commodity.
During the persecution of the Church, at the high-water mark of the antireligious movement, many artifacts had been hidden. Icons, books, and silverware, all of which would’ve have been burnt or melted down. Most priests had resisted, taking action to save the Church’s heritage. They’d buried items in fields, stashed silver in chimneys, and even wrapped paintings in waterproof leather, hiding them inside the engine of a disused, rusting tractor. No maps were drawn. Only a few knew the locations, whispered from one to another, beginning with the words:
In case I die…
Most of the guardians of these secrets had been arrested, shot, starved in the Gulags or worked to death. Of those who knew, Fraera had been among the first to be released. She’d unearthed the treasures one by one. Using her vory ’s knowledge of the black market infrastructure, the people who needed to be bribed, she’d shipped items out of the country, negotiating sales to Western religious organizations as well as private buyers and international museums. Some had balked at the idea of purchasing another Church’s treasures. Yet Fraera’s sales technique had been savagely effective: were her prices not met the safety of the items could no longer be assured. She’d sent her buyers a seventeenth-century icon of Saint Nikolas of Mozaisk. Once painted in bright colors, the egg tempera had discolored, and to recapture the brilliance it had been covered in gold and silver sheet. She’d imagined the priests weeping as they’d opened the parcel to find the icon smashed into fragments, the saint’s face scratched off except for the eyes. Fraera had not confessed to her role in this vandalism. In the interests of maintaining a functioning business relationship, she’d blamed overzealous Party members. After that, she’d been able to name her price, depicting herself as a savior rather than a profiteer.
Paid in gold, she’d brought in the riches that she’d always promised her vory, unearthing each treasure one by one in case any should consider her leadership redundant. Cautious, trusting no one, the first thing she’d spent money on was a cyanide tooth which she’d proudly displayed to her men, assuring them if they thought she could be tortured for the locations of the missing artifacts they were wrong. She would die to spite them. Judging from the reactions of the gang, two men had been thinking along those lines. She’d killed them before the week was out.
One final loose end had been the Minlag camp commander, who’d come seeking a life with Fraera, as they’d dreamed, and to collect his share of her profits:
Here’s your share.
A knife dragged up through his stomach, it hadn’t been fair-she owed him her life. It had taken him a little less than an hour to die, wriggling on the floor, wondering how he’d been so wrong. Up until the moment the blade tip had entered his stomach he’d been sure that she loved him.
The room was heavy with anticipation. Fraera raised her hand:
– We do not follow ordinary vory laws. You once had nothing. You could not feed yourselves. I saved you when the law said I should let you die. When you have fallen sick, I have provided you with medicine. When you are well, I have provided you with opium and drink. My only demand has been obedience. That is our only law. In this regard, Likhoi has failed me.
No one moved. Their eyes flicked from side to side, each man trying to figure out what the next man was thinking. Leaning on his crutch, Likhoi’s mouth twisted into a snarl:
– Let us kill the bitch! Let us be governed by a man! Not some woman who thinks fucking is a crime.
Fraera stepped closer to Likhoi:
– Who would run this new gang, you, Likhoi? You who once licked my boot for a crust of bread? You are governed by impulse, and made stupid by them. You would lead a gang to ruin.
Likhoi turned to the men:
– Let us make her our whore. Let us live like men!
Fraera could have stepped forward and slashed Likhoi’s throat, ending his challenge. Understanding that she needed to win this argument by consent, she countered with the statement:
– He has insulted me.
It was now up to her vory to decide.
No one did anything. Then, a hand grabbed Likhoi and another- his crutch was kicked away. Pushed to the ground, his clothes were ripped from him. Naked, he was pinned down: one man crouched on each arm and leg. The remaining men turned to the stove, taking a red-hot coal from the fire. Fraera looked down at Likhoi.
– You are no longer one of us.
The coal was pressed against his tattoos, the skin bubbling. His skin would be rendered blank, disfigured so no new tattoos could take their place. According to practice, he should then be let go, exiled. But Fraera-who knew the pull of vengeance too well-would make sure his injuries left him no chance of survival. She glanced at Malysh, communicating her desire. He drew his knife, flicking open the blade. He would cut the tattoos off.
In her cell Zoya gripped the bars, listening to the screams as they echoed through the corridor. Her heart beating fast, she concentrated on the sounds. They were the screams of a man, not a young boy. She felt relief.
KOLYMA FIFTY KILOMETERS NORTH OF THE PORT OF MAGADAN SEVEN
KILOMETERS SOUTH OF GULAG 57
They were standing side by side, staring at the next man’s shoulder, rocking with the motion of the freight truck. Although there was no guard stopping them from sitting down, there were no benches and the floor was so cold that they’d taken a collective decision to stand, shuffling to keep warm, like a captured herd of animals. Leo occupied a space closest to the tarpaulin sheet. It had come loose, rendering the compartment’s temperature subzero but offering, by way of exchange, a partial view of the landscape as the material flapped open. The convoy was climbing into the mountains following the Kolyma highway-a surface that unrolled meekly across the landscape as though conscious it was trespassing across a wilderness. In the convoy, there were three trucks in total. Not even a car bothered to follow behind to make sure prisoners didn’t jump down and try to escape. There was nowhere to escape to.
Abruptly the highway steepened, the rear of the truck tilting down, angled toward the snow-covered valley to such an acute degree that Leo was forced to grip the steel frame, the other prisoners pressing against him as they slid down. Unable to make the climb, the truck remained stationary, teetering and ready to roll back. The handbrake was yanked up. The engine stopped. The guards unlocked the back, spilling the prisoners onto the road:
– Walk!
The first two trucks had managed to climb over the crest of the hill, disappearing from view. The remaining truck-without the weight of the prisoners-started its engine and accelerated up the hill. Left behind, the convicts trundled, huffing like old men, the guards at the back, guns ready. Set against the terrain, the guards’ swagger seemed slight and absurd-an insect strutting. Observing them through a convict’s eyes, Leo marveled at how different the guards believed themselves to be-men marshaling cattle. He wanted to say, just to see their surprise:
I am one of you.
The idea caught him short. Was he one of them? Smug with power, stupefied by State-allocated importance: he was certain that he had been.
At the crest the highway flattened out. Leo paused, catching his breath, surveying the landscape before him. Blasted by cold air, his eyes watering, he was confronted by the surface of a moon-a sprawling plateau as wide as a city, smoothed with ice and permafrost, pock-marked with craters. The lonely highway sliced an uncertain diagonal, heading toward a mountain larger than any they’d encountered so far: rising out of the plateau like a monstrous camel’s hump. Somewhere at the base was Gulag 57.
As the convicts climbed back into the truck, Leo glanced at the other two vehicles. He had to face up to the fact that Timur wasn’t in the convoy. There was no chance that his friend would’ve gotten into one of those vehicles without making contact with him, even if it was nothing more than a glance across a crowd. Leo hadn’t seen him
