The Romanov Cross: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

he could remember, they had considered it an unholy place, a place where unhappy and evil spirits, the ones who could not ride the highways of the Aurora Borealis up into the sky, were condemned to linger on earth. Some said that these doomed souls were the spirits of the mad Russians who had once colonized the island, and that they were now trapped in the bodies of the black wolves that roamed the cliffs. Harley could almost believe it.
    “What do we do with it?” Farrell shouted as the great black box swung in the lines and netting overhead.
    It was about six feet long, three feet wide, and its lid was carved with some design Harley couldn’t make out yet. The other crewmen were staring at it dumbfounded, and Harley directed the Samoan and a couple of others to get it down and onto the conveyor belt. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to lose it, and whatever might be inside it, he didn’t want the deckhands to find out before he did.
    Farrell used a gaffing hook to pull the box clear of the railing, while the Samoan guided it onto the deck. It landed on one end with a loud thump, and a crack opened down the center of the lid. “Quick!” Harley said, lending a hand and pushing the box toward the belt. Harley guessed its weight at maybe two hundred waterlogged pounds, andonce they had securely positioned it on the belt, Harley threw the switch and watched as it was carried the length of the deck, then down into the hold below.
    “Okay, show’s over,” he shouted over the wind and crashing waves. “Haul in those pots! Now!”
    Then, as the men cast one more look over their shoulders and returned to their labors, he went back toward the bridge. But instead of going up to the pilot’s cabin, he stumbled down the swaying steps to the hold, where he found the engineer, Richter, studying the box.
    “What the hell is this?” Richter said. “You know you could have busted the belt with this damned thing?” Richter was usually just called the Old Man, and he’d worked on crab and cod and swordfish boats for nearly fifty years.
    “I don’t know what it is,” Harley said. “It just came up in the lines.”
    Richter, pulling at his bushy white eyebrows, stood back and surveyed the box, which had come to rest at the end of the now-stationary belt. Mutilated crabs, most of them dead but some of them still twitching, lay all over the wet floor. The overhead lights cast a sickly yellow glow around the huge holding tanks and roaring turbines. The air reeked of gasoline and brine.
    “I’ll tell you what I think it is,” Richter said. “This damn thing is a coffin.”
    Harley had reluctantly come to the same conclusion. It wasn’t built in the customary shape of a coffin, but the general dimensions were right.
    “And you don’t want to bring coffins aboard,” Richter grumbled over the engine noise. “Didn’t your father teach you a goddamned thing?”
    Harley was sick to death of hearing about his father. Everybody from Nome to Prudhoe Bay always had a story. He ran a hand over the lid of the box, brushing off some of the icy water, and bent closer to observe the carvings. Most of them had been worn away, but it looked like there was some writing here. Not in English, but in those characters he’d seen on the old Russian buildings that still remained here and there in Alaska. In school, they’d taught him about how the Russians had settled the area first, way back in the 1700s, and then, inone of the colossal blunders of all time, had sold it to the United States after the Civil War. This looked like that kind of writing, and in the dim light of the hold he could also make out a chiseled figure. Bending closer, he saw that it was sort of like a saint, but a really fierce-looking one, with a long robe, a short beard, and a key ring in one hand. He felt a sudden shudder descend his spine.
    “Get me a flashlight,” he told the old man.
    “What for?”
    “Just get me one.”
    Moving his head this way and that,