Altar of Bones Read Online Free PDF Page B

love …
    Lena reached out to touch him, then pulled her hand back, balling it into a fist in her lap.
    She wondered if Nikolai Popov was even his real name, wonderednow if he’d ever been a real prisoner. Most of the men at Norilsk were sent to slave in the nickel mines, but they’d made him the camp “artist” instead, putting him to work painting slogans and red stars outside on the infirmary walls. The infirmary where she conveniently worked, and he had the kind of ravishing good looks to catch any woman’s eye.
    But it was his defiant courage that had had won her heart. He told her he’d been sent to the gulag for drawing cartoons critical of Stalin and the Communist Party. “They are parasites. They feed off the fruits of our labor, all the while telling us how we should think, how we should be. I refuse to be a happy slave, Lena. There’s another world beyond this place, for you and me. For us. A world of infinite possibilities.”
    He’d made it seem as if the escape were her idea, but she could see now how easily he’d manipulated things, telling her about the gap in the fence, about the forty-five seconds of no searchlights while the sentries changed shifts. And the cave …
But is there some place, Lena love, where we can hide until the soldiers give up looking for us?
How eagerly, how stupidly, she’d told him about the cave, how it was so cleverly hidden behind a waterfall on the lake where she’d been born.
    What a truly gullible little fool you were, Lena Orlova
.
    He’d already known about the cave, obviously—not where it was, perhaps, but he’d known of its existence, and that she alone, of all the stupid females in the world, could lead him right to it. She’d been so very stupid. Stupid with love.
    And Nikolai? Had he ever loved her, even a little?
    Probably not. And, no, he’d never been a real prisoner. He was in the GUGB, surely. The secret police. One of Stalin’s spies. He’d been half-delirious with fever, probably said more than he ever should have, but he’d let slip something about a dossier. The Fontanka dossier, he’d called it. Before the revolution, Fontanka 16 had been the infamous address of the headquarters for the tsar’s own secret police. So how far back did this dossier go, and what was in it?
Who
was in it? A sketch of the altar, Nikki had said. A wild tale told in a tavern by a drunken madman. But what else? How much did he know?
    Somehow he’d found out about the altar of bones. He would neverrest now, the men he worked for would never rest, until they got their hands on its terrible power.
    “I did love you, Nikki. So very much,” she said, but he slept on.
    Again she reached out to touch him, and again she stopped herself. One of the times they’d made love had been in the shed where they stored the paints. Afterward he had said, “Do you believe this can last forever, Lena?”
    She hadn’t wanted to give him too much of herself too soon, so she’d turned the question back at him. “Do you?”
    “Yes. And I’m not talking about this,” he said, touching her between her thighs. “But this …” His hand had moved up to press into the soft flesh just below her breast. “The blood I can feel right now pumping through your heart. And this.” Then he’d taken her own hand and put it on his chest. “My own heart’s lifeblood. Can you make my heart beat forever for you, Lena?
    “Can you make our hearts beat as one until the end of time?”

3

    L ENA O RLOVA sat before the dying embers of the fire and watched the man who called himself Nikolai Popov open his eyes. His fever had broken; he would live. His black, treacherous heart would go on beating, if not forever, at least for now.
    He smiled at her, and then she knew the instant full awareness came, for his gaze left her face and went right to the altar made of bones, and she saw the greed and the hunger flare in his eyes before he looked away.
    He yawned elaborately and stretched. “God, I’m