“I thought you’d say that.” Charlie fished some typewritten notes out of his coat pocket. “Read these over on the way. It’s what you’re going to say.”
Harley grudgingly took the paper and studied it as Charlie drove. Charlie rather fancied his own way with words—over the years he had been able to talk his way out of more than one rap, including armed burglary and assault—and even if he couldn’t be the one declaiming them, it would be his words spoken from the pulpit of the town church.
With his handicapped sticker, Charlie was able to park the van right beside the front stairs. Rebekah pushed his chair up the ramp. Just inside, not far from the plaque that listed all the fishermen who had been lost at sea in the past hundred years, there were bulletin boards covered with the names and photos of the newly dead. Lucas Muller. Freddie Farrell. Jonah Tasi, the Samoan. Buddy Kubelik. Old Man Richter. It said here that the old man’s first name was Aloysius. No wonder he never used it. The photos showed the men holding up fish they’d caught, or crouching over dead elk, or hoisting beer mugs at the Yardarm. Some people had tacked on little notes and cards saying good-bye.
As Charlie’s wheelchair was maneuvered down the aisle, the other people seemed to take quick notice of him, then turn away. Charlie knew that his entourage made something of a spectacle, and he liked that. This town had always been too small for him and his ambitions, but it wasn’t until the accident—and his being saved—that he’d found the message, and the means, to make himself heard around the world. Vane’s Holy Writ wasn’t a powerful force yet, but he had every confidence that one day it would be. In His own good time, the Lord would show him how.
Rebekah stopped the chair beside the very front pew, and Charlie was pleased to see that the mayor and a couple of men beside her—one of whom looked like a Russkie—had to scoot down to make room for them. These must be the guys from the chopper, and Charlie was happy to catch a glimpse of them. Know your enemy, that’s what he’d always said. And the Lord, he felt sure, would have no quarrel with common sense. That was where a lot of people went wrong, in his view; they thought the Lord wanted you to act like some Simple Simon, to go around expecting the best of everybody and trusting them like some dumb dog. What a load. The Lord wanted you to use your God-given wits to aid Him in His cause—and Charlie had never come up short in that department.
But speaking of which … the Right Reverend Wallach, a worthless milquetoast who couldn’t stir a bowl of Cheerios much less a congregation, ascended to the pulpit with a Bible in one hand and in the other a white life preserver from the Neptune II, which he hung from a hook attached to the lectern. It was not the first time the hook had been used for that purpose, nor would it be the last. The Bering Sea wasn’t getting any kinder.
“We are gathered here today,” the reverend said, “in remembrance of the good men who lost their lives doing what they did so well, and with such joy.”
Ten seconds in, and Charlie had already nearly guffawed. Anybody who thought crabbers did it for the fun of it was out of his mind. It was just about the worst work in the world. He’d done it for years, before the first Neptune went down, and hadn’t missed it for a single minute since. Extending his ministry was what he lived for now, and to that end he would do whatever he had to. Or, more to the point, whatever Harley, and his pals Eddie and Russell, had to do. Before the service, he’d spotted those other two losers smoking a joint outside.
Harley had already broached the subject of the job to them, so Charlie wasn’t going to have to waste a lot of time on persuasion. Getting onto St. Peter’s Island, and digging up graves that might still be sealed in the permafrost, was going to require a lot of hard work. What bothered Charlie was that he’d let this potential gold mine sit there, right under his nose, his whole life. Was it Providence that had finally opened his eyes? If there was more treasure where that emerald-embossed cross had come from, he was finally going to have the resources to do whatever he wanted. He’d be able to flood the whole planet with the holy word. Jesus might have put the stash in his way for that very reason.
And who knew how much of it there might be?
Ever since he’d found the cross in Harley’s anorak, he’d been digging through Internet sites, ordering books and downloading monographs, even posing as a professor at the University of Alaska in order to call up a couple of experts on Russian history and grill them. And everything he’d learned—like the fact that the colony was founded by a batch of fanatical Siberians who had settled on the island between 1910 and 1918—only whetted his appetite more.
“We are going to hear today from members of the lost men’s families,” the reverend was droning on. “And also from the captain of the unfortunate vessel capsized on that fateful night, for he alone lived to tell the tale.”