The Ice Curtain Read Online Free

plane. The boarding stairs were blocked by a wet, grim stewardess who allowed the Siberian Delegate and his assistant in ahead of the herd.
    â€œPetrov has a lot of power,” said Nowek as they stooped to enter the musty cabin. “You don’t become chairman of the State Diamond Committee without friends.”
    â€œNo. Petrov has
collaborators
.
I
have friends.”
    The rising scream of four jet engines drilled through the cold rain. They dumped their bags in the open compartment in the tail, and found their seats in front. The passengers filled the cabin with the smell of wet wool, cigarettes, dried fish.
    The stewardess slammed the hatch shut. The engines roared, the brakes squealed, and the IL-62 trundled off to the long, concrete runway. The engines roared again, louder. A lurch and the big jet began to roll, accelerating, the seams in the concrete a fast staccato, then silence as the ground fell away.
    Noisy, inefficient, and cursed with an unquenchable thirst for fuel, the 62 was graceful in its way. The four engines at the tail and slender fuselage gave it the appearance of a long-necked goose in flight. And it was fast: they chased the morning westbound at better than 800 kilometers an hour.
    Cities, islands of gray concrete in a green, rolling sea, fell beneath the wing. Novosibirsk, Roschino, Bolshoye Savino. Nowek peered down through the scratched plastic porthole as a low, sinuous hump of hills appeared. The Ural Mountains, dividing Asia and Europe. They weren’t much to see from the ground. They were even less impressive from above.
    â€œYou were once a geologist. Tell me about diamonds.”
    Nowek looked up. “How much do you want to hear?”
    â€œI’ll say when to stop.”
    Nowek shifted in the seat. “Pure carbon exists in just three states: graphite, amorphous, and diamond. The first two are almost worthless. The last is not. What makes a jewel instead of something you put in a pencil is the environment of extreme heat and pressure found deep inside the earth. Okay so far?”
    â€œKeep going.”
    â€œOn their way to the surface, most diamonds burn up. Those that survive take on trace elements from the surrounding rock. These give color to the pure crystals. Nitrogen makes a clear diamond yellow. Boron turns it blue. Greens have been irradiated. Reds are very rare. No one knows what turns a diamond red. Reds are mysterious.”
    â€œMaybe to you.”
    â€œRed
diamonds
. The crystals get caught up in flows of lava that erupt at the surface in a kind of volcano of diamond.”
    â€œGrisha, this is just rocks. . . .”
    â€œSo are diamonds. That’s the secret the cartel doesn’t want anyone to know.”
    â€œFascinating. Now tell me what I need to know.”
    â€œTake a lump of coal, squeeze it with tremendous pressure, bake it under extreme heat, blast it to the surface, and dig it up and it becomes something you put in a vault, not a furnace.”
    â€œThank you. Now what about
our
diamonds?”
    â€œDiscovered in northern Yakutia in 1947. The Mirny mine was opened in fifty-four. Siberia is the number-two producer of diamonds in the world. More than South Africa.”
    It aroused Volsky’s competitiveness. “Who’s first?”
    â€œAustralia by weight, Botswana by value. Siberian diamonds go straight to Moscow, to Petrov. He’s supposed to sell them to the highest bidder. That’s always been the cartel. Now they want to pay us less and so nothing has been sold. No one can force Petrov to act. He’s under nobody’s thumb.”
    â€œHe’s under the President’s thumb.”
    â€œMaybe.” Nowek had his doubts. In a bankrupt country where influence came from money, who had more power? A sick President or a man who controlled billions?
    â€œSo all our gem diamonds go to the cartel?”
    â€œ
Everyone’s
gem diamonds end up there. They control ninety percent of the