Hot Siberian

CHAPTER

1

JANUARY 12.

New Year’s Eve.

Josep Kislov was nearly as drunk as he’d ever been. It wasn’t, however, one of his usual hung-mouthed, grumbling, self-sorry drunks. He had reasons to feel good.

His tour of work at Aikhal was up. Thirty-two months straight, which made him eligible now for six months off. Most of those who came to work at the Aikhal installation didn’t stay on the job for that long a stretch. At the end of a year they were quick to take the forty-two days vacation they had coming. Siberia got to them. Its long, awful cold was as confining as a penitentiary, its white waste a depriving absence of color. Just knowing where they were gnawed at them. The Arctic Circle, three thousand miles from Moscow. That was how even those who had never lived or been in Moscow measured it. On the map of the Soviet Union they kept imposed in their minds they marked the blank Siberian spot that was Aikhal time and time again, and it made them feel like specks. They had to get away if only to reconfirm their self-importance.

Josep Kislov accepted that it was evidence of his superior mental muscle that he’d been able to endure the consecutive thirty-two. The fact would be impressive in his trudovaya knizhka, his workbook. Every working Soviet citizen is required to have such a book. It serves as both a job record and a ledger of deportment to be presented when changing from one job to another, often determining if the move will be up or down. Actually, Kislov no longer gave a damn what his workbook said about him.

For the time being his job classification had him as a sorter and preformer. Metal trays of diamond rough were brought to his workbench, about a thousand carats at a time. They had already been gone over for the larger stones, those removed. Kislov culled them further, sorted out and gathered aside in separate lots all the diamonds of two particular sizes, those which would best finish at a half carat and at one carat. Nothing smaller. He passed the remaining smaller rough on to another sorter.

Only a small percentage of the diamonds that came to him were well-formed octahedral crystals, obvious diamonds ready to be cut just as they were. The rest were lumpy or long, little irregular chunks that bore no apparent diamond shape. Kislov had to grind them down to the acceptable proportions, using a flat high-speed wheel coated with oil and diamond dust. When he’d first been assigned to this job a number of odd-shaped stones had gotten by him. As a result they got lodged in the channels inside the robotic arms of the faceting machines. It was like clogging an artery. The machines had to be shut off and partially disassembled. The men in charge of the faceting, the cutters, hated the bother. Especially since Kislov was new at the job, they blamed and cursed him, ridiculed him with exaggerations about how the blind, feeble woman whose job it was before had never let such a thing happen. The cutters were spoiled, Kislov thought, spoiled by their electronic machines. They simply wanted to program the machines, then stand around taking credit while the multiple robotic arms turned out precisely faceted, perfectly proportioned identical half-carat or full-carat diamonds by the blazing piles.

At the end of each workday Kislov had to hand in a report of the exact number of diamonds he’d sorted and preformed. He knew to the carat how many stones were contained in each of the trays he turned over to the cutters for finishing, exactly how many trays each week. At that time he hoped he’d somehow be promoted to cutter. It would have meant better pay and certain special privileges. He no longer held that ambition. Something far more rewarding was imminent, he believed.

As a sorter-preformer his monthly salary was four hundred roubles—doubled because of Siberia. He hadn’t gambled, but salted away most of it. Twenty-three thousand roubles were waiting for him in his account at the State Bank in Ulyanovsk. He was looking forward to saying a hello and an enjoyable goodbye to those roubles. He’d have a new car, at least a Zhiguli two-door, new clothes from hat to shoes, a careful haircut, and a silver cigarette case that he could snap open smartly. Altogether quite a different person. He wouldn’t stay long in Ulyanovsk. He didn’t like his city. It was dull, provincial, stagnant despite the perpetual flow of patriots who made pilgrimages there to gawk reverently at one preserved site or another, anywhere that Vladimir Ulyanov, later known as Lenin, was supposed to have done anything, whether it was read a schoolbook or wipe his ass. Kislov would remain in Ulyanovsk just long enough to satisfy his eyes with his only sister and to stroll enough up and down the main way, Goncharov Street, showing off his prosperity. Then he’d get a permit that would allow him to spend some time in Moscow. City paved with privileges, Moscow. There he would go to the Ministry of Foreign Trade and seek out the man of last September.

During the second week of September a group of officials from the ministry had come to the installation on business. That in itself wasn’t unusual. Such officials showed up every so often, Kislov had noticed. He had wanted to speak to one of them, but he couldn’t get up the nerve or, for that matter, settle on which, judging from sight, would most likely be receptive to what he had to say. Until last September and the one he had heard them call Nikolai. Kislov didn’t allow himself a second thought. As swift as the moment he convinced himself that this Nikolai, though younger than the other officials, was his man. He appeared important enough. The others spoke to him respectfully. And being young, he was no doubt ambitious. That would be an advantage.

Kislov saw his chance and took it when this Nikolai happened to be alone in an area just outside the office where the production records were kept. Kislov could not recall later whether or not he had physically maneuvered the man into that nearby alcove but he probably had pressured his elbow a bit to get him in there out of possible sight. Kislov checked to make sure no one was within hearing range, then blurted out in a sibilant whisper as much as he could of what he had to tell, the accumulated information that had become so valuable to him. For substantiation, but really not knowing whether or not they were in any way meaningful, Kislov gave him a paper with the three scribbled addresses on it, along with his name. Throughout, this Nikolai hadn’t said a word, kept his mouth and eyes absolutely unreadable. Kislov wished there had been some acknowledgment, any little sign, even a mere single nod would have been encouraging. All he had to draw from was the fact that this Nikolai had listened.

Four months had passed. Kislov hung on to the explanation that because of the seriousness of the matter and the large stakes that were involved it was something that couldn’t be rushed. It was being very methodically looked into. He thought it probable that some highly placed toes were being avoided. Anyway, come tomorrow morning he would be on the transportation tractor for 280 miles to Mirny, where he’d catch a plane to Yakutsk, the nearest city of size. There was no need for him to spend time in Yakutsk. He wasn’t sneaking out even one tiny diamond to sell there.

"S’Novim Goddom!" people were shouting, Happy New Year!

Kislov agreed and was prompted to return the greeting. He howled it, opened his mouth wider than necessary for the words, got redder in the face. Just about everyone at the installation was drunk, all two thousand and some. Since noon there had been the swilling of Georgian brandy and bottle after bottle of sivukha, that ugly, poorest man’s kind of vodka. Badly distilled, it punished the roof of the mouth and the throat and made the stomach clench, but it was cheap and delivered a fast drunk. Kislov had decided this night was too special for sivukha. He was already on his second bottle of spirt. Well distilled, practically pure Russian alcohol at 192 proof, spirt had the expensive kindness to slip past the palate and get all the way down before glowing like molten silver, sending wires of warmth to the most extreme capillaries. Kislov claimed that whenever he drank spirt the fire of his first swallow went right to his asshole.

He and the girl, Erika, had drunk it the proper way to begin with—from small glass tumblers filled only a drop or so short of overflowing. She drank it straight along with him, but requested water to follow it with, and after tossing down four like that she surreptitiously dumped them into her water glass, clear with clear.

This Erika.

Kislov had first taken notice of her an hour ago when he was seated alone at a table off to one side of the recreation area. She had on a happy green dress and black stockings. Kislov watched her pick her way through the standing crowd, saw her brush off advances. He had no reason to more than hope she was bound for him. He wasn’t attractive and knew it. He appeared older than forty-six. A narrow-shouldered thin man with a paunch. His features were too sharp and his face too long, and he couldn’t smile freely without revealing too much gum.

The way Erika had come and taken the chair opposite him at the table, hadn’t asked, just assumed, it occurred to Kislov that there was something of a whore in it. He didn’t want to think she was a whore, but, if so, she was better-looking than any he’d ever been with. Early twenties was Kislov’s guess, an Estonian or possibly a Pole. Either way, some anonymous World War II German in her. She had clean blond hair and good skin, and was tall, with a conscientiously exercised body. He searched for whore money in her eyes but saw only himself. She volunteered that she’d arrived at Aikhal only the day before and was going to be assigned as a sorter of finished goods. She’d admitted she’d had no experience. Kislov offered to give her some pointers on sorting, but she wasn’t interested, rather preferred easier talk about such things as how cold the weather got there, allowing Kislov time to get drunker.

Now, with still forty-some minutes remaining in the old year they’d left the din of the recreation area and were making their way along one of the extended passageways that led to and from the sleeping quarters. The passageway was like a straight tunnel, dimly lighted and windowless, constructed of welded steel sections, well insulated. Bare red bulbs just below ceiling level marked the location of emergency exit hatches.

Whether their destination was his bed or hers had not yet been decided. It was slow going. Kislov’s legs were unreliable. Every few steps his knees would either lock or buckle or one of his ankles would twist over. Erika was patient. She steadied him with an arm around. She was plenty strong enough. Kislov paused, used the wall for support while he swigged from the bottle of spirt. When Erika lifted the bottle to her mouth, she pretended, stoppered it with her tongue. They continued on, Kislov staggering, dependent upon her.

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.

Politically, the men at the top of the System were congenital conservatives. In their view anyone who was even left-handed did not deserve sympathy or trust. They made the Soviets pay dearly for the diamonds they needed. And whenever the Soviets complained, they upped the price. The Soviets resented being gouged but had no recourse. For the time being they could only grit and pay. The long run would be a different matter.

Soviet geologists went hunting. In, of all places, Siberia. They had noticed the geological similarities between certain areas of Yakut Siberia and the diamond-rich regions of South Africa. Hundreds of geologists tromped back and forth across the frozen Siberian wastes, but it was not until 1954 that a woman geologist named Larissa Popugaieva made the find. In the basin of the Vilyui River she came upon a kimberlite pipe, the sort of extinct volcanic outlet that contains the kind of rock in which diamonds are found. Soon after that initial discovery, numerous other diamond-bearing pipes were found in that Yakut area.

Larissa Popugaieva was declared a Hero of Socialist Labor and awarded the Order of Lenin.

However, finding diamonds was one thing, getting them out of the ground another. Particularly this Siberian ground. It was permafrost, constantly frozen as much as a mile deep, a result of the fierce climate that went to 80 below zero Fahrenheit. Summers there were as brief as a month and, as if overcompensating, presented sweltering temperatures that often exceeded 100 degrees. Such heat transformed the skin of the land into mushy green bogs above which mosquitoes clouded like thick, black, buzzing mists.

Mining had never been attempted under such adverse conditions. The extreme cold changed the molecular behavior of substances, turned lubricants into glue, caused rubber to become brittle as dry bone, and made many metals fracture into fragments when asked to take the merest strain. Machinery was paralyzed. The human machinery as well. Parts balked, muscles lost their elasticity, nostrils clogged with ice.

For eleven years, from 1955 to 1966, the Soviets hacked at the frozen ground, grubbed for their diamonds. Many who worked the open-cut mines died from hypothermia. Pneumonia was almost as common as head colds. Frostbite caused casualty after casualty. There were summer instances when men or women or couples strayed too far from camp. Seduced by the sun to remove their clothes, they were literally driven mad by mosquitoes.

Those who fared best in the frigid climate were the Chukchis. Genetically connected to the Alaskan Inuit and in appearance greatly resembling them, the Chukchis came from the easternmost, northernmost corner of the Soviet Union: the Bering Sea coast and Pegiyemel. They were the last natives of Siberia to submit to Russian rule. Fierce fighters, they held off the Russian army for over a century. While other workers at the mines wore fur-lined hats and gloves, the Chukchis went about with their heads and hands bare. It wasn’t that their skins were thicker or possessed an extra, anomalous thermal layer. They just thought of the cold differently. It was to them an old familiar enemy they would never totally give in to. The Russians enlisted as many Chukchis as they could to work the diamond mines, and paid them well. The difficulty was keeping them on the job. As soon as a Chukchi had earned enough to buy the number of reindeer or harpoon points he had in mind, he’d head for home, just walk off across the frozen waste as though he had no doubt of getting there.

Despite the many obstacles, the Soviets managed to dig up more than enough diamonds to meet their industrial and technological needs. In 1965, for example, Soviet production was a million carats. But it was, unquestionably, the hard way to go, and there were those high in the government who thought it a shame that fine, gem-quality diamonds were being used on the studded ends of oil-drilling bits.

It was proposed that an expenditure be made in rubles and manpower to improve the mining methods of the Siberian diamond fields. That the country should take full financial advantage of its diamond resources was the contention. The proposal caused some members of the Central Committee to set their jaws and shore up their minds. They were against having anything at all to do with diamonds. Staunch party hard-liners, they argued that diamonds by their very nature smacked of capitalism, that diamonds and exploitation of workers had always gone hand in hand. It would be hypocritical for Russia, in its role of model Marxist state, to be involved in such business. Instead, to meet its needs, could not Russia manufacture synthetic diamonds at a more reasonable cost?

The debate was bitter and drawn-out. The diehards were eventually thwarted. The Secretariat of the Central Committee approved. Next it was up to Soviet engineers.

What the engineers came up with was a solution that could not have been more simple nor more audacious. Inasmuch as the outside cold was such a physical drawback, then mine the diamonds from the inside. Enclose the mine and erect an installation directly above it, one that could house all the various phases of the diamond-mining process, from the excavation and crushing of the ore to the extracting and separating of the precious stones. The installation would also provide housing for the workers and administrative personnel, complete facilities.

It was asked: What about the permafrozen ground? How would that be dealt with?

With the exhaust heat of jet engines. The temperature and texture of the ground could be brought to a point where it would be normally workable.

In the process of recovering diamonds was it not necessary to wash the crushed ore? Where would such a huge quantity of water, a veritable lake of it, be kept without it freezing?

To answer that problem a new recovery method had been developed, one that used X-rays. As the mixture of crushed ore and diamonds was conveyed along a belt, it would be scrutinized under fluoroscopic light. The diamonds, because of their elemental makeup, would be easily distinguishable. They would show up in various bright shades of blue, green, yellow-orange, or icy white and could, therefore, easily be picked out.

A scale model of the proposed installation was shown to the members of the Central Committee Secretariat, so that they understood how extensive a project this would be. Its structures would cover an area of nearly thirty acres.

So everything would be under one roof, even whatever was needed for cutting and polishing the diamonds?

No. There’d been no allowance for those finishing phases. Why shouldn’t the cutting and polishing be done someplace with a more compatible climate, in Kiev or Minsk or possibly even some place as far south as Tbilisi?

Tbilisi? The Secretariat scoffed at the suggestion of mixing Georgians and diamonds, the Georgians with their well-founded reputation for, to put it tactfully, sleight of hand. The unanimous decision of the Secretariat was that the finishing of the diamonds should be done on the spot. The Siberian remoteness would in itself serve as a security measure. Employees would not be going in and out every day the way they did at other workplaces. Mind, at some regular factories in Moscow and Leningrad the pilfering rate ran as high as 10 percent. Such wrongdoing, though not sanctioned, was tolerated, since it increased the workers’ satisfaction with their jobs. However, to tempt them with diamonds would be a different matter altogether, actually unfair.

Agreed.

Approved.

The installation at Aikhal got off the ground.

Literally off the ground. The entire thing, except for the mine-shaft enclosure, had to be constructed on pilings that extended twelve feet above the surface. Enormous steel beams were sunk twenty feet deep into the permafrost and held in place by the almost instantaneous freezing of the slush that was filled in around them. More solid than concrete. The pilings were essential to keep human-generated heat from melting the ground and making the installation sink. It was not uncommon in northern Siberia to see wooden houses sunk down into the tundra to their windowsills.

The enormous energy and millions of rubles the Soviets invested in the Aikhal installation were well spent. In 1971, its first year of operation, it came up with two million carats of diamonds, of which 37 percent were gem-quality stones. Soon thereafter, other installations similar to Aikhal were built in and around the Vilyui River Basin. However, Aikhal continued to be the richest deposit. By 1975 Aikhal was producing five million carats a year and showing no signs of depletion. Unlike most diamond-bearing pipes, those at Aikhal seemed to yield more as they were dug deeper.

Typically, the Soviets kept their production figures secret. Why should they let anyone know they were stockpiling? In 1977, the United States Bureau of Mines estimated diamond production of the entire world at just under forty million carats, or almost nine tons. Only slightly more than 25 percent of this production was said to be of gem quality. Little did the bureau know. The Soviets could have tacked on another fifteen million carats. Three and a half tons. The Russians were up to their beards in diamonds.

The old axiom that says timing can be everything was never more fitting.

The period during which the Russians were enjoying such success with their Siberian mines coincided almost to the very year with the time when the System lost its control over its diamond holdings in Africa. By then, 1978, Rupert Churcher had been at the head of the System for six years. While coping with Africa he’d kept an eye on the Russians and was aware of the small amounts of high-quality diamond rough they were bringing to the market every once in a while. Churcher did not know for certain what quantity of such rough the Russians were capable of producing, but he put stock in the formidable figures that the System’s security people came up with through its informants. At first the System had viewed the Russian diamonds as merely a potential threat, one that the System with its stranglehold on the marketing aspect of the trade could easily cope with. There had even been some talk early on about profiting from the situation by allowing the Russians to market some of its goods through the System. That met with graven resistance from the board of directors. The very idea! it had huffed.

Then came the African problems and a change of heart.

If the System was to survive, an affiliation between it and the Russians would have to be. Churcher, however, wasn’t about to expose his wounds and beg mercy. He tried some finagling.

He promoted the rumor that an important diamond find had been made in northern Australia. It was reported to be a huge field that could be easily and quite inexpensively mined. What was more, the gem yield percentage was phenomenally high, higher than had ever been gotten out of South Africa or even out of Namibia.

This blessed, bountiful Australian find was, of course, a feint. There was some truth to it. There were diamonds in northern Australia. The System had known that for ages. However, it had also known that the diamonds found there were mainly small and of inferior quality. What Churcher hoped was that all the to-do over the Australian find would flush the Russians, get them to come out and ask the System if it would be so kind as to help market their diamonds. The System would, with perfectly measured reluctance, condescend.

The Soviet Minister of Foreign Trade was Grigori Savich. He didn’t take the System’s bait. He just nosed around it and eyed it carefully.

Churcher casually extended an invitation to Savich to come to London for a friendly chat.

Savich told Churcher to come to Moscow and talk business.

Churcher went.

The Soviets did not mention how the System had made them pay dearly for diamonds right after the war, but no doubt they kept it in mind. They politely permitted Churcher to say his opening piece about how the System with its years of marketing experience and its established setup could be put to profitable use by the Soviets. That was true, and the Soviets agreed. They were most cordial. They agreed to everything up to the point of terms. When it came to stating terms, Churcher was interrupted by Savich. From Savich’s unequivocal tone, Churcher gathered that the Soviets knew the System was negotiating from weakness. He just assumed his soft face and nodded.

The deal was cut. All the way to its small print.

The Russians would from then on supply the System with the diamonds it needed for the world market.

The System was saved. Just a few months short of having to fold.

It was never publicized that the System and the Soviets had become such cozy business bedfellows. That would have been bad for business, especially damaging in the West on the retail level. Why give the men in the United States, for instance, a political excuse for not buying a diamond bauble or two for their lady loves? Instead, the System saw to it that Russian diamonds in general were disparaged, said to be on the small side, to be rather undesirably grayish and difficult to cut because they were brittle. Everyone, even the best-informed diamondaires in the trade, bought the scenario.

The Soviets and the System.

Over the years their secret collaboration prevailed.

Rupert Churcher prevailed.

However, on that Friday afternoon in May in the late 1980s, as Churcher studied himself in the mirror above the commode in his private lavatory off his private office on the fourth floor at 11 Harrowhouse, he had doubts that he would last long enough to get his knighthood. Yesterday the Africans, today the Russians, he mentally complained. It was a dreadful much. Just moments ago he had excused himself and left the three Russians seated in the special boardroom, the smaller, more elegant room normally reserved for when the senior members of the board, such as Sir Hubert Brightman and Sir Nelson Askwith, got together for an insiders’ chat. Churcher had excused himself because he’d felt he was on the edge and it was giving way. Nature calls, he’d said with a casual shrug and taken this breather.

Churcher broke his gaze in the mirror, made his eyes avoid his eyes. He glanced down and was astonished to see his fly undone, a portion of his starched shirttail poking out. He didn’t recall having unzipped. Hell, he didn’t have to piss. That had only been an excuse. Was his mind that far off? He shook his head as if that might rearrange his thoughts to a more comfortable order. He did up his fly and decided on a splash of Wellington. Sometimes his spirit could be lifted by a little thing like that. Wellington from Trumper’s on Curzon Street had for many years been Churcher’s cologne of preference.

He twisted the tiny gold crown-shaped cap from the cologne bottle. The cap slipped from his fingers, dropped to the marble floor, and came to rest a few inches to the left of the base of the toilet bowl. When Churcher bent down to retrieve it he got a close-up look at that white porcelain convenience into which he defecated each morning. He took such distasteful proximity as another personal infliction. Fuck the Wellington. It had betrayed him. He screwed the cap back on and left the lavatory, went through his office and down the deeply carpeted main hall to the special boardroom.

For some reason it was set in his mind that the three Russians would be exactly as he’d left them. Not fixed like a tableau but still seated in their places at the oval conference table. He found Grigori Savich and Nikolai Borodin standing at the window, their backs to the room. The third, Vadim Vysotsky, was also up; he had the glass-fronted bookcase open and seemed to be mildly amused, perhaps by the fact that the deckled pages of the well-patined edition of Thackeray he was thumbing through had never been cut. Evidently Vysotsky had looked into other things; he’d helped himself to a Havana from the seventeenth-century carved ebony box on the sidetable. While Vysotsky puffed away and nearly obscured his entire