more out of curiosity than conviction — not to mention the pleasure of defying Colonel Waggoner’s orders — and now they had stumbled upon a long-lost and legendary treasure. They had found what remained of the Romanov jewels.
The candles guttered on the altar, and one threw a spark that drifted, glowing, toward the back of the room. Slater followed it first with his eyes, and then, as he thought he discerned something in the shadows, with the beam of his flashlight.
Kozak was still absorbed in the gems, but Slater took a step or two toward the rear of the chamber.
A chair — no, it was more like a throne — had been placed in the darkest recess, atop a sort of dais. It had huge, clawed feet that protruded from under a long, gossamer-thin canopy draped from the roof. It was so grand that it made its own small enclosure. Had this, too, been designed in anticipation of Rasputin’s arrival?
It was only as he got closer that he thought he saw the tip of a small boot poking out from under the cloth. It couldn’t be. He took hold of the canopy and lifted it a few inches — enough to see that the boot was heavy and black, laced high and built with a thick heel, as if it had been molded to a deformed foot. Lifting the faded cloth higher, he saw the ragged hem of a long skirt — dark blue wool, homespun.
“Vassily,” he said, “come here.”
“Can’t you see I am busy?” Kozak joked.
“I mean it.”
Kozak ambled over, his broad back temporarily obscuring the candlelight, and upon seeing the canopied chair, said, “And that is called a Bishop’s Throne. They must have been expecting Rasputin, after all.”
Slater directed his gaze to the boot and skirt, and the professor immediately grew still. “My God,” he breathed.
Slater drew the canopy to one side, gently, but even so it began to shred and tumble from its hooks, releasing a cloud of dust that made them both turn away, coughing and closing their eyes. When the dust had settled and Slater turned back again, what he saw stunned him. His first thought was of the mummies found in the high Andes.
The old woman in the chair was sitting as erect as a queen, her eyes closed, her long gray hair knotted into a single long plait that hung over one shoulder of her cloak. Under it, she was wearing several layers of clothing — he saw the collar of a worn blouse, a jacket made of some hide, even the bottom of a richly embroidered corset.
But it was her skin that was the most entrancing. Her face looked like an old, withered apple, lined with a thousand creases, and her hands, which lay on the armrests of the chair, were brown with age; her fingers looked as brittle as twigs. One hand cradled the base of an old-fashioned kerosene lantern.
“Do you think …” Slater said, but before he could finish, Kozak had said, “Yes. Even the boot confirms it. Anastasia’s left foot was malformed.”
For at least a minute, they both stood in respectful silence, wrapped in their own thoughts. Slater was already wondering how he would broach these discoveries to the colonel, who had strictly confined him to quarters. Waggoner could rant all he wanted, but confronted with the proof itself — a bowl full of gems and a frozen corpse — he would have no choice but to alert the higher authorities in the Coast Guard, the AFIP, and Lord knows how many other agencies.
“What do we do now?” the professor finally said, and Slater switched himself back into the scientific mode. If it weren’t for the astounding, even unbelievable, nature of what they had just discovered, he asked himself, what would he have normally done? Under more logical circumstances, what would the next order of business be?
Evidence, and the systematic gathering of it. On any epidemiological mission, the first objective was to collect all the available data and evidence at the site, and that’s what he needed to do here and now — even before notifying the colonel. Once Waggoner was apprised of the situation, Slater was not at all confident that he would be given any further access. In all likelihood, he would be put under guard and whisked off the island as fast as the first chopper could take him — and in handcuffs, if the colonel had his way. No, this, he recognized, might well be his only chance to do any science at all.
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.