Pandemonium (7 page)

“I bought this, Geoffrey. For $382,772 from the Kaziristani government.” The magnate laughed. “Soviets built it. Or more precisely, their slaves did. One of those slaves, buried somewhere down here, was my grandfather.” Maxim waved, and one man activated a switch beside what appeared to be a large door to the right of the window. Geoffrey noticed
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stenciled in faded red letters on the door as it slid sideways into the wall to reveal steps leading down to two Mercedes limousines parked at the curb in front of the station.

Maxim and Galia got into the lead limo, waving in Geoffrey and Nell, who sat across from them. Maxim’s bodyguards got into the limo behind them.

“You said there are species that you need us to identify,” Nell said. “Is this where they come from?”

“We will get to work soon enough, Doctor.” Maxim knocked on the partition behind him, and the car moved forward. “This natural cavern is almost largest ever discovered, I’m pretty sure. Surrounding it are others even bigger! Before Soviets came, the village of Gursk mined salt here for seven centuries. They helped carve this world beneath Mount Kazar. Soon city’s power plant will be online, in a few hours now, I believe. Isn’t that right, Galia? Then my city will be entirely self-sufficient and will burn as bright as day. Then we will no longer need anything from the surface. It will be a very luxurious resort to live in, don’t you agree, Geoffrey?”

“As a last resort, I guess,” Geoffrey conceded. “It’s certainly a spectacular place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here.”

To the right of the train station, a string of dim streetlamps arched over a baroque bridge with gilded wreaths carved into the balustrades. As the limos cruised over the bridge, Nell and Geoffrey looked out the left window at the black currents of the river between lampposts wrapped with bronze dolphins. A ghostly waterfall glowed blue in the distance, cascading down the western wall of the cavern. To the right of the bridge, the sparkling river seemed to drop down, flowing deeper into a channel that disappeared under the eastern wall.

“My River Styx!” Maxim proclaimed.

“Wow,” Nell whispered.

On the other side of the river, they turned right and then left, heading north along the city’s eastern edge. Three-story buildings displaying a dozen European architectural styles flickered past them on either side in their jiggling headlights. Many were lit up and apparently inhabited. Small electric cars zoomed through the city’s streets. They passed shops, apartment houses, fire stations, factories, banks, nightclubs, and grocery stores. It was like a museum of architecture, Nell thought as she observed the people on the streets. They were mostly well-dressed adults or construction workers. She noticed no children, though one woman appeared to be pregnant. “How many people live here?”

“Almost five thousand right now,” Maxim said. “Mostly workers, but guests have begun to arrive.” He activated a special cell phone in the car to check for messages.

Between blocks, Nell and Geoffrey saw spokelike streets radiating from the central tower’s pointed ramparts. At the head of each avenue stood a hulking bronze colossus posed in righteous glory. She recognized Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and other revolutionary heroes. From the star-shaped tower’s pinnacle, the five points of the glimmering star stretched over the city’s main avenues. Some of the streets were lit only by construction crews and traversed by trucks and forklifts. Other avenues were empty, twilit, and still.

“Pobedograd was originally a giant bomb shelter,” Maxim said, turning off his phone. “For Communist Party elite—in case they succeeded in destroying world. I turned it into a playground for rich, and a haven for oppressed—two classes that are often same, eh? But I am only law here. Don’t worry, I’m benevolent dictator.”

The refined city surpassed anything they had seen on their journey across the impoverished countryside of Kaziristan.
Here,
Geoffrey thought,
under a mountain
.

“Stalin was addicted to underworld,” Maxim explained. The hulking magnate’s body was outlined in the window of the limousine like the profile of a mountain. His black hair and beard flowed like basalt over his shoulders as he flashed a look at Geoffrey with volcanic eyes. “Koba dug railroads and cities across Soviet Empire. Places where he could plan his disasters, and hide from their consequences. He was Devil, Dr. Binswanger.” Maxim looked grimly through the window.

“Koba?” Nell asked.

“You mean Stalin?” Geoffrey asked.

“Da,”
Maxim grunted.

“You mentioned your grandfather,” Geoffrey said.

Maxim nodded. “My grandfather was doctor, like yourself. A physicist. For telling truth, he was sentenced to Belbaltlag so he could help dig White Sea–Baltic Sea Canal, which was very first gulag. Prisoners used pickaxes and shovels to dig one-hundred-forty-mile canal in only twenty months, at cost of twenty-five thousand men—some say one hundred thousand. Nobody really knows.” Maxim shrugged and spread the fingers of one hand, shaking his head. “Records are sketchy. The canal was too narrow for ships, however. So it was nothing more than mass grave for criminals, counterrevolutionaries, and enemies of state. My grandfather survived Belbaltlag. One of few. He survived two more gulags, as well, until he arrived here. He was tough man.” Maxim looked at Nell. “But here, at Pobedograd, he died, along with seventy-five thousand other men who were building this glorious hiding place for Koba.”

“Stalin.” Nell nodded softly.

“Da.”
Maxim sipped from a silver flask, which he offered to Geoffrey and Nell, who politely refused. The oligarch continued, occasionally dropping articles as his cadence stressed certain phrases and words with explosive volume: “My father was
genius,
like my grandfather! Unlike him, however, he did not try to work inside Soviet system. He was entrepreneur in black market, instead. They branded him a gangster, just like me. Gangsters were only ones getting anything done in Russia in those days. Today, still true. The Party did not care. All they cared about was who was breaking law and if they received sufficient bribes to look other way. Our state made us what we had to be in order to survive, Geoffrey. I stepped into my father’s shoes at seventeen, after he was murdered by officials who were not bribed enough. Since then, all Russian authorities are my enemies. And I am theirs, since then.”

“I see,” Nell said with a worried glance at Geoffrey.

Maxim slapped Geoffrey’s thigh, grinning in a conspiratorial expression. “You see this city, Geoffrey? It’s nothing! The ground of Moscow is hollow with such places. Some were dug centuries ago by Ivan the Terrible. Others are so secret, even Russian government possesses
no record
of their construction!” Maxim laughed heartily, his Russian humor a potent cocktail of despair, outrage, and futility mixed with sly self-mockery. But there was a hidden declaration of war in his laugh, as well. “Under Moscow, Stalin’s underground was intended to keep state officials safe. Instead, it became refuge for enemies of state. Even in Stalin’s time, a black market of dissidents and geniuses, smugglers and rebels, all marked for murder, took root underground. During the ’70s, I, too, was saved, more than once, by hiding in Stalin’s catacombs. Many connections I made there helped me carve my slice of Soviet Union when it collapsed. By bribing the right officials and guaranteeing paychecks to oil, gas, and mine workers when Russian state could not, I gained their loyalty and kept power on so people would not freeze. I kept factories, schools, and hospitals from closing when no one else knew what to do. But when Russian government began hunting down so-called oligarchs, to reclaim what they call the ‘Party’s gold,’ I left, with my family and all of my wealth. That is something Russian government can never forgive, or forget. I own homes on all five continents—twenty-seven estates from Italy to Hawaii, from Manhattan to Hong Kong, from Israel to Costa Rica. I own a fleet of aircrafts, including three DC-10s, an American football team, an Italian basketball team, a French movie studio, and cable news networks in Australia, Eastern Europe, and Brazil. I moved all of my money and all of my family and friends out of Russia so I could not be blackmailed. Many of them live here now. And yet, at any moment, I could be assassinated. Three of my friends, other so-called oligarchs, have been murdered in
broad daylight
in major cities outside Russia. One was killed in downtown Manhattan. Digitalis in his Diet Coke. Another was killed in Argentina. Polonium in his toothpaste.” Maxim shrugged. “I am hunted wherever I go. Except here!”

Geoffrey noted the heavy security the billionaire was traveling under and glanced darkly at Nell.

They arrived at a giant steel door guarded by armed men. They read faded red letters stenciled on the steel:
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. Maxim waved out the window, and the guards activated a switch. The door rolled sideways into the wall and revealed a road that proceeded uphill into another part of the city.

The low ceiling over the road resembled the barrel vaulting of a Gothic monastery now. This section of the city seemed to be unoccupied and dark.

“This was a garrison for Stalin’s guards,” Maxim remarked, waving at the windoow. “It was built as shelter for villagers of Gursk six centuries ago. He sealed all sectors of city with lead-lined doors to protect them from floods, fires, radiation—or revolution.” Maxim winked sardonically at Nell.

There was no illumination in this sector except for their cars’ headlights. Nell noticed a few rats scurrying across the street in front of the limo.

“Most people born into poverty and oppression deserve it, I think,” Maxim inveighed. “The world they are willing to live in is their natural habitat, like crocodiles in mud or rats in sewers.”

Nell was startled as Maxim leveled his piercing gaze at both of them.

“And most people born into freedom and prosperity don’t deserve it, either—since they did nothing to create it and nothing to preserve it. Indeed, they do a little more each day to tear it down, if only by looking the other way while it crumbles. That is the sad truth, my friends.”

“So who are the ones who deserve a better world in your view, Maxim?” Nell asked.

“Those who create it—even as the rest try to tear it down every step of the way.” A bitter, world-quaking laugh rocked the hulking man’s shoulders. “But you are biologists. Every day you observe the animal kingdom. Surely you have noticed the unsustainable march humanity is on? We are headed back to mud, cannibalizing those who briefly dragged us out.” Maxim observed the shocked look on their faces. “Do not worry, Doctors,” he said. “I have classed you among those who are deserving. Both of you have courage to fight the status quo. You use your brains, which is to say, you are
honest
. Unlike many of your peers, who sell their opinions to the highest bidder. I have researched your backgrounds and I assure you, when whole world goes to hell, you will always have your place here, if you want it.”

“Well,” Geoffrey said. “That’s good to know.”

“I think it would be hard to leave the whole world behind, even for your utopia, Maxim,” Nell said. “There is too much good in it.”

“It depends, I think, on what you’re leaving behind,” Maxim said. “There are many here who found the choice quite easy.”

They traveled deeper into the medieval sector of the city as the road grew steeper. They slowed and turned abruptly left, still heading uphill. After another few minutes, they arrived at a large steel door marked with red letters:

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“Here we are!”

Maxim rolled down the window, waving twice at the waiting guards, who activated a switch. Again, the door rolled sideways into the rock. Both limos pulled into a wide cobblestone courtyard before a glistening golden palace. “Premier Stalin’s personal residence,” Maxim announced, presenting the baroque façade with a flourish as he noticed his guests’ dumbstruck reaction. “Just in time for cocktails,”

“Cocktails?” Geoffrey stammered. “It’s breakfast time, isn’t it?”

“In Pobedograd, day is night,” said Maxim.

9:00 P.M. MAXIM TIME

Geoffrey and Nell emerged from Maxim’s armored limousine eagerly, and both of them gasped before the resplendent mansion that erupted like a fantasy inside the domed cavern. They noticed a forest of yellow stalactites dripping from the ceiling as they climbed the curving steps to the palace entrance that was framed by a polished marble portico and onyx pillars with gold-leafed capitals.

At the top of the stairs, Nell looked up to see an enormous crystal chandelier suspended under a golden umbrella dome over the foyer. The chandelier illuminated a polished floor of inlaid stone with spiraling geometric designs. To each side, curving stairways carpeted in crimson swept up to the second story.

Maxim stopped to have a word with one of his men in the foyer. “She does not want any guards inside,” Geoffrey overheard him tell Galia Sokolof. There was a brief argument between them, and Maxim waved off Galia and the rest of his men. Then Maxim motioned for Nell and Geoffrey to follow him up the crimson stairway on the left.

At the top, he led them between two banks of doors and turned left up a short stairway to a door on the right—another submarine hatch with a dog wheel in the center. Maxim pushed a button. The wheel turned as someone on the other side opened the door inward.

“Please, my friends,” said Maxim. “Let me show you my conservatory.”

They stepped through the hatch into a rectangular room that was indeed the size of an English manor’s conservatory, with a high corbeled ceiling from which three gold-and-crystal chandeliers hung spaced from right to left. In the far left corner of the chamber was a glass tube in which a wrought iron stairway corkscrewed through the floor and ceiling. The back wall of the room seemed to be hewn into the solid bedrock of Mount Kazar, but most of the clawed rock face was covered by luxuriant red velvet curtains. The other three walls were lined with book-laden shelves and mahogany paneling displaying gold-framed paintings that seemed to be forgotten masterpieces. To the right of the door was a great oaken desk, and on the wall behind it was an array of video monitors displaying various parts of Maxim’s city.