“What do we do now?” the professor finally said, and Slater switched himself back into the scientific mode. If it weren’t for the astounding, even unbelievable, nature of what they had just discovered, he asked himself, what would he have normally done? Under more logical circumstances, what would the next order of business be?
Evidence, and the systematic gathering of it. On any epidemiological mission, the first objective was to collect all the available data and evidence at the site, and that’s what he needed to do here and now—even before notifying the colonel. Once Waggoner was apprised of the situation, Slater was not at all confident that he would be given any further access. In all likelihood, he would be put under guard and whisked off the island as fast as the first chopper could take him—and in handcuffs, if the colonel had his way. No, this, he recognized, might well be his only chance to do any science at all.
Slater took off his field kit and opened it, planning out the task ahead. Unlike all the others on the island, Anastasia plainly had not died of the flu—she was immune, as was he, after weathering the storm at the hospital in Nome. But he did not forget that it was she who had carried it here, nearly a century ago. As a result, it was critical that he still observe the necessary and standard precautions—especially in regard to the bystander Kozak.
Digging out a gauze face mask, he told the professor to put it on and to stand back by the altar.
“Why?” Kozak said. “What are you planning to do?”
Donning another mask himself, Slater said, “Provide your friends at the Trofimuk Institute with a little DNA evidence, if all goes well.”
“Yes, thank you,” Kozak said, slipping the elastic bands behind his ears. “I think they would rather have that than the royal jewels.”
Slater lifted the lantern off the arm of the chair and placed it on the dais beside her boot. Puzzlingly, there was moisture there, and even the hem of her long skirt looked damp; he assumed he must have been dripping melted snow from his coat.
Then he surveyed the corpse, deciding on the best area from which to draw the sample. The hair could provide some DNA, especially if he made sure to capture the follicle, too—the shaft would provide only mitochondrial evidence—but it was terribly degraded and might not do the job. Her bony wrist, on the other hand, lay perfectly exposed, and if he could suction up some petrified skin and blood cells from a vein, he would get the richest and most viable sample possible.
Laying his own flashlight on the opposite arm of the chair, he reminded Kozak to remain at a distance, “But try holding up the candelabra. I need all the light I can get.”
Kozak raised the candles, and in their flickering glow, Slater located the vein—a barely perceptible blue line under the mottled brown skin—and took an empty syringe out of his kit. To get a better angle, he turned the hand slightly—it moved more easily than he expected—drew back the plunger, and touched its tip to the skin.
Then he depressed the plunger.
And the hand flinched.
Slater recoiled, leaving the syringe stuck.
Even Kozak must have seen what had just happened. “Mother of God,” he intoned.
Slater stepped back, first in astonishment, and then in horror.
The woman’s eyes opened—they were a pale gray—and she looked at him as if she were still asleep—asleep and unwilling to wake up. She stirred in the chair, like a dreamer merely turning in bed, and her boot inched the lantern off the dais, where it shattered on the floor. Rivulets of kerosene ran in all directions, soaking the fallen canopy.
“Mother of God,” Kozak said again, stumbling backwards, the candelabra shaking in his hand. A lighted candle, toppling from its perch, dropped to the floor.
There was a crackling sound, as the flame caught the kerosene and raced across the floor of the sacristy.
Slater could not believe his own eyes.
The old woman herself looked bewildered, but oddly unafraid. Nor did she move to avoid the erupting flame.
“We have to get out!” Kozak shouted, and Slater could hear him fumbling with the crossbar that secured the bishop’s door.
The fire grazed the edge of the canopy, and the dry old fabric went up like a torch. The licking flames snagged the hem of the altar cloths and they, too, ignited, engulfing the sacrarium like a ring of sacred fire. The rubies glowed like coals, the diamonds blazed, the bowl itself blackened and cracked, spilling the gems all over the altar.
“Come on!” Kozak shouted, as Slater heard the crossbar thump onto the floor. The tar was heating up, melting.
But he couldn’t leave the old woman—whoever she was—to die here.