“Is that good or bad?” Nika asked.
“At the AFIP,” Slater replied, “we keep our specimens, for safety’s sake, at minus seventy Celsius.”
But this then would have to be the grave with which their project began. It was closest to ground zero, as it were, and as a result the condition of the cadaver in the casket lost at sea would be most closely replicated in this one. In any epidemiological mission, it was critical to work from the most hazardous location first, then proceed outward from there to see where, and how far, some contagion or contaminant might have spread. Slater motioned to Groves and told him the excavation work should begin right here, and Groves twisted a wire pennant around the top of the cross at the top of the grave, then stuck another into the snow at the foot of the grave.
“And make sure you keep the soil as intact as possible, so that we can lay it back neatly over the grave when we’re done.”
Groves made a note of it, as Nika nodded approvingly.
“We want to leave no sign of any desecration behind us when we’re done.”
“And the sooner you all go,” Kozak piped up, waving his hands, “the easier it will be for me to finish my own work here. So, scat—I must make my grid now, and you are all in the way.”
Slater knew what it was like to have a bunch of onlookers hanging around when you wanted to concentrate on a serious task at hand, so he ushered Nika and the sergeant back toward the gateposts as Kozak focused on his GPR. If this first exhumation was going to go off without a hitch tomorrow, there were things he needed to do back at the colony today. Kozak was barely aware of their leaving. And though he jiggled the monitor to see if he could remove the squiggly lines that were spoiling the topographic map, they kept coming right back, as did the occasional impression of a hard, probably metallic, object as he rolled the GPR chassis over each individual gravesite. A strong blast of cold wind swept in from the sea, bending the boughs of the dark trees that bordered the barren graveyard, and he pressed the earflaps of his hat closer against his head. It was the same kind of hat he’d worn as a boy, growing up in the Soviet Union. And now, on this strange island, he was revisited by that same crushing sadness that he remembered enveloping him even back then.
That was one reason he had just shooed them all away. When this depression fell, he needed to be alone with it … and it fell upon him often in climes like these. He was carried back in time, to a throng of mourners, gathered at an impressive state funeral in Moscow, when he was just a boy. Wrapped in their heavy black coats and fur hats, they had stood impassively as the wind had battered their faces and brought tears to their eyes. Of course, given the reputation for steely rectitude of the dignitary whose funeral it was—a man whom everyone feared and no one much liked—a sharp wind was the only way any of them would have been inclined to shed a tear.
As young Vassily had looked on, the Russian Orthodox priest, in his long black cassock and purple chimney-pot hat—the kamilavka—had overseen the perebor, or tolling of the bells. First, a small bell had been struck once, and then, in succession, slightly larger bells were rung, each one symbolizing the progress of the soul from cradle to grave—or so his mother had leaned down to whisper in his ear. At the end, all the bells were struck together, signifying the end of earthly existence. The coffin, sealed with four nails in memory of the four nails that had crucified Christ, was lowered into the grave, with the head facing east to await the Resurrection. The priest poured the ashes from a censer into the open pit, and after each of the stony-faced mourners had tossed in a shovelful of dirt and drifted off down the snowy pathways of the cemetery, Vassily had found himself alone there, with only his widowed mother. He had leaned back against her and she had folded her arms over him as they watched the gravediggers, impatient to finish the job, emerge from the cover of the trees to fill up the rest of his father’s grave.
Chapter 29
“So, where did you say you got this?” Voynovich asked, while leaning back on his stool. He’d gotten even fatter, if that was possible, since Charlie Vane had last come into the Gold Mine to fence some other items.
“I already told you,” Charlie said. “It was a gift from God.”
“Yeah, right. I’ve heard your show. You and God are good buds now.”