The frozen wastes of the Yamal peninsula, where the wind howls like a wounded beast, have played host to a most peculiar villainy. A man from the distant shores of Cameroon, a stranger to these icy reaches, has been cast into the clutches of the law. To the casual observer, he was but a scholar, arriving in Irkutsk to master the Russian tongue and seek the enlightenment of higher learning. But alas, the siren call of easy coin proved stronger than the lure of the library.

By March, this wanderer had cast aside his books and entered the den of a criminal syndicate—a true 'malina' of modern poisoners. He journeyed north to the town of Novy Urengoy, not for study, but to act as a clandestine courier. Under the cover of gloom, he labored to hide sinister parcels of synthetic narcotics in secret caches, waiting for the desperate and the damned to find them.

But no man can outrun the long arm of the law. The local constabulary, acting with the precision of the finest detectives, swooped down upon him. He was seized in a sudden raid, caught red-handed in his wretched trade. Now, the wretch sits in a cold cell, having sung like a canary and betrayed his confederates to the authorities.

He stands now before the magistrate, charged with the distribution of poisons on a grand scale via the invisible wires of the telegraph and electronic networks. For this betrayal of trust and law, the gallows may be avoided, but the iron bars of a prison for twenty long years loom over him. A sorry end for a man who sought fortune in the frost, only to find the cold embrace of the law.