The Restoration Game (33 page)

Nor did the feeling of betrayal from my gut.

I kept thinking about what might have happened if I'd succeeded in using the sat-phone to take and uplink a video of the ravine's secret—to a geosynchronous satellite, Ross had speculated. Would the phone, and I holding it, have been obliterated as soon as its job was done? I couldn't believe that Ross, let alone Amanda, could have countenanced such a plan. But I was in no mood, now, to phone either of them. Ross wasn't expecting a call from me anyway, not until I'd got out of the country. When I did, I intended to give him a piece of my mind. As for Amanda, I would make her ears burn.

We climbed down to the road through a copse of conifers about a mile farther west than I'd ascended, and walked along its side a few hundred metres to the farmhouse with a refreshment stall where Andrei waited. Anxiously scanning the mountainside and checking his phone for messages, he didn't see us coming until we crunched across the gravel in front of the corrugated-iron canopy that shaded the benches and tables.

He sprang up. “Emma! Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” I said wearily. “Forget ‘Emma.’” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “He knows. Andrei, meet Ilya.”

We sat down opposite Andrei. Klebov waved to a woman sitting by a table in the room back of the veranda and asked for more tea. Andrei took the opportunity of this distraction to lean across the table and speak quietly and urgently in my ear.

“What does he know?”

“Everything,” I said. “He recognised me, and he knows about you.”

“How did you recognise her?” Andrei asked Klebov.

“She recognised me,” Klebov said truthfully enough, and smoothly added the lie: “And from that, of course, I knew she could only be the American girl from all those years ago. The events of that day were just as memorable for me, you know.”

The two men regarded each other warily, silent until the tea had been brought.

“Well,” said Klebov, passing a cup to me, “this is a little awkward. Shall we declare a truce?”

Andrei frowned, then gave a reluctant nod.

“I heard explosions,” he said. “I was very worried.”

“Not worried enough to phone,” I said.

“Too worried,” Andrei said. “I didn't want to make things worse, if you'd been captured.”

He looked hurt.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn't think of it that way.”

“What happened?” Andrei asked. He lowered his voice. “Did you find the famous secret?”

Klebov and I looked at each other. The first sips of tea, and the relief of getting off the mountain, went to my head. I giggled. Klebov gave me a severe look that only made things worse.

“I'm sorry,” I said, spluttering. “This is all so—”

I took out my iPhone, selected the video I'd made, and handed the phone across to Andrei.

“This is what I found,” I said. “Press Play.”

Andrei watched the recording, and passed the phone back.

“This is an illusion of some kind?” he asked. “A projection?”

“Well done,” I said. “That was my first thought, too, until I cut my finger on one of the letters.”

Andrei stared at the little scar on my fingertip as if it might hold some clue. Evidently not. He shook his head.

“I don't understand,” he said.

“Neither do I,” I said. “But take it from me, there was a totally bizarre phenomenon up there, and Mr. Klebov can assure you that it had been there for many years.”

“Was?” said Andrei, suspiciously.

“This is where our story becomes truly incredible,” said Klebov, sounding sincerely apologetic. “Those explosions you heard were in fact a bombardment, which utterly destroyed the ravine of the stone text mere minutes after we had left it.”

“‘We’?” said Andrei. “You were there too, were you?”

“I was,” said Klebov, still with the smooth assurance. “Through certain…old and trusted acquaintances of mine, I had in recent days learned a number of disturbing facts.” He began ticking these off on his fingers. “One: the online game which has become so popular among our excitable youth has in its landscape a route and other clues to what certain experts in such matters considered to be the likely location of the so-called secret place of the Vrai, and some of the young players were becoming interested in this. Two: it was considered necessary, in the interests of public safety, to prevent unauthorised access to this site, which was after all a very dangerous place. Tragic, almost inexplicable events have occurred there within living memory. Given the inadequacy of the patrols on the mountain, any wide-scale exercise of public curiosity about this place of grim repute would sadly stretch the resources of the State. Consequently, a decision was made to ask a friendly neighbouring power to destroy the site by aerial bombardment. Three: a certain young activist in the self-styled democratic opposition had been pulled from his leading position in the movement by his, let us say, paymasters and had taken up bird-watching, training his binoculars on this very mountainside.

“I had the young man placed under discreet observation. Imagine my horror when this afternoon I learned that he had sent a young foreign woman up the mountain on an apparent foray to the site! The regular RSB forces were fully occupied with keeping watch on the antics of the so-called democrats. The mountain's guards were impossible to reach. There was not a moment to lose. I took my car to a spot not far from here and hastened up the mountain myself. What terrible fate—whether from the unknown but severe dangers of the site itself, or from its imminent destruction—might await her? What awful consequences might this have for our country's reputation? Such thoughts preyed on my mind as I hurried to the scene. Imagine my relief when I found the young lady! Imagine my amazement when I saw that the site actually was the location of a most mysterious phenomenon! Imagine, if you can, my dismay when this fascinating site was utterly annihilated by a precision strike not ten minutes after we had reluctantly dragged ourselves away from marvelling at it!”

He told this bullshit story in such a smooth tone I could almost have believed it myself, and finished with a smile at me. “However, all's well that ends well, eh?”

I didn't know what to say. How he could pull off such a performance so soon after what had happened was beyond me. I had to remind myself that the two biggest shocks I'd had this afternoon—that the world was a very different place from what I'd always thought, and, oh yes, quite apart from that little piece of empirical metaphysics, that Klebov was my father—were old news to him.

“I'm very grateful to you, Mr. Klebov,” I said. “Not for the first time.”

Andrei scowled. “I suppose I should say the same.”

Klebov bowed from the neck. “It was only business, both times.”

“I'm…surprised…you didn't think to phone someone and call off the air strike,” Andrei said. “Especially once you'd seen this marvel.”

“I have less influence than you might think,” said Klebov. “Besides, there's no coverage up there. Now that you mention it, I had switched my phone off.”

He took his phone from his pocket, checked for messages, and rang his voicemail. He pressed the phone to his ear in intent silence for a minute, his lips compressing more and more. When he'd finished he gazed at the phone in his hand for a moment as if it were some shiny toy he was going to have to part with. He slipped it back in his pocket and stood up.

“I have to get back to Krasnod immediately,” he said. “Andrei, could I trouble you for a lift?”

“Certainly,” said Andrei. He laid a few notes on the table under a saucer. As I too rose to leave I said to Klebov: “Didn't you say you'd left your own car somewhere nearby?”

Klebov and Andrei laughed.

“My dear Lucy,” Klebov explained, “a man in my position does not
drive his own car.”

Klebov insisted, in what I thought an odd reversal of the usual courtesy, that he take the front passenger seat and I sit in the back. As soon as Andrei pulled out, Klebov told him to drive fast.

“Why?” asked Andrei.

“There's trouble in the town,” said Klebov. “The troops are being readied to move out of barracks. I'd rather be ahead of the column than behind.”

Andrei stepped on it, overtaking a bus and avoiding an oncoming truck. Ahead lay the spur of road to the military base. I leaned forward to look between the men's heads through the windshield. Dust was rising from behind the scrub and trees that shielded the base from view. Around the long bend towards town, traffic looked heavier than normal. Buses, trucks, cars…it might be just the local rush hour, but I doubted it.

“Stop,” I said.

“What?” said Andrei, catching my eye in the rearview mirror.

“Please,” I said. “Just let me out, now.”

Klebov looked over his shoulder. “This is a bad idea, Lucy.”

“Sorry, Ilya Alekseyevich,” I said, “but I am not going into Krasnod if the troops are about to go in. I am just—fucking—not.”

Klebov turned away and looked straight ahead.

“Drive,” he said. Then, still looking ahead: “Lucy, I will not let you become a refugee.”

“Fuck you!” I screamed. “Andrei, stop!”

“Sorry,” said Andrei, “but I agree with him. If you think the troops are dangerous, wait till you see the militias.”

“I've
seen
the militias!” I said. “On the border on the way in.”

“Yes,” said Klebov. “You don't want to meet them on the way out. You'll be safe in the city even if the troops do come in. Stay in your hotel, stay away from Freedom Square, and leave the country when the government has proper control of the border again.”

My panic began to subside.

“All right,” I said, with ill grace. “Why doesn't the government have proper border guards, anyway?”

“Because it needs all its available security forces to keep the opposition down,” said Klebov.

“Now there at least we are in agreement,” said Andrei.

The two men chuckled in the complicity of mutual respect. I sat back in sullen silence for the rest of the journey. Andrei, with a wry smile, dropped me outside the Metro. Klebov looked at me with the same odd expression as he'd shown when he'd met me at the ravine, and at our previous parting. It was like he was trying to memorise my face, and hoped I would remember his.

“Goodbye, Lucy Stone,” he said, leaning over to the back for an awkward handshake.

“See you in another life, Father,” I said.

Andrei shot me a startled look.

“A private joke,” said Klebov.

I watched the yellow car out of the street, then crossed the road and entered the Kosmo.

1.

The room had been made up. Like all European hotel rooms, it was far too warm. I shrugged off my jacket and fleece and turned up the aircon. I boiled water in the kettle, made Nescafé, and devoured the complimentary biscuits. All that did was stack a shaky sugar and caffeine rush on top of my hunger. I hadn't eaten since breakfast. Thinking about food and the morning reminded me of Ross. The time now was 7:30. Knowing Ross's habits, he was probably stopped somewhere, having a bite. I called his number, which he'd so thoughtfully tabbed to my iPhone the previous night.

“Hi, Lucy.” Sound of chewing and swallowing. “How's things?”

“Mission accomplished,” I said.

“Oh, brilliant! Well done!”

“Uh, not exactly,” I said.

Wary voice: “How so?”

I gave him a fast-forward account of how so.

“Jesus!” he said, not for the first time, when I'd finished. “Klebov…? And then…? Fuck.”

“They were trying to kill me,” I said.

“Or maybe just destroy the sat-phone.”

“Don't make excuses for them,” I said.

“No, no, I'm just…trying to figure out where their minds are at. Look, it must have been triggered by not getting the uplink, before you—I mean, the GPS trace—started heading back down the mountain. Maybe they thought you or more likely someone else, the Russians or whoever, had made the video and was making off with it, to sell or use or take back to Moscow.”

“So the rods from God weren't aimed at me? Just the phone I was carrying? I'm feeling safer already.”

Actually, I was, but I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of my admitting it.

“You have to let them know the Russians don't have it,” said Ross.

“Let who?” I asked. “Even
you
don't know which three-letter agency we're working for.”

“I'll tell your mother,” said Ross. “Right away. She has the contact. And I'll let her know you're safe.”

“Yes, you do that,” I said. “And while you're at it, tell her to hang on to her shares in the Ural Caspian Mineral Company.”

Long pause.

“That isn't what this is about,” said Ross.

“Klebov thinks it is.”

“Klebov's an old commie. For him, everything's got to have a materialist explanation.”

“You know as well as I do, that's kind of the opposite of the truth.”

“Yeah, I suppose I do. Shit. What a maroon.”

“That's a bit racist.”

“Is it? Fuck me. These days…it's like you're not supposed to put salt on your language. Anyway. I wish to fuck he hadn't blown the fucking thing up.”

“So do I,” I said. “Still, at least it means the Russians won't get it.”