Chapter 32

“Just shut up,” Harley said, as he crouched in the shadow of the crooked church, “and let me think.”

For once, Eddie and Russell did as they were told, but he knew it wouldn’t last long.

Looking out over the colony grounds, Harley was amazed at how the place had been transformed in the space of a couple of days. There were half a dozen green tents, some in the traditional peaked style, others more like Quonset huts, but all of them solidly built and interconnected by pathways laid down with rubber matting and lamp poles and guide ropes. Even over the sound of the rising wind, he could hear the hum of generators from an aluminum shed, erected near a lavatory platform raised above a pair of portable holding tanks.

But what he didn’t see was any people; in fact, right now, the place looked as abandoned as it had the first time he’d been here. The Coast Guard guys were gone, and so was their chopper. When he’d heard it lift off hours ago, he’d hoped that its departure signaled the end of the expedition to the island; at last, he thought, it would be safe to get back to grave-robbing.

But he’d sure as hell been wrong on that score. Somebody was here, and it looked like they were planning to stay a while. Damn, damn, damn.

“I’m freezing my ass off,” Russell muttered. “What’s the plan?”

Harley was having to recalibrate, and quickly. They were carrying their shovels and pickaxe, along with some steel pitons he hoped to use to loosen up sections of soil this time around. He saw no one patrolling the grounds, but he knew it would be far too dangerous to try to make their way across the open colony. If somebody unexpectedly came out of one of those tents, there’d be nowhere to hide.

Crawling backward, he said, “Let’s go straight to the graveyard.” There was only another hour or two of weak sunlight left in the day, and he couldn’t afford to waste any of it.

Skirting the colony by sticking to the other side of the wooden stockade, he led them through the thickets of spruce and alder and hemlock, batting a course through the snow-laden branches, until to his own surprise he saw that a parallel trail had been neatly cut and laid all the way down from the colony gates to the wooden posts of the cemetery. Lights, too, had been strung up the whole way, and they were switched on even now. Although he couldn’t figure out how the government had heard about the emerald cross he’d found, he thought it was pretty clear, from all of this construction, that they had heard about it somehow. His brother Charlie wasn’t stupid; it was unlikely he’d spilled the beans to anyone, but Harley had a lot less faith in that greedy bitch his brother had married, or her idiot sister. Bathsheba would tell anyone anything.

And now look what he had to contend with as a result.

“Check this out,” Eddie said, holding open the flap to a dressing shed built to the left of the gates. Harley glanced inside and saw a rack of white coveralls and booties and visored headgear, all neatly arranged. Before he could stop him, Russell had slunk inside and put on one of the helmets.

“Take me to your leader,” he said, with his arms outstretched, and Harley had to snatch the helmet off him and slap it back on the shelf.

“Get out of here,” he ordered, “before I kick your ass all the way back to Port Orlov.”

“Yeah,” Russell sneered, “you and what army?”

The graveyard, luckily, was as deserted as the colony, and the fresh snow had nicely covered their tracks from the previous grave they’d opened. But now there were tight nylon lines stretched all over the place, with little pennants stuck into the ground here and there, marking the whole graveyard off in some kind of grid. And off at the far end, where the cliff gave way, whole strips of sod had been laid, crisscross, on top of a tarp, along with a fallen marker. As Harley got closer, he could see an open grave yawning.

“Looks like they got the job done better than we did,” Eddie said. “Shit, I wonder what they used.”

Harley was less interested in how they’d done it, then why. They hadn’t just dug up the grave and searched for treasures; they’d taken the whole damn body. As he stood beside the empty plot, he wondered what they wanted with a corpse. Did they think there was something inside it, something they could only extract elsewhere? Maybe after thawing the thing out? All that was left here were the remnants of the wooden coffin, a lot of it cracked and splintered.

“Hey, check it out,” said Russell, craning his head over the edge of the cliff and pointing down at the beach below. “It’s a boat.”

Harley gingerly approached the cliff and saw what he was pointing at — an RHI up on davits. This was the first piece of good news he’d had in days; the Kodiak was still stuck on the rocks and taking on water, and he had not known how to break it to his crew that the thing would probably never make it back to shore. Now he had an alternative, courtesy of the United States Coast Guard.

The only problem was, he’d be returning virtually empty-handed if he left now. Those rosary beads couldn’t be worth much.

“So,” Eddie said, scanning the desolate cemetery, “where do we start?”

Harley wished he knew. He’d picked wrong the last time, guessing that the most impressive headstone would be sitting atop the greatest booty. It was like that stupid game show, Deal or No Deal. Who knew where the serious loot was hidden?

“Russell, I’m going to need you to keep watch,” he said. “Go down that trail about twenty yards, lie low, and wait there. If you see or hear anyone coming, get back here and warn us.”

“Wait a second,” Eddie complained. “I did the digging last time. Why don’t I get to be the watchman?”

“Just do what I say,” Harley said, “both of you.”

Russell plainly didn’t need to hear another word; the idea of not working was sweet, and he tossed his spade to Eddie and meandered back toward the lighted trailhead. Eddie picked up the spade in the hand that wasn’t holding the pick and looked at Harley with a sour expression that said, You’d better get it right this time.

Chapter 33

Russell couldn’t believe his luck. All the way to the graveyard, he’d been thinking how bad it would suck to have to try to dig up a frozen grave. Just chipping the ice away from some of the intake valves on his oil-company job was a bitch and a half. Waiting until he was safely through the cemetery gates and out of Harley’s sight, he reached into the pocket of his parka and pulled out one of the beers he’d been carrying. One thing you could say about Alaska — the whole damn state was a cooler.

He went down the trail, looking for a comfortable perch — which wasn’t going to be easy. Everything was covered in snow and ice, and the ground was as solid as a rock. He wished Harley and Eddie a lot of luck, especially after their last dig had turned up nothing but a bunch of crystal beads on a string. As far as he was concerned, this whole trip was going to be a bust, and he’d be lucky to get back to the Yardarm with ten bucks in his pocket.

If he wanted to score Angie Dobbs, he’d need more than that as bait. Christ, it was hilarious that Harley thought it was such a big deal he’d fucked her. Who hadn’t?

In the harsh glow of the next light pole, he spotted a glistening stump just off to one side of the trail. It was an old tree trunk, covered in moss and lichen, and though it wasn’t exactly a Barcalounger, it was the best prospect he was likely to uncover. Brushing the snow away from the matt of rotting leaves around its base, he picked up a bunch of them in his arms and made as much of a cushion as he could. Then he plopped down on top of the pile before the rising wind could blow them away, pulled the string on his hood to cinch it closer to his face, and waited.