Hot Siberian (2 page)

A short way farther on Erika maneuvered him off to the side again, so his back was against the wall. He slung his arms loosely around her. She reached down and took hold of him through his trousers, kneaded his genitals. He fumbled for her breasts, roughly. She glanced down the passageway in both directions and determined that they were alone. She pressed her body hard against his, ground him with herself so tight that his hands and the bottle were pinned between them.

A pair of mechanical clicks were followed by a brief hiss.

It was the opening mechanism of the emergency hatch, the surrender of its pressurized rubber seal.

Kislov felt as though his body were passing through the wall and then there was the panelike barrier where the inside and outside temperatures fought, a difference of 140 degrees. He fell out the hatch back first and landed in the snow ten feet below.

At once he looked up to the open hatch. He saw the lighted rectangular shape of it diminish and disappear as Erika pulled the hatch door closed. The frigid air sobered him considerably, cleared away most of the distortions of his drunk. What a stupid fucking thing, he thought as he got to his feet. Thank God Erika was hurrying to get help. But why had she closed the hatch? On the other hand, what good having it open? It was way above his reach, and she couldn't reach down to him. Besides, when they came to get him it would be by way of one of the regularly used ramps. Where was the nearest ramp? From there all he could see was the huge steel pilings that supported the superstructure of the installation. The pilings in a line one after another, uninterrupted. He shouldn't go searching for a ramp, he decided. Not to panic. He'd be more quickly found and taken in if he remained where he was. He hugged himself tightly and tucked his hands into his armpits.

The temperature was seventy below zero. He was wearing only felt boots, trousers made mainly of acrylic fiber, and a flannel shirt. Not even thermal underwear. They'd better hurry, a shiver warned him, a pervasive biting shiver. He glanced to the sky, blamed it for such severe cold. The moon was lopsided and neon-bright, causing a blue cast on the snow. On the rise about a mile off he could easily see the dark departure that was the forest. He could even make out some of the high-reaching trunks of pines. It was from there that the wolves came for the scraps of meat that were thrown out for them. The smell of the meat brought the wolves beneath the installation so they could be shot from above. A wolf pelt was worth one hundred rubles. Kislov scanned the expanse of snow and saw only snow. He wasn't meat, he told himself, and tried to put the wolves out of mind.

The air was so still and cold he could hear the breaths that came from him crackle as the moisture particles in it froze. His breathing was shallow; the lower portion of his lungs had defensively closed off. He couldn't define his toes when he tried to work them. At first his nose and ears had burned from the cold, but now they were deadened. He remembered having once seen a babushka in Yakutsk whose ears had been amputated because they'd been frozen. He sure as hell wanted to keep his ears. Where was Erika? Were they all so drunk she couldn't make them listen? How long had he been out there? He looked at his watch and saw ten minutes to twelve. He realized the steel case of the watch was stuck frozen to his skin. Fuck this, he thought, he wasn't going to just wait there. He'd find one of the ramps and beat upon a hatch and someone would hear. He took a step. It hurt to move. He was cold to the marrow.

The
spirt
.

His eyes caught upon the bottle where it had landed in the snow no more than a reach away. He'd forgotten about the
spirt
. Of course, the
spirt
would help save him. He picked up the bottle. About half was left in it. His fingers had difficulty unscrewing the cap. He was trembling so he had to use both hands to get the mouth of the bottle to his lips. He took one, two, three, four fast swallows and another for good measure.

The
spirt
, because it was almost pure alcohol, hadn't frozen. However, while it had remained liquid, it had become the same temperature as the atmosphere. Minus seventy degrees. The moment it touched the tissues of Kislov's esophagus it froze them. Working like some cryogenic substance it immediately froze the mucous membranes of his stomach, the walls, blood vessels, and nerves of his stomach. In the adjacent veins and arteries, the vena cava, aorta, and others, it turned his blood to ice.

Within seconds, Josep Kislov was dead, frozen from the inside out.

CHAPTER

2

FOUR MONTHS LATER IN LONDON
.

Rupert Churcher gazed into his Régence giltwood mirror and detested what he saw. According to his disposition on this day his jowls were decidedly more pronounced than they'd been just last week. There they were, to the left and right of his mouth, swagging like portiers. Where was the gentle demeanor that had been his stock in trade, the collaborative pleasant expression of his features? He used to be able to conceal any amount of cunning behind them. But now … well, just look at his eyes! The whites of them were not a crisp, guileless white as they'd once been, no longer helpful in outlining the blue-gray sincerity of his irises. His whites had soured, become creamy, appeared bruised. Such debility could only be chalked up to how much of his well-being he had given to his position. Literal loss of face while striving to save face for the Central Selling System.

Yesterday, Thursday, had been a fair example of these trying times. That odoriferous tribal chief from Botswana and his retinue showing up without notice. The whole black bunch of them strutting right in and insisting they be brought up to him here in his private office on four. What gall, the way they'd dumped a basket of rough in the middle of his Kirman and announced its price.

Back in the better days they wouldn't have been allowed past the ground-floor guard. As things were, he, Churcher, the very head of the Central Selling System, had chosen to choke down his indignation. Oh, how much he'd been tempted to tell those smelly monkeys to pick up their diamonds and get out. Instead, he'd stood there and suffered them, looked down at that sizable heap of rough and put on his grateful face. It was either that or have those diamonds go to the outside market. Too many stones were finding their way from Africa to Tel Aviv. The Israelis were slippery, required watching. They'd like nothing better than to play monopoly, beat the System at its own game. Rather than give the Israelis the advantage of even another carat it was shrewd of him to toady a bit as he had yesterday. Besides, those Botswanan diamonds were well worth the asking price, would bring the System a tidy profit. However, back in better days the System would have set the price and profited more. Naturally, this Botswana chief, like all the others who came toting to London, had wanted cash. So Pulver and a couple of Security Section men had to go to all the bother of fetching the money from the bank. While that was being done, the counting and all, he'd offered tea, and afterward he'd told Pulver to have the damn cups, saucers, and spoons sterilized. Pulver had made the sardonic suggestion that perhaps the firm would do well to invest in a hospital autoclave.

Times had indeed changed, Churcher thought. A frequent thought. His predecessor, Harold Meecham, was fortunate to have retired when he did in 1972. Churcher recalled how delighted he'd been with his appointment to director, the ultimate promotion. Proud as a prince of it. Africa hadn't seemed like so much of a problem then. There'd been some boiling up here and there, in Namaqualand, Zaire, and elsewhere, but nothing that the System couldn't cool down with well-placed and reasonable payoffs.
Dash
, as the natives so aptly called it.

Who would have thought, until it was obvious and too late, that old, subservient Africa would take to presiding over itself so seriously? In some of the new African nations the System's representatives, buyers, mine managers, and so on, had been lucky to get out with their hearts still in their chests. A few fellows stationed really deep in the bush had never again been heard from.

The diamonds belong to the ground, the ground belongs to the country, the country belongs to the people, the diamonds belong to the people
was the sort of empiric Marxist babble one was forced to hear. In the same breath the System was informed that the diamond-mining leases it held were invalid, since they'd been issued by officials no longer in power. As well, unwritten agreements, honorable understandings that had been kept and taken for granted since as far back as the early 1900s, suddenly stood for nothing. The slickly structured, neatly overseen way the System had extracted diamonds from Africa was in shambles.

Could it be restored?

The System believed so, Churcher particularly. He personally went back into Africa with homburg in hand, hoping to knot new, even tighter ties with the new leaders of the various African nations. With hardly a chew the System swallowed its pride and didn't give one damn how transparent were its motives. Straight-facedly contrite, Churcher admitted regret for the System's part in the inequities of the past and vowed there would be no such abuses in the future. An accumulation of things had simply gotten out of hand on the local level and would be rectified. Good that they'd been called to mind, Churcher said.

Over the punishment of hundreds of horribly concocted cocktails and countless plates of inedible food, Churcher and other emissaries of the System never let go by a chance to express political empathy. And finally, in the privacy of those whom they believed to be the right company, they conveyed how eager the System was to make substantial amends, the emphasized word being, of course, “substantial.”

The fat Swiss bank accounts that the System opened were intended to secure for it diamond-working arrangements in perpetuity. However, no sooner were millions deposited on behalf of the solidly perched leader of an African nation but there would be a coup, an overthrow, an unscheduled election, an assassination, or whatever, and, that quickly, an altogether different regime would have to be financially indulged. It occurred repeatedly. The outstretched palms multipled! Before long a frightful number of ingrate African exiles were way out of place, schussing the slopes of Gstaad, dipping in the waters of Marbella, signing for everything at the Carleton in Cannes, and otherwise living it up at the System's expense.

It was maddening.

The financial drain mattered to the System, but what struck home harder was the prospect that Africa was helplessly out of hand and was likely to remain that way. Mind, diamonds would always be showing up from Zaire, Tanzania, and the like; however, they could not be reliably expected. Such an unpalatable realization! The System had dominated the world diamond market since the turn of the century. Ever devising, ever grabby, it had managed to increase its position to the extent that its hold was imposed over 90 percent of the diamonds that were pulled out of the earth each year. The methods it chose to market those diamonds could not have been more dictatorial.

Ten times each year the System summoned some three hundred diamond dealers to its headquarters, located at 11 Harrowhouse Street, London EC 2. They were virtually the same most important three hundred dealers each time, as only rarely was a new name added to the list. To be so included by the System was a privilege and not merely a matter of prestige, for except in the worst of times, to a dealer it meant sure profit.

In the trade these gatherings in London were called “sights.” The dealers who were notified to attend were called “sightholders.” Ostensibly, the reason for conducting a sight was to allow sightholders to examine the diamond rough that the System had decided to sell them. However, the dealers were not permitted to pick over their packets, take certain stones and leave others, and pay only for what they took. They had to accept the entire packet or none at all, the bad along with the better, exactly as the System had proportioned it. Nor could a sightholder quibble about price. He might wince, and once in a while even dare aloud some lighthearted comment pertaining to cost, but he made damn sure his tone was unmistakably lighthearted. A troublesome sightholder, one who failed to abide by the System's criteria, would be excluded from the list. Set adrift, so to speak, put out on his own to scrounge up diamonds wherever he could, a time-consuming, quite often chancier alternative.

The average price the System put on its packets was one million dollars. Three hundred sightholders paid a million each ten times every year.

What it came to was three billion dollars.

Little wonder the System went to so much bother and expense in its attempt to get things back to working order in Africa. Control was imperative. Control of supply enabled control of price.

The System continued to hold its sights on schedule, drawing the diamonds it needed for them from its backup inventory. The sightholders had no idea that anything unusual was going on. The evident turmoil in Africa did not seem to mean a thing. The System was as implacable and efficient as ever. Any rumors that it was having difficulties were swiftly evaporated by its normal arrogance.

For nearly two years, from late 1976 to well into 1978, the System deliberated what move it should make. It couldn't keep up the front much longer; its reserves were close to depletion. Soon it would be forced to cancel sights and let the diamond market, not so figuratively speaking, stone itself to death. The only other alternative was something the System had been putting off like a maiden keeping her legs crossed, and that was to seek rescue from the only possible direction.

The Soviet Union.

After World War II the Soviets were in desperate need of diamonds. They could not rebuild industrially nor hope to keep up technologically without them. Diamonds were essential to drilling oil, making steel, building rockets. With practically no diamond production of their own the Soviets were forced to buy from the West, from the System.