There was a question from the Coast Guard operator in Point Barrow—“Do you read me, St. Peter’s Island? Do you read me?”—and Kozak had finally gotten up from his chair and replied.
“Yes, we read you, loud and clear. This is Professor Vassily Kozak, of the Trofimuk United Institute of Geology, Geophysics, and Mineralogy.”
There was the crackle of static, then an uncertain, “The what institute? Are you also with the AFIP mission? Under Dr. Frank Slater? Over.”
Apparently, word had not yet traveled everywhere that Frank had been officially relieved of his duties.
“I am.”
“Okay then. Well, we’re clocking winds speed of over one hundred miles per hour and barometric pressure that’s dropping like a stone—ninety-eight millibars at last reading. You might want to batten down the hatches real tight, for at least the next twenty-four hours.”
“Thank you for that warning,” Kozak said, stifling a belch. “I will batten down all hatches. Over.”
Then he had shuffled back to his seat, poured another stiff shot of vodka, and riffled through the tattered pages of the book found in that dead boy’s pocket. Nika had said his name was Russell.
The book, as Kozak had surmised at first glance, was the sexton’s register, a record of the burials in the colony’s graveyard. Where Russell had come by it, no one knew, but Kozak had a pretty good idea. Somewhere in the woods, not far from the cemetery, there was probably an old hovel, tumbled down and overgrown by now, where the sexton had kept his tools, his ledgers, and the headstones. Once the storm had passed, he would have to recruit Sergeant Groves and go looking for it.
The bottle of vodka was running low. Fortunately, he had packed several others.
The pages that had been left in the book showed a surprising scrum of entries all dating from the autumn of 1918, along with some notes on the dynamite the colonists had used to blow open graves to a sufficient depth. Eight-inch sticks, made in Delaware by DuPont. Manufactured to kill the Germans on the battlefields of the First World War, the dynamite had instead been used to help bury Russian pacifists thousands of miles from any front. Kozak was pleased to find this proof of his theory. No wonder this cliffside was crumbling faster than even global warming could have predicted.
But it was when he turned to the last few pages of the ledger, written in a more feminine hand, that he put his glass down and sat up straighter in his chair. The ink was considerably faded, and the pages still damp around the edges, but it was clear that the sexton was no longer their author. Had he died? Was this new writer his replacement? Where the book had been a cursory list of names and dates, there were suddenly plaintive appeals, mixed in among the last death entries, and all written in a more formal Russian.
“Forgive me,” one anguished note read. “I have become the curse of all who know me, both at home and here in this awful place.”
Below it, she had dutifully entered another burial entry, this one for a man named Stefan Novyk, “Deacon of our holy congregation.” So that was his name—it had been obliterated from the headstone, but now the strange motif chiseled into the stone made perfect sense. The two doors in the upper corners had symbolized the deacon’s doors … leading through the iconostasis to the altar behind. The place where the true treasures of the church were, traditionally, kept secret and protected. “It was he who saved me from the wolves, and he who gave me shelter. And this is how I have rewarded him.”
The next few lines had become blurred and illegible, but below them, scrawled in what looked like a trembling hand, one last burial was recorded.
“Tonight, the Lord saw fit to return to me the mortal remains of Sergei Ilyinsky, my own poor, sweet, loyal, and much beloved Sergei. His body was washed up on the shore of this accursed island, and I have buried it myself in the last grave. I can dig no more. Around his neck, I have placed the emerald cross once given to me by the holy man in St. Petersburg. May it guard Sergei on his journey now … and may its chains no longer bind me to this earth. I long to be released, but I fear that its blessing has now become my curse.”
Kozak sat back in his chair, deeply moved by the anguish and loneliness of this anonymous woman. The rest of the page was empty, and Kozak turned it eagerly to see if there was anything more.
In the center of this last page were the words, “My soul endures here … forever. Mother of God, deliver me.” Just below, there was a signature that made his heart stop. He quickly tossed down a generous shot of vodka. The lights in the tent dimmed and flickered, and he wondered if it might be the aurora borealis, disturbing the magnetic and electrical fields again. But he was in no mood to go outside and see. Not now.
When the lights burned bright again, he read it once more.