As he lay there now in his open casket, she reached in under her coat. Lifting out the emerald cross, she read one last time the blessing Rasputin had engraved on its silver frame: “No one can break the chains of love that bind us.” A play on her name, as the breaker of chains. But she wanted the chains broken now. She wanted whatever force it was that tethered her to this earth to be sundered forever.
She raised Sergei’s head and draped the chain around it, the emerald cross resting on his chest. Then she lifted the lid of the coffin—an elaborately carved piece with an image of St. Peter himself on it—and fitted it into place. Something, she thought, had told her to preserve this coffin until now. Then, driving home the traditional four nails, she shoveled as much dirt and snow as she could loosen into the grave. One of the black wolves that haunted the island appeared at the gates to the cemetery, the gates where she had obsessively whittled her pleas for forgiveness, and raising its head, let out a mournful howl. But Ana wasn’t afraid. These creatures, she knew, were only souls as lost and bereft as she was … sentenced to the same kind of purgatory. They, too, were trapped in a world not of their own making, as unable to transcend it as they were to find peace. From the moment the black wolf had licked the tears from her face on the beach, she had recognized that their fate and hers were conjoined—weren’t they all Rasputin’s faithful children?—and she had known that they would only end their unhappy journey when hers, too, had come to an end.
Chapter 65
As soon as Slater saw Nika wheeled to the ambulance, protesting all the way—“I can walk, you know! I don’t need a wheelchair!”—he was sure she was back to being herself. Hospital protocols, however, dictated that she leave the Nome Regional Health Center in a chair, and prudence dictated that an ambulance convey her all the way back to her home in Port Orlov.
“I’ll see you there in no time,” Slater said, leaning down for one last kiss, as the orderly pushing the chair politely looked away.
“The work on the totem pole should be done by now,” she said.
Indeed, it was almost the first order she had given once the fever had broken and she had become fully conscious again. Although he had never asked, Slater knew that something had happened to her while she hovered in that land between life and death, something that compelled her to restore the totem pole in Port Orlov to its former glory and prominence.
“The unveiling is going to be a pretty big celebration for a town like ours.”
“Sounds like a party I can’t miss.”
“Then don’t.”
She was allowed to sit up front with the ambulance driver, and once they had pulled away, Slater crossed the snowy parking lot to the waiting Coast Guard helicopter. This time, he was alone in the passenger compartment, and the pilot, starting the engine, ordered him to buckle in immediately. “We’re on a very tight schedule,” he said, showing him none of the respect that had been shown back in the day when he was Major Frank Slater, or even the Dr. Slater in charge of the St. Peter’s Island operation. Now he was just some civilian taking up government resources.
But far from being irritated, Slater felt like a weight had been taken off his shoulders. His life was his own now—and he had made some definite plans for it.
The chopper headed straight for the sea and followed the coastline north. Slater leaned his head back and stared out the window. He was still weak from the ordeal and needed to put on a few more pounds, but he’d come to grips with what had happened and made a kind of peace with himself. Maybe he couldn’t save the world anymore; maybe it was better just to save a little piece of it. He couldn’t wait for the right time to tell Nika.
In the weak afternoon light, he could see on the horizon the familiar plateaus of Big and Little Diomede, and the icy blue channel between them that marked the meeting point of the United States and Russia. The sky was clear—a pale gray the color of a pigeon’s wing—but as they neared the island, he could see that the wind, the never-ending wind, was busy as usual, stirring the fog around its rocky shores.
Hard to believe that such a short time had passed since he had first made this approach. It felt like ages.
As the helicopter came closer, he noted that there were two or three Coast Guard vessels lying offshore, and that the colony itself was far more extensively lighted, fenced, and occupied than when he had left it. To accommodate the chopper, there was even a circular helipad, marked with reflectors, slapped down between the old well in front of the church and the green tents that Slater’s own crew had erected.
“Hang on,” the pilot announced over the headphones, as the chopper, slowing down to make its landing, was buffeted by the gusts off the Bering Strait and the whole aircraft wobbled. Slater held on to the straps, and no sooner had the wheels touched down and the engines been cut, the rotors spinning to a stop, than he saw Professor Kozak and Sergeant Groves running to open the hatchway door.
“It is so good to see you,” Kozak said, slapping him on the back, as Groves clasped his hand in a firm grip.