New Novel For Teen Readers

James Watson Fair Game: The Steps of Odessa (Spire Publishing, ISBN 1-897312-72-5; paperback, £.7.99). Available from Amazon, Borders, Blackwells, Waterstones, W.H. Smith etc. ‘James Watson…is above all a master of narrative.’ Junior Bookshelf. ‘Watson’s pedigree as a writer of political novels for young adults is impeccable.’ Books for Keeps. Fair Game is a human rights thriller set in Ukraine. Beware the Day soccer gets mixed up in politics. What matters most to journalist Victor Kaltsov is revealing the truth. What matters to his daughter Natasha is being true to herself and becoming a football star.

CHAPTER 1. Kyiv: night visitors I feel a bit sorry for my Dad. Since Mum died, he’s been like one of those inflatable dinghies with a slow puncture. He’s sinking under the waves. Not that he doesn’t try. In fact he tries too much, but it does make him very trying at times. If he’d gone, rather than Mum – well, she’d have coped better. We’d have mourned, done the usual, put flowers on the grave; talked about the good times, but at least I’d be able to go shopping with her, ask her all the things only a woman can talk about to a woman. At least Dad can talk football. He knows the good players, those in form, those who are injured and if I want to talk politics I can get a bellyful of that. Only I don’t, because I’m grieving too. He sees very little point in life; and to be honest, nor do I. We’re in the same boat; and sometimes, when he’s made lunch or supper – he’s much improved as a cook – and we play some music, we’re both of us struck down with the weight of our loss. What worries me most is the way he takes risks these days. I say, ‘Are you trying to kill yourself?’ ‘Just doing my job, Natasha,’ he replies. Some job, being a journalist at this time, in this country, when everything was supposed to be better, freer. And isn’t: no sir! He used to say to Mum, Just wait, when Freedom comes. Well we’re still waiting, right, Dad?

How did he put it the other day? – ‘We’re as free as birds so long as we don’t take wing’. Say nothing and you’re free as air. But that doesn’t suit Dad, so he takes risks. Says it as it is, gets under the skin of the sort of people who don’t take prisoners. And when two of his friends vanish for speaking out, he decides to open his mouth even further. I tell him, it’s all about the buzz it gives him. But Lonya and me, we get no buzz. Just palpitations and cold sweats. Like now, when Dad’s late back, and no message. Phone him? Sorry, not permitted, unless it’s a matter of life and death. Sometimes I wonder whether he really is a journalist, whether writing scoops, appearing on radio and TV, editing his website newsletter, are just a front – he could be a masterspy.

Only if he were one of those, a top man for the SBU, surely we’d not be living in this poky apartment, but lording it in a penthouse overlooking the Dnipro, with a boat on the river and a Mercedes at the door? And spies don’t have their water shut off twice a week, and they have something tastier than endless variations of borsch to put on the table. Which explains why my brother Lonya prefers to eat out, at his friends’ place; any friend. The only condition is that they must have a mother. Friends are no better off than we are, but at least they have mothers to complain to, who’ll listen, who’ll give you a hug – but there I go, feeling sorry for us again. ‘That,’ Dad says, ‘is the one thing you must never to do. That way – it’s downhill. You end up in the emotional gutter.’ I liked that: emotional gutter. Dad’s pretty good with words. But though he gives sensible advice, though his words are wise, he takes precious little notice of them. They had red peppers at the market. They’d two leeks left, a single red onion but no spuds. Plenty of beetroot, though, and a few mushrooms. The meat was only fit for dogs. In fact, it probably was dogs; or donkeys. Dad did a story on how you never see a donkey any more. There used to be hundreds, pulling carts, their mouths bleeding because of ill-fitting bits. He got beaten up after that little investigation. And that was nothing – absolutely nothing compared to the story he’s trying to dig out at the moment. ‘They’ll kill you, Dad,’ I said. ‘Like they killed your Mum?’ ‘Nobody killed Mum. She was ill. She died.’ ‘And what made her ill in the first place?’ ‘I don’t know and I don’t want to talk about it.’ ‘But you know!’ ‘I don’t know. It could have been many things. People in your wonderful, civilised West also die of cancer, you know.’ The borsch is drying out. I’ll eat mine, keep the rest in the oven. Still need to get in a run. ‘Five miles a day, minimum,’ says Jock. Saves the tram fare to college, though tonight I got a bad feeling, that I was being followed by this green Zhiguli. It was parked outside the flats this morning. If they’re there tomorrow, I’ll tell them to get their exhaust fixed: it’s enough to choke the neighbourhood. And at Sunday’s game, I’m sure they were taking pictures of me from behind the goal. Dad says I ought to feel honoured: if they’re taking the trouble to watch you, then you’re somebody. Okay, watch my game, but just being spied on? – no, you don’t get used to that. Anyway, why me, why Lonya? It’s Dad who’s the pain in the derriere of Security, not us. Lonya and me, we’re model citizens. We do our homework and we eat our greens. Borsch is all the better for a sprinkle of basil or parsley. Thanks, Mum, for the tip. I scored two on Sunday, by the way. Jock’s entered the Falcons in the tournament at Zhytomyr. It’s international: we’ll be playing a team from Japan, and another from Belarus – if they’re allowed out of their godforsaken country. See, it’s dark already. From my bedroom window I can see over the town. The last of the sun always catches the domes of St. Sophia. Then the shadows climb slowly upwards until the only touch of light rests on the golden weather vanes. The wind is set for snow. I love it, at least at first. It drifts across the sky enfolding everything with such brilliance, transforming everything; and you suddenly want to sing, go out, trample in it, dance in it; because, you see, there’s so little else to celebrate. Dad says we got rid of the past too quickly. We let it shoot away without

having any idea of what to put in its place. We are bankrupt as a people he says. We are corrupt. That’s his favourite word – corrupt. And yes, you’ve guessed, my Dad’s decided he wants to be the hero who exposes corruption; to shame the forces that he says are ‘throttling’ our people; the Oligarchs who are stuffing their pockets at the expense of ordinary folks who have nothing because everything’s been taken away from them. Worst of all, such greed is destroying the earth itself, poisoning the rivers and the oceans. According to Dad, the Black Sea is dying. Strong stuff, my Dad. Even Babu, his own Mum, tells him he should lighten up. Life’s a blessing, she says, compared to the past; like when, years and years ago, when we Ukys were ruled from Moscow, Babu was queuing for vegetables. You queued for everything in those days. Two hours, and an officer shoves in front of her. Our Babu forgets what country she’s living in. She opens her mouth and protests. The officer reports her and – it’s so difficult to believe now – she’s sent to a labour camp. ‘That’s suffering,’ she tells Dad. ‘Real suffering, not this pesky stuff. Four years hard labour for claiming my rights.’ Babu is as tough as snow-boots. If all goes well, Lonya and me will be spending Easter with her in Odessa. Ah, Odessa where the sun shines and the sea stretches for ever. Roll on Easter! I take my turn at the game of reproach: ‘Dad, what you’re doing, stirring things up with your headlines and your broadcasts, is an invitation to a baseball bat in a dark alley.’ Jock thinks I’m hard on Dad: ‘Ukraine needs voices like his, courage to speak out.’ Thanks, Jock, but you don’t have to live with the fall-out. Yes, Jock is as Scottish as he sounds. He used to play for Forfar Athletic. His family went from Lviv to Scotland three generations ago. But Ukys are always Ukys, wherever they are, wherever they settle. His career was cut short by a knee injury, so he bought a one-way ticket to what he always refers to as the land of his fathers; to Kyiv. He learnt the language, qualified as a coach, earned his bread as sports instructor in local schools, and is now unpaid manager of the Falcons Women’s Football Club; dedicated, fair but fanatical. He’s made the Falcons the best girls’ team in Kyiv; probably the best in the Ukraine. And shortly we’ll be off in a swish coach to Zhytomyr, where it’s just possible that Vera Sorokin – Madame Vera Sorokin (bow twice, kneel before her but don’t curtsy), the national Under-19s coach, might be on the touch-line. ‘It’ll be you, Tasha, she’ll be watching,’ says Jock. Don’t get me wrong, it’s Metrina, our goalie, he fancies. He just appreciates a great star of the future when he sees her. Still, I can’t live off scoring goals. Dad thinks I’m drifting. My teachers agree with him, even Old Prof Socha, who does fancy me, otherwise why would he keep letting me off work I don’t finish? They’re right, of course: too much soccer, not enough study. History was a bad choice, because it’s all bad news: invasions, massacres in dark forests, people being dragged away in the middle of the night. They should call it Torture Studies. I confess: ‘The way things are going, Dad, I’ll never finish college. They say I’ve as much chance of passing at the end of the year as you have of being invited to tea by the President.’ And that’s where we are at, Dad and me; stalled. He’s disappointed. He feels I’m letting him down. In a way, I am. But I haven’t got his conviction, his drive. He’s great that way, a fighter for justice. It makes him come alive. It makes him tick. Me, I haven’t got that. The only place I ever feel like fighting is in the goalmouth when some hoofer brings me down and the ref doesn’t blow for a penalty. He’s late, later than usual. I’m afraid for him. I fear for us all. Still,

as Lonya always says, ‘Tell us something new!’ In the street below, two vehicles have cruised to a halt, one a green Zhiguli saloon, its exhaust smoking, the other a four-wheel drive Mitsubishi Shogon. The sky is gently patterned with the first flakes of the snowstorm to come. Six figures emerge. One occupies the stairwell; two head for the rear of the building, and three begin to mount the spiral steps, their destination the fourth floor apartment of the journalist, Victor Kaltsov, and home of his daughter Natasha and son Lonya. ‘Don’t whatever you do allow her to run,’ has been the instruction to the agents directed to the rear of the building. ‘She’s fast, as we’ve all noted over the last few days. And no violence.’ ‘Tell her that, Chief. She’s a wildcat.’ ‘Then watch your privates.’ At first, hearing the knock on the door, Natasha guesses it’s Dad; forgotten his key again. But there are rules: never open the door to anyone unless you’ve checked them first. Natasha peers through the spyhole Dad recently had fitted. The lights on the stairs have been switched off. She can see no one. ‘Who is it?’ The reply is another knock, harder this time. She backs from the door. Then it’s true – she was followed. ‘Open up!’ ‘Who are you?’ ‘Open the door!’ Natasha has no alternative; in a moment they will smash the door down.

‘You’ve no right.Who are you?’ She lets them in – three men, each wearing a balaclava. One remains in shadow, plainly the leader. The others grasp Natasha by the arms and drag her across the room. One, she notes, is carrying an iron bar. She is dumped into a chair and the third man extinguishes light and vision as he drops a hood over Natasha’s head; ties it with a cord around her throat. The man the others call Chief is now standing before her. ‘You will not be harmed if you answer our questions.’ Natasha, thrown by this sudden loss of sight, alarmed at how quickly the hood sucks away her breath, guesses the identity of these intruders: if they’re not the police, they’re SBU. Dad had described them as yesterday’s terror and today’s nightmare for the people of the Ukraine. ‘We wish to speak with your father.’ She protests, ‘I’m choking!’ ‘Loosen the knot, Myk. Now, young lady – some answers.’ Natasha resolves to stay silent. For such a decision, for such a delay, she receives a slap across the face. ‘Talk – where is your father?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘You know and you’ll tell us.’ She has already guessed the purpose of the crowbar. One of the men is now trashing the apartment. ‘Talk,’ repeats the Chief. The noise of the crowbar is so loud he has to call out, ‘Leave it, Sergei – just go for the equipment – the tapes, the discs.’ Natasha cannot see, but she imagines correctly the shattering of Dad’s computer; and no doubt the TV. ‘See that he bags all the tapes, Myk. Every document.’

‘Camera, Chief? It’s a good one.’ At last Natasha speaks. ‘No, that’s mine. It’s nothing to do with you, or my Dad.’ ‘Then talk.’ ‘Okay. He’s gone to Belarus on a job.’ It’s possible. The Chief hesitates, but he is not convinced. ‘What time?’ ‘Can’t remember.’ ‘What flight?’ ‘This morning.’ ‘You lie. He was seen this morning coming out of the Ukrainski news agency: where is he?’ Natasha senses anger replacing fear. ‘For all I know, he’s gone fishing!’ The second slap across the face is harder than the first. She tastes blood, opts again for silence. Pausing in his destruction of everything within reach of his flailing weapon, Sergei calls, ‘Got what you want, Chief?’

Natasha is forced to stand, prodded towards the door. ‘Oh yes. Something to bargain with, I think.’ Natasha is thrust out on to the landing. ‘Something her father holds even more precious than his secret files.’ The Chief’s next words are for Natasha. ‘I trust that is the case – for your sake, Miss Kaltsov…Okay, take her down. See that she’s got a coat, we don’t want her freezing to death on the way.’ All Natasha can think about is swallowing. Her throat is dry. It seems swollen with the lack of air. She is marched downstairs. The footsteps of her captors echo in the stairwell. The night air is as sharp as a headbutt. Sergei is in the back of the car with her. He has straightened her hood, pulled it down to make sure she cannot catch a glimpse of her whereabouts. ‘Don’t try anythin’ stupid, Missy.’ One part of Natasha’s brain tries to do something useful, gauge the direction of the car. They seem to be heading into the city. There’s traffic noise, slowing for lights. Trolleybuses are approached and overtaken. She hears church bells – St. Sophia? Volodymr Cathedral? St. Andrew? Her temporary blindness prompts a disorderly vision of images. Directions flow in and out of her mind with the speed of flashing lights. The road dips, the vehicle speeds up. She guesses they are making for the river, pictures the Volodymr statue to her left, and in the dusk of her memory sees parkland and the great Rainbow Arch as the islands of the Dnipro approach. The car stops abruptly. The Chief is getting out. He addresses Myk but refers to Sergei. ‘Keep him off the booze, Myk. And no funny business – get me? For the present this little lady is precious cargo.’ Sergei growls, ‘I do my duty, Chief,’ only for the Chief to snap back, ‘You are on a last warning, Comrade. Blow this and yours is a one-way ticket to Kara.’ Unfazed, Sergei replies, ‘Sometimes, Chief, I think Siberia’d be a blessin’. I’d be spared these shitty jobs.’ For a while, as the Mitsubish speeds away, Sergei broods on his own situation. Eventually he says, ‘It’s not me, Myk, that’s changed. It’s everythin’ else – right? In the old days, we was somebody. We took orders, we did the job for Mother Russia. And what does she do, she deserts us, lets us drift like one o’them bloody icebergs – floatin’ ever westwards.

‘I mean, this city. Kyiv is the ’eart of Russia. It all began ’ere, right? It’s the soul of Rus, as the Chief used to say. But does ’e say it now? No, ’e’s ’appy we’ve sold out to big business. Who pulls our strings, Myk? Who gets us to do their nasty work? You know, I know. Even this bloody kid knows.’ He presses the barrel of his Russian-issue Makarov pistol into Natasha’s side. ‘Your Dad talk to you, does ’e, lady? We’re all democrats now – is that what ’e tells you? All Europeans, damned capitalists, only wrapped up in the wonderful Stars and Stripes?’ Myk speaks for the very first time: ‘Comrade – shut it!’ Sergei protests: ‘You agree with me, Myk. You want the old days back. You said it yourself, we’re not thugs, we’re idealists.’ Myk almost commits himself: ‘I don’t like jobs like this either. But shut it just the same!’ They travel on in silence. There’s a window open and Natasha can smell countryside – a wind that has travelled for hundreds of kilometres across the flatlands, upwards from the infinite Steppe, an ocean of grass crossed by countless rivers. This would be the moment for Lonya – the Walking Encyclopaedia as she calls him – to ask: ‘Did you know, Tasha, that three thousand rivers flow through the Ukraine?’ ‘Have you counted them?’ Suddenly she feels tears prick her eyes. Worrying about Lonya, what’ll happen to him, with his Mum gone, his father in perpetual danger, has become as regular to Natasha as eating and shopping and cleaning and training; and now she is worrying about herself, what is going to happen to her. She tries to concentrate on cooling facts: three thousand rivers, well I never. I can think of, well, there’s the Dnipro, ah, the Dnister, the – what do they call it?’ ‘Siversky Donets.’ Thanks. ‘And while we’re at it, do you know how many countries are on Ukraine’s borders?’ ‘Tell me, I can’t wait to find out.’ ‘Guess.’ ‘Four?’ ‘No, seven – Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and Moldova.’ ‘That’s six.’ ‘Guess the seventh?’ ‘Belarus?’ ‘Good. But apart from Russia, we’re the biggest. Second biggest in Europe, in fact.’ Poor Lonya, bursting with information and only his ignorant sister to tell it to. Snow is coming in through the window. She feels its coldness on the sweat of the hood. Out there, what? – gentle forests, avenues of linden stretching through a thousand years of history, all of it, the glories and the tragedies, culminating in this: a hostage, hooded, a pistol in her ribs, innocent as snow, but then, in this world – Dad’s words – ‘It’s the innocent who suffer most’. You were right, Dad – and thanks again. ‘The trouble,’ Sergei is spouting, more to himself than his companion, ‘the trouble wi’ the modern generation – kids like this one, Myk, is that they’re higorant – pig higorant of their past, our past. ‘All they think about is film stars, an’ Yankees at that. Or in our guest’s case, soccer players. I mean, what’re women doin’ playin’ football anyway, eh?’ He drops his hand on to Natasha’s thigh. ‘Eh, Miss Kaltsov?’ ‘If you take the hood off,’ she replies, ‘I’ll tell you.’ Myk does not seem to listen, but he hears everything. ‘Okay, Sergei,

remove the hood.’ ‘Is that wise?’ But Sergei does as he is instructed. ‘Not a bad looker,’ he comments. ‘But your ’air’s too short, kid. I like my women with their ’air down to their arses. Real women.’ Natasha observes her companions: Sergei, broad-faced, with a thick, sprawling nose, flushed cheeks, his head shaven to the skull. Piggy eyes. Myk sports a hair-do Cossack fashion – head shaven top and sides, like Sergei, but with a pony tail of hair – a khokhol – tied behind. He has dark, flickering eyes that watch the traffic and the prisoner with equal intensity. He is the brains, Natasha decides, Sergei the muscle. Somehow, with Natasha able to see him, watch him, even stare at him, Sergei is uneasy. ‘Yeah,’ he says, dropping his head. ‘Higorant of what matters.’ Natasha is tempted to reply, ‘At least I can spell ignorant.’ Instead, she says, ‘Actually, history is my subject.’ ‘Bah – school history. They don’t learn you the real stuff. About betrayal. Tell her, Myk.’ Myk is silent, but not Natasha: ‘What betrayal?’ ‘Ukraine is part of Rus, always was, always will be, whatever ’appens at the bloody elections.’ Natasha cannot resist replying, ‘Sorry, I thought we Ukys were independent now.’ Myk brings the conversation to an end. ‘We’re here.’ He has turned off the road. The snow is so thick in the headlights that the Shogun slows to walking pace, then stops. ‘Okay, Comrade, bring her out.’ ‘Independence – huh.’ Sergei yanks her from the car. His pistol is still jammed against her side. ‘We’ll see about that!’ ‘Sergei – shut it!’ She’s grateful for the coat they let her have. The house seems a long way from where the Shogun has been parked. That wind is telling her things. It hums through trees on both sides of her; and they are tall trees – pines possibly – because the wind is making them creak and moan high above her. Under the mat of snow there’s a soft, spongy layer of pines needles. She guesses: it’s a dacha, like Dad once rented, in the good old days when he wasn’t on the bad side of people. A little wooden home in the forest, with a lake a bicycle-ride away. Dear Mum, just look at me now. Remember our picnics? Dad and Lonya fishing. You scribbling your poems, me getting on everybody’s nerves, kicking a ball about. ‘Steps,’ warns Myk. Two wooden stairs lead on to a verandah already heaped up along its length with freezing snow. The dacha has no electricity. Myk lights two paraffin lamps. In the first of two rooms, there is a table, bunk beds against the side wall and a wood-burning stove in the corner. Natasha is marched by Sergei into the second room, empty except for a single bed. A small window is shuttered. She addresses Myk: ‘Why have you brought me here?’ Sergei sees himself as the spokesman in these matters. ‘We ask the questions round ’ere, kid.’ He pushes her on to the bed. ‘Are you going to kill me?’ Myk speaks: ‘Your father has something the Chief wants. If he gets it, you go free.’ ‘And if he doesn’t?’ Her kidnappers exchange glances, but say nothing. They take the lamp, leaving Natasha in total darkness. The door is locked; and suddenly the realisation of her predicament hits her as if she has collided head first

with the goalposts at the Falcons’ ground. She can see nothing, hear nothing. She reaches for the bed. The thin mattress is covered only by a single blanket, and both are soaked with damp. Her legs are shaking. She sits, then lies on her side, her knees pulled up to her chin. Her teeth are chattering with the cold. She speaks to the silence in a flat, hopeless voice: ‘This is happening!’ * * * Also by James Watson, The Freedom Tree, Talking in Whispers, No Surrender, Where Nobody Sees, Ticket to Prague, Justice of the Dagger and The Ghosts of Izieu. Talking in Whispers, set in Chile at the time of the overthrow of democracy by Pinochet and the generals, was winner of The Other Award, Highly Commended in the Carnegie Awards and winner of the Buxtehuder Bulle Prize for Teen Fiction. Justice of the Dagger was a Waterstone’s Book of the Month. The author has had a number of plays broadcast on radio, including a four-part dramatization of his novel No Surrender. He has had two plays for school and youth theatre published by CollinsEducational, Banned! Tom Paine, This Was Your Life and Gotcha! Wars-R-Us. Com.