The Restoration Game (13 page)

By sheer fucking coincidence bumped into A. in Rose Street afterwards. Haven't seen her since summer of ‘80 apart from a couple of frosty encounters in streets or pubs near Uni. She's moved so I don't have her address or phone. This time she gave me a friendly greeting, suggested we nip into Abbotsford for late drink.

A. remarked on my smoking cigarettes—I explained that pipe not too sociable in shared office. Then she asked how/what I was doing and I told her.

She laughed and said she was sorry for having been so uptight about Cairds and his smuggling.

She has graduated with a First and is doing PhD and has scholarship to study/research in Krassnia! Leaving next month.

Agreed to keep in touch. Gave her Cairds' London addr She promised to write when settled. I said, you never know, I might turn up, Cairds has connections as far as Georgia and Armenia these days. A. laughs. After a bit more chat A. looks at her watch, says she has to go, jumps up, and kisses me on nose before going out.

Left me feeling like there was something I hadn't done or said. I went out to look for her, up and down Rose Street but she'd vanished. Went back inside and had a whisky.

Fuck. It all comes back.

Looking back over this diary, I realise I only write when I'm elated or miserable. Time to draw a line under it.

[
Which he literally does. There are no more diary entries. The next section of the PDF file, signed by Ross Stewart and Stefan Rodowski, is (from its appearance) a carbon copy of an original typed on a typewriter.

The signatures on the copy, and the initials “RS” and “SR” at the corner of each page, are original. I have omitted these in the text—Lucy
.]

2.

18 November 1984 London

This is a true and complete record of the debriefing of Ross Stewart by Stefan Rodowski, compiled by the latter from contemporaneous notes and tapes and signed and agreed as accurate (though not necessarily verbatim) by both parties. It is agreed that the original will be kept by S. R. and the carbon copy by R. S., that both copies are separately signed at the head and foot and initialled on each page, and that both copies will be treated as equivalent in the event of any appeal.

RS: Stef, are you recording this?

SR: Yes.

RS: We've never done this before. It's a security risk.

SR: We're in a secure place. Swept. This is for you and me, so that neither of us can use it against the other without—

[crosstalk]

RS: So it's mutual blackmail, then.

SR: If you want to put it like that. I prefer to think of it as mutual insurance.

RS: Aye. So what do you want?

SR: You could begin by explaining a bit of background and context, for the record. You can speak freely—I don't expect we'll ever have to use this, but if we do it needs to be understandable on its own.

RS: OK. My name is Ross Stewart, speaking to Stefan Rodowski. Could you confirm that, Stef?

SR: Confirmed. Go on, please.

RS: I was born in Greenock, Scotland, 1958. I attended Edinburgh University 1976 to 1980, graduating with an ordinary degree in engineering and business studies. From 1980 to 1983 I worked as a Technical Supervisor and subsequently Engineering Project Manager in the Radar Division of Ferranti Defence Systems Limited. I was made redundant in 1983 and am currently a long-distance lorry driver for the haulage company Colin Byrne Associates. Colin Byrne, the owner, nicknamed “Cairds,” is an old school-friend of mine and, as well as being the owner and operator of a small but highly successful legitimate business, is a professional smuggler of cigarettes, alcohol, pornography, caviar, and other goods, which to my certain knowledge do not include controlled substances, transport of which he regards as too risky. However, he has no compunction in illegally conveying to Eastern Bloc countries high-technology items embargoed by the Western Alliance's COCOM export control regime, as well as luxury goods and items such as pornography prohibited in these countries by the Communist authorities.

While at Edinburgh University I was an active member of the Labour Club, and through this became acquainted with Stefan Rodowski, here present. He was born in Poznan, Poland, and left at an early age with his parents after the repressions of 1968. He recruited me to a clandestine organisation, covertly supported by a number of groups and individuals predominantly of a left-wing character, which exists to deliver literature and material aid to dissidents in the Eastern Bloc. I took part in six journeys for this purpose to Eastern Europe while I was a student, using a variety of forged documents supplied by Stefan. The demands of my work for Ferranti made my participation in any further journeys impracticable, though I continued to support the group with regular small donations of cash.

Shortly after taking up my new job as a long-distance driver I had a conversation with Stefan on the possibility of using Cairds' trucks to transport material to and from dissidents in the Balkans and the southern republics of the Soviet Union. (Hitherto the group had only been able to help dissidents in Central Europe.) I did not, of course, tell Stefan about Cairds' existing illegal activities. Stefan and I agreed that the relatively porous borders and more relaxed internal controls of the southern republics such as Georgia and Armenia, the prevalence of legal and illegal private enterprise, and their proximity to hardline but deeply corrupt Bulgaria and unstable Yugoslavia, make this region the “soft underbelly” of the Soviet Union and the bloc as a whole. A further vulnerability was the known interest of the local KGB and its equivalents elsewhere in the bloc not only in importing embargoed technology but in developing secure undercover export routes into Western Europe, primarily for heroin from Afghanistan but also for firearms and explosives supplied to various armed organisations in the West (which I need not name) currently supported by the Bloc essentially for their nuisance value and as bargaining chips.

My first journey for Cairds was a delivery of stereo players to Hungary, returning with shoes and other leather goods. Apart from a minor consignment of peach brandy, there was no commercial smuggling on this trip. Stefan had set up a liaison whereby I was able to deliver some emigré Magyarlanguage literature to a dissident group in Budapest, and to return with some documents that from their appearance contained economic data. I delivered these to a contact arranged by Stefan.

Over the next few months similar journeys to Zagreb in Yugoslavia, to Sofia and again to Budapest took place without untoward incident.

In late October of this year a journey from Turkey to the Georgian province of Krassnia appeared on Cairds' schedule. The cargo container of machine parts for a plastics factory was to be picked up at the Turkish port of Izmir, then driven across Turkey and through Georgia to Krasnod, the provincial capital. Why they didn't simply ship it all the way to the Soviet port of Sochi on the Black Sea I don't know-it may have had something to do with graft or just differences in lading fees. The return cargo was a large consignment of Georgian wine to Istanbul for onward shipment to Greece. The value of both cargoes was such that the shipping company responsible was keen to have a nonlocal driver. I angled for the assignment, because it seemed to hold out possibilities. I informed Stefan, who said that he had a contact in Krasnod. I also had personal reasons for wishing to make this journey.

SR: You have to explain these.

RS: Can that not be left off?

SR: No.

RS: All right. The personal reasons were that I hoped to meet Amanda Stone, a US citizen currently on an exchange scholarship in Krasnod. I'd had a relationship with this woman some years ago, which had ended badly, for reasons not unconnected with my activities for Stefan's group. Early this year I'd seen her again once by chance, and to be blunt have been obsessed with her ever since. She had sent me a postcard from Krasnod, and I'd replied, but she wasn't aware that I was coming.

SR: That'll do. Go on.

RS: OK. I and my co-driver, another of Cairds' employees and quite innocent of any knowledge of my clandestine purpose, flew to Izmir. There we picked up the truck, already loaded at the dock. I myself went into town and picked up the additional cargo-a suitcase full of copies of
The Gulag Archipelago
in the original Russian-from a contact arranged by Stefan, with no difficulty other than that of lugging the case into and out of a taxi. The journey itself was quite eventful, particularly in Eastern Turkey, where the road passes through territory controlled by a Kurdish revolutionary nationalist group with which we-

SR: You can skip that.

RS: Fine by me. Messy business. Anyway…after these vicissitudes we crossed the Soviet border into Georgia. The cargo was inspected very thoroughly–dogs, torches, the lot-and passports and manifests double-checked and so on but my contraband passed unnoticed despite a cursory search of the cab. I'd deliberately let the cab get grubby and untidy-fag ash, dirty clothes, food wrappers, and more strewn in the back, where we'd taken turns sleeping. I've found that a little squalor goes a long way to make such searches cursory, Eastern Bloc border guards being somewhat bourgeois about their spick-and-span uniforms.

We drove to Krasnod and made the delivery at KrasNor-PlasKom, the plastics factory. We had a couple of nights to stay in the town, partly to recuperate after the long journey and partly to wait for the wine shipment. The town was pleasant enough: a core of ancient, labyrinthine stone, surrounded by a ring of modern concrete: apartment blocks, shops, schools, the hospital, the university, smaller factories, and the big plastics complex. Our hotel was at the edge of the old town. The first night, as arranged, I left the hotel just as night was falling-it falls fast in these latitudes-and went to where the lorry was parked, several streets away. My co-driver was enjoying a bit of local hospitality in a wine bar. I took the case from the lorry and ostensibly set off back to the hotel, carefully taking a “wrong” turning that led me into a narrow unlit alley in the old town. Halfway down the alley, exactly as planned, I laid down the case and lit a cigarette.

Within a minute or two, a man of about the same height and build as myself walked up the alley in the same direction as I had. He walked past me, turned around, sniffed the air, and asked: “Is that an English cigarette?”

“No,” I replied, offering him the pack, “it's a Marlboro.”

“Ah,” he said, taking one, “what a pity! I prefer a Strand.”

“‘You're never alone with a Strand,’” I replied.

“But a Strand is alone with you.”

“And the band of the Waldorf Astoria,” I said.

At this nonsense—which was, of course, the code previously agreed on, which Stef had told me to memorise—the man smiled and lit up, the match-flare showing me his face for a moment—a man younger than me, tense. Without another word, he picked up the case and carried it on down the alley. I walked a few paces behind, turned sharply as the alley gave on to a small square, and turned down the next alley and back to the street. I joined my co-driver in the wine bar, and later helped him back to the hotel.

The following day I rose very early and made my way to the address on Amanda Stone's postcard. Being your typical Soviet small town, there were no available maps (other than the sketch map provided for my meeting, which I had destroyed after use)—but again, being typical, the modern part wasn't hard for me to find my way around. The apartment block had a stairwell without a door. I went up, found the flat, and knocked.

Amanda opened the door. Her expression went from anxious to…flabbergasted, I guess, when she saw me. She was wearing a dressing gown and looked as if she'd just got of bed.

“Ross!” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I said I would come,” I said.

She laughed, asked me in, and as soon as the door was closed she threw her arms around me and kissed me, very much to my surprise. Then she broke off, laughed again, and took me into the main room, where she brewed up a samovar of tea. The room was cramped and hot, the concrete sweating. We talked for an hour and…one thing led to another and we tumbled into her unmade bed. She told me she was on the Pill.

Around eleven she stirred herself, got up, washed and dressed, and then urged me to do the same. All the hot water was gone, but I complied. She kept glancing at her watch. I assumed she was running late for work at the university. I was just up and at the table and sipping some well-stewed tea while she put together some books in a bag when a knock came on the door.

Amanda answered the door. I heard her say something in Russian. She came back into the room with a man behind her.

“Ross, this is Yuri Gusayevich, a colleague of mine,” she said.

He was the man I had delivered the books to the previous evening.

I stood up and shook his hand. Neither of us, as far as I know, gave any hint that we recognised each other.

Gusayevich sat down, and we all had another cup of tea. I told Gusayevich I was a lorry driver, and that I had known Amanda at university. All the time I was watching him and Amanda with intense jealousy. There was nothing obvious, but something about the ease with which he sat, and the way he looked at her, and she at him, suggested an intimacy between them.

My meeting with the wine export agency representative to confirm the lading was scheduled for 12:30 at the hotel. The time was now noon. I said I had to leave. Amanda told me she was giving Gusayevich a lift to the university in a few minutes, but that I should leave first. I rose and shook hands with Gusayevich. Amanda saw me out. She gave me a hug in the hall and said nothing more than, “Keep in touch, Ross, OK?”

I walked back towards the hotel. A minute or two after I'd left I heard a car starting noisily and glanced back to see a Moskvitch estate car head off in the opposite direction in a cloud of dust and exhaust smoke.

Back at the hotel, I saw in reception a slim man of medium height, in a smarter suit and tie than I was used to seeing in the Eastern bloc. He was sitting in a chair near the entrance, reading
Trud
and keeping an eye on the door. There was no one else in the reception area. As I entered he folded the paper, picked up a briefcase, stood up, and stepped in my path with a friendly smile. Good-looking, midtwenties, self-assured, sharp-eyed. I assumed he was from the wine export agency. He introduced himself in fluent, American-accented English as Ilya Klebov, and asked to see my passport and visa. After he'd looked over the documents, he held on to them and said: “I'm going to have to ask you to accompany me to the militia station downtown.”