“I’ll radio ahead and let ’em know you’re coming.”
Then she brushed the broken glass away from the driver’s seat, removed the severed leg and deposited it on the roadway, and fastened her seat belt. The patrolman, using his flashlight like an airport worker directing a jet onto the right runway, helped guide the ambulance through the carnage and debris on the bridge—little piles were still burning like signal fires—and then waved her on her way. She lifted a hand in salute, and glancing in the rearview mirror, watched as he was swallowed up in the maelstrom of the storm.
Chapter 58
Once the plane was completely out of sight, even the sound of its motor lost in the rustling of the wind along the abandoned airstrip, Anastasia said, “There was a village, on the cliffs. I saw it before we landed.”
But Sergei stood where he was, his black sealskin coat billowing out around him, his eyes still fixed on the blue but empty sky.
“Sergei, he’s gone. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
He was still clutching a stone—he had thrown several in impotent fury at the plane—and looked reluctant to give it up.
Ana, deciding to give him time, went to the shed and looked inside. Plainly, it was a depot for the planes, with gas cans and tools and various pieces of machinery lying around, but nothing she could see that would be of any use to them.
“I’m sorry,” she heard over her shoulder. “I was a fool.”
“We both were,” she said, remembering that it was she who had encouraged him to hand over the second diamond. “Anyone who trusts another Russian,” she added bitterly, “is a fool.”
Taking his hand, she led him across the field, favoring her bad foot, which had accumulated many blisters on their journey, and back toward the cliffs where she had seen the dismal huts. Halfway there, she saw several figures approaching—three men, squat and broad, swathed in fur coats, with their hoods thrown back and something odd about their faces. It was only as they came closer that she saw the men had ivory disks, the size of coins, implanted in their jutting, lower lips. She knew that these must be the Eskimos; with their wide, weather-beaten features, high cheekbones and black eyes, they reminded her of the Mongolian trick riders who had once performed at Tsarskoe Selo for her parents’ anniversary.
Ana and Sergei stopped and let the men close the remaining distance. The two younger ones stood back, while the third, with woolly gray eyebrows and leaning on a staff, raised a bare hand and said, “Da?” Yes.
Ana did not know what to reply. The man was looking around, as if he, too, was puzzled at the lack of a plane, a pilot, or any explanation for their being there.
“Da?” he repeated, and she wasn’t sure he understood what he was saying himself.
“My name is Ana,” she said, “and this is Sergei.”
The old man nodded.
How, she wondered, should she continue? “I’m afraid that we may need your help.” Did he understand any other words of Russian?
“We want to go to St. Peter’s Island,” Sergei spoke up, pointing off to the east. “Saint. Peter’s. Island.”
“Kanut,” he said, lightly touching his fingers to the front of his coat.
Ana, smiling tightly, repeated their own names, and the old man nodded in agreement again. “Do you speak Russian?” she asked.
“Da.” Then added, “Some words.”
Thank God, she thought. It might be possible to make themselves understood, after all, but before she could begin, he had turned around and was heading back toward the cliffs. She could only assume that they were meant to follow, especially as his two henchmen waited for them to go on before bringing up the rear. Bewildered as she was, she did not feel threatened, as she would have with her own countrymen.