“And this man Harley Vane,” Slater said, continuing his train of thought. “Was he ever exposed to a body from that coffin?”
“He says no,” Dr. Levinson replied. “He says the lid alone came up in the nets.” She said it as if she wasn’t sure if she believed it. “And all the other crew members died at sea.”
A slab of wood, even one that had been part of a coffin a hundred years ago, was not going to carry any contagion; Slater was certain of that. But he was also certain of what Dr. Levinson uttered for the both of them next.
“We need to secure the cemetery,” she declared, “before any more caskets pop up, and we need to do it as expeditiously, and with as little hoopla, as possible. That kind of quick and thorough work is your specialty, Dr. Slater.”
He accepted the compliment without comment. It was a fact.
“And then we will need to exhume one or more of the bodies, take all the usual core samples, and have them meticulously examined and analyzed, under Biohazard 3 protocols.” She pursed her lips, and waited. The only sound was the low hum of the air-filtration system that serviced every inch of the institute’s offices and laboratories. Her words hung in the air, awaiting a response, but there was only one that Slater could give.
“When do I leave?” he asked.
“Yesterday.”
Chapter 6
TSARSKOE SELO, 1916
Her brother’s cries split the night, echoing down the long marble corridors and sweeping staircases of the palace. Anastasia—or Ana, for short—sat up in her bed. Her sister Olga was already awake under her own pile of blankets. This had happened so many times before.
“Poor Alexei,” Ana said. “It’s getting worse again.”
“There’s nothing you can do,” Olga said. “There’s nothing any of us can do.”
“Dr. Botkin is here.”
“There’s nothing Dr. Botkin can do, either,” Olga said, wearily. “Go back to sleep.”
Olga lifted one of her plump pillows and stuck her head under it, but Ana could not fall asleep again. Alexei screamed, there were slippered footsteps running in the hall outside, and Ana had to go and see for herself. She got out of bed, put on a padded robe of Chinese silk—a gift from the always generous Emir of Bokhara—and crept out into the hall. When her little brown spaniel, Jemmy, tried to follow, she nudged her back into the bedroom with her foot.
Several doors down, she could see light spilling from the Tsarevitch’s suite of rooms, and she could hear voices in urgent consultation. As the heir to the throne of Russia, Alexei—or Alexis, as he was known outside the family—was the most precious thing in the whole empire, more valuable than Anastasia and her three sisters combined (a point that none of them disputed; it was just a fact of life). But he was also the only one of the five children afflicted with a mortal disease. Hemophilia.
The family had all come to the royal compound only a week before, hoping for some relief from the pressures and public demands of life in the Winter Palace of St. Petersburg. Just fifteen miles from the capital, and reached by a private railway line, Tsarskoe Selo—or, “the tsar’s village”—was comprised of eight hundred immaculately groomed and guarded acres, where peacocks strutted with their brilliant tail feathers fanning out and a pack of tame deer roamed free. Cossacks on horseback, with sabers at their sides, rode the iron-fenced perimeters at all hours, and from every window of the two hundred rooms in the palace a strutting sentry could be seen. An additional garrison of five thousand troops was stationed in the nearest village.