The Romanov Cross: A Novel (50 page)

The grief overwhelmed her again, as it often did, like a crashing wave.

But Sergei’s eyes were open now. He refused to look out through the window, but gave Anastasia a wan smile. She reached across and squeezed his hand.

“We will be flying northeast,” Nevsky shouted, his words carried back to them on a cold draft. “This damn sun will be in our eyes the whole way.”

Ana liked it—she liked the hot bright yellow light, she liked the sky around it, a cerulean blue unmarred by a single wisp of cloud, and she liked it when the dark, snow-patched ground dropped away altogether, replaced by the cobalt blue of the Bering Sea. Glaciers sat serenely in the choppy waters, a pod of breaching whales gamboled among the chunks of floating ice. The horizon was a gleaming orange line, pulled tight as a stitch, and somewhere ahead there lay an island that was no longer a part of Russia at all, an island that housed a small colony of believers. A small colony of friends.

She would have liked to talk to Sergei, if only to distract him, but the howling of the wind and the din of the propellers was too great. Instead, she made do with holding his hand and gazing out at the unimaginable spectacle through the cockpit window. What a pity it was tainted by the machine gun, black, gleaming with oil, and brooding like a vulture.

When the plane banked, she was pressed back against the wall—it felt like lying on a slab of ice—and this time the sensation in her stomach was not so easily dismissed. The plane was losing altitude, she could feel it, and for a second she worried that they were going to crash, after all. Glancing out the window, she saw that the world had tilted to an odd angle, and in the distance, she could see two islands, not one, both of them flat and gray and barely rising above the sea. One was much bigger than the other, and she wondered which of them was St. Peter’s. Neither looked especially welcoming.

The angle grew even more extreme, and the engines made a louder, grinding sound, as the plane descended even more, soaring across the channel that narrowly separated the islands, and the windscreen filled with the image of the bigger of the two. Gradually, the plane leveled off, and the coastline appeared. Rugged, barren, choked with coveys of squalling birds. Anastasia caught a glimpse of a collection of huts, clustered on the cliffs above an inlet, as the plane dropped onto a cleared field, its tires bouncing up again as they touched the ground. The propellers whirred down, and Nevsky clutched the throttle with both hands, pulling back on it as if he were subduing a stallion. The cabin rattled, the tires squealed, and only the machine gun remained motionless. For several hundred yards, the plane rumbled and rolled along the tundra, before the engines stopped growling and the propellers stopped spinning and everything came to a halt.

Nevsky, pushing the goggles onto the top of his head, turned in his seat and said, “You can unfasten those straps now.” Then he coughed into his handkerchief.

Ana and Sergei undid their straps, and with trembling fingers Sergei unlatched the little door. He clambered out onto the ground, then held out a hand to help Ana. When she bent over, the corset nipped at her ribs, and her feet felt so unsteady she nearly toppled over. Sergei propped her up as Nevsky disembarked. Without a word, he went to a tiny, falling-down shed, and came out lugging two gas cans, one in each hand.

Ana, bewildered, looked all around, but apart from the shed, there was no sign of any habitation nearby, or any people. Were those huts the entire colony? Her heart began to sink. And why was there no one there to welcome them?

Nevsky seemed to be studiously avoiding them, and when Sergei ventured a question, he brushed him off and said, “Let me finish with this first,” as he poured the second can of gas down the funnel he had inserted in the tank at the rear of the plane. When that was done, he returned to the shed, came out with two more, and poured them in, too. A brisk wind was cutting across the open field, and Ana huddled in the shelter of the fuselage.

Tossing the empty cans to one side and removing the funnel, Nevsky finally turned to them and said, “I’ll have that second diamond now.”

“Where is everyone?” Sergei said.

“They’ll be here. Now, where is it?”

Sergei looked uncertain, but when Ana nodded, he gave it to him. Nevsky tucked it into his pocket, and threw open the little door to the plane. Then he jumped in, threw the latches, and only appeared again through the window of the cockpit. Sliding the window panel open, he spoke across the top of the machine gun as Ana and Sergei gathered below.

“Right now you’re on what the Eskimos call Nunarbuk.”

“You mean that’s their name for St. Peter’s Island?” Sergei said.

“St. Peter’s Island,” Nevsky said, fitting his goggles back into place, and pointing due east, “is over there.”

“That’s where we paid you to take us!” Ana cried, but Nevsky just shrugged.

“They have no landing strip,” he said.

“Then you have to take us back with you!” Sergei demanded, hammering at the side of the plane.

“Watch out,” Nevsky said, as he started to close the window. “The propellers can cut you in half like a loaf of bread.”

A moment later, Ana heard the engines revving up. The propellers clicked and twitched, then began to turn, and Sergei had to duck back away from the plane. It bumped along the ground in a wide circle, protected by its four whirling blades, before quickly gathering speed and then, as they watched in shock, altitude, too. It was only as it rose high into the sky, shining in the sun and banking slowly toward Siberia, that Ana realized they had even forgotten to retrieve their bundle from under the seat.

“Is that it?” Slater asked. “Is that the van?”

Nika craned forward in the passenger seat. “I can’t tell,” she said, peering through the fractured windshield. “The snow’s too thick.”

On the right side of the road, a yellow sign said, “
HERON RIVER BRIDGE AHEAD. PROCEED WITH CAUTION. REDUCE SPEED
.” It was pocked with bullet holes, and Slater wondered if there was a single sign or mailbox in Alaska that hadn’t been used for target practice.

He stepped on the gas, but he felt the tires starting to lose traction on the icy surface and he had to ease off again.

The road was winding its way through a rubble-strewn landscape of stunted trees and immense boulders. Sometimes, the vehicle in front of him would disappear behind the rocks, or be engulfed in a whirling cloud of snow, but each time he caught a glimpse of it, he was able to pick out another detail or two. First, he could see the boxy silhouette of a van. And then he could tell it was some dark color, blue or black.

It had to be Charlie Vane’s car.

He knew that he was driving the ambulance far too fast for the road and weather conditions, but he still wasn’t closing the distance. Vane had to be doing at least sixty-five or seventy miles per hour. At
any moment, he expected to see the van go spinning off the road or crashing into the rocks.

“Do you think they’ve spotted us?” Nika asked.

“Absolutely.” But what would they be able to see? “Should I put on the siren and lights? Maybe convince them it’s the police on their tail?”

“They’d only drive faster.”

Which was pretty much what Slater had thought, too.

“There’s one more bend in the road,” Nika advised him, “but it’s a wide one, and it runs behind those hills. When you come out on the other side, you’ll see the gorge, and the bridge, off in the distance but straight ahead.”

What Slater hoped to see was a National Guard barricade, with spotlights and trucks and armed soldiers, but he was afraid it was too much to expect. There probably hadn’t been time to set up something so elaborate, and now he was wondering just how far he would have to keep trailing the Vanes. All the way to Nome? He glanced at his dashboard and saw that the gas tank was already three-quarters empty. But it was critical that he stop them before they reached any population center.

The question remained—how?

Snowy hills rose up on all sides, funneling the wind and snow into a dense fog that almost entirely obscured the road. Steel poles, only four or five feet high, with red reflectors on top, were the only way to stay on course, and rusty signs warned of curves, oncoming traffic, animal crossings, avalanches, hazardous ice. The ambulance clung to the road, the windshield wipers beating furiously, the lone headlight shining on the blur of falling snow. A steady stream of freezing air blew into the car through the hole in the windshield, and Slater prayed that the wipers wouldn’t catch on one of the cracks and cause the whole window to implode in their faces.

And just when he thought the hills would never come to an end, he emerged onto a broad icy plateau. Even the van must have had to slow down, as the distance between them now was no more than the equivalent of a few city blocks.

Better yet, Slater could see the steel span of the Heron River
Bridge, rising into the darkness … with an Alaska Highway Patrol car parked laterally in front of it, its headlights shining and blue roof bar flashing.

It wasn’t a whole platoon from the National Guard, but it would do.

Or so he thought.

He watched the van begin to slow down, as if Charlie was debating what to do, and Slater used that chance to close some more of the gap.

“Okay, now let’s turn on the lights and siren!” Slater said, clutching the wheel with both hands as he suddenly felt the ambulance sliding on a patch of black ice. “Time to let him know he’s surrounded.”

But just as Nika got everything blaring, and Slater saw the patrolman stepping out of the car, the van shot forward, its back wheels hurling up a shower of snow and sleet as it rocketed toward the bridge.

“What’s he doing?” Nika shouted.

But it was clear seconds later, as the van accelerated to top speed and hit the front end of the patrol car, sending it spinning out of the way like a top, sparks flying and metal screeching. The cop jumped out of its path in the nick of time.

Slater, trying to keep control of his own car, tapped his foot on the brakes and steered into the direction of the skid. But the ambulance had gathered its own momentum now.

Up ahead, the van bounded up the corrugated ramp and onto the bridge, bucking like a bronco trying to throw its rider.

In the ambulance, Slater clung to the steering wheel and Nika braced herself against the dashboard as the vehicle did a full, unimpeded circle before finally coming to a stop, its front fender thumping into a mound of snow.

After the initial jolt, Slater looked out his side window again, just in time to see the patrolman kneeling, one arm bracing the other, and firing several rounds at the back of the fleeing vehicle.

At first, the shots appeared to have no effect, but then, after the last one, Slater saw the van suddenly zig and zag on the bridge, cutting from one lane to the other, before banging into a guardrail so hard that two wheels left the pavement, then all four. As it flipped over, tires
smoking and glass spraying, it spun, like an upside-down plate, halfway down the deserted bridge.

“You okay?” Slater said to Nika.

“Yep,” she said, in a shaky voice, “but I’m not so sure about the ambulance, or the Vanes.” She, too, was looking off at the wreckage on the bridge.

He told her to use the radio to call for medical backup. “And stay on the radio until they get here. Keep away from the accident scene.”

Then he leapt out of the ambulance, and raced toward the bridge.

“Who are you?” the patrolman hollered, still holding the gun. Slater was relieved to see that the patrolman, too, had a face mask—the word had gone out—but it was dangling down around his neck.

“Stay clear!” Slater shouted, running past the damaged patrol car. “And put your mask on until I tell you otherwise!”

“On whose authority?”

“Mine!” Slater declared. “And that’s an order!”

Before the cop could issue another challenge, Slater ran right past him, his eyes fixed on the van … and praying that this was as far as both of the Vanes, and the virus, had traveled.

It was the chimes Charlie noticed first.

He was upside down in the van, his head up against the broken roof light.

The chimes, the ones that went off whenever you hadn’t fastened a seat belt, or closed your door properly, were dinging sweetly.

It took him a few seconds to orient himself.

He remembered slowing down for the roadblock, and he also remembered thinking,
What was the point of trying to get past it? They’d have a chopper tracking him down next
. And then, before he knew what was happening, Harley had flipped out in the backseat and started screaming, “Go through it! Go through it!”

But Charlie wasn’t going to be that stupid anymore; he’d seen enough trouble in his life, and he was a reformed man now, anyway. He was trying to reason with Harley when his brother, with the blanket still wrapped around his shoulders, lunged over the back of the seat and punched the accelerator lever.

“Go through!”

The van blasted off and Charlie, knocked back as if he were an astronaut, groped in vain for the hand brake as they smashed into the
front of the police car, then, instantly picking up speed again, hurtled past.

His fingers were just able to graze the wheel as the van lurched onto the bridge, but Harley was hanging over him, trying to steer. He thought he’d heard a shot—or was it a tire exploding?—and then they were crashing into a metal guardrail, the windows shattering all around. Gas canisters and gear from the back of the van flew in every direction as the wheels hit an ice slick, and the whole car flipped in the air like a pancake on the griddle.

And now all he could hear were the chimes. The inside of the van smelled like gasoline, tinged with the astringent smell of blood. His neck and shoulders aching, he glanced at the front of his coat, where a wet, dark stain was slowly spreading. The punctured airbag was hanging down like an empty saddlebag, and the glove compartment gaped open. Its contents, including the cross and icon, were scattered somewhere in the jumble of pulverized glass and twisted metal.