Read Online The Ice Curtain by Robin White - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Robin White
Tags: Fiction
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. . .
A command:
Go to the horizon.
To take up Volskyâs cause? His life? Or did he mean the horizon that divided life and death? Maybe it was a place where all that was wrong in this world was made right, all that was crazy made sane. He thought of Galena. If he could send her a message now, what would he say? Stay. Become Gail. Live a normal life. Russia is a madhouse, a psychiatric ward run by the inmates.
Forget horizons. Nowek wasnât going anywhere. He remembered Volskyâs
visitka,
his business card, the one with President Boris Yeltsinâs phone number. Theyâd taken it, but heâd memorized it. The code word, too.
Use it if you get into trouble.
Only, what would he say to Yeltsin tonight? I didnât kill Volsky?
Nowek leaned back against the cement wall and felt it yield, felt it soften, felt it draw him in. Deeper, falling back through layer on layer. A
buran,
a blizzard, howled overhead as his arms closed around soft white pillows of new snow.
Chapter 6
. . . and Crime
It was the kind of morning that made Major Izrail Levin wish for a real snow. Not a âwalkingâ snow, but a rushing snow, a rioting snow. A snow that buries things and keeps them safely buried. Instead, the bright morning sun had already melted most of last nightâs flurry, and Moscowâs millions of ineptly tuned engines were fast turning what remained a sooty black.
A bus roared by, sending filthy water across Levinâs windshield. He cranked down his window and wiped the glass clear by hand. His 1986 Zhiguli was over a decade old and looked twice that. The little car lacked windshield wipers, its body was held together with rust, but its engine always sparked to life no matter what the Siberian winds threw at it, and it was completely self-insured; no car in Moscow dared to tangle with it.
Levinâs entire Investigations Directorate was supposed to be driving new Volvos. As government vehicles, they could be imported without the usual tax, which only made them more profitable to steal. It was a matter of market forces. Somewhere between Sweden and Moscow, the cars vanished without leaving so much as a spot of oil behind.
Market forces were in control of Russia now. Not ideology. Not the Kremlin. Not even Levinâs own Federal Security Bureau, successor to the once-feared KGB.
Of middling height and more than middling weight, Major Levin had the stout, pugnacious physique of a wrestler whose glory days had receded faster than his appetite. His dark blond hair was turning prematurely silver at the temples. He kept his mustache nicely trimmed. His eyes were as brown as olives.
Levin joined the FSB during a period of reform. That was one strike against him. He was a Jew, which counted for two more. Yet at thirty-three, he was a young, fast-rising officer. Why?
Market forces. In Russia, investigating corruption was a growth industry and Levin had a talent for it. Heâd even earned minor fame, and an odd nickname.
Before the great ruble meltdown of 1998 annihilated them, storefront banks dotted Moscow like mushrooms after an autumn rain. Their lure was simple: you handed over all your money and they paid back enormous rates of interest, so long as ever-greater numbers of depositors agreed to hand over
their
money.
Fridayâs interest payments came out of Thursdayâs deposits, with the principal going straight to the bankâs branch office in Cyprus. A classic pyramid scheme, and Levin was assigned to investigate one with a peculiar name: the Eynabejan Bank.
It was the name that intrigued him. Vaguely Armenian, not quite Caucasian. Was it a village? A lake? It was a puzzle, and eventually he figured it out:
Eynabejan
was
Najebanye
backward: Russian for âFuck You.â The baldness of it forced the FSB to act.
One week after Fuck Youâs board of directors moved en masse to Cyprus, the bank was raided by troops wearing ski masks and carrying machine guns. The Fuck You
A command:
Go to the horizon.
To take up Volskyâs cause? His life? Or did he mean the horizon that divided life and death? Maybe it was a place where all that was wrong in this world was made right, all that was crazy made sane. He thought of Galena. If he could send her a message now, what would he say? Stay. Become Gail. Live a normal life. Russia is a madhouse, a psychiatric ward run by the inmates.
Forget horizons. Nowek wasnât going anywhere. He remembered Volskyâs
visitka,
his business card, the one with President Boris Yeltsinâs phone number. Theyâd taken it, but heâd memorized it. The code word, too.
Use it if you get into trouble.
Only, what would he say to Yeltsin tonight? I didnât kill Volsky?
Nowek leaned back against the cement wall and felt it yield, felt it soften, felt it draw him in. Deeper, falling back through layer on layer. A
buran,
a blizzard, howled overhead as his arms closed around soft white pillows of new snow.
Chapter 6
. . . and Crime
It was the kind of morning that made Major Izrail Levin wish for a real snow. Not a âwalkingâ snow, but a rushing snow, a rioting snow. A snow that buries things and keeps them safely buried. Instead, the bright morning sun had already melted most of last nightâs flurry, and Moscowâs millions of ineptly tuned engines were fast turning what remained a sooty black.
A bus roared by, sending filthy water across Levinâs windshield. He cranked down his window and wiped the glass clear by hand. His 1986 Zhiguli was over a decade old and looked twice that. The little car lacked windshield wipers, its body was held together with rust, but its engine always sparked to life no matter what the Siberian winds threw at it, and it was completely self-insured; no car in Moscow dared to tangle with it.
Levinâs entire Investigations Directorate was supposed to be driving new Volvos. As government vehicles, they could be imported without the usual tax, which only made them more profitable to steal. It was a matter of market forces. Somewhere between Sweden and Moscow, the cars vanished without leaving so much as a spot of oil behind.
Market forces were in control of Russia now. Not ideology. Not the Kremlin. Not even Levinâs own Federal Security Bureau, successor to the once-feared KGB.
Of middling height and more than middling weight, Major Levin had the stout, pugnacious physique of a wrestler whose glory days had receded faster than his appetite. His dark blond hair was turning prematurely silver at the temples. He kept his mustache nicely trimmed. His eyes were as brown as olives.
Levin joined the FSB during a period of reform. That was one strike against him. He was a Jew, which counted for two more. Yet at thirty-three, he was a young, fast-rising officer. Why?
Market forces. In Russia, investigating corruption was a growth industry and Levin had a talent for it. Heâd even earned minor fame, and an odd nickname.
Before the great ruble meltdown of 1998 annihilated them, storefront banks dotted Moscow like mushrooms after an autumn rain. Their lure was simple: you handed over all your money and they paid back enormous rates of interest, so long as ever-greater numbers of depositors agreed to hand over
their
money.
Fridayâs interest payments came out of Thursdayâs deposits, with the principal going straight to the bankâs branch office in Cyprus. A classic pyramid scheme, and Levin was assigned to investigate one with a peculiar name: the Eynabejan Bank.
It was the name that intrigued him. Vaguely Armenian, not quite Caucasian. Was it a village? A lake? It was a puzzle, and eventually he figured it out:
Eynabejan
was
Najebanye
backward: Russian for âFuck You.â The baldness of it forced the FSB to act.
One week after Fuck Youâs board of directors moved en masse to Cyprus, the bank was raided by troops wearing ski masks and carrying machine guns. The Fuck You
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