Slater instantly hunched down, not believing his own eyes, and even ran a hand around the barren shelves where he had deposited the specimens taken in situ, in addition to some of the later specimens he and Dr. Lantos had taken during the autopsy.
All he found was a couple of crushed vials, as if someone had been in such a hurry that he had dropped them before absconding with the rest. But who? Russell? What on earth could he have wanted with them?
None of it made the slightest sense.
And then he remembered that Eva—in her shock at the entry of the wolf—had thrown the paper prayer and the diamond-studded icon in the freezer, too. And they were missing, as well.
That much, finally, did make sense.
And when Rudy burst in to say that the RHI was gone, Slater exploded. “What do you mean it’s gone? Why wasn’t it secured properly?”
“It was,” Rudy shot back. “Somebody untied the ropes, and there’s footprints in the snow!” Suddenly, everything was coming together like a terrifying thunderclap. Russell wasn’t alone—his cronies Harley and Eddie must have been on the island, too.
And even now they were sailing back to Port Orlov … with the virus in their pockets.
Chapter 46
Anastasia awoke to the sound of screaming … her own.
Everything around her was black and silent and still, as if she’d been muffled in a cloak of the heaviest black mink.
Or buried in a coffin.
She screamed again, every inch of her body aching and sore, but when she threw out her arms, thankfully they did not collide with the boards of a casket and when she sat up nothing obstructed her head.
But where was she?
She heard hurried, furtive footsteps and then the sound of a door opening … but from the floor. Light spilled into the room from a kerosene lamp, raised through a trapdoor, and a woman’s voice urged her not to scream again.
“You are safe, my child. You are safe.”
A woman in a black nun’s habit clambered up the last rungs of the ladder and knelt beside the pallet she was lying on. “I’m sorry,” she said, “the lamp must have run out of oil.” Her face seemed vaguely familiar.
And now Ana could see a rickety table, with an extinguished lantern on it, and a ceramic bowl and pitcher. The ceiling was sharply slanted, and cobwebs hung from the rafters. She was in an attic … an attic that smelled of warm bread and yeast and honey.
“You are at the monastery of Novo-Tikhvin. A soldier, Sergei, brought you here.”
“When?” Her voice came out as a croak.
“Three days ago.”
Three days ago … and then it all came back in a flood, the late-night awakening, the innocent march to the cellar, lining up for the photograph to be taken … and the guards bursting into the room instead. The reading of the death sentence. Her mind could go no further before she broke down, racked with uncontrollable sobs. The nun, her face framed by the squarish black hat and the black veils that hung down on either side of her cheeks, consoled her as best she could, all the while counseling her to remain quiet.
“My family …” Ana finally murmured, “my family?”
But the nun did not reply. She didn’t have to. Ana knew. Just as she knew who this nun was now—her name, she recalled, was Leonida. Sister Leonida. It was she who had sometimes brought the fresh provisions to the Ipatiev house.
“The Bolsheviks are looking for you. They know that you escaped. So we have hidden you here, above the bakery.”
The monastery was almost as famous for its bread and baked goods as it was for its many good works. In addition to the six churches it housed within its grounds, the monastery was also home to a diocesan school and library, a hospital, an orphanage, and workshops where the sisters—nearly a thousand of them—painted icons and embroidered ecclesiastical garments with silken threads of gold and silver. Their work had long been considered the finest in the Russian Empire.