by Robin White
Chapter 32
Hope Is a Diamond
The old Siberian Traders’ Guild on Gorky Street was a jewel of a building on the Irkutsk riverfront. Made of soft, honeyed sandstone flecked with bright mica, a hundred winters had rounded its edges until it looked like a melting ice cream cake. The walls hadn’t felt a paintbrush in half a century. Its pale, dusty pinks, its parchment yellows, its faded creams glowed warmly in the cold, slanting light of an October morning.
The office of the Siberian Delegate was on the second floor. You could see the Angara River through its tall windows of arched glass. Nowek sat at the desk and watched gunmetal-gray water sweep north. He still thought of it as Volsky’s desk.
There was a faint ringing. The fax machine began to buzz.
Chuchin poked his head in. “It’s time to go, Mister Mayor.”
“I’m not the mayor,” said Nowek. “And there’s a fax coming.”
“You want to be late meeting your own daughter?”
If she’ll be there at all. Galena was coming in today from America. He hoped. “Are the flags up?”
“Pah,” said Chuchin, and disappeared.
The machine hummed, then beeped. A page fell out as a second page began to print. Then his telephone rang. Typical. Nothing had happened all morning, and now that he needed to leave, the world wanted to speak with the new Siberian Delegate.
He snatched the page and picked up the heavy black phone. “Delegate Nowek listening.”
“Colonel Izrail Levin speaking.”
Nowek looked at the time. Nine-fifteen in Irkutsk. Four-fifteen in Moscow. “You’re up early.”
“Who’s been to bed? I just came from the concluding ceremonies. I thought you’d like to know how it all went.”
The IMF’s inspection team had spent the previous day counting diamonds in the Closet. “So?”
“There’s an American expression. The check is in the mail. You’ve heard it?”
No, but he understood it. Nowek let his breath out. Russia had run right up to the edge of a chasm far deeper than the karir, the open pit, up in Mirny. “Then we dodged the bullet.”
“This time. Did you read the fax I sent? You should.”
Nowek picked up the first page.
Mister Delegate:
You see how our positions have reversed? I pulled you from a cell and now I have to be polite. I’m writing because there are drums being beaten in the Kremlin, and you should know what they mean. It’s about our new President Putin (yes, I know the election is still months away, but it’s going to be a coronation, not an election). Putin feels the regions are growing too powerful. He’s setting up six more Delegates for all of Russia. A few might actually be honest. They will all be under his thumb, even you. As Siberian Delegate, you will have to be the President’s man. After everything I can say that I know you a little, and so you may want to think about whether you want to be this President’s man. By the way, a clipping came from the Foreign Press desk. I’m sending you a copy.
Levin
The second fax sheet. Nowek found it on the floor.
(NY, Oct. 19, 1999) The William Goldberg Diamond Corporation, renowned for cutting numerous majestic stones, including the Premier Rose and the Guinea Star, announced the purchase of a magnificent piece of rough: a 48.90-carat octahedron with the obvious Russian name of Zvyezda Nadezhde, or Star of Hope. The sale was private and the purchase price was not revealed, but seven figures would be in line for a flawless crystal of such size. According to the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), the stone is “the largest, most perfect single crystal diamond we have graded as of the date the report was issued.” The report went on to say “Its condition, with points and edges undamaged by the usual extraction and sorting processes, suggests new mining technologies, long rumored to be under development in Russia, may have borne fruit.”
“Any idea where the diamond came from?” asked Levin.
Seven figures? Larisa Arkova and her daughter had left Moscow for Stockholm the day before Hock had been returned to London. He had no idea where they’d gone from there, and if he did, he wouldn’t have told a senior officer in the FSB’s Investigations Directorate. “If it’s a Russian diamond,” said Nowek, “it probably came from Mirny.”
“I thought you’d say something like that. And the rest?”
“You mean about our new President? You’re suggesting I quit?”
“God knows if you do, Putin will pick someone worse. But you have to be realistic. You won’t be able to steer your own course for long.”
“Realism is overrated. At least in Russia. What about you? You’re staying on, aren’t you?”
“I don’t have to work with him. I just investigate official corruption. I’ll always have something to do.”
Chuchin poked his head in. He was wearing his dark glasses and heavy felt jacket. “You want her to stand in the cold?”
Nowek said, “I’m supposed to protect Siberia from the kind of people you investigate. I’ll keep busy. But thanks for the warning.”
“Don’t mention it. I mean that literally. Not to anyone. Winter’s coming back. Even in Moscow. Sometimes I wonder if it ever left.”
Nowek knew what Levin meant. “If you want to understand winter, come to Siberia.”
“No thank you. Did I tell you about my new dog?”
“Another basset?”
“Feliks is still a puppy, but from his paws he’s going to be a big one. You have my number. Call if you get in over your head, Mister Delegate. Or should I say, when?”
“I won’t wait so long next time.” Nowek hung up and grabbed his coat.
Outside it was cold enough to kill, but not yet cold enough to freeze the Angara. A hundred rivers small and large flow into Lake Baikal, but the Angara is the Sacred Sea’s one outlet, and the surging water seemed sure of itself, impatient and unstoppable.
Two flags snapped straight out from their poles on the brisk wind. The white, blue, and red of the Russian Federation, and the Siberian banner. White for the sky and snow, green for the taiga.
Hope was a diamond, a great blue gem tucked away in a museum. Hope was a jet touching down in Mirny, filled with dollars transferred from a bank on the Cayman Islands. And hope was a 48-carat crystal tucked into the head of a stuffed bear. Maybe it would take a thousand years to make Russia a normal place. Maybe Moscow would never join the civilized world. But if there was any place big enough for hope, Siberia was surely it, wasn’t it?
Chuchin pulled up in the white Toyota. The Land Cruiser was looking frail. Nowek wondered whether it could live through another winter. Whether he could live as the new Siberian Delegate, working for a President who didn’t mind the company of spies and thieves, and perhaps preferred them. He got in and they headed off for the airport.
Chuchin lit a cigarette. In deference to Nowek and despite the cold, he opened his window. “The call. It wasn’t good news?”
“What do you think? It was from Moscow.”
Chuchin offered a sympathetic, understanding nod. “Well, you’d better get used to them.”
Nowek had uncovered one deal with the Devil. He’d smashed it by making one of his own. Mirny’s miners would live, but only because its diamonds would keep going to the cartel. Nowek was the Siberian Delegate, but only so long as he agreed to be the new President’s man. Nowek was Siberia’s kryusha. Its “roof.” He could keep it dry when it rained. He could keep the Devil from the door, but only by doing his bidding.
They turned onto Derzhinsky Street, then up the access road to the terminal. Nowek could see Yuri’s old hangar. He wondered what the difference between one million carats and nearly one million would mean for him. Was skimming a few thousand carats from the back of Kristall’s jet legal? Was it right?
Once, Nowek would have had an answer. Now it took a genius to figure out what was right. Or a fool to ask. Winter was back, and what worked seemed to be all that counted. Was this what being Delegate meant? No certainty, no ri
ght, no wrong?
Was that a country worth fighting for? Worth living in?
Chuchin said, “There she is.”
Galena stood outside the terminal hall despite the wind and cold. She wore a long camel coat, boots with high heels. She seemed astonishingly tall, topped with a flame-red wool beret that only made her dark hair look like sable. She had a wrapped package under her arm. It was large, but thin.
Nowek thought, She found it.
She saw the Land Cruiser, and waved, girlishly.
Chuchin pulled over. Nowek was out before they stopped. He took her in his arms. Two workers passed, their expressions said, He’s lucky! He felt a quick, shivering shock, like diving into cold water. She wasn’t a child. She was a woman, and despite too much lipstick, a disturbingly beautiful one. “I thought you might not come.”
“I can’t believe I’m here, either. Careful,” she said, holding her package up for Nowek.
He took it. “The Dvo(breve)rák A Minor?”
She nodded. “It wasn’t that hard to find. America is filled with music. Even old music.” She looked around, clearly distressed. “I’d forgotten how everything is so gray.”
Nowek smiled. “Only on the outside.” He stood, quietly drinking her presence in. Her eyes were his. Dark, dark blue. The blue of Baikal. Her hair, that was Nina’s. She put her cheek up to be kissed, and he saw the earrings. Diamonds. They were at most a quarter of a carat. Pinpricks, compared with the gems he’d seen flash from the walls of the Ninth Horizon. It stirred up a ghost of the old fear he’d had for her safety, and also the anger. “The diamonds. They’re the ones . . .”
“Uncle Arkasha sent. I’ll wear them forever. For him.” She turned and the diamonds caught the sun, flashing fire. “Diamonds are forever. Isn’t that what they say?”
Nowek thought, gray sky, gray buildings, gray people. A bleak, desperate country that could fall backward, stumble ahead, collapse entirely, and most likely all three. But standing here next to Galena, he was filled with a delirium of color, with faith, with unreasonable hope. “It’s too soon to tell.”
Galena rolled her eyes, exasperated. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Chuchin honked the horn. Nowek had left the door open. There was no one more Siberian, and he was getting cold.
Nowek put his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go before Chuchin freezes,” he said, “and I’ll tell you the whole story.”
About the Author
Robin White has been an oil-well rough-neck, oil-well-logging engineer, science writer, community energy planner, and architect by vocation, instrument-rated pilot by avocation. He has lived all over the United States and in Europe, including Russia and Siberia. He now lives near Monterey, California, with his wife and daughter.
Also by Robin White
Siberian Light
THE ICE CURTAIN
A Dell Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Delacorte Press hardcover edition published February 2002
Dell mass market edition / January 2003
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2002 by Robin A. White
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001047312
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eISBN: 978-0-440-33403-3
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