by Robin White
Boyko was going on about how the deep mine was warmer, but that no miner in his right mind would give up the open pit with its air and sky. Nowek was no longer listening. Instead, he was remembering Volsky’s last words: Go to the horizon. He looked over at the tower standing above Mirny Deep. Could it be?
Nowek watched the lone ore truck grind its way up. “Have you ever found a diamond?” he asked Boyko.
“Most of us never see one except in pictures. But the largest stone ever found was pulled from a tailings pile by an honest miner with a sharp eye. One stone, over three hundred carats. The Star of Yakutia. He thought it was a bottle of vodka sticking out of the dirt.”
Another thud, another waterfall of rock dust.
“What about a miner who’s not so honest?”
“Diamonds don’t grow legs. Where would they walk to?”
“In South Africa they have elaborate security. Cameras. Guard posts. Electric fences. I don’t see them here.”
“We don’t need them. We have two things they don’t have.” Boyko swept his arm out. “We have space.”
“They have space in Africa.”
“Nasha bolsha.” Ours is bigger. “In Mirny, legs aren’t enough. Not even wheels. Here, you would need wings.”
“That’s also happened. An African mine was leaking diamonds to the black market. The company used scanners, X-rays. Guards searched everything, everywhere. They quarantined the workers for three days and examined the toilets to make sure no one swallowed a stone. Diamonds were still finding a way out.”
Boyko took a professional interest in the story. “How?”
“Pigeons. They’d strap a diamond to its leg and let it fly over the fence. There was a roost on the roof of an apartment building in town. The off-duty miners would go up with a bucket and collect diamonds like eggs. Plink, plink, plink.”
Boyko chuckled, appreciative of their invention and not at all concerned. “There are no stukachi in Mirny.”
Stukachi. Boyko had used a very specific word, one that meant both pigeons as well as informers. “You said Mirny has two things they don’t have in Africa. What’s the other?”
“Mine Director Kirillin,” said Boyko. “When you meet him, you’ll understand.”
The air was choked with yellow dust and oil smoke. Sherbakov could hardly breathe. They’d set off two thunderously loud blasts close by, each one a bright flash, followed by a roaring avalanche of blue-gray boulders that looked like nothing so much as a crashing wave of rock. Minutes afterward, the hard-frozen ground still trembled like a struck tuning fork.
High overhead, DRAGA 1’s operator peered down from the slanted windows of his cab. His orange hard hat gave an exaggerated bob. An instant later the huge boom swiveled, the bucket opened, then closed around a hill of ore. It swung the load above a Belaz 7530. Another nod of the helmet, and the boulders rumbled out.
“You don’t mind getting your hands dirty?” said Kirillin. He stood next to the dredge’s tank treads, waiting. “Get ready!”
The bucket elevated, then stopped. The operator looked down. His orange hard hat bobbed again.
“Now!” Kirillin scrambled up using the links as broad steel steps. They were treacherously slick with mud and grease, but he didn’t slip. “Hurry!”
Sherbakov climbed up onto the first tread and reached for the next. His hand slipped on grease. He had to thrust his fingers between the treads to find a grip. It was not where his imagination wanted his fingers to be. One shudder, the smallest of movements, and his fingers would be crushed.
The engine rumbled from inside the hull. The dredge trembled.
Kirillin looked back. “Bistra! Bistra!” Faster! Faster!
Sherbakov didn’t need encouragement. He put his imagination on hold and clambered after Kirillin as fast as he could climb.
At the top of the treads, a short ladder led to a perforated steel deck. Kirillin nimbly jumped onto the ladder and pulled himself up and to his feet.
A fat belch of soot clouded half the sky. The ore dredge shuddered. Sherbakov reached up to grasp the first rung. The treads began to shake underneath him.
Kirillin’s greasy hand closed around his wrist and hauled him up to the deck as the treads clanked into motion. DRAGA 1 advanced into a slope of blasted ore.
Sherbakov stood on the decking, feeling the machine tremble. Or perhaps it was his legs. The bucket lowered for another bite.
“Hey!” Kirillin shouted. He stood next to an open hatch leading into the dredge’s hull. He held a dark blue towel and a pair of thick ear protectors. He cleaned his hands, then tossed the cloth to Sherbakov. Then the hearing protectors.
Sherbakov put them on and followed Kirillin through the oval hatch, into the dredge’s dimly lit hull.
It was bedlam inside DRAGA 1. His eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. Screeches, roars, the hum of wire cables running under strain. It wasn’t noise. It was a physical pressure that assaulted Sherbakov’s body. Loud with the ear protectors, deafening without.
An oily engine the size of a boxcar sat in the middle of the enclosure, fed by fuel lines thick as Sherbakov’s wrist. Catwalks surrounded the motor. Ladders led up to the operator’s cab, down into the clanking bowels. Steel beams supported a maze of cables, gears, pulley blocks, and hydraulic lines. The dim light came from naked bulbs strung along bare wires. When the dredge moved, the lights blinked off, back on, their dull orange filaments trembling.
The machine swiveled, sending Sherbakov reeling against a catwalk railing slick with spilled oil.
“Careful!” Kirillin had to bellow to be heard.
Below the engine deck was a flowing river of cables. All were rusty.
Kirillin pointed down. “One of the bucket control cables is our troublemaker. What do you think?”
Sherbakov leaned over. One cable was badly damaged. A section had blossomed into a nest of tangled wire strands.
With an earthquake’s rumble, the worn cable was swept away.
Sherbakov tried to keep his eye on it as it threaded through a turning guide, then up to a pulley. The broken strands slammed against a guard plate. Hot yellow sparks erupted. The broken wire strands glowed red with friction heat.
Sherbakov laughed. Sometimes he forgot just how stupid the rest of the world really was. This wasn’t like a software bug. You could spend days, weeks, tracking one of those down. Here was a problem that advertised itself with sparks, and they couldn’t fix it?
He motioned for Kirillin to join him. “Watch!” Sherbakov had to shout to be heard. “The plate needs to be moved.”
Kirillin peered, cursed, then headed for the hatch.
“Tell them to bring a socket wrench!” Sherbakov called after him.
A minute later the diesel stumbled, then loped to an idle.
“Hey engineer!”
Sherbakov turned.
It was Anton, the miner he’d met aboard the plane. He was carrying a big wrench.
Boyko leaned over the chains, looking down. The steel poles visibly deflected. “They say you were once a geologist.”
“That’s true,” Nowek said.
“Here, every miner is a geologist. We know rocks, not from pictures, but by their taste.”
“I worked in the oil fields. Tasting wasn’t a good idea.”
Boyko kept staring down into the pit. “What made you leave?”
“It turned out to be a dirty business.”
“And then you were a mayor.”
“Politics is another dirty business.”
He looked back at Nowek. “Now you’re the Siberian Delegate. To be frank, it’s an odd choice for someone allergic to dirt.”
“Volsky wasn’t dirty.”
“One man.”
“You heard what happened to him?”
“Stories.”
“Here’s a true one: Volsky cared about getting your miners paid. He cared so much he went head to head with some powerful people. It scared someone enough to have him murdered. Now you want
a real story? Moscow is missing some Mirny diamonds. They say Volsky sold them na lyeva.”
Boyko looked up sharply. “That’s ridiculous.”
Nowek was surprised. He hadn’t expected this from the pit boss. “Then who do you think took them?”
“Who? Take a look.” He nodded at the earthmover. “DRAGA 1 is still digging after twenty-five years. To survive all that time it must know a few things.”
“Like you.”
“And that one.” He pointed down to the other yellow earthmover, a tenth the size of DRAGA 1, parked away from the working face of the mine. “It’s from America. A Caterpillar. A visitor.”
“Like me.”
“Exactly. The American machine was supposed to be cheaper to run. It lasted one week. You see what I’m saying?”
“I’m beginning to.”
“Ask about mining and I’ll answer. Ask about tons and I’ll give you facts and figures. You want to know what happened to Delegate Volsky? You want my view about stolen diamonds? I’ll tell you a big secret.” He took out a neatly folded handkerchief from the breast pocket of his windbreaker and mopped his brow. The white cloth turned ruddy brown. He held it up and smiled. “You see? Diamonds are a dirty business, too.”
Anton jumped down to the catwalk. “What’s the problem?”
“Loose bolts.” Sherbakov motioned for him to bring the wrench. The catwalk shook as Anton shambled up in his heavy boots.
Anton stopped, the wrench still over his shoulder. “So?”
“The plate needs to be moved away from the cable, then the bolts have to be tightened.” Sherbakov could see the dull gleam of his gold teeth in the light of a naked bulb. “You think you can do it?”
Anton’s breath still reeked of vodka. His gold teeth made his mouth look like a machine, an excavator, meant for chewing rock. He hefted the heavy wrench, letting the massive end bob. It seemed light in his hands. “In my sleep.”
“Before Mirny?” said Boyko. “I came from the Kuzbass.”
“Coal?” Nowek asked.
“My father, my uncles. Everyone worked in the mines. I was sick of breaking my back for tons. I thought I’d come here where they measure results in carats.”
“You still have to move tons to get at the carats.”
“But who knew? They also offered double arctic bonus pay. So I moved my family here. Back then you could find almost anything in the shops. They had to keep us happy because who else would work in a place like this? Your question about radiation? You’re not the first to ask. The government sent in a military team to analyze the problem. They were supposed to stay a week. They left in two days. We never heard the results.”
“But you stayed.”
“I was making good money. In five years I’d be on a beach on the Black Sea. That was the plan. It didn’t work out.”
“Don’t take it personally,” said Nowek. “Those five-year plans were never too dependable.” He watched a black car race around the perimeter road, heading for the surface at breakneck velocity.
A fresh chuff of black soot rose from DRAGA 1’s stack. The boom swung over a pile of boulders, then opened its jaws.
Nowek watched DRAGA 1 take another bite. The bucket rose, then started to swing, but it stopped so abruptly the jaws gaped open and car-size boulders tumbled and fell with a dull rumble.
Boyko was already reaching for his radio when a thin wail pierced the silence of the vast pit, the constant rattle of loose stones, the steady whisper of wind.
Boyko had the radio out. “What’s wrong?”
A rush of words came back from the tinny little speaker. His face clouded. “Is he hurt?”
“What happened?” Nowek asked.
Boyko snapped the radio off. “Some idiot was inside DRAGA 1 trying to fix something while it was running. An engineer from Sib-Auto.”
“What happened?”
“He died.”
A white van pulled up on the gravel road that circled the pit. It was the one that had met them at the airport.
An engineer from Sib-Auto. Who else could it be?
“There’s your ride to town. I’m afraid I have sad matters to deal with, Delegate Nowek. I won’t be able to answer any more questions.”
“I have just one more. What are the chances of seeing Mirny Deep?”
Boyko squinted. “Poor. You can ask Mine Director Kirillin if you don’t believe me. You’d better go. You don’t want to be late.”
He thought, Sherbakov. They weren’t afraid of the FSB. What were they afraid of? The Siberian Delegate?
Nowek took a last look into the pit. DRAGA 1 was silent. What would happen when the pit shut down for good? DRAGA 1 was far too big to haul up to the surface. The terrace roads would collapse under it. It was doomed, condemned, a mechanical monster digging its own grave, roaring as it descended, resolutely swallowing the frozen earth.
Chapter 18
Back to the Past
The pit boss threw back the van’s sliding side door and cigarette smog poured out. “Who are you?” asked Boyko.
The driver wore a black leather jacket and sunglasses. He waved a cigarette at Nowek. “They told me to come here and pick him up.”
“Who told you to come?”
A thumb jabbed back in the direction of town.
Mirny was a place where everyone knew everyone, at least by face and the pit boss was quite sure he didn’t know this face. Boyko kept staring into the van, as though he could force the unexpected back into line. A stranger, but how could there be one in a city so tightly controlled as Mirny? Boyko knew the answer, even if it left him uneasy: there were no strangers. Everyone was known, everyone was here for a reason. This driver was here for a reason, too, even if nobody had told him what it was. Still . . .
“Is something wrong?” asked Nowek.
“No.” Boyko turned to Nowek. “Be sure to ask Miss Arkova from Technical Information about the history of Russian diamonds. You may be surprised.”
“Russian history can be very unpredictable.”
The pit boss slid the door shut.
The van rolled off, trailing a billowing cloud of rock dust.
“I heard there was an accident,” said Chuchin. He took a deep drag. The tip glowed cherry red. “I’m glad you’re still breathing.”
“If you want me to keep breathing, open your window,” Nowek said. “It was Sherbakov.”
“I figured.” Chuchin rolled down his window. “How?”
“Boyko said he fell into some machinery.”
“Maybe your honest friend Levin decided to go out for a walk on his flight from Moscow, too.”
The thought had already occurred to him. Levin was supposed to be here already. Nowek didn’t know if he’d ever arrived. He was beginning to hope he hadn’t. “How did you hear about Sherbakov?”
Chuchin pointed to a radio mounted beneath the dash.
“What happened to Miss Arkova?”
“I’m not the one she was supposed to be interested in. She left me with the driver. His name is Vadim. We had a lot in common.”
Nowek smelled alcohol on Chuchin’s breath. It was a miracle he didn’t burst into flames. “Besides a bottle?”
“Siberians are sponges. You don’t know their shape until you get them soaked. He was an old strafnik like me.” A citizen of the gulag. “I let him do the talking. Me, I hardly wet a tooth.”
“So he gave you the keys to the van.”
“Strictly in the interests of safety.”
“I see.” Nowek figured that he would hear more about this later. “Did he tell you anything useful?”
“That Kirillin is no one to play games with. He’ll tie a knot in your tongue and ask how you like pretzels. He also said I should think twice about working with you. What about Boyko?”
“He said he was just a simple worker. I believe him. He said diamonds are a dirty business. I believe that, too.”
“That’s it?”
“No. He’s boss of the pit. Bu
t there’s another mine. An underground mine beneath that tower. It’s called Mirny Deep.” Nowek nodded at the tall, black structure. “There are levels in it. They call them horizons. It’s not a term I was familiar with until today.”
“Who cares what they call them?”
“Volsky’s last words were Idi k’gorizontu. Go to the horizon.”
“He could have meant anything.”
“He could have meant Mirny Deep.”
They came to a gate marked NO. 5. Chuchin stopped by a card reader, slipped a plastic card from his jacket and scanned it in.
The gate began to open.
Nowek held out his hand. Chuchin gave him the plastic card. It had a photo of Vadim. Boyko’s regular driver. “Chuchin.”
“I didn’t steal it. It came with the keys.” He was about to drive through, when an ambulance screamed by, heading in the opposite direction. He let it through, then drove off. “The city museum was very interesting. A babushka runs it. She took one look at this”—he held out the Marlboro—“and practically begged me to sell her more.”
“The miners on our plane had cases of Marlboros.”
“Those miners aren’t miners. Or at least, they’re not just miners. They used to be miners. They’ve earned special privileges.”
“From Kirillin?”
Chuchin seemed surprised. “How did you know?”
“That’s how it was in the oil fields back in Soviet times. I think Mirny hasn’t changed much.”
“They’re Kirillin’s mafiya. In Mirny if you need something you go through them or you go without. The company stores are almost empty, Mister Mayor. I know. I looked. Pockets are empty, too. Volsky was right. People are worried.”
“Boyko said that things are tough, but people are eating.”
“Well, he’s a boss. Did he mention the fire?”
