by Robin White
“Where the money is. America. We started our own company there to market them. If the cartel won’t negotiate, we’ll keep doing it. But they’ll come to heel. They have to.”
“This company. Its name?”
“Golden Autumn. The cartel will have to choose. Pay us more, or we’ll break your back. The Kremlin is running the whole show. I’m just a small gear in a big—”
“A minute ago you were a general. Now you’re just a small gear. Next you’ll tell me you just sweep the floors.”
“Listen. This must be kept secret until everything is in place. You think the cartel doesn’t have friends in America? Officials they can buy? Diamond brokers they can threaten? You could destroy years of planning. Then it will be your fault if your miners freeze.”
“Unless I keep silent and wait?”
Petrov sat back. “I’m glad we finally understand one another.”
“I understand. I wonder. Does our president also understand? Does he realize his diamonds are being sold out from under him?”
“It would be impossible to move those diamonds without his approval. You must trust me when I say—”
“I wouldn’t trust you with a piece of colored glass. Tomorrow, I’ll go to Gorky-9.” It was Yeltsin’s suburban retreat. “If I’m wrong you’ll have my apologies. But if I’m right”—Volsky leaned close and smiled—“we’ll go back to Siberia together. Only you’ll be in chains.”
Petrov slapped his open hand to the table, exasperated. “What makes you think the President doesn’t already know everything?”
“I know Boris Nikolaevich. He’s no criminal.”
Petrov laughed. “You’ve been in Siberia too long. You know the difference between a criminal and a businessman? A businessman has more imagination. Listen. The rain falls down. It doesn’t fall up. This matter begins above all our heads.”
“We’ll see who still has a head tomorrow.”
Petrov stood. “Good evening, Delegate Volsky. I wish you a night of sober contemplation and a safe trip home.” Petrov opened the door and left.
Volsky scooped up some caviar, put it to his mouth, then stopped. He tossed it to the table, grabbed his raincoat and briefcase, and walked to the door. Outside the private room, the main dining area was slowly filling. Petrov was already gone.
The rain falls from above. But from how high? If someone at the Kremlin was involved, some termite who had burrowed into a position of power and influence, Volsky would have to be careful.
It reminded him of the Siberian Dilemma.
It’s winter. Minus forty degrees. An ice fisherman falls through into frigid water. If he stays in, he’ll die in a minute. If he pulls himself out, he’ll freeze to a statue in seconds. Which will it be? A minute of life, or a few seconds?
Forget Siberia. Here was the Russian Dilemma: official, unofficial, law and crime, businessman, politician, president, thief. They were all becoming distinctions without a difference.
The headwaiter noticed him and hurried over.
“Was there something you needed, sir?”
“A phone.”
“Our members usually carry their own.”
Volsky spotted the foreign lawyer. He was no longer sitting alone. Another man was with him. Another foreigner. A blue blazer, an oxford shirt. Khaki pants. A Russian would have to work up a hard sweat to appear so casual.
Volsky joined them. They looked up. The second man was much younger, and there was something odd about his eyes. Then Volsky saw what it was; they were not quite the same color. “It seems that I need your help after all,” he said to the drunk lawyer.
“That’s what I’m here for. Meet my friend—”
“Sorry. There’s no time. You have a cell phone?”
Willie seemed puzzled, or just too drunk to understand.
“Please.” The second man reached into his rain-dark Burberry and handed his cell phone to Volsky. “Use mine.”
The green light was still blinking, whatever that meant. “And you are?”
“Eban Hock. You’re the Siberian Delegate. I’d like to talk with you if you have a moment to spare.”
“I don’t.” Volsky walked to a corner away from the tables and punched in a private number that rang in the Kremlin.
The line clicked.
“This is A.V. Volsky. The Siberian Delegate. Buran.”
Buran. Blizzard. The code word that was supposed to prove that Volsky was Volsky. There was a long silence as a list was scanned one finger at a time. Finally, “Listening.”
“I’m requesting an immediate inventory of the state diamond stockpile. Tonight if possible. Tomorrow if it’s not.”
“That’s the responsibility of . . .”
“I’ve spoken with Petrov.” That was technically true. “It’s a big job, so we’ll need some help. We’ll need a representative from the Finance Ministry, one from the Presidential Administration, and, naturally, someone from the FSB.” The last was the Federal Security Bureau, the successor to the old KGB. “Have you got it all?”
“Yes. But—”
“I also want a report on an American company licensed to sell Siberian diamonds. It’s called Golden Autumn. There’s paperwork someplace that authorizes it. I want it found and ready for inspection by tomorrow morning. Have you got all that or do I have to call Gorky-9 and have the President repeat it for you?”
“Everything is noted!” the desk officer said.
“See that it happens.” Volsky folded Hock’s cell phone closed and returned back. “Thank you.”
“Now, if you have just a few moments . . .” said Hock.
“I’m staying at the Rossiya. You can call me tomorrow.”
“I won’t be in Moscow tomorrow, I’m afraid.”
“Count your blessings.” Volsky turned and walked back through the warm, intimate dining room to the guarded outer hall.
The guards were gone. The telephone at the guard’s desk was ringing, a light on it flashing. He ignored it and found the button that unlocked the outer door. He pushed it.
There was a loud buzz, then the click of steel tongues retracting into oiled slots. He grabbed the lever. The heavy door moved and a wave of cold, wet air flowed in.
The temperature was dropping fast. Big flakes were falling through the glow of the outside lights, large and soft as eiderdown. He stepped outside. The door locked behind him. Where was Nowek? He’d better have a good reason. For that matter, where was his fucking car and driver?
There. The Chaika’s engine turned, turned, then caught in a roar and a cloud of steam. The headlights switched on. The tires spun in slush, the car approached.
Volsky held out his hand and caught a flake in his palm, really a cluster of flakes welded together. Neither one thing or another. A dishonest snow, perfect for Moscow.
The Chaika pulled up. Volsky got in back and slammed the door. “Forget the hotel,” he said. “We’re going to the Kremlin.”
The old limo began to roll.
Volsky looked at the back of the driver’s neck. There was no ponytail. “Where’s Gavril?”
“this is as far as I can go,” the cabdriver said. They were outside the iron gates to Club Ekipazh. The windshield went opaque with snow. The wipers struggled to keep it clear.
Nowek saw two headlights turn in their direction. He paid the driver off, tucked the fragile record under his coat, and got out. The pavement was slick and treacherous. The cab spun its wheels as it backed up. It swung around, disappearing down the narrow lane.
Nowek took one step, then stopped. He heard the engine. BMWs, a row of Mercedes. One Chaika. It had to be Volsky’s car. Don’t be late. He’d let Volsky down for an old recording. He stepped into its headlights and waved for Gavril to stop.
Volsky could feel the springs in the Chaika’s seat poking his thigh. He leaned forward. “Where is my driver?”
“He had another passenger to meet.”
You’re my only customer tonight. . . .
They were almost to the gate.<
br />
Volsky saw a figure standing in the headlights. Finally. Nowek. “Stop here.”
The driver jammed his boot down on the accelerator.
Volsky lunged for the handle and pulled. It didn’t budge.
The Chaika’s threadbare tires began to lose their grip. The car slid through the gate sideways. Nowek jumped a half second late.
The rear bumper caught him on the knee. A light brush for the old limousine, a caress, but enough to send him tumbling to the street. The Dvo(breve)rák A Minor went flying.
The Chaika was halfway down the narrow lane when the red brake lights flashed. It swerved to one side and stopped.
Nowek saw one of the rear doors fly open.
Volsky landed hard, slid and scraped to a stop on wet concrete. He struggled to his feet. He could see traffic passing by at one end of the street. He could see the luminous wall of Ekipazh at the other. And Nowek.
“Arkasha!”
The driver jumped out of the Chaika with a shotgun. Its short double barrel rose. Volsky slipped, fell, then struggled to his knees.
“No!”
Volsky heard Nowek cry out, and then something swept his legs out from under him. He flew back against a brick wall.
The blast reverberated, echoing like thunder.
Volsky gasped for air. He was on his back. Snowflakes fell on his face, melting, running down his cheeks. Something warm was spreading across his chest. One shell. He could survive that so long as the man didn’t shoot again. He heard Nowek shout. A barking dog. The warble of a distant siren. The driver was standing over him with the gun. Two barrels. Don’t shoot again and I’ll live. I’ll live.
“Arkasha!”
It was Nowek, and the sound of running feet was unmistakable. Fuck. Volsky saw the shotgun rise, level, point at his friend. Fuck. He lunged and grabbed hold of the hot barrel, using all his strength, all his determination, to pull it down.
His world. Endless Siberia, Moscow, his friends, his work. Everything narrowing, narrowing. All he had to do was hold on to those two barrels for another moment. A lifetime.
A blast. The barrel flew out of his grip like a rocket on a tail of fire, and Volsky was moving again, swept up in a wave of pure light. A buran, a blizzard, not of snow, but of flame. Nowek’s face. White against the black sky. Volsky tried to speak. To whisper. Nowek leaned close. His face was wet.
Volsky summoned up something from inside him, some force, some pressure, and a word, a name, rose up. “Grisha . . .”
“Don’t talk. They’re coming. Don’t say anything.”
There was a lot to say and no air left in his ruined lungs. He swallowed, tasted blood. “Idi . . . k’gorizontu . . . Idi . . .”
“Arkasha!”
Had he said it? Spoken the right words? It was all receding now. Fading behind a gentle curtain of falling snow, buried under the soft whisper of a million, million stars burning bright in a sky so infinitely deep he could no longer hear the siren’s wail. So vast, it swallowed the voice still calling out his name.
Chapter 5
The Punishment
The militia sergeant said, “Name.”
Nowek looked up. “I’ve already told you my name.”
“You’ve got something better to do? Tell me again.”
Nowek’s hands were cuffed together behind his back. He squatted at the sergeant’s feet, his thighs numb, the snow collecting on his hair, melting down his cheeks. “Nowek. Gregori Tadeovich Nowek.”
“City of registered residence?”
“Irkutsk.”
“A little snow shouldn’t bother a Siberian.”
It didn’t. Nowek was numb. His clothes were turning stiff with Volsky’s blood. Gavril’s cap was beside him. So was the shotgun. The Dvo(breve)rák was a mess of sodden cardboard trampled beneath the shuffling boots of the militia. The headlights from their patrol cars slanted across new snow.
A photographer bleached the scene with a flash, arresting the heavy flakes in mid-fall, then released them to the dark.
“Let’s begin again. You were driving the Chaika. . . .”
“Gavril was driving,” he said. “I’m Volsky’s assistant.”
“You admit you knew the victim.” The militiaman had a clipboard in one hand, a pencil in the other. The urgent blue flash of a strobe illuminated his face. The ambulance with Volsky inside was already gone.
“Of course I knew him. I was supposed to meet him here.”
“Now tell me why you shot him. Was it razborka?” A criminal settling of accounts. “Who paid you?”
Nowek looked up. “Nobody’s paid me in months.”
“So you decided to get even your own way. . . .”
“No.” Nowek looked at the shotgun, a Baikal 27. Volsky owned one very much like it, maybe the same model. What did he feel? Anger? Fear? Numbness. “This was a professional murder.”
“You’re an expert? Well, not such a good one. Volsky was shot twice. The kontrolniy vuistrel was unnecessary.” The control shot, the coup de grace. “Volsky was already dead. It’s the sign of an amateur. If it wasn’t money, then why did you do it?”
“For the last time, it was Gavril. They were leaving the club. They passed me at the gate. I thought they’d stop, but they didn’t. They swerved and I was knocked to the ground. Halfway down the alley, Volsky jumped out. Gavril stopped the car and came around with the gun. He backed Arkasha against that wall and . . .” Nowek stopped talking. His breath wouldn’t come. His heart tried to hammer its way through his ribs. He looked at the dark spray of blood, the pitted brick, remembering the flame, the thunder. “I started to run. Gavril pointed the gun at me and . . .”
“You ran at a man with a loaded shotgun?”
“I wasn’t thinking. Then I saw Volsky grab the barrel and . . .”
“Volsky was dead.”
“He was alive. That’s why he shot him again. Gavril dropped the gun and ran. There was a GAI patrol,” he said, meaning a car belonging to Moscow’s traffic police. “I thought they were coming to help, but he jumped in. Why aren’t you hunting for them?”
“So now the police are accomplices to murder?”
“Why bother to ask? You already know the answer.”
The sergeant kicked Nowek backward into the wet snow.
“I’ll tell you what else I know, citizen Nowek. We aren’t looking for Gavril because we know exactly where he is. We found him where you left him in an alley with his throat cut so badly his head came off when we picked him up off the street.”
Nowek struggled to sit. “Gavril is dead?”
“You’re the only healthy one left. Here’s the gun. Here’s the body. Here you are. Everything fits. You’re in trouble. You can still help yourself.” The pencil was poised next to a final line marked Confession. “Is there anything you want to say?”
“If Gavril was already dead, who was driving Volsky around?”
“You.”
“I took a cab here from a record shop. The Melodiya. The proprietor will remember me. The cabdriver will remember me, too. Nobody let me in through the gate. The security cameras will show that. So how did an amateur assassin end up inside the gates and inside that Chaika?”
The pencil moved away from the last line. “A thorough investigation will answer these questions.”
“You’re an optimist. The Moscow militia hasn’t solved a contract killing in years. Why would you? You’d have to arrest your friends.”
The boot lashed out again. It lifted Nowek off the pavement, sending him hard against the Chaika’s fender. “As of tonight, your information is out of date,” said the sergeant. “You’ll be our first.”
Another first. He’d ridden in militia cars before, even in prisoner vans. But always in front. Never in back. The locked cage was mustard-yellow fiberglass, windowless, reinforced with wire mesh. It was airless, lightless, cold as a meat locker. The chill did nothing to hide the smell of vomit, urine, the unmistakable rusty odor of blood. His clothes no longer felt
wet. Volsky’s blood was coagulating into a glue that cemented his pants to his skin.
The walls were slick with condensed breath. It beaded up and dripped as the jeep swayed and jounced its way to the district militia headquarters, and its annex: Gagarinsky Detention Facility 3.
There, Nowek was photographed and X-rayed. He had his blood drawn with a thick needle blunt with use. The bruise on his left leg from the Chaika’s fender was lurid and purple. It was duly noted against future prisoner claims of torture. Finally, Nowek was processed into the Preliminary Detention Area.
By law he could be kept in PDA for seventy-two hours. As mayor of Markovo, he’d enforced that law over the objection of the militia. Practically, he knew he’d remain in Gagarin-sky 3 until the militia obtained a confession, or someone wanted him moved.
He was escorted down a long flight of concrete stairs decorated with enthusiastic posters. At the top was WHO DOESN’T FULFILL SOVIET LAWS WORKS AGAINST THE PEOPLE! and THE PEOPLE OF THE USSR ARE EQUAL! and farther down, THE PARTY IS THE HONOR OF OUR EPOCH!
At the bottom, nothing had changed in over half a century. Even the air was old. It was a large, bare room of wooden benches, caged incandescent lights, a single armored door. Nowek was led through it to a corridor lined with bars.
“Lend me your boots,” came a voice from the darkness. “I’m going in front of the judge! For one day only!”
“Cigarettes? Come on, cookie. Let’s make a trade.”
“I need your fucking boots!”
“You’re in luck,” said his escort as he unlocked a cell. “Tonight you have a private room. Tomorrow we’ll give you the honeymoon suite.” He unfastened Nowek’s belt, then unlocked his wrists and pushed him in. The door pulled shut. Nowek could hear the locking bar drop.
Nowek examined his cell. It was larger than the prison van, but not by much. There was a poured slab for a bunk, a foul hole in the floor for a toilet, a single bulb burned overhead behind thick glass. On the wall someone had written in marker pen, TECHNOROCK RULES!
Technorock. Ska. House. Classical. He thought of Melodiya, the music shop, Tatiana, her grandfather. The Dvo(breve)rák A Minor.
Petrov, he thought. Volsky vowed to sell off some of his cache of diamonds. Was that a motive for murder? Volsky had been right. In Russia, a twenty-dollar bill was reason enough.
