Though Not Dead (38 page)

The house was light and pleasant and excruciatingly clean, with an underlying smell of antiseptic. The dragon ushered them into a sunroom at the back of the house that was furnished with a rattan couch and chairs with cushions in a once colorful floral print. Tall windows overlooked a fenced yard with trees and shrubs surrounding a horseshoe pit and a croquet lawn. Next to the back fence was a section of hard-packed dirt suitable for bocce ball.

The dragon said in a tone that disapproved of any such thing, “Here are your visitors, Father Vladik,” and went away again, although Kate harbored the strong suspicion that she was lurking right outside the door, ready to breathe fire all over Kate if Kate showed the least sign of harassing her charge.

Father Vladik gave Kate an impish smile. “She’ll fry both our livers up for dinner if we don’t behave.”

Kate laughed, and he nodded at a chair.

“I’m Kate Shugak,” Kate said.

He nodded, his eyes on Mutt. Kate made an unobtrusive gesture and Mutt paced forward to stand gravely while Father Vladik petted her with a spotted and fragile hand. “Lazary called to say you were coming. He says you want to know about icons.”

Kate wasn’t sure she’d ever met anyone this old, or at least anyone who had looked this old. His flesh clung to his bones like a layer of wet, washed-out cotton, and his eyes were sunken and enveloped in wrinkles. He was seated in a wheelchair, placed to catch the maximum amount of the day’s sunlight, and he was dressed in a clean white button-down shirt and brown polyester slacks. A plaid blanket had been tucked over his legs, but he’d thrown it over one arm of his chair. His fingernails were clipped and filed, his wisp of remaining hair combed neatly back, and the thin, snow-white beard was allowed to flow into his lap only under the most strict restraints of cleanliness and neatness.

Still, Kate had the feeling that Father Vladik and his fellow inmates were very lucky. The twinkle in his eye told her he knew what she was thinking and shared the feeling. “What can I do for you, Ms. Shugak?”

He listened to her story without interruption. “A missing icon,” he said thoughtfully when she came to the end. “A mystery, in fact.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Even a treasure hunt,” he said, eyes twinkling.

He surprised a laugh out of her. “I guess you could call it that, too.”

“Well, of course, icons have gone missing ever since icons appeared,” he said, and Kate did not like to ask this venerable old gentleman if he meant “appeared” in the real or the religious sense. “You understand what an icon is?”

Kate, recognizing the signs of an enthusiast, settled down for the long haul with a dutiful expression of interest, interpolating the appropriate “Really” and “How interesting” at suitable intervals.

Father Vladik was definitely an authority, covering everything in Kate’s research the day before and embellishing it with dogma as well as human interest. He asked questions as well, almost none of which could she answer. “Was the first image of your Virgin pointing at the Child?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said for the seventh or eighth time, although Father Vladik seemed never to tire of hearing it.

“Was perhaps the Virgin’s hand on the right knee of Christ? You don’t know?” Father Vladik seemed to sigh. “Unless I see it, I have no way to tell you if it was Greek or Russian. Greek icons were said to have been made from copies of a drawing Luke made of Mary.”

“This icon was three panels hinged together,” Kate said.

“A triptych,” Father Vladik said. “Yes, I see.”

“Do you know of any stories of a triptych brought to Alaska by the early Russians?” Kate said.

He frowned. “Of course there is the legend of the Lady of Kodiak.”

Kate perked up. “The Lady of Kodiak?”

The Lady of Kodiak was an icon that, according to Father Vladik, had been revealed to Saint Juvenaly, who had been martyred while proselytizing to the unfaithful in 1796. “He came from Ekaterinburg,” Father Vladik said, “and followed Archimandrite Joseph to Kodiak in 1794.” He paused, and cleared his throat. “Conditions,” he said, “were not what they had been led to expect.” And then he added, “But then, when are they ever.”

Kate appreciated this note of reality in the missionary experience and warmed even more to Father Vladik.

The Kodiak settlement was primitive and violent and there was no church, but in only two years the missionaries counted twelve thousand converts. Juvenaly took the work to mainland Alaska. “And there,” Father Vladik said, “unfortunately, Father Juvenaly disappeared.”

“What happened to him?”

“No one really knows. One Alaska Native oral history has it that he was killed by a fellow shaman.” Father Vladik sighed. “Honest zeal is a requirement of the missionary vocation, but it is also the primary cause of mission failure. The greatest delicacy is called for when carrying the true faith to the heathen.” He sank into a reverie, possibly induced by memories of missions of his own.

“And the triptych?” Kate said.

Father Vladik roused himself. “Juvenaly brought it with him to Alaska, of course. According to tradition, it served as the focus for the service, until a church was built. In Kodiak, miracles began to be reported in its presence, healing miracles, sight and hearing restored, a barren woman made fertile, a paralyzed child made to walk again. The usual things. That was when she began to be called the Lady of Kodiak.”

Kate was tempted to ask if the Lady of Kodiak had raised anyone from the dead, but forbore. Old Sam would not have approved of her poking even gentle fun at this good old man, and she was, in a manner of speaking, here in Old Sam’s service. “What happened to it?”

One shoulder rose and fell in a slight shrug. He stared past her shoulder with eyes that had begun to dim. “Some say Baranov was jealous of the authority of the church and stole it, hoping to weaken our influence. Others say Saint Juvenaly took it with him into the north.” He looked at her with disapproval. “Where is your head scarf, young woman?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your head scarf,” he said impatiently. “How may I baptize your child if you will not show the proper respect to your church and your God?”

“I—”

The dragon materialized in the doorway. “It’s almost time for lunch, Father. May I take you into the dining room?”

Kate became aware of a stir and other voices in another part of the house.

Father Vladik said, sounding querulous now, “I wish you people would quit bothering me about the Lady. She’s gone. Gone with the saint into the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!”

Kate stopped halfway to her feet. “I’m not the first one to ask about the Lady of Kodiak?”

“O come let us worship and fall down before Christ, son of God,” Father Vladik said.

“Father—”

“That will be all, Ms. Shugak,” the dragon said.

Kate followed them out into the hallway and waited until the dragon had settled Father Vladik in at the table with his lunch in front of him. He was singing now, something that sounded Gregorian, the liturgy of the Russian Orthodox service, perhaps. “There, now,” the dragon said, patting him on the shoulder. “Enjoy your lunch, Father.”

She looked up and saw Kate in the doorway, and steamed toward her with magisterial impatience. “Yes?” she said, as if she expected sheer force of personality to be enough to send Kate scuttling for cover.

It nearly was, but Kate mustered up her courage and gave speech. “Has Father Vladik had other visitors recently?”

“None of the gentlemen receive visitors that often,” the dragon said, “and such visitors would be their private business.”

“Please,” Kate said. “I’m not asking you to betray a confidence, but it would help me very much to know.”

The dragon huffed out an impatient breath, and condescended enough to say, “There was a gentleman here last week, who asked to speak with Father Vladik.”

“When?”

“I believe it would have been Friday.”

“What did they talk about?”

The dragon reared up. “I am not in the habit of eavesdropping on my gentlemen’s conversations, Ms. Shugak.”

“Of course not,” Kate said, soothing, “but did you perhaps accidentally overhear something, anything, that would give some hint as to the topic of the conversation?” She saw the refusal in the dragon’s eye and added hurriedly, “I wouldn’t ask, but it is a matter of great moment to my tribe.”

The dragon thawed a trifle. “Tribe?”

“The Niniltna Native Association. It concerns a, an artifact belonging to them, that was lost to them over eighty years ago.”

“Ah.” The dragon was silent for a moment. “I should have been a Chugachmiut shareholder.”

“Ah,” Kate said in turn, and realization dawned. “What’s your blood quantum?”

“One eighth. My maternal grandmother was one-half Eyak.”

“You’re from Cordova,” Kate said.

“My mother was,” the dragon said, and turned to go back into the dining room.

The resentments spawned by those who had been and those who had not been included in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, Kate thought bitterly, had screwed yet another promising investigation.

She and Mutt were at the door when the dragon’s voice sounded behind her, and she turned to see her standing in the hallway. “It might have been something about a lady.”

“The Lady of Kodiak?”

“Perhaps. I can’t be sure. As I say, I wasn’t listening.”

Kate walked forward to plant herself directly in front of the dragon. “My name is Ekaterina Ivana Shugak. What is your name?”

“Marilyn Barnes.”

“Barnes,” Kate said. “My paternal grandmother’s maiden name was Barnes, one of the Cordova Barneses. We’re probably cousins.” One cousin with shareholder status and a quarterly dividend and land, and one without. She didn’t look Dragon Barnes in the eye; that would have been rude. Instead she inclined her head and said in a soft voice, “I see you, Marilyn Barnes.”

The dragon hesitated. “I see you, Ekaterina Ivana Shugak.”

They didn’t exchange bows, but it was close.

*   *   *

Outside, Kate sat for a moment without starting the car.

Our Lady of Kodiak, a Russian icon reputed to work miracles, vanishes in 1796, possibly in the Interior with the missionary priest who had brought it to Alaska. Also possibly not.

Alexander Baranov made Sitka the capital of Russian America when he became the head of the Russian-American Company in 1799. In 1802 the Tlingits booted the Russians back into the sea. In 1804 Baranov returned with a warship. Thus New Archangel, now known as Sitka, was born. If he had stolen the icon from Juvenaly, he would certainly have brought it to Sitka with him.

But in 1802, Baranov’s settlement had been overrun with Tlingits, who had undoubtedly taken everything that wasn’t nailed down as theirs by right, the spoils of war.

What if one of the things they took had been the icon?

More history flipped up in Kate’s mental Rolodex. The Tlingits ran a regular trade route up the Chilkoot Pass, carrying in dentalium shells and cedar baskets and fish oil, and bringing moose and caribou hides and copper ore back out to the coast.

Tlingits, she thought, sitting up with a jerk that startled Mutt.

Tlingit tribes customarily married their sons to the daughters of powerful Athabascan chiefs, to cement ties between the tribes, to safeguard trade routes, to ensure peace.

Kookesh. A Southeast name, not an Interior name, not an Aleut name.

And what would be more natural than for a prospective husband to bring a miracle-bestowing artifact as a bride gift?

Look at it another way. Lev Kookesh hadn’t been born to the title of Niniltna’s chief. The icon could have been the price his tribe paid to have their son crowned with that laurel.

I wish you people would quit bothering me about the Lady.

Someone else had been asking questions about the Lady of Kodiak only last week.

Which meant someone was a week ahead of her.

She started the car and moved off down the street.

She didn’t notice the tail for almost six months.

Twenty-four

It was a dark blue SUV with tinted windows and no front plate. “They could get a ticket for that,” Kate said to Mutt, watching the rearview in what she hoped was unobtrusive fashion.

The SUV had pulled up behind her at the light at Lake Otis and Twentieth, also turning left. It had dropped back a few cars when she changed lanes after going through the light at Northern Lights, but it had moved up a car after the light at Thirty-sixth, and now, at Tudor, it was right behind her again.

“Not a pro,” Kate said.

Mutt’s ear twitched.

Kate was in the right-hand lane eight cars back from the light. When the electric pink Cadillac Seville next to her stalled out, she jumped on the opportunity to move into the right-turn-only lane and hit the gas. She made it around the corner just as the light turned red, sped down Tudor to the turnoff to the strip mall on the corner, negotiated the speed bumps in the strip mall’s parking lot without sacrificing speed or launching them into orbit, and poked a cautious nose back into the exit onto Lake Otis.

The SUV was the second car back from the corner, behind the same electric pink Cadillac Seville that Kate had slipped in front of when it stalled out. It was driven by a woman with big hair who wore a sparkler on her right hand that gave out a series of blinding flashes as she tapped her hand on the steering wheel to Van Halen. She was still talking on her cell phone. The bass reverberated all the way back to the Subaru. The arrow was red but she was looking left at oncoming traffic, waiting for a gap to pull into.

Kate looked left and willed the driver of the white Bronco next to her to look her way before the light turned green. He, too, was talking on his cell phone. She rolled down her window. “Hey! Hey, mister!”

He looked up and then over at her. She gave him her most dazzling smile and goosed the Subaru ahead a couple of inches, nodding at the lane.

He responded with a scowl and pulled up to within a whisker of the chrome bumper of the ancient Buick Skylark in front of him.