The Ice Curtain

by Robin White

  Dishes magically assembled themselves under her hands. “You’ll never get mushrooms like these in a restaurant.”

  He joined her at the small kitchen table and took a bite of the buttery cap, the rich crab, the cream cheese. It melted to rich velvet in his mouth. “You’re a good cook.”

  “I don’t get to show off much.”

  “Maybe you and Liza could join your husband.”

  “Mirny is still better than Africa.” Larisa popped a mushroom cap into her mouth. She chewed, then said, “Your daughter in America. You could join her, too.”

  He’d be lucky to leave Moscow. “It’s not my plan.”

  “I would go like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  “What’s stopping you from leaving Mirny?”

  “You need money to leave. A lot.”

  “You really don’t believe in those overseas dollars?”

  “I see the statements every month like everyone, but so long as diamonds aren’t being sold, they’ll never be real.”

  “Maybe they are being sold. All those dollars might be real. Everyone in Mirny should be able to buy a ticket out.”

  “It’s like talking about a world neither of us will ever see.”

  “What kind of world were the people at the ore plant looking for?”

  “What did Director Kirillin say?”

  “That four drunks were responsible.”

  “One man was responsible. A boy, really. But he wasn’t alone. It was practically the whole shakta. And some from the plant, too. One man planned it. The blood is on his name.”

  Planned the operation? It was very different from drunks stealing a truck. And shakta meant mine shaft. The open pit was universally called karir. “What happened?”

  “They took a Belaz and decided to stop at Fabrika 3 on their way. They were going to stage a protest against the company. They ran over a gas line. There was a spark. Thirty from the shakta died. Another dozen from the plant. Some right away. They were the luckiest. The driver the company assigned to you? Vadim? His wife wasn’t so lucky.”

  So she had found a way to leave Mirny. Though not the way Nowek had imagined. What had Volsky said? They’re murdering them. He felt like he was standing on the rim of something important. Like the open pit itself. “It’s safe to tell me all this?”

  She put down her fork, then reached across the table and took Nowek’s hand. “Just don’t bring it up with Boyko.”

  Her slender fingers were warm from the tea. “Why not?”

  “His son was driving the Belaz.”

  “Boyko’s son?”

  A horn sounded from out on the snowy street.

  “Don’t worry.” She stroked the back of his fingers lightly, casually. “He’s not your problem.”

  “Who is?”

  She made a movement with her other hand, sweeping it in an arc, as though the very air swarmed with malevolent spirits.

  Chapter 22

  The Diamond Line

  Nowek paused in the entry to Larisa’s building, looking out on the dim street. Full dark came on fast at sixty-two degrees north latitude. The streetlamps were already on at three in the afternoon. They cast circles of sulfurous light that swirled with cold, fine snow. He put his parka hood up. In the time it took to hurry between Larisa’s door and the waiting van, its fur ruff frosted white. His son. He slid the door open and got in.

  The pit boss said, “Fucking snow. When winter starts early, it stays late.”

  Boyko drove off before Nowek got the side door closed. The wheels skidded, then caught, throwing him back against the seat. He could see in the rearview mirror that Boyko’s hair was matted and greasy, his face smudged. There were stains on his clothes that might be red hydraulic fluid, or not. He looked like he’d spent the afternoon asleep under a bridge and had gotten up hungover and mad.

  “I thought you were used to winters in Mirny.”

  Boyko’s prominent brow was beaded with sweat. “You spend a day picking a boy out of a pulley and we’ll see what you’re used to.”

  Sherbakov. “Did you find out what happened to him?”

  “I already told you. He died. You and Mine Director Kirillin had a useful discussion?”

  “He did most of the talking.”

  “That’s Kirillin. So what did he say?”

  “There’s been a change in my plans. I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”

  “You’ll be lucky to get out of Mirny, Delegate Nowek.”

  As the van bounced along the rutted road, the last gray light drained from the sky. The blocky, cubic shape of the ore plant appeared on the horizon, golden in sodium security lights.

  “So,” said Boyko. “That’s Fabrika 3. The biggest building in town. Built in 1984. It swallows boulders of ore from the mine, breaks them into three hundred–millimeter chunks in a tumbler, grinds the chunks to eighteen-millimeter pebbles, sifts the pebbles for diamonds, and shits the tailings out the side.” The headlights struggled through the slanting snow. “The sifting is done in stages. First centrifuges, then media cyclones, vibration tables, and grease traps.”

  The snow was mesmerizing in the headlights. It swept across the beams in wind-driven diagonal streaks, suggestive of furious forward speed. Like Gogol’s troika, striking sparks as it hurtled across the snow. Russia, the envy of the world.

  The van lost traction and started to skid sideways. Boyko wrestled it back onto the road. “The grease traps catch nearly all the diamonds in the pebble stream. Diamonds hate water but they stick to grease like glue. We boil the grease and skim it like soup. The diamonds sink to the bottom. The girls in the diamond line pluck them out with gloves and drop them into lockboxes. The last stage is the X-ray sorting hall. Trust me, you don’t want to go there.”

  “Your driver Vadim. Didn’t his wife work on the diamond line?”

  “Ask Kirillin. You have some other questions?”

  “One. Is there going to be anything to see at the ore plant?”

  “Broken kimberlite and machines, and the machines won’t be running. They’re holding the next shift back until you’re out.”

  “Then there’s no reason to go.”

  Boyko looked alarmed. “Everything’s been prepared.”

  “That’s another reason not to go. Then there’s you. My wife died in a plane crash four years ago. I can’t look at the mountain where it happened. Leading a tour there would be out of the question.”

  There was a pause, then “I’m sorry, but why tell me?”

  “Your son, Boyko. I know what happened to him.”

  The pit boss blinked, surprised. “Kirillin told you?”

  Careful. Nowek could see Boyko’s hands clenched on the steering wheel. His scarred knuckles were white. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. You asked to see the ore plant? You’re going to see it. Let no one say we denied you a thing.”

  Except understanding. A son dead. Trapped in Mirny. And Boyko still could use the word we. How could he remain so loyal? Was it habit? Or fear? Nowek watched the snow beat against the windshield. “What was his name?”

  A longer pause, then “Alexei. He died on his birthday. He was twenty-one for just two hours.”

  “I have a daughter. She’s eighteen. She’s in America.”

  “I already know. Be glad. At least she’s safe.”

  You know? “I thought so,” Nowek said. “Then someone sent her a pair of diamond earrings. The note inside said From Siberia’s eternal frost.”

  “Then we’re the same.” Boyko turned. “They’ve got you by the balls, too.”

  “Who is it, Boyko? Who sent her those diamonds?”

  The only answer came from the dry, cold snow hissing against the windshield like poured sand. A gust of wind rocked the van.

  Were he and Boyko really so similar? Nowek thought, Yes, except your son is dead and Galena is alive. The same, except that you’ve given up, and I have not. He wondered whether the van was bugged, and decided it no longer mattered. “Tell
me about your son.”

  “Alyosha?” Boyko’s chest heaved. He swiped his mouth with the back of his jacket. “Everything we did, it was for him. Coming here. Staying here. So what if the whole country was fucked? We had something to point to. We had a reason. He would live a better life.”

  Nowek could feel something building up in Boyko. He didn’t speak, he didn’t want to stop it, to get in its way.

  “He wasn’t a miner. That was okay. Three generations breaking rocks is enough. Alyosha had a mind. He could do anything.”

  “In Mirny?”

  “That was my mistake.” Boyko’s face grew stony, even more impassive. “Last year, when there was still money, we could have left Mirny. But where could we go that was better?”

  “I can think of a lot of places.”

  Boyko didn’t seem to hear. “We had our apartment, a small dacha. Our greenhouse grows melons sweeter than any from Astrakhan. There’s practically no crime. Unspoiled nature. Where could you find that in Russia? I figured that so long as we had something the world was willing to buy, we’d ride out the storm.”

  “Diamonds.”

  “You asked about Moscow? They turned their backs on us and they still expected us to work around the clock. They still expected our diamonds to show up every week. How long could that go on?”

  It was the same question Volsky had asked. “So Kristall started sending them junk instead.”

  “When you hand your wallet over to a thief and then he demands your wife, what are you going to do? It was rape. The company determined that we could make our own way without Moscow. If they wouldn’t send us rubles, someone else would send us dollars.”

  “The cartel.”

  “Only we were wrong. We were just changing one thief for another. It’s almost funny. Before, when we were slaves to Moscow we were more free. Now that we’re free of them, we’re slaves.”

  Nowek thought it sounded like something Chuchin might say. “Slaves can’t leave. But miners can. Why don’t they?”

  “You know what my Alyosha wanted? A new computer. I would find him up in the middle of the night, working on the old one. Who knows what he was up to? My son could really use his head.”

  “Kirillin said he was drunk the night he took the Belaz.”

  “He was a safety supervisor. He’d no more drink on duty than piss in my pocket.” Boyko had both hands on the wheel, his grip so tight he might have expected it to fly off into the snowy night. His voice was even, controlled. “Maybe it was my fault. I told him the company would stand behind us. I told him to wait, that Kristall was beginning a new chapter. It would give us everything we were owed.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  “Not fast enough. My Alyosha wasn’t patient. It’s why he liked computers. Push a button and something happens now.” Boyko stopped, took a deep breath. “I had to choose. Blood, or company.” He turned and looked straight at Nowek. Sweat glistened on his face, though it was cold enough to see his breath.

  “You chose Kristall?”

  “My second mistake,” said Boyko.

  A white glare swam out of the darkness ahead. A double halo of approaching headlights. Someone was leaving the ore plant. Not a Belaz. The lights were too low. Boyko pulled over to let them pass, pausing at the foot of a bridge.

  Nowek looked down. A fast-moving stream ran beneath the bridge. White steam rose from it. Thanks to permafrost, streams weren’t rare in Siberia. But a warm stream had to be coming from beneath the permafrost layer, down deep where the rocks become hot to the touch. “You’re pumping a lot of water out of Mirny Deep.”

  “I told you it would flood if we didn’t.”

  “You also said the shakta was abandoned.”

  The approaching vehicle was a militia patrol. Shadowy faces in the dashboard light. Then it was gone, heading back to town.

  Boyko threw the van into gear and steered out onto the tracks left by the militia.

  The ore plant loomed out of the night, floating above the tundra, bathed in beams of bright yellow light swirling with snow. Closer, Nowek could see that its windowless skin was made from sheets of corrugated steel. Soot painted one vertical wall in long black scabs that fanned out from ground zero.

  The road curved. Nowek could no longer see the damaged wall. They came to a high steel gate and stopped. He put his hand to the window. A faint but definite throb. Something was making the glass vibrate, in and out of phase. Some big turning machinery. They hadn’t stopped everything for his visit to Fabrika 3.

  Boyko rolled down his window. Fine snow blew in as he pulled a card from his pocket and swiped it through a reader. The gate began to open. He drove through and immediately came to a stop at a second barrier. The outer fence had already closed. The inner one remained locked. They were trapped between the two.

  “Both gates are never open at once. We call it the Dead Zone.”

  “A gate wouldn’t stop a Belaz.”

  “A Belaz can climb a thirty-percent grade with a hundred tons of ore in back.” He used his card again. A green light flashed on, a warning tone sounded, and the inner gate began to move. “Alyosha could have taken the whole building down if he wanted to.”

  “What stopped him, Boyko?”

  The gate was open. The beeping continued.

  “He was your son.”

  “That’s right. My son. Someone handed your daughter diamond earrings? They burned my Alyosha like bacon. Volsky sent your daughter to heaven? My son had to die to get there.”

  Nowek felt the cold flood in through the window. It cut right through his parka and lodged in his ribs like a knife. “I never told you Volsky arranged Galena’s visa.”

  “Listen,” said Boyko. “If the computer inside the plant doesn’t read my card in five minutes, an alarm goes off. Where is Boyko? You don’t think someone is watching? Someone is always watching. What do you want from me, Delegate Nowek?”

  “The truth. You didn’t leave Mirny when you could. Kristall is selling off diamonds to the cartel. They’re keeping the miners like prisoners. Your son wanted to do something about it. Volsky wanted to do something about it, too. You didn’t help your son. You made some bad choices. Maybe it’s time to make a good one.”

  “And cut my own throat?”

  “No,” said Nowek. “And stand by your son.”

  They didn’t move. The gate beeped impatiently. The green light flashed.

  Boyko took a long, long breath, and let it out slowly. He held up his hand, short, powerful fingers stretched straight and taut. They tensed, curled into a claw, a fist. Just when Nowek thought Boyko would hit him, the pit boss slammed his fist down onto the steering wheel so hard it made the van shake.

  “Fuck.”

  Boyko jammed his boot down onto the accelerator. The van skidded, gripped, jerked into motion. Instead of going straight to the ore plant, he turned right.

  “They’ll shoot me,” said Boyko. “Maybe first they will beat me. People work. We mine ore. We deliver diamonds. Not to Moscow . . .”

  “To Irkutsk. To Golden Autumn.”

  “On paper we’re rich. All those dollars, just waiting for us at the end of the rainbow. It’s all a fantasy. But when reality looks like this, fantasies look good. We know the system was invented to pick our pockets. We know we’re just the fools at the end of the line. What do we do? Nothing.”

  “Your son tried to do something.”

  “Yes, he did,” said Boyko. “And I’m proud.”

  A dirt road circled Fabrika 3. Security lights bathed every square meter of its skin. Curtains of snow billowed through the yellow beams. Cameras on poles peered down. But the island of light was surrounded by more than double fences. It was surrounded by darkness, too.

  They came around to the side of the building that was scorched. Boyko turned away from it, bounced off the road, onto the open marsh. The van lurched over uneven ground.

  It came at them unexpectedly, a ruined concrete building, small, barely a shack. There
was a metal door set in one side. The roof was partly collapsed under a pile of junked steel beams and crumpled metal. Boyko urged the van over a pair of deep ruts. The van tipped down, then up. The headlights swirled with confetti snow.

  They stopped on a giant wheel half sunk into the ground. Twenty blackened bolts orbited a charred cinder of an axle. A ladder, its rungs and railings distorted by intense heat, draped down to the ground from a platform that projected from a shattered, glassless cab. The number 7530 could still be read on its side.

  Not a junk pile. A burned Belaz.

  Boyko switched off the engine, but left the lights and wipers on.

  “Volsky told me that the miners were being murdered,” said Nowek. “The fire was no accident.”

  “It was a Zabastovka. A strike,” said Boyko, staring at the burned ore truck. The windshield wipers swept dry snow off in clouds. “It was nothing new. Someone would gripe, there would be some whispers. The next thing you knew, the complainers were gone. But Alyosha? He did things in his own way.”

  “With an ore truck?”

  “A computer. That’s what he was doing in the middle of the night. Sending messages. Organizing everything.”

  “By elektronka?”

  Boyko nodded. “In Mirny, computers are toys for children. Kirillin had no idea what they could be used for. It must have driven him crazy. He couldn’t read Alyosha’s messages. How could he stop them?”

  Nowek wondered how much of the five minutes they’d burned up, how much time they had left. “How many people joined the strike?”

  “The entire third shift from the mine, most of the workers here at the plant. The girls of the diamond line. Even some of the militia. They stopped work at the same moment. It was like a military exercise. The Belaz was waiting for them when their shift ended.”

  “At Mirny Deep.”

  “They were going to take their demands to the city. Right into the central square. Right up the steps of the fucking apparat if they had to. What could stop a Belaz?”

  “Kirillin.”

  “They were waiting for them.” Boyko switched the wipers off, then the lights. “It was an aviation flare. The bastard tossed it into the fuel. The first explosion burst the tank. Fuel was everywhere. The second explosion was the bad one.”