The Restoration Game (19 page)

Which I did. My relationship with your mother broke up some time after, in January ‘85, if I remember that miserable month correctly.”

“So—”

“Yes, I may be your natural father. As may Ross. Do you have any more questions?”

“Well—”

“Good! Then I have a question for you. What do you think this Krassnia business is all about?”

“The game's going to be used as a cover for organising…the Maple Revolution, that's what Ross called it.”

“Yes, yes,” said Yuri, impatiently. “Of course the revolution. But why? Why has your mother's employer turned its attention to our godforsaken birthplace?”

“It's all about the pipeline,” I said.

“The pipeline?” he said. “In President Saakashvili the Americans already have a friend to guard it.”

“But not the pass around Mount Krasny. That puts Russia in striking distance of the pipeline.”

“Even if the Russians lost Krassnia, they'd still have South Ossetia and the Roki Tunnel. There are no great military advantages in using the Krasny pass—rather the reverse. No, Lucy, you have the right idea in postulating a material motivation for America's new enthusiasm for liberty in Krassnia, but the pipeline has nothing to do with it. Nor is it the territorial integrity of Georgia—in relation to that, Krassnia is a pinprick compared to South Ossetia, which has actual Russian troops deployed on the territory, or even Abkhazia, a rich coastal region of which Georgians have, let's say,
warm
memories.”

He chuckled at his own pun, and continued: “So the question remains—why is the CIA interested in Krassnia?”

“That's just what I asked myself,” I told him, “as soon as my mother proposed the game. I thought—well, apart from the pipeline, that's a constant—there's an election coming up in September, and that might seem a good chance to help the Liberal Democrats against the Social Democrats—isn't that what the former Communists call themselves?”

Yuri snorted. “Liberal Democrats, Social Democrats, National Democrats, and all the other democrats—they're all former Communists. Except the young people, obviously. Yes, you're right, the election is a chance, and will be the pretext. The SDs don't need to rig the election to win, but they will be accused of that regardless. No, it is about something much more significant than a friendly regime or a pipeline.”

“So what
is
it about?”

We were standing at an intersection, waiting to cross, so Yuri had a moment to turn and give me a solemn look, and speak in a low, portentous voice.

“It is about the secret of the Vrai.”

I almost giggled.

The lights changed. We crossed the road and turned left, into an identical residential street of former-Communist (well, that's how I tend to think of it) housing. I didn't know if Yuri knew the area really well, of if he was navigating by the polarisation of light in the sky or some inner magnetic sense, like a migrating bird.

“What's the secret of the Vrai?” I asked.

“What do you know of it?”

“I saw it mentioned in the documents Ross sent me last night.”

“The confessions?”

“Yes.”

“In which mention is made of ‘the secret of the Vrai,’ also known as ‘the Krassnian truth.’ Do you know what that is?”

“No,” I said.

“That's a pity,” said Yuri. “I had rather hoped you might.”

I nearly stumbled.

“Why?” I cried. “How the—how on earth would I know that?”

“Oh, from your mother's side of the family, perhaps, or from some old woman who your mother introduced you to, a servant or a nurse.”

“No, nothing like that. There was an old—well, she wasn't very old—there was a woman in her fifties, I guess, who remembered something that happened in 1952.”

I didn't explain further, waiting to see how Yuri would react. He gave a yelp of delight.

“Yes! Yes! The Mount Krasny incident! It is very relevant, but it is not the secret.”

“So what
is
the secret?”

“I wish I knew.”

“So how do you know that the 1952 incident is relevant? I thought it had something to do with Beria and the Bomb.”

“Ah,” said Yuri. “I know because it happened on or around Mount Krasny. That is the heart of the Vrai secret. You must know this from the legends, from the folktales and even the rumours.”

“Oh, yeah, the magical inscription in a cave. That was the secret of the power of the Vrai, right?”

I must have sounded scornful. Yuri gave me a sharp look.

“The Vrai secret is no joke, and more than a magical inscription. There is something on or in that mountain which was a source or guarantor of power for the Vrai. Its secret was passed down within the ruling tribes for centuries—strangely enough, not always from parents to children, but to children from someone of the lower classes: herdsmen, hunters of animals too lowly to count as game, nursemaids. If you look at old memoirs, time and again you come across statements like ‘and in my tenth year I learned that of which I need not speak’ or ‘so the mountaineer took me to a certain place, and my eyes were opened.’”

“Sure they weren't talking about sex?”

“Yes, I'm sure,” said Yuri, sounding irritated for a moment. “But yes, I admit, it does sound like that story by Borges….”

“Yes,” I said, as if I knew what he was talking about (I didn't, but I looked it up later), “but who initiates the initiators? And if it's a secret of the ruling tribe, why does it get passed on by people outside it?”

“Good questions,” said Yuri. “I have long puzzled about them myself. Possibly the older person of the common people acted merely as a guide to—let's say—the entrance to a cave, or chasm, and the young person of the Vrai made his or her own way in to witness the marvel, whatever it was.”

“But if this secret has been passed down for
centuries
,” I continued, as we turned on to the main road,
“somebody
would have given away what the secret is, surely.”

“You would certainly expect so,” said Yuri. “However, I've found no record of such.”

“Why can't someone just go to Krassnia and
ask?”

“I've tried that,” said Yuri. “No one will talk, even if you can get close enough to them in the first place. The very few people who may readily be suspected of having Vrai blood are well inside the oligarchy, protected by everything from unhelpful secretaries to goons, not all of them in police uniform. I soon concluded that this was not a subject healthy for me to pursue.” He sighed. “It's even possible that no one alive knows the secret—the Terror and the War may have swept them all away.”

“Like that secret-police guy whose confession…?”

Yuri glanced sharply at me. “Beryozkin? Yes, that's the one. He may have been typical. When Colonel Aleksey Klebov blew out Beryozkin's brains, he may have destroyed the last—”

“Oh!” I cried.

“I apologise,” said Yuri. “I shouldn't have—”

“No, no, it isn't that,” I said. “You just reminded me, about Klebov.”

“In what connection?”

“You've read Ross's, uh, confession?”

Yuri chuckled darkly. “The blackmail document? Indeed I have.”

“Well, was that Klebov—Aleksey—connected to Ilya Klebov, the KGB man who Ross did a deal with?”

“He was his father,” said Yuri.

“Yesss!” I said. “I
knew
it!”

“What's so exciting about that?” Yuri asked.

“Klebov—Ilya—told Ross that he knew materialism was false, right? Sounds to me a bit like what Beryozkin said just before they shot him—about another world beyond death. What if Ilya Klebov knew the secret? Maybe learned it from his father—maybe his father got it out of Beryozkin? Or was he in on it himself—was he one of the Vrai?”

Yuri snorted. “The opposite, entirely. The Klebov clan is Krasnar through and through. That may be one reason why Aleksey Klebov was chosen for the job of wiping out the Vrai clique inside the local NKVD. He may have enjoyed it.”

“I've always thought
Ilya
Klebov was a decent man,” I said.

“What do you mean, always thought?”

“Well, I met Ilya Klebov when—”

“You? Met? Klebov
?” Yuri said, each word emphatic and interrogatory and disbelieving.

I told him, briefly, about the scariest day of my life, as we walked out of Corstorphine and past the zoo. As we walked Yuri occasionally stopped to look in shop windows. Once, he stopped and stooped to tie a bootlace, and I noticed him checking the wing mirror of a parked car just before he stood up.

“A moment,” he said, when I'd finished my story. He stepped into an empty bus shelter, and stood facing me as I stopped too.

“Are you sure,” he said, looking me alarmingly in the eyes, “about the swabs? And the hair samples?”

“Yes,” I said, puzzled at this particular question. “Positive.”

He lidded his eyes and nodded slowly. “Very interesting,” he said. “Very puzzling.” He stroked his beard with thumb and forefinger. “Today that would obviously be seen as DNA sampling, but in 1991…I wonder.”

Yuri turned and resumed his walk with a swifter stride, making me hurry to catch up.

“DNA?” I said. “Hair?” I laughed. “You mean there's something special about
red hair
, like in something by Marian Zimmer Bradley?”

“I know nothing of this Marian Zimmer Bradley,” said Yuri, in a deadpan tone that reminded me of Slartibartfast talking about sitcoms, “but yes, in this context red hair is special. It is not diagnostic in itself, but in Krassnia it is a sex-typed genetic marker indicative of Vrai ancestry on the female line.” “Oh.”

“Indeed,” he said. “You must tell Ross Stewart all of this. But not tonight. Write it up and email it to him—he will give you a secure email address. And if you remember the names of the other children who were sampled, that might be of use to him as well.”

“Of use—why?” I asked, above the din of the increasingly rush-hour traffic.

Yuri stuck his hands in his jacket pockets and walked more closely beside me. When he replied his voice was so low, and so aimed at the ground in front of us rather than at me, that I strained to make him out.

“It is to do with the nature of the business. Whatever the secret may be, there is no chance of finding it as long as the slopes and summit of Mount Krasny remain guarded, as they are to this day. It's still a Zone, you know that? So to have access to it, one must have control or influence over the Krassnian state. After the Maple Revolution, the CIA—or whatever other agency, the NSA perhaps—will have that. Fine. But not enough. One point that the legends are consistent on is that only those of Vrai blood may safely approach the actual site of the secret—though they may be guided there by others, as I've said.”

By now I was quite thrilled. “So the children that Klebov took away from the school—you think those who were tested might have been Vrai?”

“I think that Klebov may have thought so,” said Yuri. “In any case, the time may come when it would be of interest to ask any who can be traced.”

“I was tested,” I objected. “And he must have known that
I
wasn't—oh.”

Yuri laughed, and quite unexpectedly patted me between the shoulder blades, in an odd, quick gesture that ended with his hands rammed once more in his pockets.

“You know you have some Vrai blood at least,” he said. “And perhaps some Krassnar, too.”

I felt a little embarrassed. It wasn't that I didn't like him. I did. I thought he was
really cool.
An actual dissident! It was almost as cool as my other putative father's being an actual criminal. Either of these was
way
more cool than an academic like Eric. But the thing was, Eric very much occupied the “father” address in my mind and heart, and always had done, even though I'd long known he wasn't my actual father. What made me uncomfortable was the reminder that I might have a blood relationship with this new stranger, cool though he was.

Awkwardly, I changed the subject.

“What's Klebov doing now—is he—?”

“Running the RSB—Krassnia's local version of the FSB? The local
branch
of the FSB, I would say! No, he is now the wealthy businessman he always wanted to be. He made a fortune in importing cars, in good time to buy most of the shares in the copper mine when it was privatised by his former colleagues.”

“I meant, is he still working with Ross?”

Yuri frowned.

“Not a good question, Lucy. Let's say they liaise on commercial matters.

About the Maple Revolution—no. He is against it, obviously, and doesn't know at all the extent of Ross's involvement.”

“Is Ross going to be involved enough to need the names of the other kids, after the Maple Revolution?”

“It doesn't matter,” said “Yuri.” “He will liaise with your mother. Much depends on circumstances at the time. The window of opportunity may be short.”

“How d'you mean?”

“Oh, the Russians will do what they can to prevent the Americans getting to the secret. They will after all retain many friends in Krassnia, especially in the apparat, even after the fall of the current regime. Klebov, for instance. And they will not hesitate to intervene directly—”

“Invade?” I said. “That seems a bit…extreme.”

“They could use special forces,” said Yuri. “Parachute troops, for example.”

“If this secret's so big,” I said, “why don't they do that already? Just go in and get it?”

“They? The Russians?”

“Yes.”

“They have done it already,” said Yuri. “They got very badly burned. That was the 1952 incident. Bear in mind, anything to do with uranium and the atomic bomb was a closely guarded state secret at the time. Even the existence of the atomic gulags was secret. And yet, those in Krassnia who were old enough to remember always associated the Mount Krasny incident with Beria and the Bomb. Always one would be confidently”—he tapped the side of his nose, theatrically—”and confidentially told that Beria came to Krasnod to supervise some experimental uranium extraction process in the mountains, and that it blew up in his face. It is very consistent. That is what you heard, as a child, yes?”

“Uhhuh,” I said. “More or less.”