The Restoration Game (35 page)

A wall that moved away from me, down the steps, past or over the guy on the ground, and on. I recovered from my frozen shock enough to run down the steps and crouch beside the felled man. Maybe if I'd been better prepared I could have done something for him, but I doubt it. Someone with an armband and a case rushed up, knelt, leaned forward, and then rocked back, as helpless as I was.

Next thing I knew, I was back up the steps. The cops were wading in, batons flailing. People in the front of the crowd pushed back, and jabbed or swiped with the flimsy sticks of their flags and placards. Almost no one was running away down the Prospekt. At first I thought this was because the riot cops weren't getting the best of it—there were maybe three hundred of them, and thousands in the crowd. Then I stood on tiptoe and gazed down the Prospekt and saw why: a column of trucks and tanks was about two hundred metres away, oily green under the yellow streetlights, and getting closer by the second.

The vehicles halted. Soldiers jumped out from the sides and ran into formation. Moments later they marched forward, on the double.
Thump thump thump
of their boots up the street.

The front ranks of the soldiers suddenly and raggedly stopped. The still-marching ranks collided with them from behind, in an almost comical confusion. I heard the angry shouts of officers. Then a hush rippled from the Prospekt and through the square like a noise. Everyone was looking towards the front of the square, it seemed at first—I looked around for some imposing presence, and saw only faces as puzzled as my own—and then I saw the backward tilt of the heads.

They were looking at something behind the parliament building. Something to the north.

I dashed across the corner of the pediment and down the steps to the street back of the square and clear of the crowd, and looked in the same direction. Even through the streetlights, I could see in the distance, above and in front of Mount Krasny, a glow that shone straight up into the sky, a glow the colour of maple leaves in autumn, the colour of auburn hair.

Later, it was claimed that the glow was from a heath fire on the mountain's slope, and when the absence of vast areas of blackened hillside became embarrassing, that it was an unusual—indeed, unique—southerly auroral display. My own instant explanation was that the Stone Text must have had its own energy source, and that the glow came as the last of its energies dissipated, ionising the air as they bled off into space.

The main thing I knew, the moment I saw it, was what was going to happen next. That was why I ran for the hotel and, when I got there, locked myself in my room.

All through the night I heard shouts, sirens, shots, the crash of glass in the distance, now and then the rush of running feet in the street outside, and the full-throated drunken singing of the songs that had boomed from the PA system in Freedom Square. I slept fitfully. In the morning I checked that the power was still on—it was—and had a shower. After breakfast in a front room of the hotel with its windows shuttered, I ventured out.

Broken glass on the street, a burned-out car at the corner. A roving militiaman reeled across the nearest junction, a bottle in one hand and a rifle in the other. From not far away, a shot echoed. I retreated hurriedly inside. Every terminal in the hotel's Internet room was taken, most of them by young backpackers who looked like they spoke English and with whom I'd no wish to speak. But the place had free wifi, and I remembered my iPhone. I sat at an empty table with a pot of coffee and went online.

…to find no news of the night's events in Krasnod, except a brief account on Russia Today TV. It stated that the Krassnian authorities had completely lost control of their own capital. The precipitating incident was said to be the unfortunate death of Edward Tuzmukhamedov, a Liberal Democrat MP. The report didn't mention the glow over Mount Krasny, but I could easily guess what had happened. The troops and cops had been shaken by the phenomenon, and the crowds enthused, all seeing it as some portent.

This hadn't been supposed to happen. It wasn't in the Colour Revolution script. What was supposed to happen was that the government would concede massive invigilation of the elections by the opposition and the NGOs, or, after narrowly and contestably winning, bow out with ill grace under the pressure of massive, peaceful demonstrations claiming (perhaps correctly) that the elections had been rigged. Nobody wanted this chaos. I expected the Russians to come in at any moment, probably from Abkhazia: their troops were roaming around there at will.

I finger-pecked awkwardly at the on-screen keyboard, searching for local travel information. The nearest I could find, going by the map reference, was in Georgian, a script I couldn't read. I went offline and phoned Andrei.

“You're still
here
?” he squawked.

“Yes,” I said, somewhat defensively, “but I'm trying to get out. Are the buses running?”

“I'll call you back,” he said.

A few anxious minutes later, he did. “There's a bus at ten for Nal'chik, in Kabardino-Balkaria,” he said.

“That's in fucking Russia!”

“Yes,” snapped Andrei, like I'd given him an insultingly needless geography lesson, rather than raised an objection, “but that's a better bet than Georgia, at the moment. Nothing's flying out of Nal'chik, but from there you can get to Sochi. Do you know where the bus station is?”

“Is it still back of the Opera House?”

He laughed. “As was. Yes. You can get a…Fuck it. I'll take you there. See you outside in half an hour. The Metro, yes?”

“Yes.”

I packed, checked out, and waited, and the yellow car arrived outside the opposite hotel. I lugged my bag across the road and jumped in.

“Why did you keep doing that?” Andrei asked.

“I didn't trust you,” I said. I strapped in. “I trust you now.”

Everything happened just as I thought it would, working itself out like destiny, like machine code. Andrei dropped me at the bus station. The bus to Nal'chik, and every other bus across any of Krassnia's borders, was crowded with people who'd had the same idea as I'd had. I barely had time to wedge myself in a seat with my bags on my lap before we were off, on the road to the north. Looking back, I saw several separate pillars of smoke in the air above Krasnod.

Before long, the city was out of sight, as the road curved around the sides of the mountains. There was a junction where the road divided, the pass to Russia to the north, the road to Abkhazia going west. Along the road to the north, after another little while, we stopped. All the traffic stopped. An hour passed. Dull thuds up ahead, smoke. A tank and truck column, Russian tricolours flying, came out of the north, going past us at speed. The traffic moved forward. A couple of kilometres farther on, the Krassnia–Russia border was marked with a tank half off the side of the road, its turret like a hat askew; a couple of trucks twisted open, like aerosol cans on the ashes of a bonfire; and the gnarled and blackened meat of men smouldering by the road. The border post had been ground flat by tank treads.

There is no such place as Krassnia.

1.

And that, dear reader, is how I came to be in New Zealand.

(Remember, at the start? Queenstown airport? The Remarkables? The sinister note? We're getting there.)

When I reached Sochi, after three twelve-hour bus rides, I looked and no doubt smelled like a refugee. This had helped, at the border. I used the Emma Taylor cards for cash and credit, cleaned up, and booked a flight to Frankfurt via Istanbul in the name of Lucy Stone. I used my US passport at Sochi airport. The official frowned, tapped at the page with the entry stamp for Russia that I'd got at the Kabardino–Balkaria border, then stamped my passport and nodded me through. At Frankfurt I used my open return to New Zealand to get on a flight to Auckland, via Singapore, and time-travelled into Wednesday, August 25.

As I trudged the long queues from the time machine to the portal of normality at Auckland, the bag straining my shoulder more than usual, I passed several bins pointedly placed beneath notices warning of the dire consequences of taking undeclared biological materials into the country. Mud and grass on walking boots counted. I thought frantically of binning my boots, thought better of it, and became increasingly paranoid about the forged passport and dodgy cards stashed in a zipped inner pocket of my little backpack. Nothing happened.

At the first ATM after Arrivals I took out a wad of NZ$, real funny money made of waterproof paper with a little leaf-shaped transparent panel, on Emma Taylor's account. Feeling as if I'd gotten away with something, I walked with shaking knees into a spring dawn and found the taxi rank.

“Where to?”

The driver was dark-skinned with tattoos dotted over his cheekbones and had an indistinguishable Kiwi accent and manner. I'd thought the UK was racially relaxed but this was something else.

“Uh…” I knew exactly one address in Auckland, from an evening of idle browsing of fashion sites (with New Zealand floating at the back of my mind) in the buildup to Suze's wedding. “Trelise Cooper, Princes Wharf.”

The driver gave me an appraising look, as if to check whether I was an actress or model travelling incognito. With depressing alacrity he clocked that I wasn't.

“Hop in then, miss.”

Didn't even offer to take my bag.

From the fast road into town the place looked like England. I nearly cried. Only the roadkill was different. Long-tailed furry animals, flattened except for their teeth.

“Possums,” said the driver, noticing. “Bloody pests. Even the eco people tell us to run them over.”

Half an hour later I found myself standing on a sidewalk near a development the general size and shape of a cruise liner, looking in the window of a boutique full of floaty dresses on snooty mannequins, and wondering what to do next. A sudden pang inside reminded me that airline meals don't actually nourish. I checked Google Maps on my iPhone, and lugged my bag a few hundred metres to a café near the Maritime Museum, where I sat at an outdoor table on a floating deck and ordered up a full English breakfast served by a small Irish waitress. After leaving a few crumbs for the plump sparrows, I felt fortified enough to call Alec.

“Lucy!” he said. “Wow! Great to hear from you! Are you back?”

“Back where?”

“Back from your trip.”

“I'm in Auckland,” I told him.

He was silent long enough for me to get worried.

“Wow!” he said again, at last. “That is so great! I'm, I'm…Jeez. I'm overwhelmed, Lucy.”

“So am I,” I said, shakily. “Uh, why didn't you reply to my texts?”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I was angry. There didn't seem much to reply to.”

I took a breath deep enough for him to hear. “OK. OK. Well. Maybe you're right. Where are you and when can I see you?”

“Driving around on the South Island, running errands for the old family business. I can fly to Auckland from Queenstown tomorrow.”

“You can? That's fantastic!”

We made arrangements to meet.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you too,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

I lugged my big bag along until I happened to pass a luggage shop, where I (well, Emma) bought a strong-shelled rolling case, into which I stuffed the bag as it was. Happening to pass a chemist's shop resulted in a similar happy thought, and I came out with a box of a hair colour approximating what mine had been like before. I booked in for one night to the Mercure on off-season rates that looked reasonable in NZ$ and cheap in pounds. There I showered, changed my hair colour, changed my clothes, repacked, and set out about eleven to see the sights of Auckland. The hotel was more or less in the CBD, the Sky Tower struck me as an experience I'd want to share with someone, for example, Alec, and I hadn't a clue where to go. I shuffled tourist information leaflets in the lobby and decided on Devonport, a small touristy town just across the water. I remembered seeing ferries at the wharf near where I'd had breakfast, so I ambled along East Customs Street, feeling very light and jaunty with just my little backpack, and around the corner to the quay area. By the time I got there I'd almost, but not quite, overcome the startle reflex at the loud, chivvying chatter made by the noisy gadget in the pedestrian crossing lights. I found Fuller's Ferries and bought a return ticket.

On the way across I sat out front. The breeze and spray dispelled my jetlag. The lightness I felt stayed when I sat. It came from more than having less to carry, more even than having touched base again with Alec. It came, I realised, from the sense of being free of it all. Free from the Other Thing. As the boat butted the waves I marvelled that I was facing north, at nearly noon, and the sun was in front of me. I was on a whole other side of the planet. The Other Thing had never been destiny. It had never been some occult emanation from the Stone Text. The whole time, all the way back along the mother-lines to Lord Hugh Montford himself over a century earlier, the inveiglement of my family with the dark affairs of Krassnia had been the by-product of the machinations of intelligence services, of imperial and business interests, of Communist and capitalist conspiracies. Here, almost half a world away from Krassnia, I was well shot of the lot of them.