The Restoration Game (18 page)

The doctor wrote our names on labels and stuck them to the tubes. Then he asked us, one by one, to open our mouths. He stuck a fresh cotton bud into each child's mouth, rubbed it against the inside of cheeks, and popped each cotton bud into a little plastic bag, which he labelled. He smiled at us and told us to go. The nurse led us out, back to the other children.

We stayed in the canteen for a few hours, increasingly bored and fractious. As the afternoon shadows lengthened, the nurses led us out, and onto another bus. It went past the tanks, and out the main gate, back to Krasnod. Our parents met us at the school.

And that was that. The scariest day of my life. It was terrifying at the time, and even more in the nightmares I had afterwards, and nobody ever explained it to me, not even who the bad men on the street had been. But that day's violence, such as it was, was the only day when things got scary in Krasnod. Nothing untoward happened for the rest of my time in Krassnia, until the day my mother took me away to the big aeroplane.

I never forgot the name of Ilya Klebov.

1.

The day after I met Ross Stewart was Friday, April 18. I woke at 6:45 to a red wine hangover and the afterimages of bad dreams. A shower helped. I sat, with a towel around my hair, over a breakfast of generic crunch and repeated applications of black coffee and orange juice. Julie and Gail came and went to the bathroom and finally rushed in all made up and neatly dressed for work, grabbing a sip of coffee and a bite of berry-bar before rushing out. At that point I got dressed. Flared jeans, high-heeled boots, and the soft leather jacket improved my morale. Two ibuprofen and a brisk walk to work finished the job. By the time I bounded up the stairs to unlock the Digital Damage door at 8:30 I was back to feeling almost bright.

Around 10:30 an email from Small Worlds hit my inbox. As we'd agreed on Wednesday, they'd sought out studio spaces in Edinburgh. They'd found one with a slot available at two that afternoon. Would I take it? I checked my schedule, to-do list, and the nearest wall's Post-It foliage, consulted Sean, and agreed. Small Worlds responded with an address and a Google Map attachment.

The studio was in one of the commercial estates around South Gyle, two train stops west of Waverley. I printed off the map and my own Krassnian translation of the game's dialogue and prompts. For the next hour or so I went through it with a highlighter, marking the female voices. After lunch I stuffed the sheaf of paper and a 4G memory stick into a laptop bag, slung it in parallel with my shoulder bag, and set off.

The studio was on the third floor of a block of red brick and brown glass. No reception, entryphone at the door. I pressed one of those unmoving button things labelled “Sound & Around”—it looked like a good guess—and tipped my ear to the speaker. Sounds came forth. All I could make out was the question mark.

“Lucy Stone,” I said.

The buzzer sounded. I pushed the glass doors open and stepped into a narrow atrium that smelled of whitewash and hessian. It had a stairwell, lit by fluorescent poles and tall windows, and a lift. I took the lift. Sound & Around had a pair of solid swing doors with tiny wire-meshed windows. I pushed through. Man-size framed posters of rockstars, felt-tip signed; framed silver discs, a plant pot, and a Kona and an Eden Springs water cooler. Behind a reception desk sat a guy in a Stereophonics T-shirt and blond dreads. He spared me a glance from his computer screen and nodded me towards a door with a light above it.

The door closed behind me with a rubbery smooch. The room contained a swivel chair in front of a table with what looked like a window with one-way glass behind it and metre of fluorescent tube above it. A big swing mike and earphones took their cabling from a hole in the middle. A jug of water and a transparent plastic cup sat to one side. Thick, worn carpet, and walls of egg-box goose-pimple deadened the sounds I made stepping forward, hanging my jacket on the chairback, sitting down, and unpacking my script. The memory stick, forgotten, fell out as I unzipped the bag. I picked it up from the carpet and fidgeted with it for a moment. Then I pulled the head-phones on and tugged the mike towards my mouth. There was no static hiss or crackle, but some aural tension told me the system was live. I gave the mike an experimental tap.

“Finally,” said a sarcastic male voice, in stereo in my ears. “Ready to record, Miss Stone.” The accent was English posh with a faint Slavic overlay.

“I can't see a USB port,” I said.

“That won't be necessary,” said the voice. “I'll burn a disc and give it to you when we've finished. You can take a copy to the memory stick then if you like.” A pause. “Ready when you are.”

“OK, thanks.”

I turned to page 13, cleared my throat, took a sip of water, and—in Krassnian, and in the slyest and slinkiest tone I could conjure—said: “Welcome, stranger, to our dark land.”

It could have been tedious and annoying, but it was fun. I let my mind sink back into childhood memory, and there trawled for voices: the wise woman was Nana, the wench was the girl in the meat shop, the crone was Miss Yesiyeva, the prompts were Mrs. Tushurashvili at her most maternally didactic, and the femme fatale was (to my surprise, but that was how the voice came out) Amanda. The warrior princess—every orc army needs a warrior princess—and on the other side the elven queen were, you will not be surprised to learn, me.

“When you see a single crow, beware.”

“Hasten, warrior, to yonder gorge, where much wisdom will be imparted.”

“Come with me to the inn.”

“Wouldst thou take some amusement before thou retirest, big boy?”

“Forward, the host!”

“Slaughter the vile rebels!”

“To escape from this maze at any time, press Esc.”

And so on, for about an hour and a half (some of which was rerecording lines I'd muffed with coughs, sips, throat-clearing noises, or giggles).

“That's it,” I said.

“Very good, Miss Stone. A moment, please.”

The mike and earphones went dead. I took the phones off, pushed the mike away, and spun the seat around, leaning back and reaching sideways for the water. Despite my frequent sipping, my throat felt raw. The silence in the room, and the way the walls and floor absorbed sound, became suddenly oppressive. More than ever the tinted window seemed like a one-way mirror. I had the feeling of being watched.

There was a light rap on the door. For all that I was expecting it, I jumped, almost spilling the water, and my reply was a yelp. The door opened and a man put his head around it, smiled, and then stepped inside, leaving the door ajar.

For a moment, strangely enough, he reminded me of Alec: tall, with a beard. But this man's beard was a stiff spade of grey, and his sharp blue eyes were magnified by thick glasses and enfolded by wrinkles. His tweed jacket, check shirt, and ancient corduroys completed the Russian-professor look. I retrospectively placed his accent: Krassnian, well educated.

His left hand clutched a cased CD, the other he stuck out, smiling.

“Yuri Gusayevich,” he said.

Another man who might be my father. This was getting embarrassing.

“Pleased to meet you,” I managed to say, shaking hands and not knowing where to look.

Gusayevich pressed the CD into my hand.

“Take this if you need a backup,” he said. “Already I have sent the sound file down the line to Small Worlds.”

“Uh, do you work for…?” I waved a hand around.

“The studio company? No, no,” said Gusayevich. “I work for Mr. Ross Stewart. I am here because I did some of the male voice acting on this game. Also, I am here to meet you.”

“Oh!” I said. “Just a moment.”

I was glad the door was open. I turned away, swept up the loose script sheets and the USB stick, and zipped them and the CD into the laptop bag. I shrugged into my jacket, slung the bags, and stepped past Gusayevich, out into the reception lobby. I nodded to the dreads and T-shirt guy and headed for the stairs. I was in no mood to share a lift. Gusayevich hurried after me. I sped down the stairs, swinging around corners with one hand on the balustrade. The main doors opened to a push-button. Gusayevich, a few steps behind, had to wait for them to reopen. This gave me time to get to the edge of the road before I turned and waited for him to catch up.

Midafternoon, scudding white clouds, raw wind funnelled by the buildings, which stood in discordant styles among the green mounds and long barrows of turf-over-rubble landscaping. Container lorries rumbled past. People dotted the surrounding pavements like figures in an architect's presentation drawing. Not far overhead, an EasyJet screamed out of Turnhouse.

Gusayevich halted, facing me, a little out of breath.

“What's the matter?” he said.

“I'll tell you what's the matter, Mr. Gusayevich,” I said. “I didn't expect to meet an employee of Ross Stewart. Is Small Worlds one of his companies?”

“No, no,” said Gusayevich, shaking his head as if to clear it. “You misunderstand. Small Worlds is indeed a front company, but not for Mr. Stewart. I am one of those doing the male voices because only very, very reliable people can be employed on this. I am one, and so are you.”

I laughed.
“I'm
reliable?”

“Oh, yes.” Gusayevich pulled a packet of Marlboros from his pocket and lit up, staring at me all the while. He took a deep draw and glanced around. “This is as good a place as any. Lucy—I may call you Lucy?—you can have no idea—how could you?—of how devilishly difficult it is to find exiles fluent in Krassnian who are completely above suspicion of collaboration with the Russian or the Krassnian secret services.”

I held his gaze, wondering if he was winding me up. And wondering, too, if he might really be my father. The man whom the other man who might be my father had betrayed. Wondering if Gusayevich knew that Ross Stewart had betrayed him.

“I do have some idea,” I said. “And as I understand it, the problem is running an op like this without having someone working for you inside the security services, and that leads to the problem of double agents and all the rest. You can never know who's going to betray you, can you?”

That was me winding
him
up.

“Indeed you can't,” said Gusayevich, without a trace of irony.

“That's why you and I are needed for this. As for using elements inside the…other side…I'm familiar with the problems, yes.”

“Ah,” I said. “I see. So…uh, why were you sent to meet me?”

“Mr. Stewart has asked me to accompany you to meet him for dinner.”

“Bit early for that,” I said. “Besides—”

“He has booked a table for six o'clock,” said Gusayevich. “Harvey Nichols, St. Andrew's Square.”

“Very kind,” I said. “But I'm seeing my boyfriend this evening.”

Alec and I had planned to meet in the Doctors', after work.

“You can still see him,” said Gusayevich. “We'll be finished by eight.”

I thought about it. “OK.”

Alec was already on the train when I called. He didn't sound put out when I suggested we meet up at the Auld Hoose at 8:30. Neither did Sean when I told him I wouldn't be back for the usual Friday evening after-work pint.

I put the phone back in my belt pouch and nodded to Gusayevich.

“Let's go,” I said. “Do I have time to go home and change?”

“No need,” said Gusayevich, after giving my appearance a critical up-and-down. “Smart casual is acceptable. And there are some things that Mr. Stewart wished me to discuss with you before we reach Harvey Nick's. Things it is better not to talk about in a restaurant.”

“Fine,” I said. “Where do you want to go?”

He cocked an eye skyward.

“The weather is fine,” he said. “We go to Harvey Nick's.”

“But didn't you just—?”

“We walk.”

2.

We walked, through the Gyle estates, over the railway bridge, through a ramble of residential back streets, then along St. John's Road and Corstorphine Road and other stretches of the A8, the main drag into town, all the way to Princes Street.

“You have questions,” Gusayevich ventured, as we set off.

“Yeah,” I said.

I couldn't ask him the most pressing question, so instead I said: “Uh, Ross Stewart, uh, mentioned your name, or at least—I mean, you
are
Yuri Gusayevich the Krassnian dissident, right?”

Yuri—that was when I began to think of him by his first name—laughed.

“It's some time since I have been called a Krassnian dissident! But yes, I am the man Mr. Stewart met in Krasnod, all those years ago.”

“And were you imprisoned?”

“Imprisoned?” He sounded startled, then gave a leaning-forward head-shake and sidelong glance. “Hah! So you know my friend Ross better than he has thought to let on. And you only met him yesterday, isn't that so?”

“Yes, but—”

“Doubtless he showed you some documents, eh?”

“Yes, but—”

“That simplifies matters. So, Lucy, to answer your question. No, I was not imprisoned. I was not even arrested. The first I knew about this possibility was in 1992, when out of the blue I received a letter of grovelling apology from one Ross Stewart, whose name I struggled to recall. I was living in Moscow at the time—working at the university, in fact. That was how he found my name, and knew who I was. He offered me employment, which was very welcome, given the condition of the economy in those years. I told him the truth by return post. I had not been arrested and had no idea that he had betrayed me. What had happened was that in 1984 I received a warning from a friend, to leave the group and concentrate on my studies.