Plainly, the entire situation was becoming untenable. Lantos was going to need to be evacuated to a proper hospital, and soon — and the biological materials left exposed in the lab tent were going to have to be gathered up, with the utmost care, and safely destroyed. In their frozen state, the specimens taken in situ from the grave itself had been dangerous enough. But once the body had been thawed for the autopsy and the harvesting of additional tissue, there was no telling what had happened to any virus that might still have been preserved in the flesh and viscera. Most probably, it had been inert, or rendered that way by the thermal change.

But there was always the chance that, for even a short window of time, it had been alive … and communicable.

Lantos stirred on the table, and her hands twitched. Slater had been in such a hurry to attend to her injuries that he hadn’t had time to arrange for any of the usual restraints. He nodded at Nika, and told her how to increase the Demerol drip. Their work was not yet done … even if he was only running on fumes and adrenaline at this point.

In fact, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could maintain the intense focus he needed, or keep his hands steady enough to do the delicate repairs Lantos required. As it was, he knew that he was just doing stopgap work — enough to stop the hemorrhaging and hold things in place — until a more skilled surgeon, in a fully equipped operating room, could do it right.

But how long would that be?

He heard the doors of the church creaking open again, then Sergeant Groves’s voice just outside the sealed flaps of the tent.

“Sorry to report this,” Groves said, “but no luck with the Coast Guard. One chopper’s grounded for repair, and the other’s already on a rescue mission off Little Diomede.”

“So what about sending a boat?” Slater said, his eyes still focused on his patient.

“They say the sea’s so rough, they doubt they can get in close enough right now. They’ve got to wait the storm out.”

“Which means how long?” he asked impatiently, pulling another suture through.

Lantos moaned, her head twisting on the table.

After a pause, Groves admitted, “No telling. But Rudy said the forecast’s not good.”

Even in the tent, Slater could hear the howling of the wind, tearing at the old timbers of the church, and he could only imagine the pounding of the sea on the rocks and shoals surrounding St. Peter’s Island. Small wonder the strange Russian sect had chosen to take refuge here; it was one of the most impregnable and unapproachable spots in the world. Of all the hellholes Slater had been to — and he’d been to plenty — this one felt cursed even to him.

“Get back on the radio,” he snapped, more irritated and distracted than was wise, “and tell them this can’t wait. It’s a life-or-death emergency.”

“Frank,” Nika said.

“Find out who’s in charge — go as high up the chain as you can—”

“Frank, the bleeding just got worse—”

“And tell them to call Dr. Levinson at the AFIP if they need to get a top security clearance. I guarantee—”

“Frank!” Nika insisted.

And when he looked at Nika, and saw what she was bowing her head at, he could see that there was an upwelling of blood, as if from a layer of the dermis that had been insufficiently closed, seeping between the sutures. Lantos groaned, and though she should have been rendered unconscious by the drip, her hands swung loose, perhaps in involuntary contractions. Nika grabbed at one of them, and missed, and Slater said, “Let me do it — just stand back.”

But Nika fumbled across the table in an attempt to snag the other hand — a breach of protocol that a trained nurse would have known not to do — and before either one of them knew how it had happened, Nika flinched and said, “Ouch,” as the tip of the suturing needle pierced the palm of her glove. For a split second that seemed like an eternity, the needle stayed there, before Slater yanked it out, and looked through his visor at Nika. She was studying the tiny puncture in her glove, from which a dot of her own blood was now oozing, and then she looked up at him, her dark eyes full of disbelief … and questions.

Exactly as he feared were his own.

Sergei was pushing a wheelbarrow back toward the Ipatiev house when he heard the sound of gunshots. For days, there had been the rumble of distant artillery, but this was small-arms fire, and much closer to home.

It sounded like a string of firecrackers.

The wheelbarrow was filled with several gas cans. Commandant Yurovsky had sent him into town with orders to siphon the fuel out of every vehicle he could find, and if anybody asked any questions, to refer them to the Kremlin. This was not the sort of duty the Bolsheviks had promised him when they came to his village and dragooned him the previous spring.

The shots were coming one at a time now, and Sergei stopped in the middle of the dark road, fear gripping at his heart. Who was doing all this shooting, in the dead of night, and why?

Pushing the wheelbarrow as fast as he could over the bumps and ruts in the dirt road, he arrived at the sharp-staked palisade surrounding the house, and when the sentry called out who was there, he said, “It’s Comrade Sergei Ilyinsky. With the gasoline.”

“Bring it around back.”

In the courtyard, Sergei found a truck waiting, and the stench of gunpowder in the air … and blood. His eyes shot to the iron grille covering the basement window, but it was dark inside and he couldn’t see a thing.

Yurovsky, stepping out of the house, saw the gas canisters and said, “That’s all?”

“There aren’t many tractors in Ekaterinburg,” Sergei said, careful to keep any emotion out of his voice.

“Go upstairs and get the sheets and blankets.”

Sergei mounted the back steps and found the house in commotion. Other guards were trooping up and down the stairs, their arms filled with linens, their mouths crammed with food, a couple swigging vodka from a jug. By the time he got to the room Anastasia shared with her sisters, the four cots had already been stripped bare. Books and diaries, combs and shoes, were scattered around the floor. Arkady, one of the Latvian guards who had recently been brought to the house, was stripping some curtains from the whitewashed windows.

“What’s going on?” Sergei said. “Where are they?”

Arkady looked at him quizzically, and said, “In Hell, if you ask me.” Then, tossing the curtains to Sergei, he said, “Take these to the basement.”

His arms clutching the curtains, Sergei stumbled down the stairs, his mind refusing to accept the awful reality of what must have just happened, then across the courtyard and down to the cellar. The acrid smell of smoke and death grew stronger with every step he took, and Sergei’s heart grew as heavy as a stone. At the bottom, Yurovsky, in his long coat, was holding a lantern and directing the operation.

The floor was so awash in blood that the soldiers trying to roll the bodies up in the sheets and drapery kept slipping and sliding.

“Just get them out of here!” Yurovsky was barking. “The truck’s right outside.”

Sergei scanned the carnage; he saw Dr. Botkin’s gold eyeglasses gleaming on his bloody face, he saw Demidova with a bayonet still stuck in her chest. He saw the Tsar’s worn old boots sticking out of a sheet, and his young son Alexei — one side of his face obliterated by a close gunshot to the ear — being wrapped in a tablecloth, like a shroud.

But where was Anastasia?

“Don’t just stand there!” Yurovsky said, smacking him on the shoulder. “Get to work.”

Sergei stepped into the morass, searching for Ana, and found her beneath the corpse of her sister Tatiana, soaked in blood, her little dog crushed beneath her. Her hair was caked with blood, her clothes were ripped to shreds, her hands were clutching something under her bodice.