The Ice Curtain (27 page)

The hose stowed back in the truck, Tereshenko climbed into the cab with Mahmet behind him. “So,” he said to the Chechen, “you've made an illegal visit to Mirny. You've taken me prisoner, you're holding my men. What will you do now?”

“Drive the truck into the garage. Don't talk.”

“It isn't every day four Chechen terrorists visit us. Me, I'm from Angara. Three years ago I came to—”

“Is that where you want the body sent?” Mahmet noticed the red light below Tereshenko's thigh. It was blinking urgently. “What is that?” He reached down and spun up the volume control.

“. . . the devil is going on out there, Angara Three?”

Mahmet looked up at Tereshenko, who was properly terrified.
“What have you done?”

Up from the collapsed fissure, through the hatch, down a drift that grew wider, the flow of fresh air stronger, cleaner. There had been five tunnels radiating out from the main chamber of the Ninth Horizon. Nowek had escaped down one and now he was emerging from another. The naked bulbs strung along the roof were almost searingly bright. Ahead, the drift opened onto the main chamber. The growing breeze urged him on. He came to the mouth of the tunnel. The blast curtain was up. He stopped.

Someone had switched on the lights in the main chamber. He wished they had not. They burned hazy and yellow behind gauzy veils of smoke and dust, dimmed, but plenty bright enough to see Boyko's body.

He was facedown in a growing pool of water. His head was turned to one side, away, thank God. One arm was trapped beneath him, the other stretched out. A white bag had been placed between his fingers. Blood swirled black in a milky suspension of powdered ore and melted ice. Nowek couldn't hear the pumps, but then he couldn't hear anything.

Boyko's hard hat was gone, and with it the two identity cards Nowek had hoped to find. The pit boss had been shot twice. There was one small hole down from the shoulders, left of the spine. Another at the back of his head, behind an ear, surrounded by charred hair plastered to the scalp with blood. A doctor he once knew had a name for it: the gray tattoo. The pattern left when a gun is thrust against skin and fired.

Nowek couldn't bear to see Boyko's face under the dirty water. He gently turned him over.

Entry wounds are almost always small. Exit wounds are another matter. A fist-size hole in Boyko's chest exposed a sharp broken rib and lung tissue already gray, already dead. The part of his face that had been underwater simply didn't exist. Nowek saw something else.

In the hand he'd kept under him as he fell, Boyko's gray fingers clutched a plastic identity card.

He pried Boyko's fingers away and took it. Slava's face stared belligerently up from the card. Nowek let the body down softly. The pit boss had turned his back to Kirillin. Insolence? Maybe. It was also possible that Boyko and Volsky were more alike than even he knew. Volsky grabbing that shotgun. Boyko protecting a card Nowek would need to escape. Each one had died trying to save Nowek's life.

Nowek opened the diamond pouch. They were smaller than the huge gem in Nowek's pocket. Ten ice-clear, perfect diamonds. He carefully tucked the giant in with the lesser crystals and thrust the pouch into his pocket.

A pistol lay on the floor, already underwater. He picked it up, found the safety was off, and thumbed it closed. There were six rounds left. It felt heavy, like cast iron. His fingers left perfect prints in the dust.

With Slava's card in one hand and the Makarov in the other, he splashed to the elevator. The water was up to his ankles and rising even as he looked. The blind security camera stared down as Nowek swiped Slava's ID through the reader.

A red light burned above the door. There was a soft
click
. The yellow light came on. The hoist was coming down.

“To be frank,” said Yuri as he put his feet up on Tereshenko's desk, “I'm disappointed. I thought we had an understanding. I thought you were part of the team.”

Tereshenko looked at the radio and shivered. The red light was blinking furiously. Someone was trying to contact him. That would have been good news except that one of the Chechens had a very sharp blade almost, but not quite, pricking the tender skin of his neck. “You don't know what it is to live here,” he said. “You don't know Mirny.
Everything
is watched.
Everything
is monitored.
Please.
It's the
diamonds
. He'll . . .”

“Mahmet?” said Yuri.

Mahmet barely twitched, and a thin stream of blood ran down Tereshenko's collar.

The airport manager screamed.

“Quiet,” said Yuri. “You should be glad it's Mahmet. My other business partner is a professional. Mahmet might accidentally kill you, but Plet would make you
wish
you were dead. So who's monitoring that radio?”

“This is
Mirny
. You can't fart without Kirillin knowing.”

“Kirillin?”

“The mine director. He's going to find you one way or another, and the sooner you leave, the better.”

“I agree,” said Yuri. He looked at Mahmet. “So?”

The Chechen said, “I have seen no diamonds.”

“They're not scattered on the street like plums!” Tereshenko shouted.

Yuri thought, then said, “Mahmet, give him the radio.”

“Please!” Tereshenko pleaded. “You're in enough trouble. . . .”

The blade dug in another millimeter. Tereshenko went white.

“Now listen,” said Yuri. “You're going to say you had too much to drink, that you and your boys were playing games, and everyone here is very, very sorry. You won't even have to pretend.”

Mahmet held up the portable radio. He dialed up the volume.

“. . . airport? Angara Three, come in. This is Pine Tree.”

Tereshenko's hands shook. Say one thing and Kirillin would call him a hero, though he'd be a dead one. Say another and this madman would let him live long enough to face Kirillin. Tereshenko had two options. Two ways to die. One tonight. The other tomorrow. And so he made the natural choice.

“Angara Three. Listening.”

“This is Pine Tree.
What's going on out there?
”

Pine Tree was militia headquarters. “Nothing. The maintenance men had a little drink. Everything is normal.”

“You'd better tell them to be more careful. I was just about to send word that someone was playing with the radio out at the airport. You know what that would mean.”

He did. “They won't step on the same rake twice.”

“Well, just watch it. Pine Tree out.” The red light went dark.

Yuri clapped his hands. “Very good.”

“What do you want done with him?” asked Mahmet.

“He can wait in the garage with his sleepy friends. Have Anzor guard them. Bashir can run a snowplow?”

“Without doubt.”

“Have him clear the runway. Nobody gets near the jet. I want to be ready to go at the jump of a flea. You'll be coming with me.” He looked at Tereshenko. “About that car we discussed?”

Tereshenko stumbled on his words. “A militia jeep. It's parked by the entrance. The keys are in the desk. The
top
drawer.”

Yuri pulled them out. “We're meeting an official from Moscow who is visiting your lovely town. Where might we find him?”

“There's just one hotel. The
Zarnitsa.
In the main square. Across from company headquarters. The road outside goes straight there. Don't turn off to the pit or the mine. They're guarded.”

“Thank you for your cooperation. Just so you understand, if we don't return in a few hours, Bashir and Anzor will be very upset. Is there anything else you'd like to tell us before we go?”

“The company building is guarded. The hotel is not.”

Yuri got up and walked to the window. He said to Mahmet, “Those arctic suits in the garage? We'll borrow them. It's getting cold. If we don't come back in—”

“Wait!”
Tereshenko shouted. He reached into his pocket.

Mahmet was faster. The Chechen plucked a wallet from the manager's fingers and tossed it to Yuri.

“There's a card inside,” said Tereshenko. “There are magnetic readers all over Mirny. An alarm goes off if you don't have it.”

“Thank you.” Yuri slipped the card from Tereshenko's wallet. “And allow me to say, welcome back to the team.”

Chapter 27

The Soldier's Story

The mine elevator was already through the Seventh Horizon. Rising, Nowek thought about
A Soldier's Story,
a folktale about a Russian soldier who trades his violin, his Russian soul, to the Devil for a book of knowledge.

The Devil takes him home for three days to explain a few details. But when the soldier returns home, it's been three
years,
not three days, and he's long been given up for dead. Now in his own house, in his own country, and soon in his own mind, he's just a ghost.

Nowek looked at his watch. The crystal was shattered. It had stopped the instant of the explosion: four forty-eight. Nowek had visited the Devil's garden for only three hours, not three days. But time already felt elastic, stretched out of shape.

Had he only arrived this morning in Mirny? Was it just yesterday that he found that dog skinner dead in a jet of live steam? Had only four days passed since Volsky was standing in a shower, telling him that things were looking up?

The Fifth Horizon flashed by as a line of flickering, smoky lights. The air reeked of explosives and dust. Nowek's ears still felt plugged by thick wool. When he tried to clear one with a finger, it came back bloody.

The Fourth Horizon. The air was getting cold again. The rock outside the elevator wasn't rock, but Siberia's eternal ice. It made him think of Galena and her diamond earrings. The thought that he might never see her again was more painful than the pellets lodged in his arm.

A shudder, a pressure wave pulsed through the elevator. It was like the quick, violent gust that precedes an express train barreling through a station. Nowek could feel it.
Wham!
Then gone. The car swayed against its guides, then continued up.

The Third Horizon. Would Slava's ID get him out of here alive? Or had Kirillin placed Slava's name on a watch list? He decided no. They'd already found him, dead. Kirillin had already solved the problem that was Boyko. He'd thought he'd solved the problem that was Nowek, too. He'd been wrong twice. With a little more luck, he might be proven wrong again.

The Second Horizon. The next would be the ore chute level, the tunnel that would lead to Fabrika 3. He thought about the ventilator shafts. About walking back to town. He thought about the cold and the snow and the burned Belaz and Boyko's son, his bones too hot to touch. He thought too long, because the hoist was already starting to slow as it neared the top.

The richest fucking diamond mine on earth.

The pistol. He already stood accused of murdering Volsky. There was no reason to be found with the weapon that had killed Boyko, too. He opened the door of the circuit breaker box, stuffed the pistol in, and closed it as the elevator came to a stop. He remembered where Boyko wore his ID card, and shoved it into a pocket.

The door slid open.

Four men in black smoke hoods, clear face masks and ear protectors. They were breathing oxygen from tanks strapped to their backs. A rescue team. Two of them rushed into the hoist and grabbed Nowek. His lips were moving. Nowek couldn't hear. He tapped his ears.

The man in the mask shouted in his ear,
“What Horizon?”

“Nine,” he said weakly, then his knees buckled.

Someone thrust a clear rubber mask over his mouth and nose. He drew in a lungful of sweet, pure air. He realized why the others were wearing hoods and breathing from tanks. The air was thick with dust and smoke.

“He's bleeding.”

“Check him through.”

Nowek sagged against them as they dragged him into a brightly lit corridor that was ribbed with girders, throbbing pipes, rust-riveted ducts large enough to vacuum up a small car. Nowek spotted the topmaster's booth. It was surrounded with thick, soundproof glass. There were two men inside. One was the topmaster, charged with logging in miners heading up or down.

The other was Kirillin.

Steel bars herded the miners through a scanner station. Nowek recognized an X-ray machine. It was the same model he'd seen in Sib-Auto's repair yard.

Diamonds glow blue under X-rays.

With all those diamonds in his pocket, he'd light up like a neon sign. If not, the scanner would read his identity and someone would know that Slava had been on the diamond line, was dead, and had not been down at the bottom of Mirny Deep. One way or another, in the next few moments, the alarm was going to sound. It was only a matter of seconds before he would become that wounded soldier in Stravinsky's tale, rising up from the earth with precious knowledge, a ghost.

“That's the third,” said the topmaster. “He must have been near the blast. You want to stop him for a body search?”

Kirillin looked at the whole-body scan on the X-ray monitor. The injured man glowed from head to toe. The finely powdered residue from the Dynagel blast reacted to X-rays even more than diamonds. “The health of our miners comes before matters of security,” he said gravely. “Let him pass.”

The topmaster punched a button and the outer gates opened just as one of the rescuers slid the ID card into the reader. A name flashed on the topmaster's screen, but by then the injured man was already on his way out to the ambulance waiting in the Dead Zone.

Lakes in the desert. A warm cabin in a blizzard. Dollars in an overseas bank. Boyko had been right about hallucinations. When you run out of hope, they looked pretty good. Nowek was sure this had to be one. He'd been carried right under Kirillin's nose with a pocket full of diamonds. No alarm had sounded. If that was possible, what was not?

Now he was looking up at a dense cloud of steam billowing out from the top of the headworks tower. The snow had stopped. Clouds raced across the sky. The stars burned with an unreal intensity. Half a meter of drifted snow was on the ground. A path had been cleared from the tower all the way to the Dead Zone. They carried him to the back of the militia ambulance. It was painted the usual dull, army green, distinct from all the other dull, army-green vehicles by a red stripe painted on its side. It was small; two stretchers left only a narrow aisle for the nurse to stand and work.

There was already a miner inside having his wrist bound. He had an open bottle of vodka clasped to his chest. They installed Nowek on the other stretcher, slammed the doors, and the ambulance began to roll.

The miner took a long look at Nowek, then said, “You know what happened?”

Nowek pointed to his ears and shook his head.

“Who set off that fucking charge without clearing the mine?”

“That's enough,” said the nurse as she tied off the last strip and pinned the arm and wrist to the miner's jacket. She shifted around to face Nowek. “Now what's wrong with you?”

She looked at Nowek's forehead, poured some raw alcohol on a cloth, and wiped away the dust.

Nowek felt the alcohol bite. He turned to look at the other miner. He was asleep. The bottle on his chest was empty.

She examined his left ear. “Blood. The eardrum is damaged.” She stepped back. “Let's get you out of your parka.”

A commotion from the mine hoist caught Kirillin's attention.

The rescue team hurried through the ore skip door carrying a miner slung in a heavy canvas tarp. They were soaking wet, as though they'd pulled a shipwrecked man from angry surf.

The topmaster had a microphone on his desk. He leaned over and keyed it. “Who is it?”

“It's Boyko!” said a voice muffled by an oxygen mask. “He's dead! He was shot!”

“Boyko?”
said the topmaster. “What was
he
doing down there?”

“A good question,” said Kirillin. “That makes three dead with Anton and Slava. It seems we have a killer on our hands.”

“But Slava's not dead.”

Kirillin turned to the topmaster. “What?”

“He's alive. He came up from Horizon Nine. You cleared him through yourself not five minutes ago.”

Kirillin swung. He couldn't see outside the headworks tower.
Nowek?
He hesitated for less than a second, then mashed his hand down on the red button that sounded the alarm. He swung on the topmaster. “Notify the militia
now
. Have them stop that ambulance wherever they find it.
Now!
Is there a radio in it?”

The topmaster already had the handheld radio out, tuned to the militia frequency. He gave it to Kirillin, thankful to all the gods and devils that the mine director had been the one to allow the
other
Slava through.

“It's all right. I'm fine,” said Nowek, holding on to the sleeve of his parka. The nurse was trying to pull it off.

“What's wrong with you? You think I'd steal your coat? It's ruined with blood already. Stop acting like a baby.”

Just then Nowek felt the ambulance veer to one side. The nurse grabbed a strap and hung on as the brakes locked and the van skidded sideways. The van was gliding silently across fresh snow. It struck something and came to a stop.

“Don't move. I'm not done,” she said to Nowek, then walked up the narrow aisle to the front. A partition separated the rear from the cab. There was a window, and it slid open.

A face peered back, then away. “Yes. We have him.”

The nurse was about to ask what he meant, when a thump made her turn.

The rear doors were open, swinging in the biting wind. One of her patients was sound asleep. The other was gone.

The ambulance had come to rest against a decorative fence made from welded steel circles. A four-story building lay beyond, with some rusted playground equipment in front. A school.

Nowek jumped the fence and ran. The snowdrifts came up to his shins. He left a perfect trail.

The school was elevated on concrete pilings to keep it from melting the permafrost. He dodged under the cracked concrete stairs, then down a dim corridor of pilings. There were only a few windblown drifts under the school, with plenty of bare earth. He might not be getting anywhere, but at least he wasn't leaving a trail.

A flashlight swept across the snowy school yard behind him. Nowek hid behind a pillar as the light probed for him. A second light flared white. He waited while the beams were looking elsewhere, then ran farther under the school.

On the far side was a large open plaza facing a wall of apartment buildings. Their walls alternated in a pattern of light and dark. Nowek was breathing heavily. He stopped. No. Not light and dark. They were white and blue.

Liza . . . eats her lunch at school. It's nearby. . . .

It was the row of apartment buildings that lined Ulitsa Popugayeva, Larisa's street. The first blue building on the left was hers. He looked back. The flashlights were under the school.

He took off across the snowy plaza. Not for her building, but for the end of the row. He ran into a drift and fell. When he got up, he saw a car slowly making its way down Ulitsa Popugayeva. A militia jeep. Its searchlight was swiveling, hunting the entrances to each apartment building.

Nowek got to his feet when it passed. He didn't have much energy. He was running on will, on stubbornness. But the snow seemed so warm, so inviting. It would be easy to simply sit down in a drift, to fall, to rest.

His run was more of a lopsided walk. His feet felt wooden, his knees rubbery. Who knew how much blood he'd left at the bottom of Mirny Deep? One hundred meters to go. Fifty. The last twenty steps. He couldn't think about diamonds, about Volsky or Boyko. Not Hock. Not even about himself. Just the next step.

The Hotel
Zarnitsa,
Chuchin, his home in Irkutsk, they all might as well be on Mars. He stopped, and when he did he could hardly muster the energy to look up at the stars. He could see the future clearly now. Nowek would become a “Snow Flower,” a body that emerged from the ice after the first thaw of spring.

One more step. Then another.

And then he was at the sidewalk. It was a jumble of footprints, and the walking was easier. He turned right and made his way to the first blue apartment building. Somehow, he climbed the four stairs to the front door. He tried to open it, but it was so well locked it didn't even rattle. He turned around, reached up, and pushed the buzzer next to the name Arkov.

He sat with his back to the door, looking out across the same snowy street he'd seen when Boyko had picked him up. The same, and completely different. Nowek felt the cold reaching for him. The stars were very bright. A bag of loose diamonds in his pocket. The giant crystal from the bottom of the Ninth Horizon. Boyko's body, the Makarov in the elevator panel. He'd done a good job of establishing his guilt. Even
Levin
would have to believe he was helping Volsky deal in dirty—

The door clicked, then pulled open.

“You can't drink here! Get moving or I'll call the militia!”

Larisa was wearing a long coat and slippers on her feet. He looked up into her face.

She looked down at Nowek, then up the street. The militia jeep was working its way back in their direction. Her expression was that of a chess player weighing moves. Nowek and the militia. Threats and opportunities.

The patrol's searchlight swept a bright white path over snow.

“Hurry,” she said, and reached down to help Nowek stand.

Chuchin had felt the hotel room floor shake, the windows rattle. He didn't need a phone call from that woman to know that a blast had been set off someplace, and that, as usual, Nowek had been in the middle of it. What did he expect? That Kristall would pin a medal on him for taking over Volsky's job of twisting their pricks? Did he think they'd give him the key to the fucking city?

He pushed a heavy dresser in front of the door. It wouldn't keep someone out of the room forever, but they'd make noise when they came for him. Chuchin knew they would come. They had to. The boy, Sherbakov. Now Nowek. He was the last detail.

He rummaged in his cardboard suitcase and pulled out a paper bag stained by fish oil. The smell of ripe
omul
was overpowering in the enclosed hotel room, which, after all, was the point. He shook the rotted fish into the toilet, then pulled out a small, plastic bag. He ripped it open with his teeth and poured seven Nagant 7.62mm cartridges into his palm. Their unique recessed tips gave them the appearance of turtles pulling their head into a shell.