The Ice Curtain (2 page)

One second. Two. Alex's scream was still inside his throat when a hot yellow gust sucked the sound from his mouth, the glass from the windshield, the air from his lungs. The blast rose into the indigo sky, roped and knotted with turbulent black eddies, a hungry furnace that consumed everything, flesh, hope, the world, and turned them all to ash.

I
RKUTSK
, S
IBERIA

Saturday,
September 25, 1999

Chapter 2

Golden Autumn

In Siberia, autumn is the glint of a bright coin dropped into deep water. Tumbling, flashing, dim, then gone. In Moscow, summer gives way reluctantly, sweetly. Five time zones to the east in Irkutsk, fall arrives with the fury of a breaking wave.

It was seven in the morning. A ragged fog draped over the swift, icy waters of the Angara River. Fine rain spattered the broad window overlooking the runways of the Irkutsk airport. Soon, hard frost would stitch itself to the glass, and the mountains, the forest, the outside world would vanish behind an impenetrable curtain of ice.

Gregori Nowek watched the last swifts of the season cut the threads of rain apart like scissors, darting between the gray sky and the slick, wet runways. He wondered where the birds went for the winter and why they returned. Was it instinct? Choice? It made him think about his daughter Galena, due back next week from a summer spent in America. What could bring her back from heaven?

Gregori Nowek had turned thirty-eight in June. He had a thin face, dark blue eyes, and a shock of brown hair that spilled over his forehead like water flowing over a stubborn rock. He wore a green jacket Galena had sent to him from America. It was supposed to allow air in but keep out rain. He hoped it worked because the weather in Moscow would be the same as here in Irkutsk: cold rain.

“So how many diamonds did we send those bastards?” asked the Siberian Delegate, Arkady Volsky.

They stood by a window in the VIP lounge, watching a weary Aeroflot IL-62 being readied for the morning flight to Moscow. Their bags were piled around their boots in a defensive circle.

Volsky had been appointed by President Yeltsin to keep an eye on Siberia for the Kremlin. Or as Volsky preferred, to keep an eye on Moscow for Siberia. He was Nowek's boss, his mentor, his friend.

“Which bastards?” asked Nowek. “The ones in London or Moscow?”

“Funny. The ones who were supposed to pay my miners.”

His miners?
Nowek thought. “Kristall shipped twelve million carats to Moscow last year,” he said. Kristall was the big Siberian mining company that controlled ninety percent of Russian diamonds. Kristall was to Russia what the diamond cartel in London was to the world. “A third of it was gem quality. The cartel bought all four million carats.”

“Four million? It's a mountain of diamonds.”

“Not even a hill,” said Nowek. “How much do you weigh? Eighty kilos?”

“Maybe.”

“Ninety?”

“It's not necessary for you to know,” Volsky said testily. He was shorter, heavier, though he lifted weights religiously. It gave him the surprising solidity of a bulldog. “What are you getting at?”

“Four million carats is eight of you. Or seven. You've put on some weight.”

Volsky looked down at his waist, then up at Nowek to see if it was a joke. You had to be careful with Nowek. “Never.”

“Easily. You were a coal miner. You still think like one. Diamonds come by the carat, not the ton.” Nowek held up his hands and used a thumb and forefinger from each to form an oval the size of an egg. “Three thousand carats. The
Cullinan
stone. The largest gem-quality crystal ever found.”

Volsky's eyebrows arched again. “That small?”

“Arkasha,” said Nowek, “a big diamond is still a very small thing.”

Volsky was a square, bluff man in his late forties. He had the pink face of a serious drinker, webbed with burst veins, and a smooth, thick helmet of silvery blond hair. His fingers were stubby and powerful. Even in his best suit there was no mistaking him for anything but a man who had known hard work.

Volsky had been a coal miner, a labor brigade leader in the Kuzbass coal region, a union organizer at the rebellious Anzhero mine. His miners had led the nationwide strike that toppled Gorbachev and installed Boris Yeltsin in his place. Yeltsin rewarded Volsky with the office of the Siberian Delegate. It was a big step up from the pits, though Volsky still spoke simply and loud, like a miner shouting
Fire in the hole!

“These four million
markovka,
” he said, using the Russian word for
carrots
instead of
carat
. “What are they worth?”

A pun in two languages?
“You've been studying English.”

“It's the language of business. It's practically mandatory,” said Volsky proudly, pleased to be able to surprise Nowek. “So?”

“In dollars, more than half a billion. Maybe more. I can't keep track of what that is in rubles these days.”

“Dollars are good enough.”

They're better,
thought Nowek. Dollars were the eternal stars. You could navigate by them. Rubles were meteorites, streaks of light, weightless dust. Breathe and they'd blow away.

“So Moscow sold the cartel half a billion dollars' worth of diamonds and those mousepricks won't send a barrel of cold shit to the mines?”

“Moscow hasn't sold
any
to the cartel in almost a year. They're too busy arguing over price. I don't know what Kristall ships to Moscow.”

“I have a colleague who says they're shipping plenty.”

It was the first Nowek had heard of it. “A miner?”

“Let's just say colleague. The
mafiya
slits throats for twenty dollars. Just think what they would do for half a billion.”

Once, Nowek had been a petroleum geologist. In Soviet times, the oil business had been absolutely corrupt. Nowek assumed diamonds worked the same way now. “Which
mafiya
?” he asked. “The ones on the street or the ones in the Kremlin?”

Volsky sighed. “It's a distinction without a difference.”

Yes, but Nowek was surprised to hear him say it. Volsky was the one with dreams of a better Russia, a Russia of laws. A Russia that might one day actually be normal. It was a dream that was becoming hard to sustain. “Moscow will say they can't send money to Siberia when they haven't sold any rough to the cartel,” he said.

Volsky shrugged. “Let them. I have a plan.”

It better be a good one.
Winter was coming, and the lowest temperature in history, minus one hundred sixty degrees, had been recorded near the diamond mines. “So?”

“We're meeting Yevgeny Petrov, the chairman of the State Diamond Committee. They call him
Prince of Diamonds
for a reason. He controls the state diamond stockpile. It's a
real
mountain of gems.” He gave Nowek an impish grin. “He's going to sell some and send the money to my miners. It's simple.”

Nowek thought that what seemed simple in Irkutsk might not seem that way in Moscow. “How will you make him do it?”

“First I'll use reason,” said Volsky. “But if reason doesn't work, I have other tools of persuasion.”

“A club?”

“The President. My miners handed him his job in ninety-one. That's why I have a direct number to the Kremlin duty desk today. I even have my own password. Maybe you forgot?”

“It's his memory I worry about.” Yeltsin was fast becoming an invisible man. The papers were full of rumors that he wasn't even alive. “I hear he's not in such good shape.”

“I don't care if he's made of wax. He's still President and if he says do something, Petrov will obey.” Volsky looked out the window, too, then said, “Galena is really coming back home next week?”

“She can't stay in America. Her visa runs out. Besides, she's only eighteen,” said Nowek. But he didn't sound convinced. “I want to be back in time to meet her plane.”

“Don't worry. You will be.”

Nowek turned. “Not you?”

“I'm going up to Mirny with my pockets full of Petrov's money, or with his head. It will be up to him which. I've never been there. It should be interesting.”

Desperate. Dismal. Marooned.
These were the words that came to Nowek's mind when he thought of Mirny. Not
interesting
. “You're not giving Petrov much time to be reasonable, Arkasha.”

“I gave the miners my word.”

Nowek knew there was no arguing. Once Volsky said he would do something, Nowek had never known him to back away. Volsky could be maddeningly evasive. But heaven help
anyone
who stood between him and his word. You might as well stand in front of the Trans Siberian Express and try to flag it down with a handkerchief.

“Relax,” said Volsky with a smile. “I know what I'm doing. Besides, three days in Moscow is long enough. More and we both might contract some disease.”

Nowek knew his friend wasn't speaking about the flu. Moscow wasn't another city so much as a black hole, a whirlpool that drew in Siberia's wealth and magically made it disappear. Moscow, florid with corruption, radioactive with greed.

They watched a fuel truck rumble up to the old jet. A worker got out and tugged a hose from a reluctant reel. He was smoking a cigarette, but out of respect for the fuel left it burning on the truck's fender. A breeze sent it into a rain puddle.

Volsky saw Nowek was preoccupied. He thought he knew his friend's mind. Sometimes he did. “You've talked with Galena?”

“By
electronka
.” E-mail. “I asked what she missed from Siberia. You know what she said?
Get serious.
”

“It's not easy growing up without a mother.”

Nowek didn't need reminding that it was right here, at this very airport, that he'd last seen his wife alive. Nina had boarded a plane bound for Moscow. It went down twenty-seven minutes later. Years later, the potato field still reeked of jet fuel and burned plastic.

“You know,” Volsky continued, “if you decided to go . . .”

Nowek looked up. “Where?”

“To America. With Galena. Live a normal life. I could help.”

“No thanks,” said Nowek. “What would I do there? I'm a troublemaker. There are no troubles in heaven. Only money. Everything in America is about money.”

“Everything is about money here, too, Gregori.”

“Yes. But we still tell ourselves it's not.”

The window dripped with condensation. Its edges were alive with mold, the panes fogged. Nowek cleared a circle in the glass. A face appeared in the cockpit windows, peering up at the leaden sky.

“About your diamond figures,” said Volsky. “They're reliable?”

“They're reliable estimates. We know how many gem diamonds ended up in London last year because the cartel published the figures. No one knows how many were really mined.”

“Petrov knows.”

“Not even Petrov. By law, Kristall reports only total diamond production. Gem quality and industrial. The gems sell for a lot. The industrials for a little. You see the problem?”

“Fuck.” Volsky grunted. “If no one knows how many
good
ones actually come out of the ground, anyone with access . . .”

“Exactly.” Access was what Russian politics was all about. From access came influence, from influence control, and from control? Plunder. “Your miner friend says gem diamonds are being shipped to Moscow? Petrov can—”

“Skim off as many good ones as he pleases. And nobody said anything about a miner friend.”

“Fine. Just so you know that when it comes to how many stones were mined, it all depends on your assumptions.”

Volsky snorted. “It doesn't pay to make assumptions when it comes to Moscow. These days, nobody has any fucking answers.”

“In Russia, answers can be harder to find than diamonds.”

“I'll tell that to Petrov.”

A flashing beacon began to strobe from the wings of the jet.

“Amazing,” said Volsky. “They're going to be on time.”

“It doesn't pay to make assumptions about Aeroflot, either.”

“They're better now.”

“Russian Darwinism,” said Nowek. “The survival of the luckiest. You know what Americans call it?
Aeroflop.
”

“Shto?”

“
Flop.
It means
disaster
in the international language of business.”

A tinny loudspeaker announced the morning Moscow flight.

Volsky grabbed his suitcase and hefted the strap onto his broad miner's shoulder. “Be honest. Could Aeroflot get any worse?”

Nowek had to smile.
BE HONEST: COULD I DO ANY WORSE
? was the slogan Volsky had suggested for Nowek's campaign for mayor of Markovo. It had proven popular. Nowek won the election. But not durable. Russia's economic collapse in 1998 had claimed millions of victims. Nowek had been one of them.

Volsky flashed their official passes to a bored clerk. They walked through the control gate, through a grimy hallway and out into the rain. They skirted a Brownian mass of passengers pushing their way to the plane. The boarding stairs were blocked by a wet, grim stewardess who allowed the Siberian Delegate and his assistant in ahead of the herd.

“Petrov has a lot of power,” said Nowek as they stooped to enter the musty cabin. “You don't become chairman of the State Diamond Committee without friends.”

“No. Petrov has
collaborators
.
I
have friends.”

The rising scream of four jet engines drilled through the cold rain. They dumped their bags in the open compartment in the tail, and found their seats in front. The passengers filled the cabin with the smell of wet wool, cigarettes, dried fish.

The stewardess slammed the hatch shut. The engines roared, the brakes squealed, and the IL-62 trundled off to the long, concrete runway. The engines roared again, louder. A lurch and the big jet began to roll, accelerating, the seams in the concrete a fast staccato, then silence as the ground fell away.

Noisy, inefficient, and cursed with an unquenchable thirst for fuel, the 62 was graceful in its way. The four engines at the tail and slender fuselage gave it the appearance of a long-necked goose in flight. And it was fast: they chased the morning westbound at better than 800 kilometers an hour.