The Restoration Game (24 page)

“That last one's easily answered,” said Ross. “There are no such drones as can fly into a narrow ravine and report back, especially without being spotted.”

“There's those bomb-disposal robots they use in Iraq—”

“Which need nearby real-time operators. No, I think you slightly over-estimate the state of the art in robotics. As for why the Russians haven't tried it—who says they haven't? Those kids who were tested along with you—thanks for telling me about that, by the way, very interesting—may have been kept track of by the FSB. Who knows? Or if research was done on the genetics of the thing, maybe someone has found what the gene does and found a way to replicate its function. Or perhaps the Russian army can send in a camera on a crawler. Again, who knows? Point is, whether or not any of these things might happen in the future, or may have already happened, the next few weeks may be our last chance to get someone in to have a look before the region comes under complete Russian control. Right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So you see why you have to go to Krassnia,” Ross repeated, by way of conclusion.

All I could see was the Other Thing like a black cloud and in front of it Ross's patient, perseverant face, that of a middleaged man who still had the callow guile and crass insensitivity of the youth whose diaries I'd read. Someone who thought that all you needed to do to persuade was to explain. I could feel myself getting worn down by him already, leaving aside the obvious big objections in principle and coming up with a couple of small ones in implementation, like a TV talking head interviewing a politician.

“How do you know all this stuff about Vrai blood or genes making it safe to go there isn't just nonsense?”

“We don't, really,” said Ross. “Apart from the legends and rumours being so damn consistent on this very point, no matter how much they're contradictory on others.”

I was not reassured, but I let that go and moved to my next item.

“And how would I—anyone who did go in, I mean—know the way to the secret place? Yuri said there might be no one left alive who can act as a guide.”

Ross wiped his greasy fingertips unsatisfactorily on shiny paper, and his lips on the back of his hand.

“Now, there we do have something to go on,” he said, cheerfully. “We know the route—well, the likely route. Your mother worked it out…some years ago, after I sent her copies of Arbatov's and Beryozkin's confessions. You know, where Arbatov mentions having alluded to the Vrai secret? And how Beryozkin confirms this?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Amanda looked again at Arbatov's book,
Life and Legends of the Krassnar.
She looked for references to places, landmarks, and directions, and pencilled them all on a map. The marks were, well, all over the map until she narrowed her search down to references that seemed a bit more specific than the context called for, or than she would expect in a folktale of a given type, or that used a later form of the dialect than the body of the tale, and so on—lots of subtle clues, difficult for anyone but an expert like herself to spot. And when she mapped
them
—aha!”

Ross flung out a hand.

“She found a route?” I asked, disbelieving.

“Yes,” said Ross. “A path right up the side of the mountain, to a deep, narrow ravine.”

“Just like in that story Yuri heard?”

“Mmh-hmh,” Ross nodded. “Exciting, eh?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

Something nagged me from the back of my mind. “Uh, was this before or after she wrote
The Krassniad?”

“The Krassniad?”
Ross frowned. “That came out when?” “’94 or ’95,” I said.

“Oh!” Ross said, brow clearing. “It was after that. Well after.”

“Shit!” I said.

“What?”

“Have you read it?”

“Glanced at it,” said Ross. “Not my horn of mead, so to speak. Why?”

“The Krassniad
's littered with details about places. I thought it was, like, local colour. Like, you know, every time we meet a new warrior we get his father and grandfather's name and his mother's nickname? Same with places, including places along the way Duram and his men took up to the Vrai fastness. The cave of the magic inscription, the spells, yeah?”

“I'll take your word for it,” said Ross. “What are you—?” His eyebrows shot up. “Wait—you think the route's spelled out for all to see in the fucking
Krassniad?”

“There's
a
route,” I said. “I don't know if it's the right one, obviously.”

“Probably not,” said Ross, sounding unsure of himself. “I mean, this was written before Amanda studied Arbatov's book with this in mind.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But not before she'd spent years studying it in depth, checking every source and footnote and gathering even more Krassnian folklore in her fieldwork. And if some of these details were the sort of thing that she could pick out as salient, maybe even without realising it…”

“I suppose,” said Ross. “Anyhow, water over the dam now, eh? Book's out of print, and it was always banned in Krassnia….”

“Banned, huh? And that means no one read it? Come on! You were a book smuggler!”

“So?” Ross shrugged. “A few copies may have circulated. A lot of copies, even. It's hardly a bestseller—I don't think it's even been pirated.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But I know something that has been. The game.”

“The game? Why would that—oh, Jesus H fucking Christ, you didn't! Did you?”

“Of course I did,” I said. “I based the map in the game on
The Krassniad.
What else would I have based it on?”

Ross looked back hard at me and said: “So you see why you have to go to Krassnia.”

“All right,” I said. Maybe he really had worn me down. “All right. But—”

“Tomorrow,” said Ross.

“No
way!”
I yelled. “I have a wedding to go to.”

“A
wedding?”
Ross sounded like he didn't believe anyone would think that was important. It was like I'd said “a picnic.”

“I'm a bridesmaid,” I said.

“Well, in that case…” He frowned, considering. “We can delay until Sunday.”

I seriously thought he was joking. Then I saw he wasn't.

“And how d'you expect me to get to Krassnia?”

“In one of my artics,” he said.

“Artics?”

“Container trucks.”

I stared at him. “
Container trucks?
What the fuck's wrong with flying? There must still be flights in to Batumi, or even just to Istanbul, it'd still be quicker than a truck.”

Ross shook his head. “Even without the likelihood that the airspace around Georgia might be a wee bit contested, or the airports closed, or whatever…I don't trust flying for this kind of thing. Too controlled. You're in a plane, you get clocked, end of story. Nowhere to run. Whereas in a lorry…” He smiled into the middle distance. “You have options, know what I mean?”

“And how long will I be away?”

“Allow a week and a half to get there, a few days to reach the place—call it a fortnight, and double that for complications.” He shrugged. “Allow a month, tops. Any longer we're into September, and one way or another the place will have blown by then anyway.”

“What about getting back?”

“Oh, the exit's easy enough,” he said. “You can fly out, maybe not from Georgia but at least from Turkey.”

He didn't sound like he'd given this aspect of the matter much thought. I gave him a suspicious look.

“I
am
supposed to get out, right? To come back? That is part of the plan, yeah?”

To my surprise, he didn't brush off my misgivings. He looked me straight in the eye.

“Lucy,” he said, “I know what I'm asking of you. I'm not going to try to kid you that it's not dangerous. Leaving aside the little problem of the ex-MVD guys patrolling the mountainside, whatever is in the secret place it's something bloody dangerous. You heard Yuri's story about 1952, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“OK. Whatever is there, just seeing a film of it left two of the scariest guys who ever walked the earth shaking in their boots. So…”

“It didn't scare the Vrai,” I said.

I felt a strange thrill of pride in these mysterious ancestors of mine, and I added: “And it doesn't scare me.”

Ross slapped my knee. “That's the spirit!”

But as soon as I'd somehow talked my way into saying I was brave enough to face something that had made Stalin and Beria quail, a more sensible part of my brain popped up with practical objections. “What about my
job?”

“Are you the only person in the whole wide world who can do your job?” “Well, not exactly—”

“Right then,” he said. “You're the only person in the whole wide world who can do
this
job.”

“But what about notice, and—”

Ross leaned across me and slid the door open.

“You'll sort something out,” he said.

It sounded the same whether it was a prediction or an instruction. I made to leave.

“Oh, and do something about your hair,” he said. “What?”

He waved a hand above his head. “The colour. For the passport photo.” I was down on the street again, looking up. He was still leaning over, holding the door handle.

“I
have
a passport,” I said. “In fact, I have two.”

“You'll need another.”

“How do I—”

“I'll be in touch,” he said.

The door slid shut.

2.

I tucked my lilac satin clutch bag under my left elbow, wedged the stem of my champagne flute between two spare fingers of the hand already holding a side plate of cucumber-and-tuna white bread triangles and tikka chicken wings, and with the lilac-polished fingernails of the other hand raked some flakes of sausage-roll pastry out of Alec's beard.

“Thanksh,” he said, around a mouthful of aforesaid sausage roll. He washed it down with a swallow of beer. “Mmm. Well.”

He looked around the reception-crowded lounge bar, then back at me. “You look absolutely fantastic, Lucy,” he told me, for the third time.

“Thank you,” I said. I risked a nibble of tikka, kissed the sticky sauce off my fingertips, reshuffled the plate and glass. “Uh, Alec—”

“Yeah,” he said. “Music is a bit loud in here.”

“What?”

He tipped his head to indicate the balcony. I threaded after him as he sidled out. The MC was tooling up to bully everyone into another complicated Scottish dance. The balcony was hardly less crowded than the room, but Alec had found a spare white-enamel wobbly round table in the corner. No seats, but it gave me somewhere to put down my plate and bag. Below us, smokers in suits or kilts or long dresses stood or teetered on wet pebbles in the lowering sun. Little white triangular sails scudded on the Firth. A long train rumbled over the bridge.

“So,” I said, around nibbling on a fishy sail of damp bread, “you'll admit now that modern wedding dresses look good?”

“Oh, sure,” said Alec. “Suze is beautiful.” He gulped beer. “You too,” he added.

“I know,” I said, posing (palm upraised at raised shoulder, one heel kicked up) though a fourth reminder seemed a little excessive. Another awkward silence. This was getting like our first conversation, at Suze's flat-warming all those months ago.

“Uh, Alec—”

“One, two, three BACK, now TURN your partner THREE times ending with your LEFT arms CROSSED,” the MC boomed.

“Oh, fuck,” said Alec. He put down his pint and made his way to the balcony's double-glazed patio door and slid it shut, returning to our table in a spatter of applause. He brushed pastry flakes and grease from his fingers and dipped into his suit jacket's inside pocket, from whence he withdrew a long white envelope.

“Uh, Lucy,” he said, “this is, uh, something I wanted to give you here, I mean don't take it the wrong…Anyway. Here it is.”

With that he handed me the envelope. I gave him the quizzical eye-brow—for a heart-sinking moment I'd thought he was about to give me a “Dear John” letter, but his expression was more worried-but-eager-to-please than expecting-a-goodkicking—and thumb-nailed the envelope open. What was inside was leaves and leaves of flimsy and carbon-copy and took me a moment to figure out: an Air New Zealand open return ticket. I didn't know how much the New Zealand dollar was in pounds but there was an eye-watering four-digit number of them printed in a box at the bottom corner.

I looked up, blinking. “Alec,” I said. “You shouldn't’—I flung my arms around his neck—”have.”

“Shouldn't at
all,”
I added, disengaging arms and lips about a minute later. “This is crazy. This is like—a car, or your tuition, or—I don't know.”

Alec shifted and shrugged. “I can afford it. My folks own a
sheep farm”

He said this like it was
oil well.

“All the same,” I said.

“The thing is,” Alec said, looking even more awkward, “I'm going back.”

He must have mistaken my stunned expression for incomprehension. “To NZ,” he explained.

“But—”

“I'm sorry, Lucy, it's just—I'm homesick, I miss NZ a lot and—uh, well, like I said I can afford that ticket but I can't afford another year in Scotland, no way, and my folks deserve a bit of help on the farm to cover my studies, the old man's getting on a bit, and I love you and I want you to come out to, uh, like be with me—when you can, I mean, but that's why it's an open return so, what I mean is, no pressure.”

I stood listening to this babbling stream of talk with my mouth open.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “When are you going?”

“Next Friday,” he said.

“Oh,” I said, with a lift-shaft feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Like that.”

“Well, I already had that flight booked,” he said. “All along. The only question was whether to postpone it. So.” Big smile. “The money I saved from not taking the penalty for that went straight to your open ticket.”

“Alec,” I said, “I love you too, but…well, this is all a bit…fast.”

He took his pipe from his pocket, turned it over several times in his hands, and rattled the stem between his teeth.

“Like I said. No pressure.”

“Jeez,” I said. “No pressure.”

I slithered the flimsies and carbons back into the envelope, and thumbed the tacky strips to an inadequate reseal. My name was written on the front, in nerdy Rotring tech-pen ink, the lines all the same width like in a diagram. I could just see Alec, labouring for a minute or two over the lettering, tongue-tip protruding, like a small boy inking his first Valentine card. SWALK. This wasn't a goodbye note, as I'd momentarily feared—it was practically a marriage proposal.