The Ice Curtain

by Robin White

  Kirillin watched in horror as the plane took off, then banked gently to the south. “Your men have failed!”

  “No! Look!” General Stepanov pointed. The Yak was still in a banked turn, no longer climbing. The angle grew steeper, steeper, until the wings went vertical. Vertical, then beyond.

  The nose dropped, lower, lower. Straight down. An instant later the Yak buried its nose in the snow.

  Kirillin saw the plane become a sphere of white fire, the fuselage vanishing like a dry log pushed into the eager, open mouth of Hell.

  Chapter 30

  The Spark

  Nowek woke up, unsure of where he was and what had happened. He rolled over on a bare wooden plank until he faced a cement wall. It could have been his cell in Gagarinsky 3, except the graffiti was different. Instead of TECHNOROCK RULES!, someone had written, simply, FUCKED. Nowek understood the sentiment. He sat up and looked around.

  They’d taken his belt, his boots and socks, the towel Larisa had used for a sling. Even the bandages were unwrapped and paper-thin gauze applied over the wounds in his arm. It was encouraging. He wasn’t going to be found dead in his cell. It meant they had something more long term in mind.

  Boots scraped down concrete stairs outside his cell. Nowek sat on the plank, waiting, listening. They’d taken his watch, too, as though he might hang himself with it. It had to be dawn, the traditional time for prison departures. To a camp of corrective labor, to a hangman’s noose. With luck, to Moscow. With even more luck, the elektronka he’d sent last night had been read by someone, the right someone, and they would be at the airport, waiting. But then he thought, Luck? No. Hoping for even some of that put Nowek far into the zone of miracles.

  He heard the rattle of a lock, the slide of a steel bolt. The tiny window in the door slid open, revealing two eyes. It snapped shut. The door opened.

  A militia sergeant. He’d brought handcuffs and a friend with a rifle. “It’s time,” he said. “You’re going on a trip.” He was short, thick of neck, small of eye.

  “Where to?” When there was no reply, Nowek asked, “What about my colleague? His name is Chuchin. He was with me when—”

  “All your friends are dead. Their plane was shot down last night.” He held out the steel rings. “Kirillin’s waiting. Let’s go.”

  Plane? It couldn’t be Levin. His message said that he was in a hospital, only accidentally alive. Had he sent someone else? Nowek held out both hands, the steel cuff clinked around his wrists.

  Up the stairs, through the entrance, and out to a waiting van. Outside, a pale, frigid dawn. The hairs in his nostrils froze. Nowek guessed it was minus ten. His paper prison slippers kicked up powdery snow. The eastern horizon was frosted white, like warm breath on cold glass. He climbed into the van. The rear door slammed shut, and they were moving.

  The convoy departed from the rear of Kristall’s headquarters. Two jeeps in the lead, followed by the surviving snow tank, its flanks bearing scars of last night’s battle. Two more jeeps fell in behind and, last, the company van with Hock, Larisa, and her young daughter inside. Liza and her stuffed bear were both wrapped in a cocoon of blankets.

  As the little convoy approached the airport, Larisa saw the blasted, smoldering snow tank, the cratered walls of the terminal, shell casings strewn like bright coins. A swath of snow painted in frozen red.

  Kristall’s white, blue, and gold Yak-40 had been pulled out of its hangar. The runway was cleared. Snipers were on the roof of the terminal, and armed militia formed a cordon sanitaire around the plane itself. The flight crew was on board making final checks.

  Kirillin paced the ramp with a handheld radio in his fist and with the commanding general of the Mirny militia on short tow.

  A patrol had been sent to inspect the wreckage of Yuri’s plane. They returned to report total annihilation. The plane was just a scorched crater filled with charred, shredded aluminum so sharp a touch drew blood.

  The surviving snow tank rumbled up to the Yak. Kirillin waved the cold, unhappy militia aside. It backed into position. Kirillin gave the order, the steel ramp dropped.

  The cold air transmitted a kind of electric tension, though even a close observer would see nothing more than men in winter coats carrying brown boxes up into the Yak’s baggage hold. The boxes weren’t especially noteworthy. A bakery might send you home with a cake in one. Cardboard, split at the middle and lined with foam. Each box contained nearly seven million dollars in gem-quality diamonds.

  One million carats. Two hundred kilos by Mirny’s measure, four hundred forty pounds of diamonds by London’s reckoning. Thirty cake boxes to the men who had to carry them, and nearly two hundred million dollars by the most widely accepted measurement system of them all.

  The boxes were stacked in an armored vault in the Yak’s tail. The interior quickly filled to capacity. The last box was gently placed, the door swung closed, the locking bar turned, the combination pad spun and scrambled.

  The snow tank rumbled away. Hock led Larisa up the ramp. Liza had one hand clamped on her mother’s long coat, the other clutched her brown bear. She wore a blanket around her shoulders like a shawl.

  Larisa got Liza settled into her smooth, gray leather seat. She looked out through the porthole.

  Kirillin was staring up at her from the ramp below. He turned his back on her.

  “He can’t stand the thought of someone leaving,” she said to Hock. “He can’t stand losing control of even one person.”

  “Kirillin’s got more to worry about than you, my dear.”

  “You said he wanted to talk to me. What about?”

  Hock hung up his overcoat and blazer in the closet and sat down beside her. “He shut the city down yesterday. Microwave. Satellite. Phone lines. Just before everything went dead a call was routed through the exchange to a number in Irkutsk.” Hock smoothed Liza’s hair. “It came from your telephone.”

  One of the pilots pulled the forward cabin door shut. The rear ramp was still down. Two of the jeeps flanked the plane, ready to escort it to the runway.

  “That’s ridiculous. I don’t know anyone in Irkutsk.”

  “It went to a computer. It was an e-mail message in code. Kirillin couldn’t read it.” Hock took Liza’s chin. “You didn’t send any elektronka last night, did you?”

  “No,” she said, then moved away from his hand.

  He looked up at Larisa. “Kirillin hasn’t a clue what was in that message. I told him it had to be Nowek.”

  “I fixed him lunch. I didn’t give him a computer.”

  He patted her knee, letting his hand linger. “Nowek was wounded in Mirny Deep. Someone patched him up. Not in the mine. No medical supplies were missing. And where was Nowek found? Right down the street from your flat. Kirillin’s not entirely stupid.”

  “Mirny’s a village. Everything happens near everything else.”

  “The world is like that, too. The diamond world.”

  “What’s going to happen to Nowek?” She asked the question, wondering whether she really wanted to know.

  “You didn’t know? He’s coming with us.”

  “To London?”

  Hock chuckled. “To Moscow. The police want him.” He peered at her face. “Something wrong, Larisa?”

  “What could be wrong?”

  “Quite a lot, depending on what Nowek says about last night. Do you have any idea who helped him?”

  “Why should I know anything about it?”

  “If you do, you’d better tell me now. You see, as far as the diamond world goes, London and Moscow are the same. Loyalty is rewarded. Disloyalty is punished. Severely.”

  “Eban,” she said, moving close to him, “how can you even think I’ve been disloyal?”

  “I’d hate to. You remember that little story I told at the hotel? About the UN fellow and the spear?”

  She sat up straight. “Eban!”

  “Most of what I said was true. Phillipe was working for the UN, only he was supposed to be working for us.
Instead, he was sending reports out to them on private matters. Diamonds for weapons deals. Where war diamonds go to get a clean pedigree. Which African warlord was in our pay, how much he was getting. Very sensitive stuff these days. The cartel could hardly sit by and allow it to go on. Phillipe was setting a terrible example.”

  “You said the cartel doesn’t operate that way.”

  “But they hire people who do. The rebels taking him for ransom was the one bit that wasn’t entirely accurate. Oh, they ran him up the pole and stuck a great spear up his bum. But you see,” said Hock, leaning close, lowering his voice so that Liza wouldn’t hear, “we paid them to do it.”

  Larisa cupped her hands over Liza’s ears. “Stop!”

  “I remember when I first joined the company. They gave us our orientation down in Pretoria. Standard stuff. But at the end, there was a videotape. The diamond world, how the pieces work, how the market is maintained. Why it’s a damned good thing all round that it is. When it was done, the screen faded, and up came six words: NOW YOU ARE ONE OF US. It gave you the shivers. Like seeing the words of God up there in black and white.”

  His eyes, one green, one blue, seemed to belong on different faces. “I hope you slept soundly last night, Larisa. Soundly and alone. Because if something awkward does come up, Kirillin won’t be your problem. Neither will Moscow. We will.”

  Nowek was led to the tail of the Yak and through the cordon of militiamen. Kirillin was waiting at the boarding ramp.

  “There you are,” he said. “The Siberian Delegate. Didn’t I say you’d be leaving on the first flight out?”

  Nowek’s feet were numb with cold. “You have remarkable powers of prediction, Mister Director.”

  “It’s a shame you didn’t listen to me when you had the chance. But crime has a way of catching up with the criminal.”

  “That’s my hope, too. I wonder. When it happens here, where will you run? Moscow? London? The Cayman Islands?”

  Kirillin’s mahogany cheeks colored a deeper shade. “No one is running. I’ll be here, toiling shoulder to shoulder with the men and women of Kristall.”

  “I’d reconsider that if I were you. The last time your miners demanded what was fair, you had them burned. Now you’re shipping a million carats of diamonds to the cartel and has anyone been paid?” Nowek looked at the stony faces of the militia. “Have any of you seen one dollar from your overseas account?”

  Kirillin took a deep breath that flagged white in the cold. “You’ve caused enough trouble, Nowek. We have no use here for troublemakers. The Moscow militia is anticipating your arrival. I see no reason to delay them.” He turned on his heel and left.

  The sergeant urged Nowek up the ramp and into the Yak. A curtain was pulled across the aisle, isolating the main cabin. The tail was blocked off by a massive steel door. A vault. Two seats were to the left. A galley and baggage bin were to the right. The aisle was narrow. There were no windows. Nowek sat down, glad to be out of the cold. The sergeant unlocked one cuff, then refastened it to the rail under Nowek’s seat.

  The engines lit off with a whine, a whoosh, a rumble. Nowek felt a jerk, and the Yak began to move, flanked by two jeeps.

  Kirillin retreated into the militia jeep with the commander of the Mirny militia, General Stepanov. An AK-74 Kalashnikov was mounted on a rack behind the front seats.

  “Any trouble?” he asked the militia officer.

  “Boyko. He’s not like the others.”

  “The miners will understand what was going on. Boyko was under stress after what happened last summer. He was found with contraband,” said Kirillin, slowly, deliberately, as though speaking to Stepanov in dialect. “The miners will wonder how much money Boyko pocketed to betray us. What did he have that I don’t? Soon, that’s all they’ll remember.” Kirillin watched the jet move out onto the runway. He picked up a microphone and the transmit key. “Mobile One. Move out now. If you see anything, even a rabbit, shoot it.”

  “Mobile One, understood.”

  “Mobile Two, park halfway down the runway and off to the side. Keep your eyes open. Your directive is the same.”

  “Mobile Two.”

  The lead jeep sprinted ahead. When it reached the end, it circled around to face down the runway. The trailing jeep stopped, moved off to the side, climbed a snowbank, and parked.

  The Yak, heavy with fuel, trundled to the end of the runway and pivoted. It moved forward slightly to keep its jet blast from blowing Mobile One into the weeds.

  “Kristall Six,” said Kirillin. “This is Control. You’re cleared for departure.”

  The pilot checked the engine instruments one last time, then said, “Flaps?”

  “Set.”

  “Speed brakes?”

  “Stowed.”

  The runway stretched straight ahead, black between two hills of plowed snow. The pilot put his boots on the toe brakes, then placed his right hand across the three yellow throttle knobs. “I hope the militia enjoys the heat,” he said as he started to push them forward. The engine needles surged around their dials. The three turbofans moaned, crackled, roared. The Yak began to roll.

  And came to a sudden stop.

  “Get your feet off the brakes,” said the captain.

  “They are,” the copilot answered, confused. He looked up. “Captain!” A red light blinked on the overhead panel. The boarding ramp at the tail was open.

  Kirillin saw the yak move forward, then stop. “Binoculars.”

  Stepanov handed him a pair. Kirillin trained them out onto the jet, furiously spinning the focus knob.

  “There’s a man down by the nose wheel!” Kirillin was reaching for the radio when a white flash erupted behind the jet, a boil of orange flame rose up, and a heavy concussion rumbled through the frigid air.

  Yuri watched pieces of Mobile One rise, then scatter and tumble like dry leaves before the jet’s hot exhaust. A fender, a roof, a wheel. A man. The chock he’d thrown in front of the nose wheel was slipping. Three jet engines at takeoff power was more than it could stop. The rear ramp was down. Aslan swarmed up. Chuchin was next, then Bashir. Finally, Mahmet, still firing at his AK, waved at Yuri to come now.

  The engines were thundering, their blast blew the smoke from the rocketed jeep away in a hurricane of heat. Yuri yanked the stiff nylon rope he’d tied to the steel chock. The Yak needed no more encouragement. The jet started to roll.

  “Get us out there!” Kirillin shouted. He threw the glasses down and snatched the radio. “Mobile Two! Intruders on the runway! Stop them!” He yanked the Kalashnikov out of its rack.

  Stepanov jammed his boot down on the gas pedal. The tires slipped, skidded, then caught. The Volga shot ahead.

  The men of Mobile Two had seen white-clad men top the mound of plowed snow on the far side of the runway. They’d seen one of them dive under the nose of the Yak. Given another half second they might have been able to bring them under fire. But in that half second, Mobile One vanished, and now they had more important things to consider.

  Automatic weapons fire erupted. Bullets spatted angrily against their jeep’s thin sides. Short rounds burrowed into the snowbank. The air was filled with invisible droplets of death. They did what anyone would do given the circumstances. They dove and rolled down the far side of the bank, then crawled away as fast as their knees and elbows would take them.

  The jet was rolling, faster, faster. The airspeed indicator came awake. Close to flying speed. The pilot was leaving whatever had blown up behind. He pressed the transmit button on his yoke. “Mirny Control, this is Kristall Six! What’s going on?”

  But there was no one able to tell him. At least, not before he heard a shout from the rear cabin, followed by the hammering staccato of an assault rifle firing on full automatic.

  The militiamen of Mobile Two cautiously poked their heads up above the snowbank. The shooting had stopped. The Yak was hurtling down the runway, dragging its tail ramp, trailing a stream of sparks.

  Kirillin was screaming over
the radio: “Shoot! Shoot them!”

  Yes, but who were they supposed to shoot?

  The Yak roared by, accelerating.

  General Stepanov’s black Volga fell in behind. Kirillin was leaning out the window with a rifle in his hands. It was a race, and the car was swiftly losing ground.

  Yuri was only halfway up the ramp. It was grinding itself into oblivion as the speeding jet dragged it across the runway.

  “Let’s go, boss!” shouted Mahmet.

  Yuri reached up to grab Mahmet’s hand when, with a sharp pop, a ragged hole appeared next to his head. Then another. He crouched down and looked back. A series of white puffs erupted from the side of a black Volga that was chasing them. He felt something cold and wet flood over his face. He screamed. He’d been shot.

  “Boss!” Mahmet tried to grab Yuri’s arm but his hand slipped. The Chechen took hold of the collar of his white snowsuit and hauled Yuri up the ramp like a freshly caught fish.

  The jet’s nose wheel broke ground, and the world tilted. He slid back down toward the open ramp. Something stopped him. A foot, clad in a paper slipper. He looked up. It was Nowek.

  Kirillin shifted his fire to the engines, aiming into their hot exhausts.

  “They’re taking off!” Stepanov shouted.

  With our diamonds. Kirillin couldn’t stop them from taking off. But he might be able to keep them from getting very far. He pulled the old clip out and rammed a fresh one in.

  He swung the black snout of his Kalashnikov to the wings and emptied the whole clip into the fuel tanks. Kerosene billowed out in a white mist. Oily drops spattered the Volga’s windshield.

  Yuri was thrashing around as though he’d been riddled with bullets. Chuchin didn’t know what he was screaming about. There was no blood he could see, just a lot of jet fuel covering his oversuit. Chuchin tried to get around him to pull the lanyard and close the ramp, but Yuri kept rolling in the way. He reared back and kicked him, hard. Yuri was on his feet in a flash, fists balled and furious.

  Chuchin shoved him back against a metal box attached to the cabin wall. It was hinged, and now it flapped open. An emergency kit, filled with bandages, ointments, aspirin. Three red cylinders fell out with the rest.