It didn’t matter. Borovsky was about to show them what was inside.
Borovsky removed a chain from around his neck and used the attached key to unlock the ancient locks. Picking up a small pry bar from a nearby crate, he thrust the sharpened end under the lid. Struggling to simply remove one of the sixteen nails, he motioned for Cobb to pick up the second pry bar and start on the opposite side. Working together, it still took them nearly five minutes to move their way around the coffin. As Borovsky pried loose the final anchor, Cobb and McNutt gently pulled back the wooden curtain while bracing themselves for the expected and inevitable stench of death.
There was none. Much to everyone’s surprise, there were also no spiders, cockroaches, ants, maggots, flies, mice, or rats. There was only a slight aroma.
‘What is that smell?’ McNutt said. ‘It’s like … fruit.’
‘Shellac,’ Jasmine said, transfixed by the object within. ‘Used as a preservative — made from lac, a deposit found on trees across this continent.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I thought it might be prune.’
McNutt was only partly kidding because the object inside the coffin looked like a human-sized, human-shaped prune.
Time seemed to have sealed its limbs against, and slightly into, its desiccated yet lumpy body, which consisted of what seemed to be eroding clothing combined with mummified flesh.
Whatever hair was left on its wrinkle-skinned skull now looked like stringy mold. There were only vague suggestions of ears, eyes, nose, or mouth. Over the years, its shape had shifted severely. Now it looked like a Halloween mask.
The only thing seemingly untouched by time was a ring that clung to what used to be its finger. The wide, gold band of the ring was encrusted with sparkling diamonds. The girdle held a magnificent, blood-red ruby. The face of the ring was oblong, with bands of onyx standing out against the polished jewel.
The emblem was clear.
It was the three-barred cross of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The ring was sanctimonious, yet righteous; decadent, yet humble. It somehow reflected lust and virtue at the same time. As if the designer recognized the sin of creating such a lavish bauble before asking for God’s forgiveness by adorning the piece with the holy sign of his faith.
‘We’ve found the ultimate treasure,’ Jasmine said.
‘We have?’ Cobb asked. ‘I mean — is this what I think it is?’
She looked back at the others with a palpable sense of dread.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s Rasputin.’
56
The reactions to the announcement were muted. The shock of the find was tempered by Borovsky’s explanation that this body was what had drawn the attention of the Black Robes and why they were so fanatically determined to remain.
Cobb was not startled or unnerved by Rasputin’s corpse. It was just one more dead body on a day full of them. Instead, he focused on the rest of the train car, searching for more surprises.
Sarah walked over casually to the coffin. She froze when she saw the ring on his finger.
‘Get me a good image,’ Garcia said.
McNutt brought the flashlight closer.
‘How do you know it’s him?’ McNutt asked Jasmine.
Jasmine pointed to the ring. ‘That’s a gift from the tsarina.’
‘Couldn’t it have been looted from one of the palaces and left here with the rest of the treasure?’ he asked.
‘Hidden on a dead body?’ Sarah said.
‘In a coffin,’ McNutt replied. ‘Who’d look there with all the rest of this lying around?’
‘Me,’ Sarah said, looking over the perimeter of the pine box. ‘The way that thing was sealed tight, they might as well have built a neon sign that said “Important!”’
Jasmine corrected her. ‘Actually, the spikes and padlock weren’t to keep people out.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Sarah asked.
Jasmine didn’t answer. It took a moment for her meaning to penetrate.
‘Oh,’ McNutt gasped. ‘It was to keep Dracula in.’
‘It’s Rasputin all right,’ Garcia said. ‘Facial recognition is a match. So much for the rumor that his body was immolated.’
There was no response.
For a moment, the train car was, fittingly, as quiet as a tomb.
McNutt broke the silence. He pointed at the ring and glanced at Sarah. ‘Gonna go for that?’
Sarah looked down at the jewelry. The corpse still had a disquieting power about it. ‘Too tough to fence.’ She cocked her head slightly to one side, then knelt on one knee beside the coffin to get a better look at the infamous mystic.
‘Praying to your master?’ McNutt asked.
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Please tell me you aren’t a Black Robe. I’d hate to shoot you before I get to bang you.’
Cobb glanced at Sarah and quickly studied her face. McNutt’s idea wasn’t likely, but it wasn’t impossible. Papineau had strong-armed Garcia into spying for him; maybe he’d hired a second mole. Or maybe the Black Robes had bribed her. He took a second — literally, no more — to study her posture, her eyes, her hands. Her head was tilted to one side, not bowed. Her eyes were moving; they were not down, not shut. Her fingers were relaxed and nowhere near a weapon. She did not have what the guys at Guantanamo Bay called ‘snapback’ — the look of a captive, or infiltrator, or sleeper, who was shedding a guise and reverting to their true self.
‘Sarah,’ Cobb said, ‘you with us?’
‘Yeah,’ she assured him. ‘Just looking.’
Cobb nodded. ‘All right then. Let’s go.’
No one asked where. The others in the group were still in the thrall of a man who had been dead nearly a century — a man whose mesmeric powers, at least, transcended death.
Cobb led his team members back toward the entrance of the cave when the hair on his arms began to prickle. The others would soon feel the same sensation, but Cobb’s sharply-honed senses alerted him first. He froze, his head slowly panning from side to side.
‘I feel it, too,’ McNutt agreed.
‘Feel what?’ Sarah asked.
‘The air’s moving in here,’ McNutt explained.
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Jasmine argued. ‘That would mean-’
‘There’s a second opening somewhere,’ Sarah said. ‘He’s right.’
They looked back toward the front of the train. No one could honestly say that they knew that’s where the cave opened, but it was the logical choice.
Sarah grinned and looked meaningfully at Cobb.
‘You up for it?’ he asked her.
‘It’s what I do, Jack.’
‘Go to it then,’ he ordered.
‘I don’t get it!’ Garcia cried. ‘What’s going on now?’
‘Garcia, I’m with you,’ McNutt said. ‘Except I’m here, and I’m lost.’
But Sarah was already sneaking past the front of the first car, going deeper into the cave. Cobb turned in the other direction and headed back toward Decebal, with a distracted McNutt and a confused Jasmine close behind.
‘Did you know about this too, Papi?’ Cobb asked as they walked.
