The Ice Curtain

by Robin White

  The guard fished out Levin’s wallet and flipped open his identity card. “Police.”

  “Then let him go, Sergei.”

  The cold chrome barrel in his ear withdrew. Levin pushed away from the fence, turned, and saw a tall man in a tan raincoat and dark slacks coming down the marble stairs. The light from the open door surrounded his head with an icon’s golden halo. His breath flagged white in the chill, dank air. He held out his hand to the guard, took Levin’s wallet, and let the streetlight illuminate it.

  The foreigner picked through the wallet until he came to a picture of a dog. “Basset. Female?”

  “Male,” said Levin.

  “I used to raise them. Small for a male. What’s his name?”

  “Sasha. Now that we’re friends, how about you?”

  He flipped the wallet shut and handed it to Levin. “Eban Hock. Forgive me for taking precautions. It’s Moscow. You can’t be too careful.” Hock fished out a small business card from inside his raincoat and handed Levin his visitka, his card.

  Eban Hock

  Strategic Resources, Ltd.

  Lynnwood, Pretoria

  South Africa

  When he turned, the light from the streetlamp washed across Hock’s face. It was the face Levin had seen on that security tape, the foreigner in the Land Rover being ferried through the Ekipazh gate. Short sandy hair. The dark tan of a European who spends a lot of time under an African sun. Wide-set eyes. Hock had arrived at the club in one of the two cars Levin had seen leave just before Volsky was murdered. Hock surely wasn’t the one to pull the trigger. Was he the one to pay for it? “Just what is your business, Mister Hock?”

  “Law enforcement. You and I are alike. The FSB keeps order in Russia? We keep order in the world of diamonds.” Hock said to the guard, “Get my bag, Sergei. We don’t want to be late.”

  “You’re leaving Moscow?”

  “You haven’t said why you’re prowling about.”

  “One of your vehicles was involved in a crime.” And you were there.

  “I’ve always thought Moscow was a model of efficiency when it came to law. In London it can take all day to resolve a parking ticket. Here a fine can be paid on the spot. In cash. It’s much simpler, really.”

  “In Moscow, murder is still a little more complicated.”

  “You must mean Delegate Volsky.”

  Now it was Levin’s turn to register surprise. “Yes, but—”

  “I was there the night it happened. I thought the militia already had someone in custody. Am I mistaken?”

  Levin was prepared for evasion, for denial. For lies. Not the truth. “They were mistaken. What were you doing at Ekipazh?”

  “I was there for a meeting.” Hock checked his watch. “I wish I had more time to talk, Major. But as I said, I do have a plane to catch.” He nodded to the guard. A combination was entered into a keypad, and a section of fence began to open.

  “In Russia, airlines are subject to all kinds of delays. Weather. Mechanical difficulties. A request from state security. It doesn’t take much to keep them on the ground.”

  Hock looked up and down the street, then at Levin. “Usually the FSB is noisier when it makes an arrest. Guns. Men in black ski masks. All I see is you.”

  “Times are hard. We run a leaner operation these days.”

  “Ah. Then you’re looking for money.”

  “I’m looking for information. Who were you meeting at Ekipazh?”

  “Yevgeny Petrov. They call him the Prince of Diamonds. The meeting didn’t come off. Anything else you’d like to know?”

  “Why were you meeting Petrov?”

  “Why?” Hock chuckled. “Because your Prince of Diamonds has been breaking the law.”

  “Why would you care if he broke our laws?”

  “Not your laws. Ours. Petrov is supposed to be working out a new purchase agreement with London. Instead, he’s been selling diamonds hand over fist. Rather a lot of them, too. That makes life difficult for everyone.”

  Levin had the odd sensation of suddenly being in deep, dangerous waters. One moment your feet are touching sand. The next, there’s nothing below. “You were going to tell him to stop?”

  “Well, it would be in everyone’s interests if he did.”

  “You mean the cartel’s interest.”

  “The cartel, Russia. The company that mines the diamonds. The miners. Everyone. Diamonds are being leaked to the black market. Flooded is more like it. They’re bringing world prices down. Not just for the cartel, either. Leaks are bad for everyone and we’ve traced this one to your Petrov.”

  “How were you going to stop him?”

  “We’re not terrorists, if that’s what you’re getting at. There’s no point. In Russia, everything is bought from the top to the bottom dirt cheap. It’s always been that way. Even in 1917. When Tsar Nicholas was shot, his diamonds were packed in fourteen cigar boxes and sent to London in exchange for cash, and not very much at that.”

  “You were going to pay Petrov to stop?”

  “Cooperation is our bread and butter. Maybe you and I could find a way to work together, too.” Hock opened the tailgate.

  “I don’t think so, Mister Hock.”

  “No?” He tossed in his bag.

  “Petrov broke your laws. Not Russia’s. Petrov’s job is to sell Siberian diamonds to the world. Not to the cartel. Unless he’s putting them in his pocket. That would be different.”

  “Not to us.” Hock let the tailgate fall with a thump. “Maybe when I come back to Moscow, we can meet again.”

  “You’re going to London?”

  “No.” Hock opened the back door. “I’m going to Mirny.”

  “Mirny?”

  “My client’s Kristall. It’s their diamonds that have gone missing, after all. You’d better go home, Major Levin. It’s getting late. The streets can get dangerous.” With that, he got in.

  When the car’s lights came on, Levin could read the back plate perfectly: KZ131.

  He’s working for Kristall. Levin turned off Kalinin Prospekt, heading home. Not Petrov. Like Levin, the cartel thought Petrov was guilty. But not of the same crime. Petrov had been up to something with Golden Autumn, and whatever that something was, whoever had authorized it, a lot of diamonds were gone. All the cartel cared about was that Petrov was selling the stones to someone else. Hock had just confirmed what Levin already suspected. Yet the possibility that he and Hock might be on the same side left him uneasy, left him less sure of what he knew.

  It was nine when Levin pulled up and parked the Zhiguli behind his apartment building. His neighborhood was reasonably safe, but Levin preferred to be behind a solid door.

  He unlocked his apartment. “Sasha?”

  The basset raised his heavy head from the arm of Levin’s couch and gazed back soulfully.

  Levin held out the collar and leash. “Walk?”

  At the word walk, the dog bounded to life, tail swinging.

  They went down the front stairs, out to the street.

  His breath smoked. The wind was raw and sharp. The next time it snowed it would last until April. He let the basset take him on the usual route. Up one side of the narrow street. Across, then back, each lamppost properly anointed. Another tram rumbled by the intersection. The cold ground trembled like struck steel.

  He crossed the side street for the last time and headed back. Ahead, two figures hurried in the opposite direction. When they passed under a streetlight, he saw they were dressed in dark pants, dark jackets. Heavy boots. Wool caps. Not a pair of New Russians. They looked like what they were: Khuligany. Leaving the scene of a crime, or hurrying to one.

  Levin’s grip tightened on the leash. He was already thinking how he would describe them to the militia after he handed them his wallet. One was tall, with the thin, hollowed face of a serious drug addict. His arms swung curiously out of rhythm with his steps. The other was short, almost plump. He walked with his arms well out to his sides. They were the cheap bandity L
evin thought of as “flatheads” for their distinctive, brush-cut hairstyle.

  The short one was carrying something. A cane? Levin stepped aside to let them pass.

  They didn’t. The basset looked up, his back hairs stiff, a low growl issuing from his throat. “Quiet, Sasha. There’s a good dog.” Levin bent down to reassure him, and unhooked first his collar, then removed his muzzle. “Looking for an address?”

  Their only answer was the puffing of their breath.

  “Let me suggest another possibility,” said Levin. He reached into his jacket for his wallet. “You’re thirsty. Maybe you’re low on cash. Here.” He opened the wallet. “Buy yourselves drinks on me.”

  The tall, hollow one said, “We don’t want kike money.”

  In other circumstances, Levin might have wondered what made them think he was Jewish. He wasn’t wearing a yellow star on his sleeve. But he was paying closer attention to the length of steel reinforcing bar in the short one’s grip. It was thick as a thumb, the tip crudely broken and sharp.

  He held up his wallet. A whizzing sound, and his hand flew away, stung. The wallet fluttered to the street ignored.

  “Stay away from the Closet, Jew,” said the tall one.

  The Closet? He would have asked, but Sasha lunged and clamped his jaws around the nearest available leg.

  It belonged to the tall one. “Fucking dog!” All four of the basset’s legs flew off the ground as they spun. Sasha wouldn’t let go. They twirled and danced, ears, legs, arms flying. “Fucking dog!”

  The steel rod rose, stopped, poised. Levin didn’t think. He didn’t measure. He drove his shoulder into the short one’s gut.

  They tumbled off the curb together, slammed against a parked truck, tangled, fell. The rod clattered to the street. Levin tried to pin him against the tire, but a bare hand, scarred, decorated with tattoos, wriggled free and stabbed at Levin’s eyes.

  He jerked his head back. The fingers missed an eye, caught an ear. Warm blood gushed down Levin’s cheek. He rolled and made a grab for the rod, but the short one was quicker.

  He kicked Levin hard enough to stun him, grabbed the steel and whipped it down across Levin’s shoulders.

  Levin rolled away, then up onto his knees. He was almost on his feet when the rod caught him squarely in the mouth. His front teeth cracked. Levin felt another warm gush of blood. He fell hard and crawled under the protective bulk of the truck. Let them whip his legs, his back. They’d get tired eventually and he’d be hurt, but alive.

  The rod struck methodically, scientifically flaying the coat from his back, his shirt from his skin, his skin into torn, bloody sheets. He heard his attackers’ heavy breathing, as though this was hard work to be taken seriously, to be finished properly. He felt himself rise away from the pain. They’d have to stop. They’d have to stop.

  It was Sasha that brought him back.

  The tall one pulled the dog off by the ears, and swung him hard against a light pole. The basset yelped. A kick and Sasha bellowed, the air was filled with the dog’s frantic cries, the thud of boots, of snapping ribs.

  It wasn’t smart, but he wasn’t thinking. Levin crawled out from under the truck and grabbed the tall one’s legs. His hands closed around torn pants already slick with blood. A kick flicked Levin away, depositing him on his raw, bloody back.

  He looked up into the streetlights, the sky, the stars. He sensed the boot coming too late. It snapped his head back and speared his vision with jagged streaks of light. When it cleared, Levin saw the rod.

  It came down like a lance. Instinct threw his arm up. Instinct closed his eyes. But instinct was not enough.

  The tip caught the corner of his right eye. It was cold, granular like the frozen sand of a winter beach. Levin wrapped a hand around the shaft and tried to push it away, but with a determined grunt, the thug put his weight behind it.

  The rod pushed, the skin stretched inward, then ripped. Levin sensed only a brief, invading pressure before the world dissolved, shattered to jagged pieces. Steel grated on bone. The whole world pulled in around him to what he could feel, what he could hear. A world illuminated by incandescent flashes of pain, punctuated by the rumble of iron tram wheels, echoing like distant thunder.

  IRKUTSK, SIBERIA

  Chapter 11

  The Trapper

  Senior Engineer Ivan Bezdomov sat on the steps of his summer bunker, watching clouds race across the face of a three-quarter moon. The air smelled of winter, wet and heavy. It would snow tonight. Not a blizzard, but enough to stick and stay. That was good, and bad. Good because snow made tracking stray dogs easier. Bad because it meant winter, killing winter, was back.

  Across an empty street and beyond the abandoned factory, Bezdomov could see the dark wall of the Irkutsk airport terminal. It might as well be abandoned, too. Nothing moved. Not a single light burned. He might be the last human left alive by some strange, slow-motion apocalypse that left buildings standing and people alive, but stripped them of their normal lives, their everyday dreams, their simple hopes.

  Bezdomov’s summer house was an old bomb shelter built in the middle of a field of wild grass across from the Irkutsk airport, equipped with rotting bunks and sturdy bombproof doors. But let’s call Bezdomov and his home by their real names: He was one step away from being a stone-age hunter living in an unheated cave. He looked at the bricked-up hulk of the old optical plant.

  Once, he’d worked there as a senior engineer. Now he trapped stray dogs for their fur and sold their skins at the city’s main bazaar. If a fortune-teller had told him he would live like this he’d have laughed in her face. Or killed himself.

  He was halfway down the cracked concrete steps into his bunker when a sudden flicker of light made him stop and look back. The moon was gone, but the once-dark airport was ablaze with light: blue lamps outlined the runway, red and green beacons flashed from atop the control tower, brilliant white strobes lit the undersides of the clouds. Lights were expensive. Some big shot on a tour. Whoever it was, it had nothing to do with him.

  He went down the steps and pulled the blast door shut behind. The bunker was lit by candles. The curved walls were rough, unfinished concrete. The skinning business had been good this season. A lot of dogs had been kicked out of their homes, and more than a few had fallen into his wire snares. Two carcasses, fresh enough to bleed, were on the floor; a black Alsatian and a big husky. The husky was the real prize. Its lush, thick fur banded in black and gray, frosted with silver, would sell as wolf.

  If only the bunker were heated, he’d stay here year-round. But it wasn’t, and so it was time for Bezdomov to move to his winter den. He left the carcasses. The cold would freeze their meat more reliably than any refrigerator. He slipped a nest of wire snares under his belt, slung the uncured skins over his shoulder, picked up the candle, and made his way to another hatch set low into the side wall. He climbed through. Ahead lay a hundred-meter tunnel that ran under a field, beneath a road, and into a storage closet in the basement of the old optical plant. His building.

  The low passage had been well engineered. Half of it was sloped downhill. At the precise midpoint, a floor drain, and then uphill to another, final blast door. He pulled the door in and stepped through.

  The brick factory held on to the meager heat of the day. It was still freezing, but a good five degrees warmer inside than out. And he hadn’t even turned on the heat. That was next.

  In the corner of the storage room, two pipes penetrated the foundation wall, turned ninety degrees, and ran straight up to the floor above. An iron wheel that looked straight off a submarine operated the main shutoff. Bezdomov touched it. Warm.

  The factory used to be heated with steam from the central airport system. The boilers were shut off in summer, but now that it was getting cold, the main supply pipes out in the street were filled with steam, free for the taking.

  He grabbed the big wheel. It hadn’t been touched in a year and so it turned reluctantly, but soon he heard the hiss of pressure c
oursing through rusted pipes. A bleed valve spat air, then bubbles. The pipes went from cold to warm to hot. Forget airport lights. Free heat in a Siberian winter was the real miracle.

  Bezdomov pulled off his heavy rubber boots, put on the warm felt valenki he wore inside as slippers and went out into the old shipping area. Candlelight revealed bare brick walls, a set of doors that opened onto the airport ramp, a grimy linoleum floor. He hung the pelts on a pair of metal hooks and started for the stairs that led to the administrative offices, but for the second time tonight, something new, something curious, stopped him.

  The old sable trappers up in the Barguzhinsky Mountains could look at a set of marks in the dirt and deduce from it not just an animal, but an entire history. Bezdomov wasn’t that good, but he didn’t need to be to know that someone had been here.

  Two days ago the floor was blanketed in dust, as unmarked as new snow. Tonight it wasn’t. They’d tracked grit in from the loading ramp door. How many boots? One pair was too many. And look. Skid marks. Something had been dragged, or rolled, to another door that opened onto an equipment storage yard that held wrecked electrical equipment of some kind. Probably with valuable metals, since the yard was fenced with electrified wire. Who had been here? And why?

  Bezdomov spotted something small, something white, by the ramp doors. He walked over to it, wary as a deer who has heard the snap of a twig in a forest that should be silent. A small white pouch. Cigarettes? He picked it up carefully, as though it might explode.

  The pouch was made of several plies of paper. There was a kind of plastic Ziploc closure at the top. He opened it. No cigarettes. Nothing. He turned it inside out. The inner layer was napped like felt. The outside was woven from something waterproof and tough. The engineer in him wondered what it had been designed to hold. Lenses? Something small, something valuable, surely. Something that needed cushioning. He held up his candle, letting its light shine on some writing at the bottom.

  There were three lines of script. The first was easy to decipher: vigor. A brand of cigarette? Next a size: 95.3 #215; 50.8 mm. Point three? It seemed unnecessarily exact. The final line was a surprise: gemstone supplies.