The professor moved to the altar, holding the bowl in front of him as carefully as if it were the host itself. When he put it down, Slater trained his own beam on it, and it was like he was looking at a kaleidoscope.
The basin itself was made of white porcelain, with a gold rim, but inside it, as if they were a heap of marbles, lay a dazzling mound of gems—bright white diamonds, fiery rubies, sapphires as blue as the crevices in a glacier, emeralds as green as a cat’s eyes. There were rings, too—of gold and silver—and bracelets and broaches—ivory and onyx—and ropes of pearls, coiled and tangled, that had faded to a pale yellow. Kozak dipped his hands in, as if he were tossing a salad, and let the jewels sift back into the bowl between his fingers. They clinked and clattered as they fell, the sound echoing around the sacristy.
“Talk about a king’s ransom,” Slater said.
“No,” Kozak said. “A Tsar’s ransom.”
It was more than Slater had ever imagined finding. He had gone along with the professor’s scheme more out of curiosity than conviction—not to mention the pleasure of defying Colonel Waggoner’s orders—and now they had stumbled upon a long-lost and legendary treasure. They had found what remained of the Romanov jewels.
The candles guttered on the altar, and one threw a spark that drifted, glowing, toward the back of the room. Slater followed it first with his eyes, and then, as he thought he discerned something in the shadows, with the beam of his flashlight.
Kozak was still absorbed in the gems, but Slater took a step or two toward the rear of the chamber.
A chair—no, it was more like a throne—had been placed in the darkest recess, atop a sort of dais. It had huge, clawed feet that protruded from under a long, gossamer-thin canopy draped from the roof. It was so grand that it made its own small enclosure. Had this, too, been designed in anticipation of Rasputin’s arrival?
It was only as he got closer that he thought he saw the tip of a small boot poking out from under the cloth. It couldn’t be. He took hold of the canopy and lifted it a few inches—enough to see that the boot was heavy and black, laced high and built with a thick heel, as if it had been molded to a deformed foot. Lifting the faded cloth higher, he saw the ragged hem of a long skirt—dark blue wool, homespun.
“Vassily,” he said, “come here.”
“Can’t you see I am busy?” Kozak joked.
“I mean it.”
Kozak ambled over, his broad back temporarily obscuring the candlelight, and upon seeing the canopied chair, said, “And that is called a Bishop’s Throne. They must have been expecting Rasputin, after all.”
Slater directed his gaze to the boot and skirt, and the professor immediately grew still. “My God,” he breathed.
Slater drew the canopy to one side, gently, but even so it began to shred and tumble from its hooks, releasing a cloud of dust that made them both turn away, coughing and closing their eyes. When the dust had settled and Slater turned back again, what he saw stunned him. His first thought was of the mummies found in the high Andes.
The old woman in the chair was sitting as erect as a queen, her eyes closed, her long gray hair knotted into a single long plait that hung over one shoulder of her cloak. Under it, she was wearing several layers of clothing—he saw the collar of a worn blouse, a jacket made of some hide, even the bottom of a richly embroidered corset.
But it was her skin that was the most entrancing. Her face looked like an old, withered apple, lined with a thousand creases, and her hands, which lay on the armrests of the chair, were brown with age; her fingers looked as brittle as twigs. One hand cradled the base of an old-fashioned kerosene lantern.
“Do you think …” Slater said, but before he could finish, Kozak had said, “Yes. Even the boot confirms it. Anastasia’s left foot was malformed.”
For at least a minute, they both stood in respectful silence, wrapped in their own thoughts. Slater was already wondering how he would broach these discoveries to the colonel, who had strictly confined him to quarters. Waggoner could rant all he wanted, but confronted with the proof itself—a bowl full of gems and a frozen corpse—he would have no choice but to alert the higher authorities in the Coast Guard, the AFIP, and Lord knows how many other agencies.