Read Online The Ice Curtain by Robin White - Free Book Online Page A

examined his cell. It was larger than the prison van, but not by much. There was a poured slab for a bunk, a foul hole in the floor for a toilet, a single bulb burned overhead behind thick glass. On the wall someone had written in marker pen, TECHNOROCK RULES !
    Technorock. Ska. House. Classical. He thought of
Melodiya,
the music shop, Tatiana, her grandfather. The Dvo(breve)rák A Minor.
    Petrov,
he thought. Volsky vowed to sell off some of his cache of diamonds. Was that a motive for murder? Volsky had been right. In Russia, a twenty-dollar bill was reason enough.
    Nowek replayed the night again and again. The car, the struggle, one flash, another. Volsky had been alive after that first shot. Dying, he’d saved Nowek’s life.
    Again.
    In America, you can call someone you just met your friend. Friendship is harder to earn in Russia, but once kindled it burns for life. Volsky had always lived up to his end of the bargain. And Nowek?
    Four years ago Nowek’s wife, Nina, was dead, and he might as well have been. He was numb with grief, sleepwalking, a zombie. He’d just been fired from his job as a petroleum geologist at the Samotlor fields. He’d caught it in the neck for daring to speak the truth about the potential for a catastrophic oil spill that happened just as he said it would. Being right had doomed him. Volsky invited him out to hunt eiders. In truth, he wanted to tempt Nowek back to the world of the living.
    A fire crackling in the woods. A cold, still afternoon, the sun draining away low to the west, more glare than heat. The smell of snow in the air. A metal flask placed near the fire to keep the tea inside from freezing. It was silent, as only the northern taiga can be silent in the grip of deep cold. And then, the shot.
    The dense air carried the shotgun blast up from the lake. It arrived like a slap. A minute later, Volsky clumped through a stand of frozen reeds, a gorgeous white eider in one hand, the shotgun broken over his shoulder. “
This
is what we can do to them.” He tossed the bird to the ground. His breath puffed white.
    There was very little blood, just a pink fringe to the snowy white neck. The eider had been neatly decapitated. Nowek said, “Not bad.”
    â€œNot bad?” Volsky pulled his own flask from inside his jacket and toed the eider with his boot. “It’s fucking
perfect
.”
    Nowek looked at the bird. The long-tipped feathers were slowly opening like a fan. “That depends on what you were aiming at.”
    â€œWhat I aim for, I hit.” He handed Nowek the bottle. His eyes had a calmness to them. “Let’s talk about you. The All-Siberian Reform Party is getting organized. We’re looking for candidates.” He leaned over. “Your name has come up for the position of mayor of Markovo. It’s an oil town. You have the necessary experience.”
    â€œMy experience was brief. They fired me.”
    â€œPeople say you’re stubborn, that you don’t care if you make trouble, only whether something is right.”
    Nowek unscrewed the top. He tipped it back and drank. Vodka. It was cold, then hot, then good. “Have you considered these might not be compliments?”
    â€œThey are to us. To
me
.”
    Nowek drained the flask and turned it upside down. A crystal droplet appeared, hung, and fell. “You think they’ll let me just walk in and win an election?”
    â€œNo. We’ll fight and
take
it from them. I’ll watch your back,” said Volsky. “You watch mine. From now to the end. Wherever it leads. Do we have a deal?”
    Volsky had lived up to his word, even as his life was draining away into the gutters. And what had Nowek done? He’d dawdled over a Dvo(breve)rák symphony.
    He leaned against the cold prison wall.
I’ll watch your back, you watch mine.
Volsky had stood by him, even as he whispered something that made no sense:
Idi . . . k’gorizontu . . . Idi