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.
Chapter 55