The Ice Curtain (18 page)

“You don't mind getting your hands dirty?” said Kirillin. He stood next to the dredge's tank treads, waiting. “Get ready!”

The bucket elevated, then stopped. The operator looked down. His orange hard hat bobbed again.

“Now!”
Kirillin scrambled up using the links as broad steel steps. They were treacherously slick with mud and grease, but he didn't slip. “Hurry!”

Sherbakov climbed up onto the first tread and reached for the next. His hand slipped on grease. He had to thrust his fingers between the treads to find a grip. It was not where his imagination wanted his fingers to be. One shudder, the smallest of movements, and his fingers would be crushed.

The engine rumbled from inside the hull. The dredge trembled.

Kirillin looked back.
“Bistra! Bistra!”
Faster! Faster!

Sherbakov didn't need encouragement. He put his imagination on hold and clambered after Kirillin as fast as he could climb.

At the top of the treads, a short ladder led to a perforated steel deck. Kirillin nimbly jumped onto the ladder and pulled himself up and to his feet.

A fat belch of soot clouded half the sky. The ore dredge shuddered. Sherbakov reached up to grasp the first rung. The treads began to shake underneath him.

Kirillin's greasy hand closed around his wrist and hauled him up to the deck as the treads clanked into motion. DRAGA 1 advanced into a slope of blasted ore.

Sherbakov stood on the decking, feeling the machine tremble. Or perhaps it was his legs. The bucket lowered for another bite.

“Hey!” Kirillin shouted. He stood next to an open hatch leading into the dredge's hull. He held a dark blue towel and a pair of thick ear protectors. He cleaned his hands, then tossed the cloth to Sherbakov. Then the hearing protectors.

Sherbakov put them on and followed Kirillin through the oval hatch, into the dredge's dimly lit hull.

It was bedlam inside DRAGA 1. His eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. Screeches, roars, the hum of wire cables running under strain. It wasn't
noise
. It was a physical pressure that assaulted Sherbakov's body. Loud with the ear protectors, deafening without.

An oily engine the size of a boxcar sat in the middle of the enclosure, fed by fuel lines thick as Sherbakov's wrist. Catwalks surrounded the motor. Ladders led up to the operator's cab, down into the clanking bowels. Steel beams supported a maze of cables, gears, pulley blocks, and hydraulic lines. The dim light came from naked bulbs strung along bare wires. When the dredge moved, the lights blinked off, back on, their dull orange filaments trembling.

The machine swiveled, sending Sherbakov reeling against a catwalk railing slick with spilled oil.

“Careful!”
Kirillin had to bellow to be heard.

Below the engine deck was a flowing river of cables. All were rusty.

Kirillin pointed down. “One of the bucket control cables is our troublemaker. What do you think?”

Sherbakov leaned over. One cable was badly damaged. A section had blossomed into a nest of tangled wire strands.

With an earthquake's rumble, the worn cable was swept away.

Sherbakov tried to keep his eye on it as it threaded through a turning guide, then up to a pulley. The broken strands slammed against a guard plate. Hot yellow sparks erupted. The broken wire strands glowed red with friction heat.

Sherbakov laughed. Sometimes he forgot just how stupid the rest of the world really was. This wasn't like a software bug. You could spend days, weeks, tracking one of those down. Here was a problem that advertised itself with sparks, and they couldn't fix it?

He motioned for Kirillin to join him.
“Watch!”
Sherbakov had to shout to be heard.
“The plate needs to be moved.”

Kirillin peered, cursed, then headed for the hatch.

“Tell them to bring a socket wrench!”
Sherbakov called after him.

A minute later the diesel stumbled, then loped to an idle.

“Hey engineer!”

Sherbakov turned.

It was Anton, the miner he'd met aboard the plane. He was carrying a big wrench.

Boyko leaned over the chains, looking down. The steel poles visibly deflected. “They say you were once a geologist.”

“That's true,” Nowek said.

“Here, every miner is a geologist. We know rocks, not from pictures, but by their taste.”

“I worked in the oil fields. Tasting wasn't a good idea.”

Boyko kept staring down into the pit. “What made you leave?”

“It turned out to be a dirty business.”

“And then you were a mayor.”

“Politics is another dirty business.”

He looked back at Nowek. “Now you're the Siberian Delegate. To be frank, it's an odd choice for someone allergic to dirt.”

“Volsky wasn't dirty.”

“One man.”

“You heard what happened to him?”

“Stories.”

“Here's a true one: Volsky cared about getting your miners paid. He cared so much he went head to head with some powerful people. It scared someone enough to have him murdered. Now you want a real story? Moscow is missing some Mirny diamonds. They say Volsky sold them
na lyeva
.”

Boyko looked up sharply. “That's ridiculous.”

Nowek was surprised. He hadn't expected this from the pit boss. “Then who do you think took them?”

“Who? Take a look.” He nodded at the earthmover. “DRAGA 1 is still digging after twenty-five years. To survive all that time it must know a few things.”

“Like you.”

“And that one.” He pointed down to the other yellow earthmover, a tenth the size of DRAGA 1, parked away from the working face of the mine. “It's from America. A Caterpillar. A visitor.”

“Like me.”

“Exactly. The American machine was supposed to be cheaper to run. It lasted one week. You see what I'm saying?”

“I'm beginning to.”

“Ask about mining and I'll answer. Ask about tons and I'll give you facts and figures. You want to know what happened to Delegate Volsky? You want my view about stolen diamonds? I'll tell you a big secret.” He took out a neatly folded handkerchief from the breast pocket of his windbreaker and mopped his brow. The white cloth turned ruddy brown. He held it up and smiled. “You see? Diamonds are a dirty business, too.”

Anton jumped down to the catwalk. “What's the problem?”

“Loose bolts.” Sherbakov motioned for him to bring the wrench. The catwalk shook as Anton shambled up in his heavy boots.

Anton stopped, the wrench still over his shoulder. “So?”

“The plate needs to be moved away from the cable, then the bolts have to be tightened.” Sherbakov could see the dull gleam of his gold teeth in the light of a naked bulb. “You think you can do it?”

Anton's breath still reeked of vodka. His gold teeth made his mouth look like a machine, an excavator, meant for chewing rock. He hefted the heavy wrench, letting the massive end bob. It seemed light in his hands. “In my sleep.”

“Before Mirny?” said Boyko. “I came from the Kuzbass.”

“Coal?” Nowek asked.

“My father, my uncles. Everyone worked in the mines. I was sick of breaking my back for tons. I thought I'd come here where they measure results in carats.”

“You still have to move tons to get at the carats.”

“But who knew? They also offered double arctic bonus pay. So I moved my family here. Back then you could find almost anything in the shops. They had to keep us happy because who else would work in a place like this? Your question about radiation? You're not the first to ask. The government sent in a military team to analyze the problem. They were supposed to stay a week. They left in two days. We never heard the results.”

“But you stayed.”

“I was making good money. In five years I'd be on a beach on the Black Sea. That was the plan. It didn't work out.”

“Don't take it personally,” said Nowek. “Those five-year plans were never too dependable.” He watched a black car race around the perimeter road, heading for the surface at breakneck velocity.

A fresh chuff of black soot rose from DRAGA 1's stack. The boom swung over a pile of boulders, then opened its jaws.

Nowek watched DRAGA 1 take another bite. The bucket rose, then started to swing, but it stopped so abruptly the jaws gaped open and car-size boulders tumbled and fell with a dull rumble.

Boyko was already reaching for his radio when a thin wail pierced the silence of the vast pit, the constant rattle of loose stones, the steady whisper of wind.

Boyko had the radio out. “What's wrong?”

A rush of words came back from the tinny little speaker. His face clouded. “Is he hurt?”

“What happened?” Nowek asked.

Boyko snapped the radio off. “Some idiot was inside DRAGA 1 trying to fix something while it was running. An engineer from Sib-Auto.”

“What happened?”

“He died.”

A white van pulled up on the gravel road that circled the pit. It was the one that had met them at the airport.

An engineer from Sib-Auto.
Who else could it be?

“There's your ride to town. I'm afraid I have sad matters to deal with, Delegate Nowek. I won't be able to answer any more questions.”

“I have just one more. What are the chances of seeing Mirny Deep?”

Boyko squinted. “Poor. You can ask Mine Director Kirillin if you don't believe me. You'd better go. You don't want to be late.”

He thought,
Sherbakov
. They weren't afraid of the FSB. What
were
they afraid of? The Siberian Delegate?

Nowek took a last look into the pit. DRAGA 1 was silent. What would happen when the pit shut down for good? DRAGA 1 was far too big to haul up to the surface. The terrace roads would collapse under it. It was doomed, condemned, a mechanical monster digging its own grave, roaring as it descended, resolutely swallowing the frozen earth.

Chapter 18

Back to the Past

The pit boss threw back the van's sliding side door and cigarette smog poured out. “Who are you?” asked Boyko.

The driver wore a black leather jacket and sunglasses. He waved a cigarette at Nowek. “They told me to come here and pick him up.”

“Who told you to come?”

A thumb jabbed back in the direction of town.

Mirny was a place where everyone knew everyone, at least by face and the pit boss was quite sure he didn't know this face. Boyko kept staring into the van, as though he could force the unexpected back into line. A stranger, but how could there be one in a city so tightly controlled as Mirny? Boyko knew the answer, even if it left him uneasy: there were no strangers. Everyone was known, everyone was here for a reason. This driver was here for a reason, too, even if nobody had told him what it was. Still . . .

“Is something wrong?” asked Nowek.

“No.” Boyko turned to Nowek. “Be sure to ask Miss Arkova from Technical Information about the history of Russian diamonds. You may be surprised.”

“Russian history can be very unpredictable.”

The pit boss slid the door shut.

The van rolled off, trailing a billowing cloud of rock dust.

“I heard there was an accident,” said Chuchin. He took a deep drag. The tip glowed cherry red. “I'm glad you're still breathing.”

“If you want me to keep breathing, open your window,” Nowek said. “It was Sherbakov.”

“I figured.” Chuchin rolled down his window. “How?”

“Boyko said he fell into some machinery.”

“Maybe your honest friend Levin decided to go out for a walk on his flight from Moscow, too.”

The thought had already occurred to him. Levin was supposed to be here already. Nowek didn't know if he'd ever arrived. He was beginning to hope he hadn't. “How did you hear about Sherbakov?”

Chuchin pointed to a radio mounted beneath the dash.

“What happened to Miss Arkova?”

“I'm not the one she was supposed to be interested in. She left me with the driver. His name is Vadim. We had a lot in common.”

Nowek smelled alcohol on Chuchin's breath. It was a miracle he didn't burst into flames. “Besides a bottle?”

“Siberians are sponges. You don't know their shape until you get them soaked. He was an old
strafnik
like me.” A citizen of the gulag. “I let him do the talking. Me, I hardly wet a tooth.”

“So he gave you the keys to the van.”

“Strictly in the interests of safety.”

“I see.” Nowek figured that he would hear more about this later. “Did he tell you anything useful?”

“That Kirillin is no one to play games with. He'll tie a knot in your tongue and ask how you like pretzels. He also said I should think twice about working with you. What about Boyko?”

“He said he was just a simple worker. I believe him. He said diamonds are a dirty business. I believe that, too.”

“That's it?”

“No. He's boss of the pit. But there's another mine. An underground mine beneath that tower. It's called Mirny Deep.” Nowek nodded at the tall, black structure. “There are levels in it. They call them horizons. It's not a term I was familiar with until today.”

“Who cares what they call them?”

“Volsky's last words were
Idi k'gorizontu
. Go to the horizon.”

“He could have meant anything.”

“He could have meant Mirny Deep.”

They came to a gate marked
NO.
5. Chuchin stopped by a card reader, slipped a plastic card from his jacket and scanned it in.

The gate began to open.

Nowek held out his hand. Chuchin gave him the plastic card. It had a photo of Vadim. Boyko's regular driver. “Chuchin.”

“I didn't steal it. It came with the keys.” He was about to drive through, when an ambulance screamed by, heading in the opposite direction. He let it through, then drove off. “The city museum was very interesting. A
babushka
runs it. She took one look at this”—he held out the Marlboro—“and practically begged me to sell her more.”

“The miners on our plane had cases of Marlboros.”

“Those miners aren't miners. Or at least, they're not just miners. They used to be miners. They've earned special privileges.”

“From Kirillin?”

Chuchin seemed surprised. “How did you know?”

“That's how it was in the oil fields back in Soviet times. I think Mirny hasn't changed much.”

“They're Kirillin's
mafiya
. In Mirny if you need something you go through them or you go without. The company stores are almost empty, Mister Mayor. I know. I looked. Pockets are empty, too. Volsky was right. People are worried.”

“Boyko said that things are tough, but people are eating.”

“Well, he's a boss. Did he mention the fire?”

“He called it an accident.”

Chuchin snorted. “The only accident was that the miners didn't burn the fucking city to the ground. They were sick of working without pay, so they stole a Belaz. Maybe they were going to drive it to Moscow. Who knows? Someone had the idea of going to the plant. They ran over a gas pipe. There was a spark.
Boom.
”

“Why would anyone stay in Mirny and work for nothing?”

“He said it wasn't possible to leave. They'd lose their accounts.”

“What accounts?”

“Kristall pays half their salaries with
veskels
. The other half is in dollars they deposit overseas. Or so they say. If a miner leaves, all he gets to keep are the
veskels
. The miners who aren't miners? They get paid in dollars. It's why they can afford these.” He held up the Marlboros. “Everyone else gets a little envelope every month saying how rich he is. Every fucking miner is worth forty, fifty thousand dollars. Except he can't spend it. It drove Vadim's wife crazy. She didn't bother with a divorce. She just left. That's when he started crying and handed the keys over. He wanted to join her, but he couldn't. He said he wasn't brave enough.”

It was another pyramid scheme. Stay and work for promises or leave penniless. Nowek sat back in the seat as the dusty road unfurled. Were the dollars even real? Even if they were, he doubted they'd ever find a way into the hands of a miner. No. The miners here weren't just unpaid. They were prisoners. Not of barbed wire or ice. But of their own hope.

Chuchin's leather coat was zippered to the neck, as though winter never left his bones, which, in a way, was true. He glanced at Nowek and said, “You have that look. You're thinking.”

“Boyko said their quota was twenty thousand tons of ore a day. A Belaz can carry one hundred tons. That's two hundred trips from the pit to the ore plant.”

“I haven't seen three trucks on the road.”

“So how are they making quota?”

“They're not.”

“Then how could the cartel in London buy four million carats of gem diamond from Kristall? If they aren't coming from the pit, where
are
they coming from?”

Chuchin paused. “The other mine?”

Nowek looked back at Mirny Deep's tower. White vapor streamed from the top. A cloud, a ribbon drawn out by the wind, then gone.

Could Kristall pull it off?
Nowek knew it was common practice to keep as much of your business off the books as possible. That's why every businessman, from factory chief to the owner of the corner liquor kiosk, put on paper only what he was willing to have confiscated by the tax police. But Kristall wasn't a corner liquor kiosk. It wasn't a factory.
It was the source of a quarter of the world's gem diamonds.
Could Kristall run an entire mine off the books? Could they just decide to cut Moscow out of the deal entirely, and make their own way in the diamond world? With the cartel?

The van left a trail of rising dust, a gritty plume that flattened in the wind. They bumped up onto the paved road to Mirny. It was made in typical Soviet fashion: huge precast slabs of concrete dropped like oversize dominoes onto the ground. The permafrost shifted beneath them, sagging, melting, buckling the panels into an obstacle course.

Nowek sat back.

“We try to ignore Moscow.”

“That look.” Chuchin scowled. “You're thinking again.”

“Have you ever heard of a Potemkin village, Chuchin?”

“I don't like travel.”

“This was in 1787. Prince Potemkin was governor of Crimea and Empress Catherine was coming on an inspection tour.”

“Like you.”

“Things were a mess.”

“Like now.”

“Potemkin couldn't let her find out, so he built a false-front village so she could see how wonderful everything was. Houses, stores, well-dressed peasants. Bread baking in the ovens.”

“What are you saying? Mirny is one of these Potemkin villages?”

“No,” said Nowek. “That the open pit might be a Potemkin mine. Only here it's backward. They send the gems to Irkutsk and the junk to Moscow, and if anyone comes here to look . . .”

“They can say
From this mine? What diamonds?
”

“Sure,” said Nowek. “Meanwhile the good diamonds are sold. Those overseas accounts get bigger.”

“Who do they belong to?”

Nowek didn't have to think long. “When I find that out, we'll know who murdered Volsky.”

“If you ask me, Volsky would have figured this out.”

“Probably.”

“And they stopped him. Why do you think you'll do better?”

“Volsky marched into a minefield. We'll take it step by step.”

“When it comes to mines, one step is all it takes.”

They entered a district of raw, ten-story concrete apartment flats that blocked the view to the mine. Piers elevated them above the permafrost. The unpainted concrete walls were streaked in red rust and grime, the corners gnawed by wind, chipped by cold.

Chuchin said, “You're right. Nothing much has changed in Mirny. It reminds me of a story.”

“No stories, Chuchin.”

Chuchin was unimpeded. “Lenin, Stalin, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev are riding the train together to the future when the tracks suddenly stop. They hit the brakes and scratch their heads. Lenin says,
Organize the villagers to cut wood for ties! The steelworkers will forge tracks! The rail crews will hammer it into the ground! Shoulder to shoulder, we'll roll on to true communism!
”

Chuchin's eyebrows curved down, tricky and sinister, his accent syrupy Georgian. “Stalin says,
It's the engineers' fault
.
Arrest them and shoot them. Who needs tracks? We'll run the train across their bodies.
He's about to give the order when Brezhnev interferes.
Comrades! I have an even better idea. We'll pull the shades down and pretend we're moving.
But then Gorbachev says,
Who needs rails? We'll just call the train a bus, drive ahead, and see what happens.

“The train moves. It's almost off the end when Yeltsin jumps out of the woods with a bottle and says,
Stop! Forget the future! Everyone! Back to the past!
”

“And so?”

“That's Mirny,” said Chuchin. “You don't need a nose to smell it.”

“I'm surprised you can still smell anything.”

“Pah.”

The administrative center of town was built around an open square that looked both ceremonial and ominous. A place for parades and executions. In its center, what else? A black, heroic bust of Lenin almost two stories high. It was surrounded by a grizzled fringe of park, all stunted trees and gap-toothed fences. To the right was the mayor's office and the militia station. To the left was a small hotel, the
Zarnitsa
. The name meant
first light of dawn.
At the back of the square was Kristall's
apparat,
its headquarters.

Chuchin slowed as they approached the statue. The ground at its base was studded with broken vodka bottles. Executed in smooth black stone, Lenin glared down at the few people hurrying by. His forehead was bizarrely pronounced, as though ready to burst and spread the seeds of revolution across fallow land.

Chuchin lit a new cigarette from the smoldering tip of the old, then flicked the stub out the window.

Nowek asked, “Do you ever wonder what your lungs look like?”

“Never.” Chuchin pulled into a reserved parking spot at Kristall's front door. The
apparat
was modest for a diamond company. Plain concrete stairs beneath a projecting concrete awning. A simple revolving glass door at the top. All the windows were covered by heavy steel security screens. “So.” He killed the engine.

Nowek paused, looking at the shabby building.

“You have that look again,” said Chuchin.

“How could someone here know where Galena was staying in America?”

“They couldn't.”

“So who sent her those diamonds?”

“Someone bigger. Some Moscow shit like Petrov.”

“Maybe.” Nowek slid open the side door and got out. “I shouldn't be long. Find a quiet place for me to call Moscow. If Levin is still there, he has to know what happened to Sherbakov.”

The revolving door swept Nowek into an air-lock entry guarded by men wearing the old uniform of the KGB. They sat in glass booths, their hands poised, waiting for Nowek's papers.

Nowek gave them up and was allowed to pass.

Kristall's
apparat
was two buildings masquerading as one. The bleached, broken exterior blended with Mirny depressingly well. Inside, the lobby looked and felt more European, less Russian. It was orderly, with only a hint of the normal Russian odors of cigarettes, boiled cabbage, and sweat. It took a lot of effort to establish the illusion of order. It took even more to keep Russian smells at bay. Squint, and it might be Berlin.

The vaulted atrium was filled with light. A cascading waterfall of crystals hung from the skylight beams, catching the light and flashing in imitation of a diamond's fire. In the center, a fountain splashed over wet, blue rocks. Not just any rocks, but kimberlite ore, the native rock of diamond.