“How are you feeling?” she said, but it was more than just a courtesy question. “Have you had any recurrences of the malaria?”

“I’m fine,” he said, working to keep his voice even and his gaze level. Shrugging off his overcoat — he’d rushed straight upstairs without stopping at his office — he took a seat at the table. The blue suit he was wearing hung loose on his frame; he’d lost weight in Afghanistan.

“Don’t lie to me, Dr. Slater. It’s important.”

“Whatever you need,” he said, trying to dodge the question, “I am available.”

Whether or not she believed him, or was just too intent on gaining his services to push it any further, he did not know. But leaning back in her chair and surveying him carefully, she said, “We all have a certain number of chips we can call in, and frankly, I used up most of mine at your trial.”

“I understand that,” he said, “and I appreciate it.”

“Good, I’m happy to hear that. Because now I’m going to tell you how you can pay me back.”

“Shoot.”

“We have a problem.”

So far no surprise. Slater’s job was nothing but dealing with problems.

“In Alaska.”

Now that was a surprise. Slater had been dispatched to some far-flung spots, but seldom anywhere in the United States.

“First, I want you to see some things.” She tapped a few keys on her laptop, and a slide appeared on a screen that had lowered behind her. It was a shot of a snowy road, with a long line of telephone poles running along one side, but all of them were teetering at odd angles.

“This shot was taken a few days ago, outside a town called Port Orlov.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“No one has. It’s a tiny fishing village, on the northwest tip of the Seward Peninsula. This shot was taken there, too,” she said, tapping again, and bringing up a picture of an A-frame house that had slipped off its foundation.

“And here’s the Inuit totem pole that has stood in the center of town since 1867, to commemorate the Russian sale of the Alaska territory.” Miraculously, the old wooden column, with faded paint on the faces of eagles and otters, was still standing, but at an angle that reminded Slater of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Plainly, the ground was shifting, but that was a problem for the geologists, was it not?

“Earthquake activity?” he asked, and Dr. Levinson shook her head.

“We’ve checked all the seismological data, and no, that’s not it.”

She tapped again, and a series of shots came up, of mailboxes that had fallen over, of concrete steps that had cracked, of wharves that had buckled.

“It’s climate change,” she said. “The average air temperature’s rising, the offshore currents are getting warmer … and the permafrost is starting to thaw.”

Okay, that sounded like a perfectly reasonable conclusion. But he still didn’t see how any of it fell into his bailiwick.

As if she could guess what he was thinking, Dr. Levinson clicked on the next slide. “And then this turned up,” she said.

At first he thought it was just an old dark door, or maybe an antique dining table, but then he looked more closely and saw that its surface was elaborately carved and depicted a classical figure, maybe a saint, in a flowing robe, and holding a set of keys on a ring. A long crack ran down one side of the wood.

“I assume it’s the top of a coffin,” Slater said, and when she didn’t correct him, he added, “but who’s that on top?”

“St. Peter, holding the keys to Heaven and Hell.”

“Where did it come from?”

“The Coast Guard retrieved it. A fishing boat had pulled it up in the nets, and when the boat hit some rocks and went under, one of the crew was able to hang on to it long enough to get to shore.”

“He sounds like Ishmael.”

“His name’s Harley Vane, and from what I’ve read in the initial reports, he’s a piece of work. He’s claimed the lid as salvage, and he still has it.”

That seemed a bit strange to Slater, but maybe if he’d had occasion to hitch a ride on a coffin lid, he’d feel attached to it, too. “Where’s it from?”

“Our best guess is that it came from the cemetery on a place called St. Peter’s Island, a few miles west of Port Orlov.”

Another slide came up. An aerial shot of a hulking black island, with a bank of fog clinging to its shores.

“The island is nearly impregnable, but a sect of religious zealots, most of them from Siberia, did manage to settle there around 1912.”

“Don’t tell me anyone’s still there,” Slater said, though one look at the forbidding island was enough to make him wonder how anyone could ever have chosen to call it home in the first place.

“No one alive,” Levinson said, and now she leaned forward on the table, her arms folded and her expression grave. She looked at him over the top of her bifocals. “They all died, in the space of a week or two. In 1918.”

The date was a dead giveaway, and now he could see where this had all been going. “The Spanish flu?”

Levinson nodded.

It was all coming together. “So the same disturbances to the ground in Port Orlov are showing up on the island, too.”

She remained silent while he worked it out.

“And as the permafrost thaws, things that were buried are coming to the surface. Things like old caskets.”

“The graveyard was built on a cliff, away from the settlement itself,” she said, filling in another piece. “But now the cliff is giving way.”

And shedding coffins … coffins filled with victims of the flu. “Is the concern,” he said, thinking aloud, “that the Spanish flu virus might still be viable in the frozen corpses?”

“It’s a remote possibility,” she conceded, “but it’s a possibility that we have to deal with, nonetheless.”

As an epidemiologist, Slater did not need to be told what could happen if the Spanish flu was ever released again into the world. In a few short years, the Spanish flu pandemic had swept the globe, and although there were still disputes about the final death toll, the figure of 50 million was well accepted. In his own view, Slater had always thought that the casualty count on the Indian subcontinent had been vastly understated. What was not in dispute was that the Spanish flu had been the most devastating plague ever to hit the human race, and that to this day no one had ever completely figured it out, or discovered a way to combat it. Its victims died the most excruciating of deaths, literally drowning in a froth of their own blood and secretions, and although some of the most thorough research into mapping its genetic structure had been done right here, at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the scientific community was still no closer to a cure.

“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.