The Ice Curtain (13 page)

An ambulance was dispatched. When it arrived, the medics took one look at Levin and decided it didn't matter where they took him. But Levin was lucky one more time: someone followed the trail of blood back to the street, and there they found his wallet and, inside, his FSB identity card.

That changed the equation slightly, but enough. Whether they were calling themselves KGB, FSB, or the Monks of the Holy Name, the organs of state security could make your life miserable. This FSB officer might die, but nobody was going to say they didn't take him to the best trauma center in Moscow. And so the ambulance screamed off into the night, siren wailing, lights flashing, heading for Number 31.

The duty surgeon was accustomed to Moscow's nightly harvest of murder and mayhem. He coiled the optic nerve back into the bruised socket, casually pushed the eye in and stitched the torn flaps of muscle and skin closed.

The nerve would either work or not. The eye would either stay put or not. And if the damage extended into the brain itself? Levin would never regain consciousness.

But he did, and when he did, Levin found himself floating on a flat sea of white sheets. His face was hot and swollen. His left eye saw through a narrow slit. When he closed it the world went black. A steady drip of anesthetic left him feeling nothing, which just added to the confusion. He tried to reach up and touch his face, but his arm would only go so far.

The memory of the attack was beyond recollection. All Levin knew was what he could see: a light fixture, a clock, a radio without a dial that played just one station, a green wall.

Then a face.

“He's awake,” said General Goloshev. “He moved.”

“He's not really awake,” said a gaunt, sad-looking doctor.

“I'm looking at his eye. It's open.
I
say he's awake.”

“And I'm on the faculty of medicine at the Lomonosov Institute at Moscow State University. How about you?”

General Goloshev loomed in Levin's monocular view. “Levin?” The general leaned over close enough for Levin to smell his breath. It was sweet and minty. “He'll remember nothing of this?”

“If he does he won't know what it means.”

Levin blinked. Adding Goloshev to the scene didn't help him identify it. He looked around the room, to see some clue, something, anything, familiar.

“How long will he have to stay here?”

“We should be able to move him to a recovery area tomorrow. Of course, hidden damage is a possibility. The eye is not far from the brain.”

“He's one of our top boys. We want him taken care of. Let him have all the rest he needs. What are you using?”

“Scopolamine and opiates.”

“It's safe?”

“There can be reactions.” The doctor placed a tray on the table beside Levin's bed. It contained two syringes. “That's why we keep Antilurium close by. It counteracts the sedatives.” He pointed to the other syringe. “We'll know by Wednesday if he'll recover.”

“Whatever is required. Just take good care of him.”

Levin thought,
What day is it?
He tried to move, to speak. It came out as a moan. But it brought the Toad back into view.

“You see? They said you could be out for days. I said, Levin? Not a chance. You're at Hospital Number 31. You have a concussion, some nasty cuts. Frankly speaking, your face has looked better. Scars give a man character. You'll have to beat the girls off with a stick.”

A stick! “My eye . . .”

“You were robbed and beaten.”

Stick. Beaten, yes. But robbed? Was that right? Levin fought to clear the mist, to see, to remember. An indistinct shape materialized, just out of reach.

“Remember next time to keep your pistol handy when you go out for an evening walk . . .”

Sasha!
The memory sharpened, slowly, emerging from the murk and the shock like a developing photograph.

Hock . . . Kristall . . . Petrov . . .
Images began to come at him faster, clearer, piercing the shock, the drugs. A face, no,
two
faces. The flow of memory rushed ahead, a river surging between narrowing cliffs.

Stay away from the Closet!

They didn't want his money. They wanted him to stop his investigation.
Petrov?
Who else
could
it be? “What day . . . is today?”

“Tuesday.”

He took in a sharp breath. He was supposed to meet Sherbakov in Mirny . . . tomorrow? How was he going to do that?

“The hooligans who attacked you. Can you describe them?”

“Sherbakov . . .”

“He's already flown east.”

“A man . . . South African . . . Hock . . .”

“Relax,
boychik
. You're the lucky one. If you knew what it was like where Sherbakov is going, you wouldn't be anxious to follow. For now, rest. Everything is taken care of. You can sleep like a gopher.”

Levin felt the bite of a needle.

Stay away from the Closet!

Goloshev leaned over and patted Levin's arm. “We'll get these two bastards. You rest. We need you back at work as soon as possible.” He winked, turned, and left.

Levin's tongue tasted swollen and metallic. The drug was rising, and he was falling. How could Goloshev get them if he didn't know what they looked like? Levin had their faces memorized. He could picture them in detail. Their heights, weights, their nationalities . . . Nationalities?

We don't want your fucking kike money.

They'd known he was Jewish. It was on his passport, but they never saw it. They might infer it from his name, but he was just a man out walking a dog.
How could they know?

Levin struggled to think clearly, precisely. Either they'd seen his personnel file at the FSB or were hired by someone who had. Who sent those two flatheads his way?

“We'll get these two bastards. . . .”

Levin felt his face throb with each beat of his heart.

And who told Goloshev there'd been
two
?

Chapter 13

The Violinist

The militia jeep followed them onto BOUlevard Yuri Gagarin. Sherbakov's ailing Volga struggled to keep station at the rear, its sick engine spewing blue smoke.

Chuchin glanced into the rearview mirror. “Your FSB friend is having troubles.”

“Slow down. I can't afford to lose him,” said Nowek. “He's the only thing keeping the militia away.”

Chuchin slowed. All three vehicles rolled at a more majestic pace down the frost-heaved boulevard.

They followed the river from the center of Irkutsk to the university district known as
Akademgorodok,
Academics' City. The wide avenue named for the first cosmonaut to orbit the earth looked more like a relic from the eighteenth century than something from the age of space. The street had been abandoned to the elements. Now it was an obstacle course of potholes.

The deepest had been filled with straw and water, then allowed to freeze over. It worked until the temperature really dropped, and then, when the ice expanded, so did the hole.

Chuchin carefully steered the white Toyota Land Cruiser around the worst of them. He was a master when it came to scrounging for parts. He'd grafted Russian headlights, wipers, and wheels onto the sturdy Japanese car, but replacing something major? Out of the question.

Nowek had received the car as a gift back when he was still mayor of Markovo. A group of Japanese businessmen wanted his permission to log the taiga around the city. They'd done business in Russia before. They knew a facilitating payment was expected. What happened was not.

Nowek accepted the car and denied their request. Back then only the
mafiya
drove nicer vehicles. Now, after two years of Siberian roads and Chuchin's surgeries, Nowek's Land Cruiser looked like the survivor of a great tank battle fought in mud.

They passed streets named for Lenin, for Marx, even for Derzhinsky, the founder of the KGB. In Moscow, the old names had been erased. They persisted in Irkutsk, though whether out of nostalgia or indifference was difficult to say.

The ten-story apartment towers of Academics' City rose in orderly chevrons from the river embankment to the top of a hill. The old steam ferry
Baikal
was moored where the buildings met the river. The ship, built in Britain, disassembled and hauled across two continents by rail, was wreathed in river smoke. The mist swirled around its single black smokestack as though ghostly stokers were shoveling soft coal into its great, silent boiler.

Chuchin pulled into the drive that led to Nowek's building. “When do you want me to come back?”

“An hour will be more than enough,” said Nowek as he opened the door and grabbed his bag. He walked up the cracked concrete stairs, through the glass door and into the cold lobby.

What was the old joke about the drunk who fell asleep on a train? He woke up in a different Siberian city, but emerged onto the same Square of the Soviets, walked down the same Lenin Street, up to an identical building on Marx Prospekt, climbed a matching set of filthy stairs to a floor he knew by heart, and only discovered something amiss when his key didn't fit?

Nowek paused and turned. The militia jeep was parked on the street. As Nowek watched, the Volga appeared.

All was right in the universe.

The flat was on the sixth floor. He ignored the elevator. The stairs might be reliably grim, but they were also grimly reliable. It was cold enough for Nowek to see his warm breath rising in a thick cloud. Soon long daggers of ice would hang from the walls, the ceilings, like dripstone in some underground cavern.

He came to the sixth-floor landing. The metal door that opened onto the hallway was streaked with ribbons of dark rust. As he pulled the handle, he heard a shout, punctuated by the
bang
of a door slammed hard.

Nowek opened the door and came face-to-face with a young woman, a girl, hardly older than Galena. Jeans, boots with fashionably thick heels, a tight red turtleneck that was nothing if not an invitation to admire. She had short, wheat-yellow hair. The sweater's neck gaped to one side, pulled out of shape.

“Paulina?”

“He's an
animal
! Look what he did!” She grabbed the neck of her sweater. “It's ruined! Who will pay for another? Him?
You?
”

“What happened?” Though he could guess.

“He said it was time to take his medicine. I knew it's really just vodka, but I played along. I was pouring him a glass and he grabbed me like a snake. You said he was blind!”

It wouldn't help to tell her he was only
nearly
blind. “I'm sorry about the sweater. He's old and he doesn't know what he's—”

“Oh, he knows what he's doing. At least, he knows what he'd
like
to be doing. Go to the Intourist Hotel and hire a professional.”

“Paulina, let's—”

“You don't even have to pay me. I wouldn't touch the money.” With that she pushed by him.

Nowek listened to the angry stomp of her boots as she fled downstairs. Paulina had been the fourth girl Nowek had hired to care for his father. She'd lasted longer than the first, shorter than the last. He walked to his apartment and stopped, listening.

Sweet violin music came from inside, the notes soft and rich as old wine. He recognized a Khachaturian “Nocturne,” a duet for violin and piano. The playing was so full, so devastatingly elegant you'd never know the piano was missing.

A mystery. How could those stiff, arthritic fingers summon a universe from just a faint constellation of notes? Two mysteries: What would the crippled seventy-six-year-old have done if he'd actually
caught
Paulina?

He went in.

Tadeus was a commanding figure with a violin tucked under his cheek and a bow flowing gracefully back and forth across bright strings. Music charged the air like ozone. The instrument fell lightly into perfect position, his head just so. His expression was one of complete confidence and control. The tiny room vanished, and Nowek's father was in front of an orchestra in a hall packed with people holding their breath, waiting for the final note.

The “Nocturne” was short. The final note rose to a musical question, then fell away to answer it with silence.

When he stopped and turned his thick lenses in Nowek's direction, Tadeus underwent a second transformation: to a tired old man in an overheated room.

“Welcome home, Gregori.” He put the old violin down. He felt along the tabletop for a brimming glass. Medicinal herbs tinted the liquid a dubious green.

“Hello, father,” said Nowek. He carefully closed the door behind him. It wouldn't latch. “I didn't realize you heard me.”

“Your disapproval was deafening.”

“You're wrong. I was admiring the piece.”

Tadeus had a full head of snow-white hair. His face was bright pink, especially after a drink. His eyes were magnified behind thick, useless glasses. He wore a white shirt buttoned all the way to his neck, a woolen vest, and old black pants faded to eggplant. He wore slippers. “That's all you can say?”

“I just came from a funeral. It's the best I can do.”

“You'll get used to them.” Then “Whose?”

“Arkady Volsky died.”

“Your boss?”

“My friend.” Nowek tossed his suitcase to the couch. What would he need for Mirny? Coat. Sweater. Boots. Everything.

“Dead friends,” said Tadeus. “It's nothing new. There was a time when you didn't dare to make a friend. You never knew who would be around one day to the next.”

“The war?”

“Stalin. That student you hired. What was her name?”

“Paulina.”

“She has a very sweet voice.”

“Not when I heard it.”

“Well.” He turned to face Nowek in that disquieting, upturned way of the blind. “And how was Moscow?”

“I didn't bring the Dvo(breve)rák.”

“Didn't, or couldn't?”

“Both.” He cracked open the suitcase, pulled the bloodstained clothes out and tossed them into the sink. He ran cold water on them. The colors began to swirl in maroons and reds.

“What are you doing?”

“I have to leave again tomorrow.” Nowek put his hands under the tap, turned the hot water on full, and scrubbed hard. “I won't be back for a few days. Maybe longer. You'll have to be on your own. Can you manage?”

“I lived through wars. I lived through Stalin. I'll survive a few days more.” Tadeus answered by picking up the violin again. He drew the bow and played a single, high, lonely note.

The opening note unfurled. It was the sound of a winter sunset fading to deep night. But then, from underneath, a more intimate theme, pulsing, filling the darkness with light.

Nowek recognized it immediately. It was
Luchinushka
. “The Rush Light.” A folk melody that honored a primitive oil lamp once found in every Siberian house. A slender reed filled with cottony fibers, soaked in melted fat. No matter the cold, the isolation, the rush light held back the terrible tide of winter, of night.

Nowek turned off the tap and listened. A single flame that overcame the dark. What was that if not hope? A man who stood for what was right, no matter the cost. What was that if not Volsky?

Nowek pulled his computer out of the suitcase and plugged the phone line into the wall jack. He turned it on. The screen glowed a soft blue. A message was waiting.

To: Gregori Nowek

From: Galena Nowek <[email protected]

Father:

When I read your letter, I had to close my eyes and think that it was all some mistake, that you were saying one thing but meaning another. You know how you do that. Then I read it all again. Of course I will stay. But now even you say that living in Russia is ridiculous. Yes. I already know, thank you. Why would you stay there now? What is left to be loyal to? Your friend? Your country? Americans don't want to hear about us anymore. Nothing good is expected to come from Russia. It's only for gangsters and vodka and, yes, diamonds.

Nowek stopped.
Diamonds?
He read the last lines.

Did he tell you he'd sent them to me? The delivery truck brought this tiny box. I had no idea what it was. I mean, only you and Uncle Arkasha knew my address here. Diamond earrings!? Inside was a note:
From Siberia's eternal frost. Uncle Arkasha.
I'll wear them for him but please. You say that thinking of me safe in America allows you to breathe. Imagine what it's like for me to think of you still there. Please come out. If not for you, then for me.

Galena

Volsky sent diamonds?
Nowek felt his pulse begin to race. Was that even possible?
No.
But neither were Volsky's words captured on Levin's tape recording. Who
else
knew where Galena was? If not Volsky, then it had to be someone who could find her—and find her terrifyingly fast. She was safe in America. Safe. It allowed him to think, to live. Was she safe still?

Levin? He knew she was in America, but not where exactly, and
he
was FSB. It had to be someone else. Someone
else
who was sending Nowek a message:
No one is beyond our reach.

Pressure and heat turn carbon to diamond. The same forces were turning Nowek's fear into anger, his anger to fury. His best friend shot dead.

They were threatening his daughter.

Mirny,
he thought as he shut the computer off. A city on the tundra, run by Kristall, totally controlled, sitting on a mountain of diamonds. A place beyond the world's horizon. It would be so easy, so impossibly easy, to turn away, to stop. To pretend. They knew it. More, they were counting on it.

Corruption. Theft. Murder. These were everyday crimes in Russia. But someone had plundered the Closet, someone had pocketed half a billion dollars in rough Siberian gems and the IMF was set to pull the plug on the whole mess. It was crime on a scale that made the larceny of the oligarchs, the men who'd already stolen everything in Russia worth stealing, look like shoplifting.

Nowek always suspected that everything Marx had said about communism was a lie. Who could have guessed that everything he'd said about capitalism would turn out to be so right?