Pulling aside the broken refectory tables and cracked barrels, they scoured the wall with their flashlight beams until Slater could dimly make out the frame of a doorway—narrow and arched at the top, with the barest outline remaining of a golden-haired saint wielding a silver sword. On this door, there was a rusted chain, hanging loose, and no boards secured across it.
No words needed to be exchanged. With each of them taking hold of one end of an upended pew, they inched it away from the iconostasis. Then, Slater cleared away some other debris, like cutting tumbleweed away from a fence, until he could get to the door itself. If there had ever been a handle, it had long since fallen off and was probably rolling around in the darkness beneath their feet.
“Let me,” Kozak said, elbowing past him and putting his shoulder against the wood. “If there’s a curse, it should fall on me.”
He pressed his burly shoulder against the door and Slater heard its antique hinges squeak, but hold.
“Russians do good work,” Kozak muttered, putting his head down and pressing harder. After a few seconds, there was a popping sound, as first one hinge, then the other, gave way. The door, its bottom scraping the floor, creaked open.
Kozak stood to one side, and with a sweep of his arm gestured for Slater to enter first. “I do not care what they say in Washington,” he declared. “You are still the head of this mission.”
Slater appreciated the vote of confidence and slid through the open space, pushing the door wider as he went. Cobwebs clung to his head, and the air inside was as cold and still and stifling as a meat locker. He had the uneasy sense of intruding upon something sacred and long inviolate. He swept his flashlight beam around the room, but the rays seemed to be swallowed up by the inky blackness. Here, there were no holes in the roof or cracks in the timbered walls to let in the moonlight, and even the floor, when he turned the light on it, gave off the dull gleam of tar. This sacristy had been sealed like a tomb.
“I would give a great deal for a lamp right now,” Kozak said.
So would Slater. The flashlight only gave him glimpses of what lay all around him—a wooden altar, covered with one red cloth and one white. A few ecclesiastical vessels—chalices and bowls and salvers. Everything thick with dust.
But a candelabra, too—with the nubs of candles still in it.
“Have you got some matches on you?” Slater asked, and Kozak, patting his pipe pocket, said, “Always.”
Slater left his flashlight beam trained on the candelabra, and the professor struck one match after another, trying to find and light the wicks. Eventually, out of six or seven candles, he got four of them lighted, providing a flickering but more diffused light to penetrate the room.
The first thing he noticed was a door, no more than four feet tall, cut flush with the logs in the wall and secured by a crossbar. When he pointed it out to Kozak, he said, jokingly, “I wish we’d known about that in advance.”
“Huh,” Kozak said, running his fingers over his beard. “A bishop’s door. You find such a thing in the great churches of places like Moscow—places where a bishop might actually wish to make a miraculous appearance. But I would never have expected to find one here.” He rattled the crossbar in its grooves and it moved easily. “And they could hardly have expected a bishop to come to this church.”
“What about a grand duchess?” Slater was beginning to believe what Kozak had translated from the sexton’s ledger.
But Kozak shook his head. “I don’t think even she knew she would end her days here.”
“Who was it built for then?”
“If I had to make a guess,” the professor said, “I would say it was her protector and confessor. The man these settlers came here to venerate. Rasputin.”
Slater glanced again at the rough-hewn door, fitted so skillfully into the wall that it would hardly be noticed if it were not for the bar. They had missed its existence entirely from the outside.
Against the opposite wall, a mirrored cabinet stood open, with two cassocks hanging from its hooks. Kozak reverently stroked the sleeve of the white cassock, saying, “This one was used only for Pascha. Easter.” The other was black, with a scarlet lining, and when he brushed it to one side, he reached into the back of the cabinet, felt the rim of a basin—no doubt the sacrarium used to wash the holy linens after a service—and started to lift it out. There was the sound of pebbles sloshing around in a bowl.
“Frank.” Kozak’s voice was filled with awe. “Frank.”