by Robin White
“There is no such company,” said Petrov. “As for his other request, there’s a difference between sealing and auditing.”
“I’m not sure I understand the distinction.”
“You audit something when you’re suspicious. Sealing is something else, something more like”—Petrov paused, then found the word he was hunting for—“hiding.”
“What could Volsky wish to hide?”
“It’s an interesting question. Perhaps we’ll all find an answer when the audit is complete.” Petrov glanced up at the Repository building. “I assume you can be trusted around loose diamonds? Come. We’ll walk together.” Petrov dismissed the driver.
Levin followed him. “Your car is an unusual color.”
“When they made it bulletproof, I had them repaint it the precise color of the Hope Diamond. You’ve heard of it?”
“Only that it was supposed to be cursed.”
“The world’s most valuable gem. When they moved it they had armored trucks, troops. A real show of force. Meanwhile, they’d already sent the diamond to its new home. You know how?”
Levin shook his head.
“By mail. In a simple box.” Petrov smiled. “The world of diamonds is filled with fascinating stories.”
So it seemed. Volsky asked for records about a diamond company, Golden Autumn. Did it exist? If it didn’t, why would Volsky think it did? And if it did, how could Volsky know about it and the chairman of the State Diamond Committee not?
They walked into a security antechamber big enough for just one person to pass. A fat bureaucrat in a heavy winter coat would be a tight squeeze. Levin handed over his identity documents and keys to a Ministry guard sitting behind thick bulletproof glass.
Petrov walked straight through without stopping. He motioned Levin toward an elevator. “We’re using the sorting area for the audit.” The door opened with a rattle.
Levin looked at the stairs. Elevators in old buildings were notoriously unreliable.
“Don’t worry,” said Petrov. “The elevator’s function is absolutely normal.”
Levin reluctantly followed him in. Absolutely normal. It reminded him of a story. Ivan and Oleg went looking for a place to eat lunch and discovered that the cafés, restaurants, and kiosks were all inexplicably closed. It was lunch hour. The biggest meal of the day, and everything was closed. Complaints could be risky. You never knew who was listening. Ivan shrugged his shoulders and said, “The situation is normal.” Not to be outdone in case someone was listening, Oleg replied, “The situation is not normal. It’s perfect.”
The elevator came to a stop. Petrov opened the door. The corridor beyond was guarded by another Interior Ministry officer seated at a desk. He smiled a gold-toothed grin at the boss.
Petrov paused at a set of enormous double oak doors. “Have you ever seen half a billion dollars sitting on a table?” With that, he pushed them open.
The room beyond was high-ceilinged and softly lit from a wall of arched windows. The glass block Levin had seen from the street cast a diffuse, but penetrating, glow. Shadowless and powerful, it filled the vast sorting room with a cold clinical light. A dozen women in white laboratory smocks and nurses’ headbands were seated at long tables pushed up close to the windows, bent over heaps of colored pebbles. Guards were stationed at a desk with several television monitors. Cameras peered from above.
“In a normal year, two and a half billion dollars’ worth of Siberian rough comes through here. Technical diamonds make up two thirds of the carats. Gems, two thirds of the value.”
Levin said, “I understand this year hasn’t been so normal.”
“True. We’re battling the diamond cartel for fair treatment. Who will give in first? They say Russia. I say they will.”
“The cartel is very powerful, isn’t it?”
“But they need diamonds. Our diamonds. Take a look at those tables, Major.” Petrov nodded at the heaped sorting tables. “The stones come from just our Transit Room. We have thirty-three other rooms at the State Repository. Each year, another four million carats of gem diamonds arrive. We’re hanging them over London’s head. If the cartel doesn’t want to be crushed, they’ll start buying again and they’ll do it at my price. Not theirs.”
“The diamonds. They’re safe here?”
Petrov smiled. “Nothing has disappeared from the Closet in centuries. The diamond boxes are verified, then locked away in the Transit Room until the stones can be sorted by color, quality, and size. What you see taking place now. The eye is still best for that work.”
“How are the diamonds verified?”
“The stones are sorted in Siberia by Kristall, then packed into containers and sealed. A detailed manifest accompanies them. We check the containers by weight when they arrive. Naturally, we also examine the seals to make sure they’re intact. In normal times, the stones are on their way in a matter of a few days. But as you said, this year has not been so normal.”
In other words, thought Levin, nobody knows what’s really in the boxes. “Is it wise to trust Kristall that much?”
“The world of diamonds is built on trust, Major. A billion-dollar deal rests on a handshake. It’s a tradition. As for Kristall, our relationship goes back many years and not one—”
“Mister Chairman!”
A young man in a suit bustled over with a sheaf of papers.
“My sorting room manager.” Petrov leaned over and whispered, “Someone’s useless nephew. You know the kind?”
Levin nodded. His office teemed with them.
“So?” Petrov said brusquely. “Have you finished?”
“The weights all match. The seals were intact. We’re checking the contents against the manifests now.”
Petrov asked, “How much longer?”
“One moment while I check.”
“Splendid idea.” Petrov turned to the FSB officer. “Come with me, Major. I’ll show you something.”
The translucent glass panels spilled a cold gray light over the sorting tables. A woman used a tiny rake to sift through the rough diamonds. There were three piles of sparkling gravel before her, each with a paper label: specials, sizes, and smalls. From each pile, thinner lines radiated containing stones of similar size and color.
Ice clears, yellows, silvery grays, browns, a few startling blues. Some diamonds showed classic crystalline form. Others were flat triangles, or cubic, or even double pyramids joined at their bases. It looked like nothing so much as the colored gravel children put in the bottom of aquariums. It took an effort to remind himself what these pebbles really were, and what they were worth.
“Siberian rough is among the best in the world,” said Petrov. “Australia mines more carats, but most of it is junk.”
“So many pieces,” said Levin, looking over the table with its piles. “I thought diamonds were hard to break.”
“Diamonds get their name from the Greek adamas. It means unconquerable. It’s not really true. They’re hard, but strike them along a crystal plane and they’ll shatter. We learned that the hard way,” said Petrov. “Kristall’s ore tumblers once used iron balls to help break the ore. But they were breaking everything, including the diamonds. Now we treat them more carefully. Like eggs.”
Levin had never been so close to something worth so much. Each pebble on the table was worth more than his annual salary.
Petrov reached over and plucked an especially large yellow crystal from the special pile. “Go ahead. Take a closer look.”
Levin cupped his hand and Petrov dropped the rough diamond into it. It was a big octahedron, though its points were rounded. The color was a brownish yellow, with dark smudges trapped within. It felt like ice, as though some of Siberia remained inside. “It feels cold.”
“Atomic density,” Petrov explained. “Nothing absorbs heat so well as a diamond. It literally pulls it from your skin, so naturally it feels cold. What do you think? Perhaps your wife would enjoy wearing something like that on her finger?”
“Very big.” He han
ded it back, nervous about dropping it.
“All special stones are big. But size is not the whole story.” He turned to the sorter. “What would you say?”
“Strong yellow. Eleven point four carats,” the woman said rather mechanically. “Many carbon inclusions.”
“In other words, not gem quality,” Petrov explained. “A crystal like this is worth no more than ten thousand dollars. If it were a flawless D or E, the same stone would be worth perhaps one million dollars to the right buyer.”
“You think Russia will find a buyer soon?”
“Diamonds aren’t sausages, Major. They don’t go bad.”
“Mister Chairman!” the sorting room manager hurried back, his hair plastered to his brow.
“Finally.” Petrov turned and held out his hand for the report. He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a pair of reading glasses. He handed it back to the manager. “This is a listing of technical diamonds. Where are the stones of the highest rank?”
The floor manager looked as though he’d swallowed a diamond, and a big one. “The weights match the manifests. . . .”
“You’ve haven’t counted any gem rough. Why?”
“Mister Chairman . . .”
“Well?” said Petrov. “Go finish up and be quick about it.”
The manager looked at Petrov, then Levin, then back at the chairman once more. “Sir, the weights are all correct. But when we broke the seals and opened the boxes, we found only technical stones. The gem rough . . . it’s . . .” he stammered, “it’s gone.”
Chapter 7
The Buzzard’s Egg
Levin pulled the Zhiguli up to the locked gates of Ekipazh and parked. The street was strewn with sodden trash, some of it vaguely medical. Bandages and wrappers left by ambulance workers still in a hurry. Some empty cigarette boxes. The sleeve to an old vinyl record. How long had that been sitting there?
He thought about the big industrial diamond he’d held back at the Closet. Worth what? Ten thousand dollars? Petrov had dismissed it as mediocre. How much would a year’s supply of gem diamonds be worth? Four million carats. Millions? Hundreds of millions? And how had they been siphoned away? A disgruntled miner didn’t do it.
Would the head of the State Diamond Committee pick his own pockets? Would the Siberian Delegate make himself rich from Siberia’s treasure? They weren’t even serious questions.
But why would Petrov be so eager to perform an audit if he already knew the stockpile had been raided? Why would Volsky demand the stocks be sealed and examined? They both should be on some warm, secluded island that lacked an extradition treaty, drinking tea with the board of directors of the Fuck You Bank. Anywhere but Moscow.
He paced the length of the narrow street to where the brick wall was gouged and blasted by buckshot. The red surface was pocked with craters. Lead beads could still be seen in them. Pellets that had rocketed through the Siberian Delegate’s chest. Their spread was remarkably small. The gun had been fired at zero range. He faced the gate.
Petrov’s driver, Gavril, murdered three blocks away. Had he driven away from Ekipazh after dropping Volsky off? Parked by an alley to smoke? Met Volsky’s aide Nowek? Then Nowek cut his throat and drove back through those locked gates. Who let him back in? A guard would pay more attention to the car than the driver. Who would inconvenience the occupants of a new Mercedes? But a Chaika? The guards should have met it with pistols drawn.
A lot of questions. There had to be a camera record that would provide some answers. He walked back to the fence and stared across the empty courtyard. He saw a camera in a hooded box above the club’s front door.
Levin quickly found three more. One was mounted on the corner of a building across the street, another tucked beneath a streetlight fixture. The last was just a small glass porthole beside the brass call button outside the gate. As he looked into its eye, he saw the optics within shift, focus. He was being watched.
He pressed the button.
“What do you want?” the speaker squawked.
“Major Levin. FSB. General Goloshev’s department.”
“Documents.”
He held up his card to the tiny eye. It focused in, then back.
There was a pause, and then the gate began to open.
The front door was already buzzing when he reached for the polished handle. Inside was a corridor, a desk, a metal detector, and a guard sitting in front of a television screen. Multiple switches allowed him to select different views, different cameras, and a joystick permitted him to pan the cameras at will.
The door closed behind him with a solid clank. Levin noticed a video recorder and a bookshelf of videotapes, all carefully labeled, and one unmarked cassette on the desk.
“Here.” The guard pushed the videotape forward. “Take it.”
First Petrov taking responsibility. Now a guard offering important evidence. Neither one had demanded a bribe to do the right thing. What was Russia coming to? “Thank you for your cooperation.”
“The general already sent his thanks.” The guard smiled slyly. “The militia wanted it too. I slipped some hot stuff into a blank case and gave it to them instead.”
“Hot?”
“German,” said the guard. “Women with men, women with dogs. Levin. I’ve heard your name somewhere.”
“I doubt it. About the tape. That was good thinking.”
“Be sure to tell Goloshev. Do they still call him the Toad?”
Levin slipped the tape into his coat. “Still.”
Levin drove down Vladmirova Street, noting that a line had already formed outside Na Skoruyu Ryku, “At the Quick Hand.” It was a Russian version of a fast-food restaurant, a small, stand-up café where the city’s best borscht was made. Levin made a mental note to stop there on his way home.
Why shouldn’t Goloshev ask for the tape? Goloshev was leading the FSB’s investigation into Volsky’s murder. And it made sense to keep the tape away from the militia. They were hopeless clowns. The only killer they’d bothered to catch and arrest in years was Volsky’s aide, and he’d been standing next to the body, covered in blood, a shotgun at his feet. All Nowek lacked was a union card from the Society of Amateur Assassins.
Petrov’s quick audit. Goloshev’s quick request for the security video. Intelligent, responsible steps. Normal in any rational place. Only in Russia was normal suspect.
He turned off Bolshaya Lubyanka onto Furkasovky Perelok.
The entrance to the FSB’s underground parking garage was an unmarked arch set into the gray Lubyanka Annex. He swung off the street and down the long ramp to the garage level beneath the street.
Beyond a single concrete wall was the basement of the old Lubyanka Prison, the last stop for untold thousands of doomed men and women. The lucky ones would be taken out to the Moscow River, a pistol put to their heads and shot. The unlucky ones went east to where the tracks ran out and the snows began.
Levin parked and walked to the elevators. They were guarded by two sentries in plain clothes. Levin showed his pass and was allowed through. He pressed five, and with a lurch and a whine, the cab began to rise. A charred smell filled the air. A fire had broken out two years ago, and it still smelled like a burning chemical dump.
A lieutenant “guarded” the fifth-floor hallway. Sherbakov, Levin’s assistant, had the duty for the weekend. A newspaper was open on the desk. Friday’s Moskovsky Komsomolets.
Sherbakov had tousled red hair, a bony, angular face. He wore glasses with fashionably small black frames. He loved computers best. He’d lose himself fixing, tweaking a database, improving some program. Levin gave up assigning regular administrative tasks and let him work on an encryption system for electronic mail. At least it was remotely related to his work.
“Anything interesting?” Levin asked him.
Sherbakov showed Levin the big headline: COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR ALMOST SLAIN!
It was the almost that Levin found compelling. The subtitle, BUSINESSMAN CATCHES BULLET WITH HIS TEETH, w
as even better. Of course, there were so many contract killings these days that every conceivable statistical probability was taking place. A victim catching a bullet in his teeth? Why not? “Here,” he said, tossing the videotape to him. “Make a copy and send the original up to General Goloshev.”
“What format is it in?”
“How should I know? It’s from a security system.”
“It could be PAL, VHS, even something like . . .”
“Whatever’s normal.” Levin could see the disappointment on Sherbakov’s face, but he was not going to get drawn into a technical discussion of videotape formats. “How’s the e-mail project coming?”
Sherbakov brightened. “Still a few bugs. Sometimes it works perfectly, sometimes it crashes. I’m hunting for the glitch.”
“You think you’ll find it?”
Sherbakov looked offended. “It’s a computer, Major. I’ve got a killer name for it, too: KGB. As in, Let KGB keep your secrets! What do you think?”
“Don’t take forever about the tape.” Levin rode the elevator up another two floors, where Goloshev’s private secretary, a plush blonde of about forty, escorted him down a long corridor. She had the short, overripe shape of a carved fertility fetish. Levin imagined her in Soviet Agriculture, Miss Kolkhoz, 1985.
She knocked on Goloshev’s door. There was a grunt from the far side. She opened it. Levin tugged at his tie to straighten it, then walked into General Goloshev’s office.
“We have a real buzzard’s egg, Levin. It started small and hatched into something big and ugly. Sit.”
The air was hazy with cigarette smoke. At least it made the char smell easier to ignore. Levin pulled a wooden chair over.
General Goloshev sat a conference table covered in crimson baize. He was short and fat. His white shirt was stained yellow with sweat. His heavy winter uniform jacket was draped across the back of his chair. He had loose jowls, a neckless neck, and small, suspicious eyes. The young officers called him the Toad, though not too loudly.
Levin thought of him as one of those desert amphibians that digs into the sand and waits decades for the rains. Goloshev had dug himself deep during the FSB’s brief flirtation with reforms. Now that the old ways were back in style, the rains had returned and the Toad was free to croak again.