An Alaska Tundra Adventure

"Yurovsky kept detailed records of his daily tasks, but those were kept secret until the Soviet Union was dissolved. I was able to get a copy of his journals from a professor in Moscow, and I read what Yurovsky did during his years as head of Cheka. One trip stuck out as something I should investigate further.

"In August of 1919, a year after Tsar Nicholas and his family were killed, Yurovsky visited the Gulag at Uelen on the Russian coast of the Bering Sea. His notes said he was delivering a high level prisoner and also inspecting the camp. He stayed there for seven days, but strangely, only the first, second, and seventh day's activities are recorded in his journal. I found his activities on the second day particularly interesting. He went to the fishing village at Uelen. Apparently he stayed at the fishing village for four days and then returned to the Gulag. After that, he went back to Moscow.

"The days in between the second and seventh day had no entries, so I wondered what he was doing. The fishing village at Uelen was just a tiny village. It was doubtful he spent all his time talking to the villagers and having fish for lunch and dinner.

"It was a couple months later that I stumbled upon what I think was the answer. During the Alaska Purchase, Big Diomede Island became part of Russia and Little Diomede Island became part of Alaska. I thought it would be interesting to see if the USSR had maintained the agreement once Lenin took power. I thought it unlikely because the Lenin government had aggressively pursued whaling in the Bering Sea and would have probably violated the territorial waters of Alaska.

"What I found were the logs of Alaskan fishing boats that had spotted Russian whalers off the coast of Alaska. I also found one account of the wreck of one of those whalers off the island of Little Diomede in 1920. The whaler went aground during a storm and the Captain and his crew were rescued by the natives on Little Diomede. The Captain and his crew were then taken to Big Diomede with all they had salvaged from the wreck except for one thing, the ship's log. One of the natives kept it and turned it over to the tribal leader thinking it might be important.

"When a US Navy ship was patrolling the waters off Little Diomede during World War Two, it made a stop at Little Diomede. The son of the original tribal leader gave the log to the captain of the US Navy ship. Through a long chain of events, it ultimately ended up in the Library of Congress where I found it while doing my research.

"According to the log of the whaler Doensk that was berthed at Uelen, on August 20, 1920, a high ranking Russian official boarded her and ordered her to sail east to the coast of Alaska. The name of the official wasn't given, but the date happens to be the same as the second day of Yurovsky's visit to Uelen. In Yurovsky's position in Cheka, he would have had the authority to order almost anyone to do anything. Refusing his order would have meant either death or sentencing to the Gulag at Uelen.

"The Captain of the Doensk had sailed due east and upon arriving at the coast of Alaska, sailed north until he found the inlet to a lagoon. This high level official directed him to sail through the inlet and anchor on the opposite shore. The captain of the whaler recorded his anchored position. That's where I started.

"The high level official then ordered the captain to lower a whale boat with two men and said he would have them take him to the shore and wait until he returned. They did as he'd ordered, and about two hours later, the official returned to the whale boat. The whale boat went back to the whaler, and the whaler then sailed out of the lagoon and back to Uelen. The total time of the trip was four days, coincidentally the same amount of time as the days with no entry in Yurovsky's journal.

"What I think is Yurovsky kept the diamonds and precious gems for himself and then brought them to Alaska and buried them here. He probably intended to come back and get them, but he kept getting promoted higher and higher in the Soviet government and didn't have the freedom he'd had before.

"I found one last piece of evidence. It was a letter Yurovsky wrote to his wife in 1938 when he knew he was dying. He said he was proud of the legacy he was leaving behind from his later years, but regretted his participation in the killing of Tsar Nicholas. His final words in the letter were that he wanted to be buried beside a remote lake with an island and a shore shaped like a hook. He said spending eternity in such a lonely place might atone for what he'd done.

"Don't you see? Based on the time it took the whaler to get from Uelen to Alaska, the inlet has to be Ikpek Lagoon and the only lake he could have walked to and back from in two hours has to be this one. You saw the hook and the island when we flew over.

"What he was saying to his wife was that he'd taken the diamonds and gems and buried them right here, right where we're standing. He probably left a marker of some type and it would be metal. When they dug his grave, they'd see the marker and dig to find out what was there. The diamonds and gems would have been in a metal box because wood would have just rotted away. Even if it was a wood box, there would be metal nails and hinges and a hasp. My metal detector will find any metal that's here and like you say, the natives never used metal. If there's metal here, it has to be what Yurovsky left here."

For the next two hours, Matt followed Amanda with the Marlin slung over his shoulder as she walked a grid pattern from the arm of land that formed the hook and to the north-west. He'd had his doubts before, but they'd covered an area about equal to an eighth of the area spanning a second of both latitude and longitude. It was almost noon by then, and he asked Amanda if she was ready for lunch. She asked if he was going to build a fire and he laughed.

"No, because there's nothing to burn up here. I'm not much into roughing it anyway. I have a small propane stove in the plane. Why don't you take a rest while I cook us some soup?"

Amanda nodded.

"I need to change the batteries in my metal detector anyway."

Matt dipped a pot of water from the lake, then got out the small, one-burner stove, and set it on a relatively flat rock. He lit the stove and then sat the pot on top of it, and while the water heated he asked Amanda which she preferred -- potato or beef vegetable. When she said beef vegetable, he took a package of each and two stainless steel bowls and spoons from the box in the plane.

When the water was boiling, Matt poured the contents of the soup packages into the bowls, added a cup of boiling water, stirred them until the soup mix dissolved and then carried them over to where Amanda was sitting on one of the pontoons of the Cessna.

"Here you go. Best let it cool a little though."

After lunch, Amanda started walking with her metal detector again. Matt picked up the Marlin and followed her. After an hour he said, "Amanda, how accurate do you think your coordinates are?"

Amanda stopped walking and looked up.

"I'm not sure, but Yurovsky couldn't have walked much further than this. I don't know. Maybe within a hundred meters or so. Why?"

"Well, if you're off by only one second of latitude that's about a hundred feet, and a second of longitude is about eighty. At the rate we're going, we won't be able to cover that much ground in the next three days. If we're only as close as you think, it'll take almost a month. I brought along enough food for a couple weeks if we don't get carried away and I can stay here with you, but I can't do it for free. Are you sure you want to keep going?"

Amanda frowned.

"I don't have enough money for more than a week. It's here though, I know it is. I guess I'll have to walk faster."

Matt stopped Amanda at six that night because he could tell she was tired. She said, "But it's still daylight", and Matt smiled.

"It'll be daylight for another four hours, Amanda. It doesn't get dark until after ten this time of year. You look like you're about to drop. Let's have some dinner and then turn in for the night."

Dinner was beef stew from a package of dry ingredients boiled in more water from the lake. Amanda made a face when she tasted it, but she finished the bowl without saying anything. After Matt took their utensils and washed them in the lake, he was careful to gather up any packaging that was left and stow it in an air-tight container in the plane. As he explained to Amanda, "A bear can smell food a long way away, and we don't want any uninvited guests tonight."

When Matt said they should turn in, he asked Amanda what she'd brought to sleep in. She grinned.

"I didn't bring a lace nightgown if that's what you mean. I figured I'd just sleep in my clothes."

Matt shook his head.

"No, what I meant was did you bring blankets or a sleeping bag. It'll drop into the thirties tonight."

Amanda shook her head.

"I didn't have room for a sleeping bag, but I did bring a blanket. I thought that would be enough if I slept in my clothes too."

Matt smiled because he'd been through this before. Somebody in a group always underestimated how cold it can get in the Arctic even during the summer.

"If that's all you brought, you'll be freezing by morning. I brought an extra sleeping bag you can use. Oh, and just for information, sleeping in your clothes won't help. The clothes will get tight on you and slow down the circulation in your arms and legs and you'll still feel cold. When they lived in igloos, the natives always slept in the nude for just that reason. The good thing is, if you leave your clothes in the bottom of your sleeping bag, they'll be warm in the morning."

That night, Amanda climbed into the sleeping bag, zipped it up and then struggled to take off her shirt and pants. Once she was in just her bra and panties, Amanda didn't feel comfortable lying so close to Matt in the back of the plane. It was like they were in bed together even though she was zipped up in a sleeping bag. It had been almost a year since she'd slept this close to a man.

Amanda had thought she loved Larry and he loved her, but when she talked about going to Alaska, he'd tried hard to talk her out of it. It came to a head one night as they were going to bed.

"Mandy, why the hell do you want to go up to some place where there are no fucking people? What if something happens while you're there? Don't expect me to come up there and nurse you back to health. I'm happy right here and you should be too. We have a nice apartment and we have things to do on the weekend."

He cupped her bare right breast and squeezed gently, then stroked her nipple with his thumb.

"Besides, if you're up there and I'm down here, who's gonna take care of you like I do every night?"

Amanda had pushed Larry's hand away and then told him to leave because the apartment was in her name. She'd expected him to say he was sorry and that he'd go with her if that would make her happy, but he didn't. All he did was say he was going to stay with a friend and he'd be back for his stuff in the morning. Then he got dressed and walked out the door without even saying goodbye. He didn't say anything the next morning either. When Amanda let him in, he put his clothes in the laundry bag he'd brought with him and then left. She hadn't seen or heard from Larry since.

Amanda had missed Larry for about a week. It took her that long to figure out that while she'd liked Larry, what she thought was love was really the feeling that he needed her. Because he'd just left her instead of trying to straighten things out, she realized Larry hadn't needed her for the person she was. He only needed her for the way she willingly accepted him into her bed every night and the way she made love with him.

When she thought more about Larry, she realized he wasn't the man she'd thought he was. Larry was good looking and he said she was beautiful, but his idea of something to do on the weekends was to go club-hopping. He said he was showing her off to everybody, but she'd seen him looking at other women. When she'd asked him about that, he just shrugged and said it wasn't wrong to appreciate beauty wherever you found it.

Larry also wasn't very manly. Because of the way she looked, Amanda often had other men come up and try to talk to her. If she was out with Larry when that happened, he'd just sit there and not say anything. She didn't expect him to start a fight, but she did think it would have been proper to tell the other guy that they were together.

After that, Amanda had thrown herself into her research and ignored any invitations to go out with men. Part of the reason was that she was getting close to tracking down where Kurovsky had gone, but in large part, she was protecting herself from being hurt again.

The only thing she did miss was the intimacy she and Larry had had together. Since the first time she'd experienced an orgasm, she'd craved the intense release that wiped everything from her mind for a few minutes. It was like she was floating in the air while the little tremors kept her mind from thinking about anything else.

Amanda needed that release and she needed it often, first to relieve the tensions of studying hard so she made grades good enough to get her accepted into a master's program, and then from the hours and hours of pouring over old documents in search of Kurovsky's travels. She'd been a mess after Larry left. Without Larry and the way he made love to her, she'd been forced to try to relieve those tensions herself, but it didn't work as well. She'd had to watch what she said to other people. On the rare occasions when she didn't, she'd snapped at people who hadn't done anything wrong.

Amanda raised up enough she could see Matt. He was asleep even though there was still light coming through the windows of the plane. Amanda figured he was used to sleeping in his plane even when it wasn't dark. She wasn't though.

She tried covering up her head to block out the light, but that didn't work. All it did was make her think more.

Matt was a lot different than Larry had been. Of course, she was a customer, so he wouldn't have done anything, but he hadn't even said anything about how she looked. That had always happened before. If she was buying something, even the saleswomen would tell her she looked great. Matt had pretty much ignored her.

Then Amanda realized that wasn't right. He just hadn't said anything that a woman might consider to be an invitation to anything. What he had done was bring a sleeping bag for her so she wouldn't be cold at night, and he'd fixed all their meals so she could keep looking. He'd believed her first story about why she wanted to fly to this lake even though Amanda herself thought that was a pretty weak reason. When she'd told him the real reason, all he'd done was pick up his rifle and follow her across the tundra. She wasn't very far from the plane so he could easily have just stayed there, but he'd said he was protecting her from any bears that might come by.

Amanda's rational side told her that was all because she was paying him, but she let her emotional side entertain the idea that maybe Matt liked her. Amanda knew she liked Matt. He was certainly a man, a man with the confidence to fly a plane to a tiny little lake and then land on that lake. She knew Larry would have been terrified of seeing a bear, yet Matt didn't seem too concerned. All he'd said about bears was that he'd shoot in the air to scare one away, but if he had to, he'd kill it so it would hurt either of them.

What if he did like her? Would he be able to tell her that? Amanda didn't think he probably would because she was still a customer. What if he did say he liked her? What would she say? Amanda finally fell asleep trying to think of a way to tell Matt she liked him without seeming to ask him for anything else.

For the next three days, Amanda walked the tundra with her metal detector while Matt followed her. She'd about given up when at almost five in the afternoon, the metal detector beeped and then started beeping faster. She stopped and looked up at Matt.

"I found something."

Matt watched as Amanda took her trowel and started to dig. She didn't get far because the tundra only thawed a few inches during the winter. She quickly hit frozen ground and stopped.

"I can't dig any deeper. I don't know what to do. You don't have a pick in the plane, do you?"

Matt chuckled, but he was intrigued. Maybe Amanda was right.

"No pick, but I do have an axe. Stay here and I'll go get it."

After a few chops into the frozen ground, Matt reached down and picked up a clump of frozen dirt with a spent cartridge casing in it. He scraped away the dirt until he could see the bottom of the cartridge.

"It's a cartridge for a Russian Mosin Nagant rifle. A lot of native hunters use those for caribou. Hard to tell how long this one's been here. Did your Kurovsky guy have a rifle with him? A Mosin is what he'd probably have carried."

Amanda shrugged.

"I don't know. There was nothing in the ship's log that said he did."

Matt finished cleaning the frozen dirt from the cartridge case and then handed it to Amanda.

"Probably just a native hunter then. At least you found something. Maybe you'll find it tomorrow."

As Amanda tried to fall asleep that night, she wondered why Matt had said maybe she'd find something the next day. He'd been patient with her while she searched and didn't find anything. Was he just trying to make her feel good?

The next morning Amanda woke up and realized her face was cold. She raised up and saw that Matt wasn't beside her. She was shivering when she pulled on her clothes and jacket and then got out of the plane. Matt was standing there and staring out over the lake, except she couldn't see the lake. All she saw was a very dense fog. She walked up to Matt and asked what had happened.

Matt shrugged.

"Cold front moved in last night and this is what happens. The warmer water in the air over the lake is condensed into fog by the colder air."

"It'll be gone in a while, won't it?"

Matt shook his head.

"I don't know. This time of year these cold fronts are pretty common. Usually the fog burns off by noon, but it's pretty cold this morning, a lot colder than I remember it being before. See the ice on the plants? This air is cold enough to freeze the fog into ice when it condenses back to water on the plants."

Amanda felt a tingle of fear race through her mind.

"What if it doesn't go away?"

Matt frowned.

"Then we stay where we are. I can't take off if I can't see."

He smiled then.

"Don't worry too much. It'll probably burn off in a day or two, and the worst that will happen is you'll have a couple more days to search. Since it's not your fault that cold front came through, I won't charge you for the extra days."

Amanda asked if somebody wouldn't come looking for them if they didn't get back to Nome on schedule. Matt smiled.

"Yeah, but not for a few days. When I filed the flight plan, I didn't put down a return for this week. I just put down that it would be this week or next week. I figured I'd update Nome once we were back in the air. If we don't get back to Nome in another week, they'll send out a plane to find us. Like I said though, don't worry. The fog will lift in at least a day or two."

Matt had tried to make Amanda feel better, but he wasn't so sure. This close to the long Alaskan winter, the weather could be tricky. The weather report he'd checked when he filed the flight plan indicated the cold front was on the way but would take about two weeks to get to Nome. That's the only reason he'd decided to take Amanda to the lake. He figured there was more than enough time to get her there, spend a week, and then get back to Anchorage.