The Ice Curtain (30 page)

Then a new voice.

“We have him!”

“Who?” asked the man at militia headquarters.

“The Siberian Delegate! We have Nowek.”

Chuchin stared at the little radio as though it had just called him by name.
What did they just say?
He ran up the volume.
Alive?

“We're bringing him in now! He's wounded and carrying contraband!”

“Contraband?”

“Diamonds!”

Yuri poked his head in. “Okay, grandfather. We're leaving.”

Chuchin shook his head. “No. We're not.”

Kirillin looked at Gate 5. It was in perfect working order. “Someone let them through. Whose card was used?”

“Tereshenko's,” said General Stepanov, the commander of the Mirny militia. “The terrorists ambushed our patrol. It looks like explosives were used. Perhaps a rocket.”

Kirillin turned. “Really? You can just look at a hole in the ground, some scattered pieces and four tires that flew a kilometer and a half, and come up with such a conclusion?”

“Well,” said Stepanov, “it was
probably
a rocket.”

Kirillin started walking back to the jeep, thinking out loud. “Boyko. A single shot in the hotel, fired out of Delegate Nowek's room. Your men ambushed. Tereshenko's card.” He looked off in the direction of the airport. “It's clear these saboteurs flew in. That's where we'll have to stop them.”

“Sending two jeeps against rockets is slaughter, Mister Director.”

He faced Stepanov. “We'll use the snow tanks to push them back into their airplane. We'll encourage them to go.”

“
Encourage
them? They've killed—”

“We'll station sharpshooters off either end to make sure they don't succeed, of course.”

Chuchin made his case to Yuri. His breath smoked white in the chilly garage. Mahmet and Anzor, the eldest and youngest of the Brothers, stood silently. Aslan was guarding the plane. Cousin Bashir was back covering the road to the terminal with the PK, hyperaware of every sound now that he'd been surprised once.

When Chuchin was done, Yuri said, “Not a chance. I'm not sticking around another minute.”

The five prisoners watched them argue, their eyes going back and forth like spectators at a tennis match.

“But he's alive,” said Chuchin. “I heard them say it.”

“They're sending a fucking army in our direction. Did you hear that, too?”

“Pah.” Chuchin pulled out his Nagant. “I'm staying.”

Mahmet's rifle seemed to materialize out of a white cloud of breath. It was pointed at Chuchin's head, safety off.

Chuchin paid no attention to the AK. “You came to pick him up because you thought there was trouble. Now there's trouble and you're running. If I'm the only one with balls, then go. All of you. Get out of my sight.” Chuchin turned his back on them in disdain.

Tereshenko said, “He's right. You'd better go while you can. You may stop a militia jeep, but you won't stop tanks.”

Chuchin turned. “Tanks?”

“The security office uses them for transporting diamonds to the airport. Believe me, if they don't come for you tonight, they'll be here in the morning. There's a shipment of . . .” He stopped himself, in time he thought. But he was wrong.

“Diamonds?” asked Yuri.

The snow tanks looked like eight-wheeled turtles painted white. They weren't true tanks, just obsolete BTR-60 armored personnel carriers Kristall had acquired from the army. Too slow for a modern battlefield, their armor and gun turrets made them excellent mobile diamond vaults.

First one, then the second tank started up with a clatter of cold engines and clouds of oil smoke. No diamonds were brought on board through the rear doors. Only belts of heavy machine gun rounds, each bullet as long as a man's index finger.

When they were ready, the driver settled behind his bulletproof prisms, and moved off, heading north.

“Mommy?”

Larisa closed the small suitcase, locked it, then put it beside her bed. “What are you doing awake?”

Liza wore a one-piece suit in a waffled pink fabric. “I heard you yelling.” She saw the suitcase. “Are you going away?”

“We're
both
going away. Tomorrow morning.”

“For a long time?”

“If we're lucky. Now back to bed with you.”

“Can Misha come, too?”

Her bear. “Of course.”

She ran to the bear and grabbed it, hugging it close. “Why were you yelling?”

“Sometimes people say bad things that can hurt.”

“You mean when they lie.”

“Yes.” She stroked Liza's wheat-colored hair. “But sometimes when they say something that's true, it hurts even more.”

“Mommy? Misha has a bump.”

Larisa looked. It was true. There was a hard lump under the bear's brown scalp. The seam in the back was loose. Torn.

“I hear a snowplow!” Liza jumped to the window, excited.

Larisa probed the lump in poor Misha's head. Her finger came up against something cold and sharp. She drew in a quick, startled breath when she realized what she was feeling, then another when she felt the crystal's size. She joined Liza at the window in time to see the first snow tank rumble by. Then the second. “The snowplows are gone. Now go to bed.”

“Mommy?” Liza looked up. “Why are you crying?”

“Please,” said Larisa. She clutched the torn bear to her breast. “Just go to bed.”

The stars were out again, the clouds driven off by the wind, and the temperature was plummeting. “What do you think?” asked Yuri.

“It's possible,” said Mahmet. He peered down the shallow slope at the road to town. It was very quiet, which was not good. It meant they wouldn't come in stupid.

“That's all you have to say?”

“If you want something sure, boss, we should leave now.”

“You heard what he said. The tanks are coming in the morning with diamonds. How many diamonds fit in a tank?”

Mahmet considered it, then said, “Enough.”

“Exactly. There's something else, too. In the hangar next to the garage. A jet. A very
nice
jet.”

“Two jets and one pilot is a problem, boss.”

“Maybe not,” said Yuri.

Pavel was a sergeant in the Mirny militia, and an avid gunner of eiders. Like mushroom hunters with their secret glades, he had his secret lakes where he would build a hideout, sit behind a good mosquito net with his shotgun, and wait.

What he was doing tonight was the same. Pavel sat in a semicircular snow cave off one end of the runway. Someone else, he wasn't sure who, was waiting at the opposite end. An airplane flew faster than an eider, and it might have dazzling lights to blind him, but unlike a shotgun, his snow-white SK self-loading carbine gave him ten chances to hit a target. By any reasonable count, that was six more than he would need. He had no doubt who would bring the plane down. Having no doubts was the key to accurate shooting.

The first bullet would go through the jet's left windshield, the next through the right. He'd send a third and a fourth through the eyeless frames just to make certain. It would be embarrassing if it took any more than that to kill them.

Mahmet saw them first. A fan of dark moving figures strung across the road. Behind them was a vehicle. Then another. Not jeeps. Not trucks. He whistled to Anzor. He was standing in the terminal door.

“Tanks!”
he shouted in to Yuri.

“Slow them down!” Yuri yelled. “Then meet us at the plane!”

Anzor ran outside to join Mahmet at the machine gun. He slid behind the PK. “Slow them down?”

“They're Russians.” Mahmet took command of the rocket launcher. “Just shoot. Let God decide who lives.” Mahmet eyed the approaching tanks. They were at extreme range. A hit would be an accident, but it would make them think. He elevated the tube, whispered a prayer, and fired.

The rocket whooshed up and away, arcing high, tipping over, a falling star accelerated as it neared the ground. The round went long, exploding behind the rearmost tank, sending a column of white fire, red flame, gray smoke, and snow into the air.

The figures dropped and began firing blindly. Supersonic bullets cracked overhead, smashing the terminal windows, cratering the concrete walls. Mahmet loaded another spindly rocket and dropped it between the two tanks. The return fire grew in intensity. Bullets sent innocent puffs of snow into the air in front of where they lay.

“Answer them, brother,” said Mahmet.

Anzor pulled the trigger bars and the PK vomited a stream of bullets. He walked tracers through the prone soldiers, and sent their bodies tumbling back over the snow, loose-limbed as dolls. Bright sparks spattered off the nearest tank. “God is making good decisions!”

The tank turret swiveled, the main gun rose.

“Anzor!” shouted Mahmet. “Get—”

A stuttering white flash, and the world vanished behind an avalanche of snow. A second burst punched a chain of fist-size craters in the concrete wall behind them.

Mahmet grabbed his youngest brother by the shoulder.
“Let's go! We've got to—“

The tank fired again. The first round amputated the machine gun from the tripod and sent it flying into the air. Anzor still had his hands in front of him, holding the vanished handles, when the second round struck.

“Brother!”
Mahmet dropped the RPG and dove into a sea of red snow. Anzor's legs, his hips, were connected to his chest by slender blue sinews. Anzor stared at his ruined body in wonderment, then recognition. He blinked, looked up at his older brother, and said, “God . . .” His eyes went wide, dimmed, then shut.

Mahmet stared for perhaps a second, oblivious to the fury erupting around him. They were a family. A blow against one was answered by all.

He crawled back to the RPG. The figures down in the snow were coming again. They were close. He stood with the tube over his shoulder. He put the first tank in his sights, and as the crackle of automatic fire rose to a crescendo, he screamed
“Allahu akhbar!”
and pulled the trigger.

The rocket tore across the open space, flying almost in a flat trajectory. It struck at the joint of turret and hull, lancing through the thin steel armor, blowing the turret into the sky, and igniting the gasoline in the fuel tanks.

A wave of fire broke over the troopers. Mahmet could see them running into the snow, guttering like so many human candles. He dropped the weapon and ran for the plane. Its three jet engines were already running, screaming for the dead.

Pavel listened to the explosions, the growing storm of automatic weapons, and knew that his own moment was drawing near. It was quickly confirmed by first the sound, then the sight, of a jet moving away from the terminal. It wasn't showing a single light, and the flashes and
crumps
coming from beyond said that whoever was flying was leaving someone, maybe everyone else, behind. It was a cowardly thing to do, and it made Pavel feel better about killing them.

The jet swung out on the runway and pivoted, pointing its nose right at him. The shooter at the other end of the runway was firing now. He could see the muzzle flash, but the report was lost against the thunder coming from the jet engines. The turbines throttled up to a roar. Pavel felt vibration in his belly as he lay flat to the ground. He brought the SK up, relaxed, checked the safety one more time, then placed the sights on the cockpit windows.

The Yak began to roll. It was coming straight at Pavel's eyes.

Not too soon. There's no hurry. No reason to rush.

The jet was gaining speed. He moved his sights slightly to the left, took up the slack in the trigger mechanism, and fired the first round. The explosion of windshield glass came at the exact same instant Pavel sent the second bullet flying, this time to the right. He sent a third round into the cockpit, a fourth, and because he wasn't sure, a fifth.

The Yak lifted its nose and ramped up into the sky.

Pavel squeezed a sixth shot off into its belly. He didn't fire a seventh, because he was flattened by the thunder of three turbojet engines passing over his head.

He spun and brought the SK to his shoulder and sent a seventh, an eighth, a ninth, a tenth bullet into the bright red eyes of its fiery engines. He squeezed the trigger again, but the SK was empty.

Kirillin watched in horror as the plane took off, then banked gently to the south. “Your men have failed!”

“No! Look!” General Stepanov pointed. The Yak was still in a banked turn, no longer climbing. The angle grew steeper, steeper, until the wings went vertical. Vertical, then beyond.

The nose dropped, lower, lower. Straight down. An instant later the Yak buried its nose in the snow.

Kirillin saw the plane become a sphere of white fire, the fuselage vanishing like a dry log pushed into the eager, open mouth of Hell.

Chapter 30

The Spark

Nowek woke up, unsure of where he was and what had happened. He rolled over on a bare wooden plank until he faced a cement wall. It could have been his cell in Gagarinsky 3, except the graffiti was different. Instead of
TECHNOROCK RULES!,
someone had written, simply,
FUCKED
.
Nowek understood the sentiment. He sat up and looked around.

They'd taken his belt, his boots and socks, the towel Larisa had used for a sling. Even the bandages were unwrapped and paper-thin gauze applied over the wounds in his arm. It was encouraging. He wasn't going to be found dead in his cell. It meant they had something more long term in mind.

Boots scraped down concrete stairs outside his cell. Nowek sat on the plank, waiting, listening. They'd taken his watch, too, as though he might hang himself with it. It had to be dawn, the traditional time for prison departures. To a camp of corrective labor, to a hangman's noose. With luck, to Moscow. With even more luck, the
elektronka
he'd sent last night had been read by someone, the right someone, and they would be at the airport, waiting. But then he thought,
Luck? No.
Hoping for even
some
of that put Nowek far into the zone of miracles.

He heard the rattle of a lock, the slide of a steel bolt. The tiny window in the door slid open, revealing two eyes. It snapped shut. The door opened.

A militia sergeant. He'd brought handcuffs and a friend with a rifle. “It's time,” he said. “You're going on a trip.” He was short, thick of neck, small of eye.

“Where to?” When there was no reply, Nowek asked, “What about my colleague? His name is Chuchin. He was with me when—”

“All your friends are dead. Their plane was shot down last night.” He held out the steel rings. “Kirillin's waiting. Let's go.”

Plane?
It couldn't be Levin. His message said that he was in a hospital, only accidentally alive. Had he sent someone else? Nowek held out both hands, the steel cuff clinked around his wrists.

Up the stairs, through the entrance, and out to a waiting van. Outside, a pale, frigid dawn. The hairs in his nostrils froze. Nowek guessed it was minus ten. His paper prison slippers kicked up powdery snow. The eastern horizon was frosted white, like warm breath on cold glass. He climbed into the van. The rear door slammed shut, and they were moving.

The convoy departed from the rear of Kristall's headquarters. Two jeeps in the lead, followed by the surviving snow tank, its flanks bearing scars of last night's battle. Two more jeeps fell in behind and, last, the company van with Hock, Larisa, and her young daughter inside. Liza and her stuffed bear were both wrapped in a cocoon of blankets.

As the little convoy approached the airport, Larisa saw the blasted, smoldering snow tank, the cratered walls of the terminal, shell casings strewn like bright coins. A swath of snow painted in frozen red.

Kristall's white, blue, and gold Yak-40 had been pulled out of its hangar. The runway was cleared. Snipers were on the roof of the terminal, and armed militia formed a
cordon sanitaire
around the plane itself. The flight crew was on board making final checks.

Kirillin paced the ramp with a handheld radio in his fist and with the commanding general of the Mirny militia on short tow.

A patrol had been sent to inspect the wreckage of Yuri's plane. They returned to report total annihilation. The plane was just a scorched crater filled with charred, shredded aluminum so sharp a touch drew blood.

The surviving snow tank rumbled up to the Yak. Kirillin waved the cold, unhappy militia aside. It backed into position. Kirillin gave the order, the steel ramp dropped.

The cold air transmitted a kind of electric tension, though even a close observer would see nothing more than men in winter coats carrying brown boxes up into the Yak's baggage hold. The boxes weren't especially noteworthy. A bakery might send you home with a cake in one. Cardboard, split at the middle and lined with foam. Each box contained nearly seven million dollars in gem-quality diamonds.

One million carats. Two hundred kilos by Mirny's measure, four hundred forty pounds of diamonds by London's reckoning. Thirty cake boxes to the men who had to carry them, and nearly two hundred million dollars by the most widely accepted measurement system of them all.

The boxes were stacked in an armored vault in the Yak's tail. The interior quickly filled to capacity. The last box was gently placed, the door swung closed, the locking bar turned, the combination pad spun and scrambled.

The snow tank rumbled away. Hock led Larisa up the ramp. Liza had one hand clamped on her mother's long coat, the other clutched her brown bear. She wore a blanket around her shoulders like a shawl.

Larisa got Liza settled into her smooth, gray leather seat. She looked out through the porthole.

Kirillin was staring up at her from the ramp below. He turned his back on her.

“He can't stand the thought of someone leaving,” she said to Hock. “He can't stand losing control of even one person.”

“Kirillin's got more to worry about than you, my dear.”

“You said he wanted to talk to me. What about?”

Hock hung up his overcoat and blazer in the closet and sat down beside her. “He shut the city down yesterday. Microwave. Satellite. Phone lines. Just before everything went dead a call was routed through the exchange to a number in Irkutsk.” Hock smoothed Liza's hair. “It came from your telephone.”

One of the pilots pulled the forward cabin door shut. The rear ramp was still down. Two of the jeeps flanked the plane, ready to escort it to the runway.

“That's ridiculous. I don't know anyone in Irkutsk.”

“It went to a computer. It was an e-mail message in code. Kirillin couldn't read it.” Hock took Liza's chin. “You didn't send any
elektronka
last night, did you?”

“No,” she said, then moved away from his hand.

He looked up at Larisa. “Kirillin hasn't a clue what was in that message. I told him it had to be Nowek.”

“I fixed him lunch. I didn't give him a computer.”

He patted her knee, letting his hand linger. “Nowek was wounded in Mirny Deep. Someone patched him up. Not in the mine. No medical supplies were missing. And where was Nowek found? Right down the street from your flat. Kirillin's not entirely stupid.”

“Mirny's a village. Everything happens near everything else.”

“The world is like that, too. The diamond world.”

“What's going to happen to Nowek?” She asked the question, wondering whether she really wanted to know.

“You didn't know? He's coming with us.”

“To
London
?”

Hock chuckled. “To Moscow. The police want him.” He peered at her face. “Something wrong, Larisa?”

“What could be wrong?”

“Quite a lot, depending on what Nowek says about last night. Do you have any idea who helped him?”

“Why should I know anything about it?”

“If you do, you'd better tell me now. You see, as far as the diamond world goes, London and Moscow are the same. Loyalty is rewarded. Disloyalty is punished. Severely.”

“Eban,” she said, moving close to him, “how can you even think I've been disloyal?”

“I'd hate to. You remember that little story I told at the hotel? About the UN fellow and the spear?”

She sat up straight. “Eban!”

“Most of what I said was true. Phillipe
was
working for the UN, only he was supposed to be working for us. Instead, he was sending reports out to them on private matters. Diamonds for weapons deals. Where war diamonds go to get a clean pedigree. Which African warlord was in our pay, how much he was getting. Very sensitive stuff these days. The cartel could hardly sit by and allow it to go on. Phillipe was setting a terrible example.”

“You said the cartel doesn't operate that way.”

“But they hire people who
do
. The rebels taking him for ransom was the one bit that wasn't entirely accurate. Oh, they ran him up the pole and stuck a great spear up his bum. But you see,” said Hock, leaning close, lowering his voice so that Liza wouldn't hear, “
we
paid them to do it.”

Larisa cupped her hands over Liza's ears.
“Stop!”

“I remember when I first joined the company. They gave us our orientation down in Pretoria. Standard stuff. But at the end, there was a videotape. The diamond world, how the pieces work, how the market is maintained. Why it's a damned good thing all round that it is. When it was done, the screen faded, and up came six words:
NOW YOU ARE ONE OF US
.
It gave you the shivers. Like seeing the words of God up there in black and white.”

His eyes, one green, one blue, seemed to belong on different faces. “I hope you slept soundly last night, Larisa. Soundly and alone. Because if something awkward
does
come up, Kirillin won't be your problem. Neither will Moscow.
We
will.”

Nowek was led to the tail of the Yak and through the cordon of militiamen. Kirillin was waiting at the boarding ramp.

“There you are,” he said. “The Siberian Delegate. Didn't I say you'd be leaving on the first flight out?”

Nowek's feet were numb with cold. “You have remarkable powers of prediction, Mister Director.”

“It's a shame you didn't listen to me when you had the chance. But crime has a way of catching up with the criminal.”

“That's my hope, too. I wonder. When it happens here, where will you run? Moscow? London? The Cayman Islands?”

Kirillin's mahogany cheeks colored a deeper shade. “No one is running. I'll be here, toiling shoulder to shoulder with the men and women of Kristall.”

“I'd reconsider that if I were you. The last time your miners demanded what was fair, you had them burned. Now you're shipping a million carats of diamonds to the cartel and has anyone been paid?” Nowek looked at the stony faces of the militia. “Have any of you seen one dollar from your overseas account?”

Kirillin took a deep breath that flagged white in the cold. “You've caused enough trouble, Nowek. We have no use here for troublemakers. The Moscow militia is anticipating your arrival. I see no reason to delay them.” He turned on his heel and left.

The sergeant urged Nowek up the ramp and into the Yak. A curtain was pulled across the aisle, isolating the main cabin. The tail was blocked off by a massive steel door. A vault. Two seats were to the left. A galley and baggage bin were to the right. The aisle was narrow. There were no windows. Nowek sat down, glad to be out of the cold. The sergeant unlocked one cuff, then refastened it to the rail under Nowek's seat.

The engines lit off with a whine, a
whoosh,
a rumble. Nowek felt a jerk, and the Yak began to move, flanked by two jeeps.

Kirillin retreated into the militia jeep with the commander of the Mirny militia, General Stepanov. An AK-74 Kalashnikov was mounted on a rack behind the front seats.

“Any trouble?” he asked the militia officer.

“Boyko. He's not like the others.”

“The miners will understand what was going on. Boyko was under stress after what happened last summer. He was found with contraband,” said Kirillin, slowly, deliberately, as though speaking to Stepanov in dialect. “The miners will wonder how much money Boyko pocketed to betray us. What did he have that I don't? Soon, that's
all
they'll remember.” Kirillin watched the jet move out onto the runway. He picked up a microphone and the transmit key. “Mobile One. Move out now. If you see anything, even a rabbit, shoot it.”

“Mobile One, understood.”

“Mobile Two, park halfway down the runway and off to the side. Keep your eyes open. Your directive is the same.”

“Mobile Two.”

The lead jeep sprinted ahead. When it reached the end, it circled around to face down the runway. The trailing jeep stopped, moved off to the side, climbed a snowbank, and parked.

The Yak, heavy with fuel, trundled to the end of the runway and pivoted. It moved forward slightly to keep its jet blast from blowing Mobile One into the weeds.

“Kristall Six,” said Kirillin. “This is Control. You're cleared for departure.”

The pilot checked the engine instruments one last time, then said, “Flaps?”

“Set.”

“Speed brakes?”

“Stowed.”

The runway stretched straight ahead, black between two hills of plowed snow. The pilot put his boots on the toe brakes, then placed his right hand across the three yellow throttle knobs. “I hope the militia enjoys the heat,” he said as he started to push them forward. The engine needles surged around their dials. The three turbofans moaned, crackled, roared. The Yak began to roll.

And came to a sudden stop.

“Get your feet off the brakes,” said the captain.

“They are,” the copilot answered, confused. He looked up. “Captain!” A red light blinked on the overhead panel. The boarding ramp at the tail was open.

Kirillin saw the yak move forward, then stop. “Binoculars.”

Stepanov handed him a pair. Kirillin trained them out onto the jet, furiously spinning the focus knob.

“There's a man down by the nose wheel!”
Kirillin was reaching for the radio when a white flash erupted behind the jet, a boil of orange flame rose up, and a heavy concussion rumbled through the frigid air.

Yuri watched pieces of Mobile One rise, then scatter and tumble like dry leaves before the jet's hot exhaust. A fender, a roof, a wheel. A man. The chock he'd thrown in front of the nose wheel was slipping. Three jet engines at takeoff power was more than it could stop. The rear ramp was down. Aslan swarmed up. Chuchin was next, then Bashir. Finally, Mahmet, still firing at his AK, waved at Yuri to come
now
.