Now Anastasia looked at it, too, with special attention. Pokrovskoe. She had heard Rasputin speak of it often. It was his own hometown. And he had predicted that the Romanovs would see it one day.
Could he have imagined it would be under circumstances like these?
She did not need to ask the next question before Sergei said, “Father Grigori lived in the house you see with two stories.”
It was unmistakable, looming over all the other cottages in the town the way Rasputin himself had always dominated whatever company he was in. Anastasia wondered who lived in it now — she had heard rumors of a wife and young son. But then there had been so many rumors, most of them scurrilous, that neither she, nor the Tsaritsa, to whom they were often whispered, knew what to believe. She was eager to alert her mother, who was still on the train resting her bad back, where they were; she would want to know.
Coming closer than he ever had before, but keeping an eye out lest the other guards grow suspicious, Sergei said, “There are those who still communicate with the starets.”
“What do you mean, communicate with him? Father Grigori is dead. He is buried in the imperial park.”
Sergei’s eyes earnestly bore into hers.
“I put a white rose on his coffin myself,” Ana said. Her fingers, without meaning to, went to her chest and touched the cross beneath her blouse.
“There are those who keep the fire alight,” Sergei said, just before the whistle on the locomotive screeched. Jemmy barked back at it.
“All aboard,” an officer hollered from on top of the royal train car, “and now!” The whistle went off again, and there was an impatient chuffing sound from the engine.
Sergei ostentatiously lifted his rifle barrel and nudged his prisoner in the direction of the train. Anastasia walked back toward the tracks, Jemmy trotting at her heels. Her sisters were already mounting the stairs, followed by her father in his customary khaki tunic and forage cap. He was holding Alexei, identically dressed, by the hand. The engineer was waving a flag.
Anastasia turned around to say something to Sergei, but he was sauntering back to the troop car with a pair of the other guards and pretended not to notice.
Moments later, the train resumed its journey, and as Ana watched from the window, the flowers and fields and whitewashed barns of Pokrovskoe slid from view. She had forgotten to ask which house had been Sergei’s, and deeply regretted that now.
Chapter 25
“Kushtaka,” Nika said, and Slater had to ask her to repeat it, partly to catch this new word again, and partly because he simply liked to hear her say it.
The lights in the mess tent were wavering, as the wind, only partially blocked by the old stockade, battered the triple-reinforced nylon walls with a dull roar. The temporary electrical grid Sergeant Groves had slapped together was still holding, but the lamps, strung up on wires, were swaying above their makeshift dinner table. Tomorrow, Slater thought, they’d have to get the backup generator online, too — just in case.
“Kushtaka,” Nika said. “The otter-men. If you were an unhappy soul, still nursing some grievance on earth, you were condemned to linger here, unable to ascend the staircase of the aurora borealis into heaven. Or maybe you just drowned, and your body could not be recovered and properly disposed of — either way, your spirit could become a changeling, half-human and half-otter.”
“Why otter?” Dr. Eva Lantos asked, as she dunked her herbal tea bag one more time.
“Because the otter lived between the sea and the land, and now your spirit lived between life and death.”
“We have many such legends in Russia, too,” Professor Kozak said, mopping up the last remnants of his stew with a crust of bread. “I grew up with such stories.”
“Most cultures do have something similar,” Nika agreed. “The kushtaka, for instance, were sometimes said to take on the form of a beautiful woman, or someone you loved, in order to lure you into deep water or the depths of a forest. If you got lost, you could wind up becoming a changeling yourself.”
“So if I see Angelina Jolie in the woods,” Kozak said, “and she is calling to me, ‘Vassily! Vassily! I must have you!’ I should not go to her.”
“You might at least want to think it over,” Nika said with a smile.
Kozak shrugged. “Still, I would go.”
Slater leaned back against a crate and surveyed his team like a proud father observing his brood. In only a matter of hours on the island, they had begun to come together nicely as a team. Professor Kozak was an industrious bear, quickly unpacking his ground-penetrating radar equipment and itching to get started the next day. Dr. Lantos had checked all the crates of lab equipment and supplies, and advised Slater on where they should set up the autopsy tent. Sergeant Groves was off on rounds right now, securing the premises (from force of habit, since the island held no hostiles) and getting to know the Coast Guardsmen who had been left to complete the construction of the prefabs, lighting poles, and ramps the next day.
If the weather allowed, that was. A storm was heading their way, and already its winds were scouring the colony like a steel brush. Slater prayed they wouldn’t get a heavy snowfall, which would mean just that much more digging to get to the graves.
And then there was Nika, whose presence here he had so opposed at first, and who was rather like a spirit herself — a friendly, woodland sprite, filled with native tales and history and lore. Slater found himself immersed not only in her words, but in the light that seemed to be captured in her jet-black hair and eyes. Her tawny skin had taken on a positively golden cast in the glow of the lamps, and he noticed that she frequently touched a little ivory figurine, no bigger than a jump drive, hanging outside her blue-and-gold Berkeley sweatshirt. He was grateful when the professor, perhaps noting it too, asked, “Is that a figure of a little kushtaka around your neck?”
“No,” Nika said, holding it out on its thin chain so that they all could see it better. “That would be bad luck. This is a good-luck charm. We call them bilikins.”
Slater leaned closer, his coffee mug still in his hand. Now he could see that it was an owl, expertly carved with its wings furled and its eyes wide open.
“The owl represents the perfect guide because he can see even in the dark of night. The leader of the hunt traditionally wore it.”
“Walrus tusk?” Kozak said, turning it over in his stubby fingers.
“Maybe,” Nika said. “But my grandmother gave it to me, and her grandmother gave it to her, and if the story is true, it’s made from the tusk of a woolly mammoth. They’re frozen in the soil all around here, and every once in a while one turns up.”
What else, Slater couldn’t help but think, was he going to find in the frozen soil of St. Peter’s Island? A perfectly preserved specimen, its viral load stored within the flesh like a ticking bomb, or a decaying corpse, whose deadly contaminant had been leeched away by decades of slow exposure and erosion?
“Yes,” Kozak said, “the topography and geology of Alaska is like Siberia, and is well suited to this sort of preservation.” Now that he knew its provenance, he looked even more impressed by the humble bilikin.
An especially strong gust of wind battered the tent, and the lights flickered again. Slater reached into his shirt pocket and removed several plastic packets, each one containing a dozen blue capsules and a dozen white.
“I think brandy is more usual after dinner, yes?” Kozak said, examining his packet.
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t mix well with these,” Slater said.
Dr. Lantos had opened her packet, and said, “Prophylactic measures?”
“Yes. The blue one’s a standard anti-influenza drug; you’ll need to take it every day for the next six days, whether we’re still working here or not. The white one is a neuraminidase inhibitor that’s shown both preventative and therapeutic results in trials done at the AFIP.”