The Restoration Game (7 page)

Amanda shrugged. “That'll pass. Cold War Two will be over by the time I graduate.” She laughed lightly. “Well, either that or it'll be the Third World War!”

“Well, OK,” said Ross, frowning, “but even if things calm down and it's back to detente—suppose you do get over there, visit Krassnia. You won't have much chance of finding out what happened to Arbatov. Not with the generation that came to power under Stalin still in power.” He brandished the book again. “You can see the names: Kosygin, Brezhnev, Shelepin…”

“Old men. They won't be in power forever.”

“Aye, but, come on. They'll pick their successors.”

“Not always. Not forever. Hell, the
Party
won't be in power forever. Wouldn't you agree?”

“Forever is a long time,” Ross said. “So, aye, sure, nothing lasts forever. But…the Soviet Union will last for, you know, decades. It'll have to reform some day, yeah, but I don't think we'll live to see the Party lose power.”

“I do,” said Amanda.

Ross stared at her. “Why?”

She reached forward and picked up the brown envelope from the sofa between them.

“Because of this. It's like you said—the capitalists never give up.” She grinned at him. “We're still in the restoration game.”

Ross's head jerked back. He frowned. “I'm no into that,” he said.

“What are you into?”

Ross tapped a thumbnail on his lapel badge. “Labour Party,” he said. “Clause Four Labour Students. Democratic socialism, an' that.”

“Like, what's just lost in a landslide to Margaret Thatcher?”

“Aye, well, nobody said it would be easy. Anyway, we support the dissidents and reformers in the Eastern bloc.”

Amanda waved a hand. “That's just talk.”

“It's not just talk,” said Ross, vehemently and indignantly.

“So what is it then, apart from talk?”

Ross relit his pipe. The smoke still smelled good. He looked at her through a cloud of it.

“I can't talk about that,” he said.

Very interesting
, Amanda thought. She had plenty to not talk about herself.

She smiled and stood up, stretching. “Let's get another drink,” she said. “And if you don't want to talk about that, let's talk about something else, shall we?”

They did. They went on talking.

That's a considerable expansion of the story my mother told me when I first asked how she'd met my father.

It's the true story. It's not the whole story.

2.

Three nights into the job. I sat in the Reference Section of Edinburgh Central Library and tapped notes into my laptop from the books stacked in front of me. The time was 7:30 p.m. and I'd come here from the office—less than five minutes' walk away—at five. I'd miss out on the Friday after-work drinks with the lads, at the Doctors' on the corner. The library closes at eight and I wanted to make the most of it. My back ached. I was hungry. My jacket kept sliding off the curved chairback. Eventually I folded it and held it on my lap like a cat. There was some comfort in that.

I needed comfort because researching Krassnia for the game had turned into something else. I already had enough detail from
The Krassniad
and from a map of the Caucasus I'd found in a huge
Times Atlas
to get the place-names and the landscape nailed down.

This wasn't the first time I'd looked at Krassnia on a map. I'd looked it up on Google Earth as soon as Amanda had put the phone down the night she'd called—last week, which already seemed a long time ago. And from looking at that map, I even thought I'd found an answer to the question I'd tactfully not asked Amanda: what's with the CIA's sudden interest in Krassnia? Simple geography: Krassnia lies south of the western end of the Caucasus, and includes a pass—high and difficult, but wider than the Roki Tunnel—into Russia. Whoever holds Krassnia is within a hundred klicks of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, across open terrain.

The same night I'd found one Reuters reference to an upcoming election in early September, which the ruling Social Democrats were (“according to the opposition Liberal Democrats and a wide spectrum of civil society organizations”) expected to rig. As soon as I saw the phrase “a wide spectrum of civil society organizations” I'd thought:
Aha! Colour Revolution!

Which explained what the CIA wanted the game for: as soon as it was on sale it would (like all other games in that part of the world) be pirated to all the Internet cafés and campus servers, where its virtual spaces would make a very good place for the
wide spectrum of civil society organizations
to…organise, away from the prying eyes of the Krassnian security police (FSB, prop.). The revolution would not just be televised: it would be computer-gamed.

The trouble was, I'd gone on looking for references to Krassnia and found
far too many
, none of them of any use. It always worked the same way. I'd pull down a relevant book, look up “Krassnia” or “Krassnian” in the index. Sure enough, there it was. Add the book to the pile in the crook of my arm. When the pile got too heavy to add anymore to, I'd take it back to the table, sit down, and start chasing page numbers.

Always with the same result.

Samples, from my notes:

“The settlements, unsatisfactory though they were, of the conflicts in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Adjara left outstanding the minor but intractable problem of Krassnia. The Saakashvili government has, like its predecessors, turned a blind eye to the tiny region's anomalous status, no doubt in the hope that the problem will, over time, resolve itself.”

That was the one and only reference to Krassnia in
Georgia after Communism: A Brief History
, Morgan Chancellor, London, 2005.

“Scuffling and yelling by a small group of Krassnians on the fringe of the crowd failed to disrupt the demonstration. Later investigation revealed, to no one's surprise, the FSB's hand in the affair.”
The Rose Revolution: A Case Study in Democratic Transformation
, Anne Fassbinder, Washington, 2007.

“The role of other minor nationalities in the deportation was, if anything, worse than that of the Ossetes, that of the Krassnians being particularly infamous.”
The Soviet Southern Flank
, William T. McCulloch, Boston, 1978.

“The Krassnian nationality question was also, as is known, harmoniously resolved in accord with the decisions of the Twentieth Congress.”
A History of Soviet Georgia
, I. M. Shishkin, Moscow, 1982.

“At this crucial moment the Krassnians, as so often in the past, played a treacherous and despicable role in the nation's life.”
Georgia Under Soviet Rule
, Y. A. Yakobashvili, Toronto, 1938.

“The undeniable instances of striking, if overstated, economic and social transformation (charitably leaving aside such unavoidable disasters as the Krassnian plastics industry) add some weight to the positive side of the balance.”
Economic Development in the Caucasus, 1922—1969
, George C. Bullen, London, 1972.

Every relevant book I'd looked at had the same pattern: a passing reference to Krassnia or the Krassnians as if everything about the place and people
went without saying.

Online: not much better. Even the Wikipedia entry for Krassnia was a stub.

I'd now reached the point where I'd pull books about Russia or the Soviet Union off the shelves almost at random, with the same frustrating result:

“The lesson he had drawn from his painful experience in Krassnia once more stood him in good stead.”
Koba in the Observatory: New Light on Stalin's Early Years
, David Isaacson, Tel Aviv, 1998.

“The infamous ‘Krassnian clique' was, as the Soviet Foreign Policy Archives now reveal, active behind the scenes in sowing distrust of Khrushchev before the XXII Congress convened.”
Khrushchev: A New Biography
, Alan Harrington, New Jersey, 2003.

“Beria's oversight of the project was relentless: the records show flying visits to sites as far apart as Krasnoyarsk and Krassnia. The problems at the latter have, of course, often been recounted. For Krasnoyarsk, however, the story has hitherto been more patchy, and is well worth detailed examination.”
Beria and the Bomb: The Secret History of State Committee on Problem Number One
, A. I. Mintz, St. Petersburg, 1995.

Beria—I recalled the first time I'd heard that name, from my Nana, and wondered if this infuriatingly vague mention referred to the incident she'd told me about.

“By 1990, the reports of national disturbances (Armenia, the Baltics, Georgia—with its inevitable Krassnian complication—and Turkmenistan) should have warned Gorbachev of the dangers, but unaccountably he continued the fatal policy.”
Perestroika: Rise and Fall
, Andreas Schmidt, Berlin, 1992.

“Transdnestria has served as an entrepot for contraband and peoplesmuggling, and a haven for the Russian
Mafiya
, following the well-known pattern pioneered in Krassnia.”
Criminal Capitals
, Ian Johnson, London, 2003.

“The young Lord Montford's travels in 1899 took him to the Caucasus, where he encountered a pioneer party of prospectors. In an excited letter from Krasnod, administrative capital of Krassnia on the Georgian border, he told the Board of Directors of the ‘splendid chaps’ who were ‘discovering rich deposits on an almost monthly basis.’ The Turk, he said, was ‘already sniffing around, to say nothing of the Prussian and the Hebrew!’ Montford's decision to strike an exclusive deal at once, without waiting to consult the Board, was to prove farsighted, and immensely lucrative to the Ural Caucasian Mineral Company. His week in Krassnia was also, of course, to prove of great personal significance to Lord Montford!”
The British Adventure in Russia, From Peter to Nicholas
, Dame Sheila Gardiner, London, 1939.

That one made me jump. My heart was hammering.

Was
this
Lord Montford my maternal great-great-grandfather? Did my family's connection to the godforsaken place go back
that
far?

I flicked through the book, but found no further reference. The time was 7:50 p.m. The library was about to close. I sighed and shoved the stack together, gathered up my stuff—laptop, shoulder bag, still-damp umbrella—and set about replacing the books on the shelves. I'd just finished that and was about to walk out when I happened to notice a couple of shelves set aside for the
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
.

Dumping my stuff at my feet, I grabbed the “M” volume. There were a lot of Lord Montfords. There were a lot of Lord
Hugh
Montfords. The first Lord Hugh died on a Crusade, for Christ's sake! Bloody family had probably come over with William the Conqueror.

Ah, there was one that looked likely:

Montford, Lord Hugh (1881—1962)
…lots of abbreviations of titles, decorations, and clubs…
Lieutenant, Army Signal Corps 1914—1920, s. France, Bulgaria, Russia
…honourable discharge 1921, mentioned in dispatches (twice)…
Major, Home Guard, 1940—1945
…business interests…

My eye skipped to the foot of the entry:

m. Katerina Koblyakova (b. 1882, Krasnod, Russ., d. 1965) 1900, two sons (Hugh, 1902-1940; Edward, 1904-1944), one daughter (Eugenie, 1915-)

At this point I said
“Fu-u-uck!!”
so loudly that I was pointed to the door two minutes before the library closed.

The rain had stopped. The evening was still not dark. The street lights had come on. It was Friday. I had a party to go to. I should have felt jaunty. In circumstances like these I've been known to skip.

Not this time. I trudged on wet slippery pavement past Greyfriars Bobby and the art shops and charity shops and the building with the Digital Damage office on its second floor, and hesitated a moment before turning right into Lauriston Place. The avenue to the Meadows stretched off gloomily into the distance. Across the way a young guy crouched in the lee of the coffee kiosk with an upturned hat at his feet and nobody walking past him.

Feeling sorry for him, I did my bit for the poor by buying a copy of the
Big Issue
from a pathetically young and pretty girl in a headscarf and long skirt who'd stood in the rain outside the post office all day. She smiled and thanked me. I hurried on.

I glanced to the left at the bright lights of the Doctors', the pub on the corner, and considered nipping across and diving in. But the lads would be long gone and I had a party to go to.

I felt thoroughly rattled. My hand strayed a couple of times to the latch of my bag. Each time, I was within a second of digging out my mobile and speed-dialling Amanda. It would be expensive, but it would wake her up and serve her right. How
dare
she never mention once in our
entire lives
that our family's connection with Krassnia went back a generation further than she—or Great-Grandma Eugenie, come to think of it—had ever let on?

It was at that moment, I think, right on that corner, that all my connections with Krassnia—from my birth there, through to the scariest day of my life, and Amanda's admissions and shortly afterward Eugenie's confession that Saturday evening in Boston, and the old photo and the game and the book that had subconsciously inspired it, and my guesses as to what the game was for, and
now this
—all came together with that creepy feeling of
destiny
in a big dark swirly shape in my mind, a cloud full of half-seen faces, which I began then and there to think of as the Other Thing.

Something that
just could not be
part of my life, but was.

Past the old Royal Infirmary, dark against the lowering sun and rendered darker by the light from the developer's office at the former main door, and by the splendid illumination of St. George's School, lit up like a cathedral on the opposite side of the road. My flat was down towards the bottom of Lauriston Place, near Tollcross. Traffic was light and there weren't many people about. I walked fast. After I'd gone a couple of hundred metres I noticed a distinctive sound behind me, something between a squelch and a click, in the rhythm of footsteps.