The Ice Curtain (11 page)

The rod pushed, the skin stretched inward, then ripped. Levin sensed only a brief, invading pressure before the world dissolved, shattered to jagged pieces. Steel grated on bone. The whole world pulled in around him to what he could feel, what he could hear. A world illuminated by incandescent flashes of pain, punctuated by the rumble of iron tram wheels, echoing like distant thunder.

I
RKUTSK
, S
IBERIA

Chapter 11

The Trapper

Senior Engineer Ivan Bezdomov sat on the steps of his summer bunker, watching clouds race across the face of a three-quarter moon. The air smelled of winter, wet and heavy. It would snow tonight. Not a blizzard, but enough to stick and stay. That was good, and bad. Good because snow made tracking stray dogs easier. Bad because it meant winter, killing winter, was back.

Across an empty street and beyond the abandoned factory, Bezdomov could see the dark wall of the Irkutsk airport terminal. It might as well be abandoned, too. Nothing moved. Not a single light burned. He might be the last human left alive by some strange, slow-motion apocalypse that left buildings standing and people alive, but stripped them of their normal lives, their everyday dreams, their simple hopes.

Bezdomov's summer house was an old bomb shelter built in the middle of a field of wild grass across from the Irkutsk airport, equipped with rotting bunks and sturdy bombproof doors. But let's call Bezdomov and his home by their real names: He was one step away from being a stone-age hunter living in an unheated cave. He looked at the bricked-up hulk of the old optical plant.

Once, he'd worked there as a senior engineer. Now he trapped stray dogs for their fur and sold their skins at the city's main bazaar. If a fortune-teller had told him he would live like this he'd have laughed in her face. Or killed himself.

He was halfway down the cracked concrete steps into his bunker when a sudden flicker of light made him stop and look back. The moon was gone, but the once-dark airport was ablaze with light: blue lamps outlined the runway, red and green beacons flashed from atop the control tower, brilliant white strobes lit the undersides of the clouds. Lights were expensive.
Some big shot on a tour.
Whoever it was, it had nothing to do with him.

He went down the steps and pulled the blast door shut behind. The bunker was lit by candles. The curved walls were rough, unfinished concrete. The skinning business had been good this season. A lot of dogs had been kicked out of their homes, and more than a few had fallen into his wire snares. Two carcasses, fresh enough to bleed, were on the floor; a black Alsatian and a big husky. The husky was the real prize. Its lush, thick fur banded in black and gray, frosted with silver, would sell as wolf.

If only the bunker were heated, he'd stay here year-round. But it wasn't, and so it was time for Bezdomov to move to his winter den. He left the carcasses. The cold would freeze their meat more reliably than any refrigerator. He slipped a nest of wire snares under his belt, slung the uncured skins over his shoulder, picked up the candle, and made his way to another hatch set low into the side wall. He climbed through. Ahead lay a hundred-meter tunnel that ran under a field, beneath a road, and into a storage closet in the basement of the old optical plant.
His
building.

The low passage had been well engineered. Half of it was sloped downhill. At the precise midpoint, a floor drain, and then uphill to another, final blast door. He pulled the door in and stepped through.

The brick factory held on to the meager heat of the day. It was still freezing, but a good five degrees warmer inside than out. And he hadn't even turned on the heat. That was next.

In the corner of the storage room, two pipes penetrated the foundation wall, turned ninety degrees, and ran straight up to the floor above. An iron wheel that looked straight off a submarine operated the main shutoff. Bezdomov touched it. Warm.

The factory used to be heated with steam from the central airport system. The boilers were shut off in summer, but now that it was getting cold, the main supply pipes out in the street were filled with steam, free for the taking.

He grabbed the big wheel. It hadn't been touched in a year and so it turned reluctantly, but soon he heard the hiss of pressure coursing through rusted pipes. A bleed valve spat air, then bubbles. The pipes went from cold to warm to hot. Forget airport lights. Free heat in a Siberian winter was the real miracle.

Bezdomov pulled off his heavy rubber boots, put on the warm felt
valenki
he wore inside as slippers and went out into the old shipping area. Candlelight revealed bare brick walls, a set of doors that opened onto the airport ramp, a grimy linoleum floor. He hung the pelts on a pair of metal hooks and started for the stairs that led to the administrative offices, but for the second time tonight, something new, something curious, stopped him.

The old sable trappers up in the Barguzhinsky Mountains could look at a set of marks in the dirt and deduce from it not just an animal, but an entire history. Bezdomov wasn't that good, but he didn't need to be to know that someone had been here.

Two days ago the floor was blanketed in dust, as unmarked as new snow. Tonight it wasn't. They'd tracked grit in from the loading ramp door. How many boots? One pair was too many. And look.
Skid marks.
Something had been dragged, or rolled, to another door that opened onto an equipment storage yard that held wrecked electrical equipment of some kind. Probably with valuable metals, since the yard was fenced with electrified wire. Who had been here? And why?

Bezdomov spotted something small, something white, by the ramp doors. He walked over to it, wary as a deer who has heard the snap of a twig in a forest that should be silent. A small white pouch. Cigarettes? He picked it up carefully, as though it might explode.

The pouch was made of several plies of paper. There was a kind of plastic Ziploc closure at the top. He opened it. No cigarettes. Nothing. He turned it inside out. The inner layer was napped like felt. The outside was woven from something waterproof and tough. The engineer in him wondered what it had been designed to hold. Lenses? Something small, something valuable, surely. Something that needed cushioning. He held up his candle, letting its light shine on some writing at the bottom.

There were three lines of script. The first was easy to decipher:
vigor
. A brand of cigarette? Next a size:
95.3
#215;
50.8 mm
. Point three? It seemed unnecessarily exact. The final line was a surprise:
gemstone supplies
.

Gemstones?
Bezdomov moved the candle to read it better, when he heard the scream of jet engines growing louder, closer.
The big shot,
he thought. He waited for it to pass, but it didn't. Instead, the sound grew to a piercing whine, then fell away to a whisper, right outside the factory wall.

He blew out the candle, stuffed the pouch into his belt, and ran upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. Eight risers. A landing. Eight more. At the next level, Bezdomov stopped and listened. Around him, the building echoed with the thump of filling steam pipes. Inside, his chest hammered, too.

There was a window up in the director's old office. The glass hadn't been washed in a decade, but it was clear enough to see the jet. A short, stubby plane with three engines in back was parked right below. A cargo ramp at the tail descended with the controlled grace of a ballerina flexing a leg, and then a man stomped down to the tarmac. He looked around, then motioned impatiently to someone inside. He had a shotgun over his shoulder.

Bezdomov reached down and touched the handle of the pelt knife he kept in his boot.

A second man emerged from the jet. He guided a large rolling cart down the ramp. Some kind of metal box was strapped down to it like a body going to an autopsy. It didn't seem heavy, but the man moved it so slowly, so carefully, it might be filled with fresh eggs. Together, they rolled the cart toward Bezdomov's building and disappeared beneath the canopy over the door.

He rushed to the stairs and heard the rasp of turning locks, the squeal of reluctant hinges, and a loud, booming voice.

“. . . boxes. One pebble and we could live like two pashas.”

“Or die like two idiots.”

“Don't say you've never thought of it.”

“Slava, don't even make jokes. You never know.”

“Relax. He's not here.” The door slammed shut.

But Bezdomov was, not that he had a clue what they were talking about. Pebbles?

“It's fucking cold in this tomb. What time is it?”

“What does it matter? He's never late.”

Bezdomov eased back from the stairs, not even breathing. He'd wait them out. Whoever they were, whoever was coming, they would leave. There was no reason for them to stay.

Just then, a bleed valve popped open over the trapper's head with a sharp, loud
clack
.

“What the fuck was that?”

“Wait here.” The stairs flashed bright with the beam of a powerful lantern. “Who's up there?”

Bezdomov slipped the pelt knife from his boot. Run or fight? It seemed ridiculous to put a knife up against a shotgun. That left escape. There was another floor above, and a roof. But getting to them meant running in front of whoever it was with the . . .

“Who's there?” the voice called again, louder now. The light shifted. He was coming up the steps.

Bezdomov retreated into the empty director's office. There wasn't even a desk to hide under. Jump out the window? He might be able to smash it with his knife, his fists, and run. The canopy would break his fall and from there it was a short drop to the ground. He thought of all the animals he'd trapped. Simple, tame pets who should have run when they saw the snare, but who let their hunger for fresh meat, their trust in the human race, lure them to their deaths.

Bezdomov had seen the paper pouch. It should have set off an alarm. He should have run back into his tunnel and sealed the blast doors. Instead, the lure of a safe warm haven for the winter had drawn him in. Not to a refuge, but a trap.

He flipped the pelt knife around and smashed it against the window. The entire pane jumped from its rotted molding and fell out. Bezdomov pulled himself into the eyeless opening. It seemed like a bigger drop than he'd imagined. He looked and thought once, again, and then it was too late. A beam of light caught him.

“Don't turn. Don't even fucking
breathe
. Get back down and drop what's in your hand.”

He swayed, the decision to jump draining away second by second, muscle by muscle.

“Do as I say! Now!”

“Please,” he said, easing down from the open frame. “It's a mistake. I thought the building was empty. I'll go.”

“It's a mistake, all right. Don't make another. Drop the blade
now
.”

Bezdomov wasn't brave. If he had been, he'd be living in a flat with people, not in a bomb shelter with dead dogs. His fist opened. The knife clattered to the floor. He heard the one with the shotgun approach from behind and kick the knife away. “I won't cause you any trouble. Please. I used to work here.” He thought of the husky he'd trapped. Someone's pet. Used to humans. Used to being taken care of. With his leg snared in Bezdomov's wire, he'd looked up and wagged his tail. Didn't he
know
? It mystified Bezdomov then. Now he understood.

The man with the gun snatched the wire snares from the trapper's belt. “What the fuck are these?”

“For animals.”

A snort. “How did you get in?”

“I'll show you. I didn't mean to make things difficult.”

“Don't worry. You won't.”

From below “Anton?”

“It's a squatter.” To Bezdomov he said, “Hands behind you.”

Bezdomov did as he was told and felt cold metal around his wrists. His snares! Of all the . . . A kick in the small of his back sent him sprawling. The shotgun barrel pressed against his neck.

Anton searched him. He found his old identity card. A piece of plastic with a picture, a job title. “Senior engineer, eh?”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Fucking engineers. What's this?” The paper pouch drew the gunman's interest. “Where did you get it?”

“I saw it on the floor downstairs. When I first came in. I swear I won't, I mean, I didn't think it was . . .”

Anton tapped the back of his skull with the barrel. “You're giving me a headache, Engineer.”

In the silence that followed, Bezdomov heard a second jet approaching. The sound of its engines swelled, then died. A few minutes later, he heard the door scrape open downstairs, low voices conferring, then someone called up, “What is it?”

Bezdomov listened. A different voice. Impatient and full of authority. And an accent. Who was it? A foreigner?

“A squatter. It's under control,” Anton replied.

“Stay. I'm coming up.”

No wonder they turned on the airport lights. A foreigner meant that Bezdomov had stepped in really big shit.

“So,” said the foreigner. “Who is it?”

“He says he used to work here. He had a card and this.” His tone was deferential.

“Senior Engineer Bezdomov,” said the new voice. “What were you doing snooping? You left something in your desk drawer?”

“I wasn't snooping,” said Bezdomov. “I was only looking for a place to sleep.” Whoever this foreign voice belonged to, he was clearly the
nachelnik
. The boss. His hopes rekindled. A Russian would kill him, but foreigners were different. Softer.

“The building is under new ownership.”

“I swear. If I had known I would never . . .”

“Where did you get the diamond pouch?”

“Diamonds?”
said Bezdomov. “I don't know
anything
about diamonds. Lenses, ray paths. Skins and snares. Just ask. But diamonds? Nothing. I was just . . .”

“How did you get in? The doors are all bolted and locked.”

“Don't worry. No one has a key. There's a tunnel. . . .” Bezdomov explained everything without omitting the smallest detail. When he was done, he said, “I don't know anything and that's the way it will stay. You can count on me.”

“He's lying. Tomorrow everyone will hear,” said Anton.

“
No!
I'll take your secret to the grave!
Please!
Life's a kopeck here, but you're not Russian, I can hear it. You're not . . .”