The Restoration Game (32 page)

“But why?” I cried. I closed my eyes and shook my head. “It's a wonder of the world! It's the most significant thing in the world! Maybe in the universe! Every scientist on earth would love to see this!”

He looked unmoved.

“If this thing reveals some deep truth, as you think, science will someday find that truth by itself.”

I thought of another plea.

“That would be the best revenge on the Vrai,” I said, “to give their secret to the world.”

This time, he looked pitying.

“How wrong you are,” he said. “It is the Vrai—and their like—who want the world to know this. Why do you think you are here?”

I said nothing.

“Come, come, Lucy,” he said. “Don't be stubborn. I know you were sent here. And I don't know, but I can assume, that you have some recording and communications equipment in that bag on your back.”

“Well, all right,” I said. “There's not much point my denying it. But what has that got to do with the Vrai? There aren't any Vrai anymore, except…”

“Except distant descendants,” said Klebov. “Quite. Descendants like you, and, more to the point, your mother. Your mother, Amanda, who has a claim to a piece of property that I own, and who has some reason to think that everyone knowing what's here will help her to get it back.”

“That's not it at all,” I said. “I'm doing this for the US government, which wants to know what's here before the Russians come in or the revolution is crushed.”

Klebov shook his head. “The US government and the CIA have a hand in this, yes, but what is essentially going on is a family quarrel over property, fought with armies and secret services.”

A
family
quarrel? I thought.

“You're saying Amanda is
using
the CIA? To get the mine back?”

“Exactly.”

This was so close to my own earlier suspicions that I was a little shaken.

“But why should she want the secret to be known?”

“Because it would make Krassnia the centre of world attention. At present, this country is so obscure that any crackdown or even a Russian incursion would be seen as a minor mopping-up operation between Ossetia and Abkhazia. If this comes out—it's just as you say, every scientist in the world would want a look. It would indeed be a wonder of the world.”

“And you would destroy it, to hang on to a bloody copper mine?”

“Not for that, no,” said Klebov. “It's not about
a bloody copper mine.
It's about the blood of the Vrai. I will destroy this rock to prevent the Vrai raising their heads, claiming their obscure bloodlines, and basking in the prestige of having guarded this wonder for centuries.”

“If you hate the Vrai so much,” I said, “why did you rescue us?”

“I don't hate the Vrai,” Klebov said. “I hate what they did to our people, not just in ancient times but in Stalin's time. I hate their traditions, their sense of superiority, their ‘truth’ and their ‘blood.’” He laughed bitterly. “There is no
truth
in the story of the
blood
of the Vrai. There is not even a genetic difference between Vrai and Krassnar. There is a gene for red hair, yes, but generations of rape and bastardy spread it among the Krassnar, usually unexpressed, as in my case, because it's recessive. Apart from that, nothing. That's what I asked that doctor to find out. And when he did—or rather, when the results from those DNA samples came back from a very dilapidated Institute of Physical Ethnography in Moscow, years later—I knew it was safe to come here.”

He motioned briskly to his left with the weapon. “So, Lucy, enough talk. Place your bag on the ground and walk away. Wait for me, if you wish, at the bottom of the last slope you climbed, and I'll join you at a run in a few minutes. I'll see you safely off the mountain and back to your CIA pal Andrei Milyukhin before the sun sets.”

I reached for my shoulder strap, moving slowly, thinking fast.

“You knew about him?” I asked.

Klebov snorted. “It was because he disappeared from the revolution that I knew to expect you.”

“You've been expecting me since before I was born,” I said. “You knew what would someday be asked of Amanda's child. The only person of Vrai ancestry the CIA could rely on. One of their own. And yet you saved me, when you could have abandoned me to the pogrom.”

I laid the bag slowly on the ground. “You saved me for the same reason you're not going to shoot me now. Because you're my father.”

After having all those guys (well, OK, two, but I was beginning to feel a bit like the girl in
Mamma Mia!
) claiming they might be my father, I felt a small triumph in batting this ball the other way for a change. Small consolation, because if what I'd said was true…

Klebov stuck the pistol in a side pocket of his jacket, and wiped his nose on the back of his wrist. This might have indicated a sentimental moment, or that his nasal septum had an itch or a drip that had been bothering him for some time while he'd been keeping me covered.

“I've committed a lot of crimes,” he said, “but you were my only sin. The only thing I did not because I had to, but because I could. It wasn't rape, you understand. Your mother and I came to…an understanding.”

“One in which you had the power.”

“Yes.” He looked uncomfortable. “A favour, in exchange for Gusayevich's freedom, and…other considerations.”

“
What
other considerations?”

“Her area of study was more sensitive than the fools in Moscow knew when they approved her stay, or than we in Krassnia could tell them. I had real concerns about so-called ethnic tensions, the nationality question as we called it, to say nothing of her poking into the business of Arbatov and the whole legend. She was travelling around Krassnia, talking to people—old folk, mostly—and uncovering some very interesting information about how they and others really felt. I suspected she was reporting—by what channels, I didn't know, but could have found out—to the US embassy in Moscow. I told her that I wouldn't have her slung out of the country, if she would share her reports with me—at least, those that concerned certain individuals who were, as we put it, speculating on difficulties in the nationality question. My superiors were far more satisfied with that success than they would have been with Gusayevich's name.”

“You got
Amanda
to work for the KGB?”

“I never turned her, if that's what you mean.”

“Great,” I said. “But she did spy for you on, what, Krassnian nationalists?”

“Krassnar chauvinists—the same people who later, in 1991 when they had their chance, tried to launch a pogrom against ethnic Georgians, Jews, and supposed Vrai. Thanks to Amanda's information, I and my men had enough advance warning to crush that pogrom before it could get off the ground.”

“You're saying that somehow justifies what you did? That it's all square?”

“I don't think in those terms,” said Klebov. He grimaced. “You're right, I won't shoot you. But I can hurt you, very painfully, and quicker than you think. You would be unable to move for several minutes, which is all the time I need. After that we could leave, though not as fast as I would like. Let's spare ourselves the embarrassment. Step well away from the bag.”

I did. Klebov snatched it up, and fished out the satellite phone. He gave it a curious look and thoughtful heft, then put it somewhere inside his jacket. He zipped the bag up and tossed it back to the ground at my feet. I crouched to pick it up, not taking my eye off Klebov.

“You're relieved you still have your own phone,” Klebov said, as I stood up. “Too bad for you there's no network coverage up here.”

I must have still looked smug instead of crestfallen, because he added: “I don't care about pictures. Take as many as you want.”

He gave me a dismissive wave and walked away, disappearing around the side of the ravine. I fumbled out my iPhone and videoed the scrolling text until Klebov came back, at a run.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said. He motioned ahead. “After you.”

I ran for the end of the ravine, scrambled down the rock steps, and hared down the slope. Klebov caught up with me as I teetered on the edge of the snowfield. He stuck his legs over and slid down on his back and elbows, heels dug in. I did the same. Down we went like toboggans. At the bottom we both got up and ran, our long shadows pacing us to our left. Up the shorter, scrubby slope on the other side and over into the scree-covered declivity where I'd seen what might have been an
almas.
Down and up the sides we crashed, feet slithering on the stones. Just as we reached the top and were about to plunge down the longer scrub-covered slope, I felt a shudder in the ground under my feet.

I turned as the air thumped my ears. We must have been about a kilometre from the cliff face. Its detail stood out sharply in the slanting sunlight. The rock face in front of the ravine was quite distinct. Dust clouds bloomed above it, then from two vertical cracks about a hundred metres apart. For a moment nothing more seemed to happen. Then, with a crash that shook the ground again, the entire rock face slipped down about ten metres. Its top began to move forward, then the whole rectangle of rock toppled forward with another groundshaking crash. Curtains of dust obscured the raw new cliff face for a minute, then began to dissipate and settle.

“For a moment there,” Klebov said, “I was afraid the text column would hold the cliff, or stay standing like a pillar.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “So much for nanotechnology and smart matter, eh?”

I shook with reaction and exertion. Sweat chilled on my brow and back.

“It's not funny,” I said. “You've done something…” I shook my head. “I don't know, it's like…sacrilege. Like the Taliban blowing up those Buddhas in Afghanistan, only worse, because that thing was
real
.”

“Best thing the Taliban ever did,” said Klebov. “Iconoclasm is progressive.”

He reached inside his jacket and handed back the satellite phone.

“I suppose you have calls to make.”

He took a few steps away, as if to give me privacy. I glared after him, then looked down at the phone. No point in using the SKY number—I had no streaming video on
this
phone to uplink. I could have kicked myself for not having whipped the satellite phone out and hit Record the second I saw the stone text, instead of wasting a precious minute or two gawping at it and cutting my finger and letting Klebov sneak up on me. For a vengeful moment I considered hitting the number I'd labelled 911—the scream for help. What would happen, I wondered—parachutes or hang gliders suddenly blossoming in the sky, Special Forces snake-eaters jumping out of the undergrowth, ready to snatch Klebov away to some ghost prison or black site? Hah! That'd larn him!

My finger moved to the number tagged ROS. I hated the thought of telling him how the mission had turned out. Just as I was about to press it I saw a bright flash. I looked up, startled, and saw another, and another, light up the newly exposed cliff face. As the third went off I heard a bang and a peculiar screaming sound, which was repeated at one-second intervals. White-hot splashes erupted along the line where the ravine had been:
flash-flash-flash-flash
…

After about ten flashes there was a momentary pause, in which the bangs and screams continued and echoed, like thunder after lightning. Then I saw another flash, on the slope beside the fallen rock face, then another, closer to us. A moment later, a splash of red and white erupted steaming from the snowfield. The flashes were tracking the exact route we'd taken. A phrase rose to the top of my mind:
creeping barrage.

Then another:
GPS.

I hurled the satellite phone as far as I could across the vale of scree.

“Run!” I shouted.

Klebov, who'd been as transfixed as I was, jolted out of his open-mouthed rigor and fled downhill. I threw myself after him, helter-skelter. A flash-bang-scream behind us and a blast of heat was followed seconds later by a hissing shower of stones and red-hot debris that made the scrub smoulder. None hit us. At the foot of the slope we blundered in among the trees. I shielded my eyes with my arm as branches lashed my face.

By the time we reached the clearing we knew that the bombardment had stopped. We continued by sheer momentum until we collapsed from the waist across the sacrifice stone. Klebov was saying something in Krassnian that sounded like a prayer, but not to God. After a few gasps I recognised his words as lines spoken by Duram at this very stone.

We heaved our chests from the stone and turned around, leaning against the rock, hands on our knees, still breathing hard. Klebov looked sidelong at me.

“I thought if I was going to die here I might as well have a word with the gods of our fathers first,” he said. “What the devil were these things?”

He sounded as bewildered as the characters in
Lost
fleeing from the black smoke thing in the forest.

“Kinetic-energy weapon,” I said. “Metal shafts, dropped from orbit or very high altitude. Rods from God.”

Klebov took a few more deep breaths. “I've heard of that project,” he said. “It hasn't been built yet.”

“Looks like it has,” I said. “Black-budget job, I guess.”

“You assume they were American?” Klebov said. “With such precision? More likely your aliens.”

“If they'd been aimed by aliens they'd have hit us,” I said. “These were striking the places where the phone had been—along where the ravine was, then along our path. That last one probably hit the phone.”

“I'm not going back to find out,” said Klebov. “Or stay around, for any more magic weapons—or the patrols coming to investigate.”

He shoved himself upright. “Let's go.”

We got off the mountain about 6:30. Klebov confidently followed a different route from the one I'd taken, a route with better concealment: thicker woods, deeper gullies, fewer scree slopes. All the time I felt exposed, not to the patrols (we saw one, of two men toiling up a hillside far away), but to whatever had aimed and hurled the strange shafts from above. The feeling of being watched never left the back of my neck.