Chapter 11
Bol’shezemel’skaya Tundra
Komi Republic, Russia
The heater on the small bus worked like those on every Russian-manufactured vehicle, which was to say, hardly at all.
The old man tried to shrug his blanket higher over his shoulders.
He was wearing only a thin prison jumpsuit in what had to be subzero temperatures.
An hour ago, with his hands and feet going numb, one of the four guards, the least sadistic of the bunch, had tossed a blanket on his seat.
With both of his arms and one leg chained to the frame, he’d wrapped it around himself with a contortionist’s agility.
The threadbare layer was hardly worth the trouble—less a source of warmth than a reminder that it existed.
They had been on the small bus for roughly twelve hours, three stops made for piss breaks and gas.
His back ached from the constant rocking and his wrists were raw from the manacles.
Sleep was all but impossible. The bus had departed properly paved surfaces hours ago, and the gravel road they were on was rutted with spine-jarring potholes.
It was drivable, but barely, one winter storm away from closure.
The reason for this road’s existence had been on display for the last hundred kilometers—a high-volume crude-oil transmission pipeline tracked along the left shoulder.
During the night he had seen a number of trucks pass in the opposite direction; all had been hauling oil drums and machinery.
The West Siberian basin was one of Russia’s most productive oil fields, although the yields were steadily declining.
The old man knew a lot about petroleum extraction.
It had once been his area of expertise, although admittedly his information was dated.
In a roundabout way, that knowledge was the reason he was here, chained to a frozen bus seat and desperately hungry.
The majority of the inmates at Penal Colony 18 were simple murderers and cutthroats, but a small subset were different.
His file attested that he had been sentenced to life at hard labor for strangling a prostitute.
It was, of course, a complete fabrication.
As the Russian saying went, “Give us a person and we’ll find the infraction. ”
His true crime had been a string of blog posts that were critical of the regime.
He had worked as a geologist at the influential Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas.
When his research proved definitively that Russia’s oil fields were drying up, he published a series of articles suggesting that diversification of the economy was critical for the nation’s long-term future.
True as his conclusions might have been, they diverged from the party line.
In those fractious years, with the economy stagnating, he’d faced a crossroad decision: do what was best for his country or shut up and move on.
In a fit of academic pique, one final blog post had become his personal waterloo.
He regretted it now, his crisis of conscience, but at the time it had seemed like the right thing to do.
The bus jarred suddenly, nearly bouncing him out of his seat. The chassis groaned and the engine sputtered, but the driver didn’t slow. The old man looked through a window rimed in frost and saw a world without color. Only shades of gray. Shades of cold.
He had asked the guards where they were going, but they’d only ignored him.
He knew it was north, based on the fringe of light on the horizon behind them and to the right.
He’d performed calculations in his head—long one of his tricks to maintain sanity in surroundings designed to extinguish it—and he decided they had to be getting close to the Kara Sea.
“Where do you think we are going?” growled the prisoner in the seat behind him. The former bratva hit man was obviously entertaining the same question.
“I have no idea,” the old man said.
“You worked in these places, did you not?”
The other prisoners knew a bit about his background, although the old man never let on that his conviction for strangling the prostitute was a sham—camp cred was never to be wasted. “I didn’t work in the fields,” he said. “I worked at a government institute that performed geological estimates.”
“Whatever we are doing, it must have to do with oil or—”
“Shut up!” the nearest guard barked.
Both men complied to avoid a gun butt to the head.
The driver soon veered onto a side road that was in even worse shape.
There was no pipeline here, and after a few kilometers the bus pulled to a crunching stop on the gravel surface.
The guards took their shotguns in hand and, one at a time, they removed the shackles binding the prisoners to their seats.
When the old man stepped outside the cold hit like a wall.
He tried to make sense of the scene before him.
A floodlit industrial pad was surrounded by a high fence topped with multiple coils of concertina wire.
The double gates were wide open, almost like an invitation.
Four guards stood at the entrance, three of them holding assault rifles.
The old man took a closer look at what was inside the fence; a concrete slab, large enough to support a good-sized house, held at least a hundred rust-covered barrels.
All appeared to be in poor condition, but otherwise the barrels were no different from millions around the world—standard fifty-five-gallon industrial drums.
Curiously, a few dozen barrels had been pulled clear, and beside each of them was a metal cask.
The casks were cylindrical, perhaps four feet tall, with high-grade metal that shone in the sodium glow.
He saw nothing else. No people, no sheds, no buildings of any kind.
It was simply a storage pad on the edge of a frozen world.
Light snow was falling, swirling through the jaundiced illumination.
The man at the gate who was not carrying a weapon wore a heavy blue parka and a fur-lined ushanka.
He walked authoritatively to the supervisor of the guard detail at the bus and exchanged a few quiet words.
The prison guards boarded back up, and soon the bus rumbled away into the night.
As it did so, it’s headlights raked across another vehicle the old man hadn’t noticed.
A sturdy flatbed truck was parked in the distant gloom, and next to it sat a forklift.
The man in the parka approached them carrying an armload of clothing. He dropped the garments in the dirt, and without preamble said, “Put these on.”
The three inmates hesitated only long enough to exchange a quick glance.
Their drab prison coveralls were threadbare, and a second layer of clothing would be a godsend.
It turned out to be three identical ensembles—what looked like a fireman’s jacket and gloves.
The prisoners put them on, warmth the only thing on their minds, although the old man was struck by how heavy it all seemed.
The man in the blue parka said, “Your task tonight is simple. You will transfer the material in the barrels into more-modern containers. The powder in the barrels is odorous, but it will do you no harm.” He went into a detailed briefing on how to open the old containers—a simple wrench in the best case, or hacksaws if the bolts on the access panels were frozen.
Small shovels were provided to transfer the powder, and he insisted that each new container be filled to its maximum capacity.
He explained how to seal the shiny casks and said that afterward they should wash with disinfectant.
When they were done, another bus would take them to a bunkhouse, where they would be given vodka and a hot meal.
The man pointed to a pile of tools just inside the gate and told them to get to work.
The old man swapped a second glance with the bratva man, then the other prisoner, a skinny kid who had murdered two young girls.
The three guards circled menacingly behind them, their weapons poised.
The old man walked tentatively toward the gate, and the others fell in behind him.
They each picked up a few tools and proceeded to the nearest barrel.
The old man studied it closely and then looked at the others nearby.
All were rusting badly, and judging by the red-brown stains on the concrete they had been here many years.
One of the drums at the edge of the slab seemed to be leaking, and an odd stain was spread over the concrete.
On closer inspection, he realized these were not standard oil barrels.
The tops were removable, a modified cap of steel secured by a halo of eight bolts.
Taking a deep breath, the old man seated a wrench on the head of the first bolt and placed his free hand on the barrel for leverage. With a creak, the bolt turned.
It took ten minutes to remove the cap of the first barrel, all eight bolts yielding to brute force.
The old man stepped back and the child murderer lifted the lid.
And that was when he got his first real surprise.
As the lid was removed, a faint blue glow appeared.
It wasn’t much, little more than the glow of a luminescent watch.
But it was definitely there, emanating from what looked like baker’s flour.
He sensed a flutter in his old heart, but it didn’t last long.
Resignedly, the old man moved to the next barrel. His coworkers picked up camping shovels and began transferring the powder to a canister. These containers looked new, and once filled they were easy to seal; the heavy lids were hinged and could be locked down by four spring latches.
For two hours they worked, slowing only to cut a few rusted bolts.
At the end, all twenty-nine new containers were filled with the powder.
By then, the old man’s new jacket resembled a baker’s apron, and his gloves were solid white.
They were topping off the final cask when the forklift cranked to life.
The man in the parka moved it toward the gate.
He got off, but left the machine idling.
Walking to the gate, he placed a spray bottle of what looked like disinfectant on the gravel entry path.
Throughout the entire process, their minders had remained outside the fence. They stood together now twenty yards beyond the entrance.
As he torqued down the latches of the last lid, the bratva man said under his breath, “If we can lure them closer, the three of us can attack one of the guards. If we keep him close, the others might hold their fire. We must get control of a weapon.”
The murderer thought it was a good idea. “It’s our only chance.”
The old man looked at them sadly. They were just now coming to conclusions he himself had reached hours ago. The promise of freedom. The money. The token protective gear. Most telling of all: the prison guards had been sent away.
None of them would leave this place alive.
When he had stepped forward in the prison yard yesterday morning, the old man had seen a gamble worth taking. He was old and tired, and probably wouldn’t survive another winter in prison. He knew the odds against finding freedom would be long, but he’d had little to lose.
The men beside him had run a different equation.
They were street-smart and cunning. They hadn’t been swayed by the chance of money or freedom.
The promise of a hot meal and vodka fooled no one.
They had volunteered with one hope: that an opportunity for escape might present itself.
Now, with time running out, they had to make their move.
Yet their calculations differed from the old man’s on one significant point. They still believed they had a future. He looked at them woefully, with their darting eyes and sleeves covered in white. A mist hung in the air between them, fine powder swirling in the floodlights.
The old man said, “You don’t understand, do you? We are already dead.”