The Romanov Cross: A Novel (38 page)

The matted pathway was slippery with snow and ice, and as he hurried down it he had to regain his balance once or twice by grabbing a light pole and holding on. The daylight was going fast. Running through the gates he heard a scream—unmistakably from Lantos in the lab.

What now?

Barreling up the ramp and into the tent, throwing all caution—and safety protocols—to the wind, he saw a black wolf leaping up at the plastic sheathing of the autopsy chamber. Lantos was inside, brandishing the Stryker saw and screaming for help. The plastic was already shredded in strips, but the wolf had not yet been able to claw its way through.

Slater’s eyes searched the lab for any kind of weapon, but all he saw were microscopes and vials and glass tanks of agitated white mice.

The wolf swiped at the plastic again, ripping another strip loose, then yanking at it with its jaws.

“Hey!” Slater shouted, just to grab its attention. “Over here!”

The wolf whipped its head around. There was a bolt of white on its muzzle and plastic hanging from its teeth.

He snatched a specimen scale off the counter and hurled it, missing the target but distracting the beast for a second.

“Come on!” he shouted, treading backwards toward the exit. “Follow me, you bastard!” He grabbed a clipboard and threw that, too, the pages fluttering loose as it flew. “Follow me!”

But the wolf refused to take the bait. Now it seemed to know that he was harmless, and with renewed vigor it turned its head sideways, gathered a hunk of the heavy-duty sheathing in its mouth, and began tearing it away again.

Lantos screamed as a great swath of the shredded curtain fell apart, enough for the wolf to squirm its way into the autopsy chamber.

Lantos swung the saw, but the wolf leapt on her, fangs flashing and claws out, and as Slater ran through the lab he saw her fall under its weight.

He tore through the same opening as the wolf, snatched the biggest scalpel on the instrument tray and slashed at the raised hackles on the animal’s back. The first cut was ignored, and so was the second, but on the third the wolf howled, and twisted around in rage.

Slater stepped back, the bloody scalpel slick in his hand, bracing himself against the freezer for the attack. To his astonishment the wolf snarled, but instead of charging at him, it turned away and leapt onto the autopsy table, squarely setting its paws on either side of the deacon’s corpse, like a predator defending its kill.

“Run!” Slater said to Lantos, who was lying on the floor in her lab suit and rubber apron. “Can you run?”

Lantos scrambled out of the chamber, her hands cradling her abdomen, while Slater, the breath raw in his throat, covered her retreat.

The wolf bent its head to the ravaged remains on the table and sniffed at them. Its own blood matted its thick black fur, lending it an oily sheen.

Slater inched his way backwards, watching the wolf while clutching the scalpel.

But the creature stood its ground atop the table, not even bothering to look at him as he parted the torn curtains and stepped into the lab proper. Still looking over his shoulder, Slater hurried toward the open flaps that were slapping in the wind. Just before he passed
through them, he took one last look at the wolf through the hanging shreds of the autopsy chamber. Lifting its powerful head toward the sky, it howled with a sound as forlorn and grief-stricken as any mourner at a funeral.

He staggered through the tent flaps; they were smeared with blood, as was the railing of the ramp. In the last of the daylight, he could see a trail of crimson spots on the white snow, leading off into the colony grounds. All around the stockade, he could hear the baying of wolves, answering the call.

But he could not see Lantos.

The trail of blood and footprints seemed to go first in one direction, and then in another, as if she were staggering blindly, simply trying to put distance between herself and the lab tent.

“Eva!” he called out, and the only reply he heard was from the wolves. “Eva!”

The tents were glowing green all around him, but the blood led him up toward the old well, where he found a deeper and wetter pool. “Eva!”

She was crumpled in a heap, her arms cradling her stomach, against the stone wall of the well. When he turned her over, he could see that the blood was oozing through a gash in her rubber apron. Her face mask was askew, and as he bent over her, he said, “Can you hear me?”

There was no answer, but he felt for a pulse in her neck and found it. “Just hang in there,” he said, “you’re going to be all right. I promise you.” It was a promise he wasn’t at all sure he could keep.

Snow had started to fall in earnest, and it was dark. If he was going to save her life, he would have to perform emergency surgery on her and close that wound, but the lab was now off-limits, as were all the other colony tents. Lantos might have been contaminated, and he needed to keep her in quarantine from now on.

The cockeyed church, with its onion dome, rose before him, and picking her up in his arms, he mounted the old wooden steps, kicked the doors open with one foot, then laid her as gently as he could atop one of the pews.

When she groaned, he was relieved to hear it. “Eva, I’ll be right back.” He placed her hands, still in their sticky gloves, on her own abdomen. “Keep pressing down. You hear me? Keep it compacted.”

She grunted softly, and Slater charged out again. The wolves were howling in the woods—had they picked up the scent of all the blood?—as he yanked the doors firmly closed behind him. The green tents, only fifty yards off, looked a mile away. But he barely stopped to catch his breath before he vaulted down the steps on his way to fetch his surgical supplies.

The mission had just gone completely off the rails, but if he didn’t keep his head, it could lead to a disaster of epic proportions.

“But what about Russell?” Eddie complained. “We gotta keep looking for Russell!”

As far as Harley was concerned, they had looked for Russell long enough. They’d gone all the way back to the graveyard, where they’d hidden behind some trees long enough to see some stocky guy with a little silver beard pushing what looked like a lawn mower around on the snow, then they’d tried to follow their drunken buddy’s trail through the woods. The only clue they picked up was his flashlight, still shining under a bunch of bushes. But it didn’t look good—why would Russell, dumb as he was, have thrown his flashlight away?

“We can’t leave a man behind!” Eddie said, his eyes gleaming in the dusk, and at that Harley had nearly puked.
We can’t leave a man behind?
What did Eddie think they were—Marines?

“Forget it,” Harley said. “He’s either frozen stiff somewhere, or he’s holed up in the colony right now, warm as toast and telling some bullshit story about how he got lost kayaking.”

And the colony was where Harley was heading. He’d had enough of the graveyard, and more than enough of the fucking woods. If the
Coast Guard guys had dug up something special, he’d find it in the colony by now.

It hadn’t been hard to slip through the gap in the stockade wall, and just before the daylight completely vanished, he led Eddie to a secluded spot behind the generator shed. Digging into his backpack, he pulled out a pair of night-vision binoculars and looped the cord around his neck.

“Hey, where’d you get those?” Eddie said enviously as Harley adjusted the scopes.

“Arctic Circle Gun Shoppe.”

“What’d they cost?”

“How the hell should I know?” It wasn’t as if he’d paid for them. He’d swiped them along with the MREs.

The tents were glowing green, but the ground between them was dark, and it was there that the infrared-sensitive lenses came in handy. Harley could sweep the grounds, and if anybody was moving on the pathways, he’d see the blurry outline of their bodies. The only drawback was the slight high-pitched whine that the binoculars gave off, like a mosquito incessantly buzzing around your ears.

Kind of like Eddie.

“I want to see!” Eddie said, groping for the binoculars. “Let me take a look.”

Harley had to swat his hands away, and he could see now that Eddie was flying high. Somewhere along the trail, he must have ingested some uppers. And that was all that Harley needed now—a speed freak as an accomplice.

As he watched, he saw some activity up by the church—that Slater guy was running around in one of those lab suits—and he was bringing up Nika Tincook, the mayor, their arms filled with what looked like sheets and blankets and medical instrument bags. What the fuck was going on? Even over the rising wind, he could hear their voices—they sounded alarmed—but what he didn’t hear, or see, was any activity down in that big old tent by the main gates … where the flaps were waving wildly and the lights were all on inside.

“Come on,” he said to Eddie, “but keep low and keep your mouth shut.”

“What are we doing? Are we rescuing Russell?”

Harley didn’t bother to reply. Crouching low, he set off across the colony grounds, leaping over the PVC pipes and electrical cables that stretched across the snow and under the braided ropes that marked the paths. At the ramp, he slowed down for a second—was that blood on the railing?—but he couldn’t very well stay outside either. He ducked under the flaps and waited for Eddie to follow him in.

“Hey, man, did you see the blood on—”

“Shut up,” Harley said, looking around but seeing no one. There were counters on both sides, covered with beakers and vials and microscopes; it reminded him of the chemistry class he’d failed. On a computer screen, he saw what looked like a molecule—or was it an atom?—turning slowly on its axis.

“Check it out,” Eddie said, gesturing at three tanks of white mice. “Wouldn’t your snake like a taste of these little babies?”

Before Harley could stop him, the idiot had reached inside a container and lifted one out by its tail. Its back was stained with orange ink and it dangled frantically in the air.

“Drop the goddamned mouse,” Harley said.

Grinning, Eddie lifted it over his open mouth like he was about to swallow it, and Harley shoved him, hard enough that the mouse slipped free and ran squeaking for cover.

“I am going to kick your ass if you do one more stupid thing,” Harley said.

“Big man,” Eddie said, but he lowered his eyes and didn’t issue any further challenge.

Harley turned back to the room; the only thing worth stealing in here might be the laptops, or maybe the microscopes, and they’d be a bitch to carry back. At the far end of the tent, there were ripped plastic curtains that extended from the floor to the ceiling. It looked like some kind of inner sanctum, but one that had been busted into. That alone was good enough for Harley.

He walked down the center of the room, noting that there was blood here, too, and even more on the strips of plastic. Even Eddie was hanging back.

Harley poked his head into what was left of this chamber, and nearly threw up on the spot.

A dismembered corpse was lying on a stainless-steel table, and there were bowls and basins of blood and organs on surgical carts and counters.

“Jesus Christ Almighty,” Eddie said, though he was so revved up he walked in mesmerized. Standing over the body and flipping back the flap of scalp concealing its face, he said, “I wonder who he was.”

One of the old Russians, Harley thought, though why they’d do something like this to him now …

“Looks like a wolf got at him, too.”

“What are you talking about?” Harley said, afraid to look too closely. How was Eddie managing it?

“Paw prints,” Eddie said, and now Harley glanced over long enough to see that Eddie was actually right about something. There were bloody paw prints—and pretty fresh-looking ones at that—on the tabletop.

Harley spun his gaze around the tiny chamber, as if a wolf might still be lurking somewhere, but all that caught his attention this time was a fridge with a wheel on it like you’d see on a bank vault.

But given everything else in the room, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to open it.

“What’s in there?” Eddie said excitedly.

Harley had come this far; there was no point in stopping now. He turned the wheel, there was a hissing sound as the seal was broken, and a bright white light came on inside.

Again, there was an array of flasks and vials, many of them marked with stickers and labels, but there was also the unmistakable sparkle of white diamonds—three of them, embedded in an old brass icon of the Virgin Mary. Eddie saw it, too, and made a grab for it, knocking over half of the bottles and tubes in the fridge, but Harley wedged it into his own breast pocket and said, “We’ll fence it in Nome.”

“Damn straight we will,” Eddie said, “and this, too.”

It was an old scrap of paper, rolled up like a scroll, and Eddie snatched it off the shelf and scrabbled it open, the page crackling and breaking in several spots.

It was a few lines long, black ink that had faded to gray, and written in Russian.

“What’d you think it was going to be?” Harley sneered. “A treasure map?”

“Maybe it is, for all you know,” Eddie said, stuffing it into the pocket of his parka. Then, to Harley’s dismay, he grabbed some of the test tubes and vials and stashed those in his pocket, too.

“That stuff’s not worth shit,” Harley said. “What are you doing?”

“It might be worth something to somebody,” he replied, “and they can pay me to get it back.” When he realized his own pocket was full, he crammed a couple more into Harley’s pockets, too. “And they can pay you, too!” Harley batted him away again—more and more, he wished he’d checked everyone’s backpacks for drugs and booze before they’d left Port Orlov—and closed the freezer door. For good measure, he gave the wheel a spin.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Harley said, and after Eddie had cast one more look at the mutilated corpse—what was he thinking of stealing now, Harley thought, a kidney?—they stepped out into the lab.

“The laptops?” Eddie said, but Harley shook his head. They were government-issue, and probably traceable; besides, he just wanted to get the hell out of this damn slaughterhouse. They had slunk no more than ten or twenty yards away when he saw a burly black guy, in an Army coat, running toward the lab tent with one of the Coast Guardsmen right behind him. They were carrying rifles and they were loaded for bear … or wolf.