The Narrative Version [Have chess set, will travel]

Full of confidence in my long experience of travelling to Russia, and still buoyed up by a blissful ten days just completed in Georgia's capital city Tbilisi, I was the first passenger off the plane at Moscow's Sheremetevo-1 airport, the first into the reception hall and the first to present my passport and visa. I was in a hurry to start my planned three days in Moscow before flying to St Petersburg and the week-long conference there - that was the prospect and the sooner it started the better. Besides, Nikolai would be waiting for me the other side of customs after I had collected my one piece of luggage, the faithful blue rucksack that had never, repeat never, let me down. Only passport control to go through, then. At random I chose one of the glass booths occupied by a stereotype of uniformed official, no doubt bored in goldfish isolation, just waiting to let me through.

Well, it was a woman, more a girl, really, so I put on my smile when handing over my crimson European Union passport with folded Russian visa tucked in, for her to inspect. She smiled back - they all do these days. But her mouth said, politely enough, something different: "Not valid. Do you have another visa?" I hit the earth without a parachute. "No, of course I don't. The visa says 'St Petersburg' as well as Moscow, and I haven't been to St Petersburg yet. I've got a ticket to St Petersburg, do you want to see it?" I felt myself beginning to bluster. She frowned and shook her head. "This is not valid. It's already used. Will you wait please." I couldn't think of anything useful to say.

Well aware, from the experience of others more than from my own, that shouting and creating a scene makes no difference - certainly no difference for the better, it gives them something genuine to object to - I waited. All would be cleared up. While waiting I rehearsed what had happened - surely they would question me, and I'd better get everything straight. Today's date was July 21st. My five air tickets, taking me from Heathrow (on 10th July) to Moscow to Tbilisi to Moscow to St Petersburg and final exit to Gatwick (on 5th August) had been purchased early in June from a local travel agent who did not handle visas. So I next applied for, and duly obtained in short order, my Georgian visa from the Georgian Embassy just a stone's throw from Kensington High Street - a doddle and a pleasure, there being queues of size zero and a beaming receptionist. This visa was affixed to a page of my passport. And then I had queued outside the Russian Consulate, also in Kensington, along with all the other hoi polloi, armed with a carefully completed visa application form (just one form, no choice - how simple!) and more than enough supporting documentation, including a complete list of my flights and the word 'transit' both on this list and on the application form, to cover the 12 hours or so that I would be in the airport at Moscow waiting for the flight to Tbilisi. When I collected my visa I carefully checked it for the dates and the two Russian cities to be visited, and left the premises, putting the precious tryptych-style anaemic pink document in my passport. All was in order. So what could the problem be? All was, or appeared to be, perfectly in order at Sheremetevo-2 when I had landed on Russian soil for the first time. True, the travel agent had told me that I would have to collect my luggage, so I followed the directions (ignoring 'transit', which surely referred to Sheremetevo-2, when I needed Sheremetevo-1 for Georgia), through passport control, collected my luggage, and made my laboured way - it was hot, and I had to change a little money into roubles and then find the right 'route taxi' - to Sheremetevo-1, where I waited along with many others, overnight, having stood around until a seat was vacant. There was no trouble boarding the Aeroflot flight next morning, no questions were asked in Georgia, and no difficulties were raised on boarding the flight (Aeroflot again) from Tbilisi on July 21st. On all of these occasions both my passport and my visa had been inspected. What could possibly be wrong? A senior official would sort it out. Nothing to worry about.

Eventually a senior official, also female, turns up. She has looked at my documents, knows the regulations, and has her instructions. Despite my strong expostulations and expressed desire to travel to St Petersburg to fulfil my international obligations there, I make no headway. My rucksack is retrieved and handed over to me, which is hardly welcome as its weight fingers the baggage limit of 20 kilos. It may have been an error, but I retreat to my next line of defence, reliance on my friends. I say that Nikolai is waiting for me. Slightly to my surprise, the lady obligingly goes in search of Nikolai and returns with him, ushering him through the forbidding barriers without a qualm - how simple it is to pass through if you're in uniform! I explain to stout Nikolai (stout in the sense of reliable) what has happened - all this is in Russian, by the way - and ask him to invoke the aid of one or other of the persons responsible for my official invitation - Andrei or Yakov - and unperturbed, or, more likely, simply used to crises of the kind, having lived there all his life, Nikolai departs.

The transit lounge at Sheremetevo-1 is a functional room with fixed upholstered seats, a duty-free counter, and a lockable room intended for the use of business travellers. Transit passengers enter round a corner at one end, churn around the intestines for as long as they have to, and then exit, squeezed, at the other end, to the security handling area with a pair of X-ray funnels and single metal detector yoke. It was through this exit that I was ushered, enema fashion, and installed in a second room off the main lounge. This room already had an occupant, asleep on the one piece of furniture in the room, a rather hard green covered couch supplied with a couple of even harder green bolsters. There was no sign of genuine transit passengers. It was a squarish room, with a marble floor, a small reinforced window that could not be opened located round a corner, giving the square a warped L-flavour, and, apart from the couch, nothing else. All was in the incessant glare of strip lighting which it was painful and pointless to try to outstare. At 6pm it was stuffy, and would surely become hot at some stage.

David, the room's incumbent, is a plump-cheeked Spaniard. He's also from Cuba and, most recently, from Kirgizstan, countries from which visas are not, he says, required for entering Russia. So he hadn't got a visa. But Sheremetevo was treating him as a Spaniard coming from Kirgizstan, and therefore he did need a visa. Not much help to me, but then I was of no help to him. A dirty plate and some cutlery showed he had been eating, so he must have been there some time.

We suddenly acquire companions. There are five Indians who have been refused entry to Georgia, where they want to go, and an American. The Indians squat on the floor, the American joins me on the couch, David making room. The American is no ordinary American, he's dressed from shoulder to ankle in an orange toga (as near to a toga as makes no difference), and is holding a string of solid beads. We talk. He's 49 years old, a Hare Krishna conference lecturer, and has just come from addressing adherents (he says Hare Krishna is not a religion, but it has to be one) in Odessa. We continue talking. His immediate problem is that he had asked for a multiple-entry visa but had been given, he has now been told, a single entry visa. An echo of my position, or, as I still believe, alleged position. He knows Sanskrit and can quote the Bhagavad-Gita and the Vedas in the original till the (sacred?) cows come home. He knows the answers to all of life's questions. The purpose of life is to find out why we are here. We are here to be happy. We must pursue happiness. In the universe we are all one. Reincarnation is a logical consequence. That is what we are here to prepare for, he avers with no hint of doubt in his quiet voice. At that point I beg to differ, and he enquires of me what Quakers believe. I am less convincing than he had been, but it helps to pass the time. He offers me an orange and I gratefully accept half. An aloof passport official, male this time, enters and talks to each of us. I try to help Hare Krishna by using my Russian. The officer seems familiar with our cases, his purpose apparently being to establish the facts as we see them. He asks if I have paid a fine, and I say 'no'. Apart from discovering that there is a male and female toilet off the main transit lounge, I gain nothing from him and never see him again.

I had arrived in the lounge at about 5.30 in the evening. It is now late, and we try to sleep. The Hare Krishna man expects to solve his problem by paying $600 - presumably not his personal money, but his organisation's - and proceeds to tell his beads, muttering the while. I take it he is either meditating or performing some soothing equivalent. I hardly notice his departure or the departure of the Indians, and David and I are alone again. I always travel with a small towel, which I retrieve from my rucksack, spread on the hard, smooth floor, and cover my eyes with a scarf that likewise accompanies me everywhere. I doze. At 2am we are woken with a plate of food (each!), which is mainly a half-way palatable fat sausage and pasta. I hate-a-da-pasta, but consume the sausage almost thankfully, having decided that it was unlikely to be either bugged or drugged. So we haven't been forgotten, but how is this to end? The food finished, David resumes his snoring. The thought of paying $600 doesn't cheer me up. I have quite a few dollars with me, but not for the purpose of paying a fine. I do have my credit card, and at a pinch will offer to use it. Was there perhaps a conspiracy to issue invalid visas so that other parts of the Russian economy could flourish by imposing fines and inviting bribes? Hardly, but, why should I worry? Nikolai knows his way around, he must do, surely? And then a grey-clad lady informs me that my 'friends' will collect me. Whatever that means, it sounds good. But I mustn't let optimism creep in. Nothing has really changed.

It's 10am. There's a general murmur and bustle outside in the lounge. It's a more purposeful, genuine, transit situation. One or two passengers enter our room - we've been there long enough to own it. There's room on the couch for a replacement. This one is an Englishman, if an exceptional one, though dressed soberly and not in orange. He's a correspondent for The Guardian newspaper on his way to Simferopol in the Crimea to do a piece on a reclusive religious sect there. There's no escape from religion, it seems. We swap business cards and relevant information. His name is Tom Whitehouse. He professes interest in my predicament, but his flight is called. I should have asked him where and how he got his visa, which may have been a transit visa as he was using the transit lounge, but it is too late now. But he did, after a longish think, say that the George Soros Foundation in Prague had a journal called Impressions that published accounts of experiences such as mine. Hum, I think, not enough sex or violence to attract any publisher, decent or not. Lascivious thoughts suggested by the more nubile of the passport girls would not add up to much. Of course, I could always let my imagination embroider the bare facts.

At 10.30am David leaves. He has no luggage as his wife had already collected it. He had bought me a 'Sprite' fizzy drink from the counter and had been interesting to talk to. Did I know why the Pope had visited Castro's Cuba? No, why did the Pope visit Castro's Cuba? "To see how the Devil manages his empire!"

Once more I'm alone with my rucksack and the hard couch. The thought of lugging the rucksack around during whatever was going to happen next lacks appeal so I sniff round the transit lounge to see if a luggage trolley has been left behind, for instance by the transit passengers. No such luck. The duty-free counter, more a bar, is closed. At the far end of the lounge, where the passenger entrance with the passport booths is to the left, there's also a closed-off broad passage-way to the right. The closing off modus operandi is a very large plastic black sheet hung over a cantilevered piece of string acting as a kind of washing-line. Not very effective. But there's something under the black sheet, which I lift up. Lo and behold, it's a luggage trolley. Which I lose no time in appropriating for personal use. The trolley carries the name TRANSAERO (in Cyrillic ®LA2&hibar;’ђЂЌ‘ЂќђЋ®LA1&hibar;), the same as the name over the business lounge entrance. It's a minor triumph when I load the rucksack onto the trolley and settle down again for a supplementary snooze.

I had with me unintentional emergency rations in the shape of half a litre of water - cool, beautiful Georgian water, perfectly drinkable from the Tbilisi tap - in a light plastic screw-top bottle, itself wrapped in a scarf to keep it cold (a staple travelling recipe), but nothing else. I sip the water like a miser. Who has my passport, my visa? Will I ever see them again? Poor Nikolai, what can he do? This airport is on one side of Moscow, way out north-west (I think of my favourite Hitchcock thriller North by north-west), off the map of the city while Nikolai lives practically off the map to the south-east. I had surrendered my tickets - important evidence, to my mind - but they, at least, had been returned. Perhaps that was not good news, though, if they were considered irrelevant. How could I tell?

There is time to think. I should have some plan, even if only to handle the next encounter with authority. Since the Russian Consulate is most likely to blame, my plan is to log what happens and keep as many documents, in original or photocopy, as possible, so that I can support any complaint or claim that I make. It's not an optimistic plan, but what else am I to do? The useful Russian word 'spravka', meaning official receipt or certificate, comes to mind, and I latch on to it, as if it's a lifeline. If I have to pay a fine I'll insist on a spravka. Big deal!

Another visit from a passport underling - at least she is personable. But all she wants to know is my arrival details and if I have a Georgian visa. I reply short-temperedly that she is (or 'they' are) the one(s) holding my passport with the Georgian visa affixed to it, so why ask me, whereupon she disappears, remonstrating that she's 'only trying to help'. I forbear to point out that the only help I want is to get to St Petersburg in time for the conference: it's already Wednesday, and the do starts there on Saturday. If this is progress, it's in the reverse direction.

I examine the room I am in again, more closely. High on a wall opposite the one door is a bare bracket drooling a pair of loose, severed cable ends. Had it once supported a camera? If so, for what purpose?

Why not make a phone call from the business lounge? Someone had already gone in and apparently used a phone there (or else had been talking to herself in a loud voice). Sure enough, there's a phone, and the good-looking receptionist reacts with an unconcerned nod when I indicate what I want. There are no telephone directories, so all I have is my own notebook with its private list. I phone Nikolai. He's not there and the phone is answered by his 7-year-old daughter, whom I have no wish to worry. What else? Phone the British Embassy or Consulate? But what is the number? My otherwise excellent Falk map of Moscow gives the address but no phone number. In any case, what about incoming calls? Not possible, the receptionist insists, and in any case Transaero is a separate company - I am the responsibility of Aeroflot - and the business lounge will shortly close. Much later I think of directory enquiries - one dials '09' for that, or one used to - but the ploy might not have succeeded, if only because it would probably have over-taxed my Russian.

Aeroflot. A senior uniformed lady - I couldn't make out her rank - informed me that the British Embassy wouldn't help - though whether she knew this from having asked on my behalf or from experience was unresolved - she offered no evidence either way - and confronted me with an 'either-or': either to return to Tbilisi and apply to the Russian Embassy there for a re-entry visa, or to fly to London. My request to go on to St Petersburg was again ignored. She decamped.

Enter a junior passport official who presented a form ('protocol') on which my alleged infringement of regulations was detailed, and on the back of which I was invited to set down - in Russian - my version, abridged. I did so - the abridged version - and signed my name. At my request I receive a photocopy of my suspect visa, so things have changed, a little, since the days of the totally predictable 'nyet'. There was a fine to pay - that seemed to be one of the objects of the protocol, for me to admit that I had committed an infringement - so I produced my credit card. "How much?" I asked. The reply was mumbled - it might have been '478' - unclear both as to currency and amount, but it could have been in hundreds or in tens, due to the 'st' sound occurring in both Russian sets of words. Was there any point in haggling? There was also the complication - my heart missed a beat at the thought - of the Russian currency having been officially divided by a thousand in January: both former and new rouble still circulated and prices in supermarkets sometimes gave both, sometimes only one - a minefield for the tourist and a potential goldmine for the unscrupulous, or canny, vendor. How was a benighted foreigner to know which amount was meant when a native Russian spoke fast in his or her own vernacular? Well, I was about to find out the truth in my case at least. My credit card didn't faze them, but it would be interesting to see how it worked, since there is still no general credit card usage in Russia, any more than there are chequebook accounts with the many banks. Well, two young passport ladies, endlessly chattering to each other about clothes and suchlike, were appointed to escort me outside the building and past aircraft at the ready, around the tarmac edge - I felt an absurd analogy to walking round the boundary of a cricket field with a match under way - to a small and ominously anonymous office some four or five minutes' away. We, or rather they, knocked to be identified through a spyhole operated from the other side by an armed guard. We trooped in. It was really tiny, with two low windowed guichets, seated females practically invisible imprisoned behind, some posters, a chair, and not much else. Acting under instructions, I presented my credit card at the far guichet, to withdraw forty - ah, not four hundred - dollars. I signed a slip and back came uncrisp dollar bills, and the inevitable spravka - everything according to the unspecified regulations. A sideways step to the second guichet. Hand over the dollars. Another calculation - at another rate of exchange, and to whose disadvantage, would you like to guess? - and another spravka materialises, this time along with a minimal tinkle of roubly change. Ah, yes, since anyone from any country might be fined, everything is in dollars. How would the Russians manage without dollars, which no normal law-abiding Russian citizen could obtain? Out we march, my companions still gossiping. I have to say that our mar

ch is leisurely, but then it is quite warm. I lift my arm to gesture at an enormous overhead sign proclaiming "Moscow welcomes all its visitors", and say pointedly to my young guards "Except me". I draw some satisfaction from their startled shock at the imputation of selective hospitality. They don't reply, stop gossiping, and I too keep my mouth shut.

It's now 1.30 pm on Wednesday. Back to the transit lounge, which is almost empty, apart from a married couple, middle-aged, whom I haven't seen before. It's a different problem that they have. He's an Iraqi, one who left years ago and is a refugee, stateless, but whom the Russians insist on treating as an Iraqi for visa purposes. The couple have two children, not with them but in Uzbekistan. He's the one in trouble as his wife, living somehow in Moscow, has come to visit him. She has a headache and ask me if I have anything for it. I ferret out a packet of paracetamol, which she nods at and gratefully takes one tablet. And I thought that I had problems...

I sit down and try to think. Tbilisi or London? I find myself unconsciously slipping into playing the game their way: they have the initiative, whoever they are. Well, which is it to be, Georgia or England? Much as I love Georgia, Russia doesn't. Three hundred thousand Georgian refugees have fled Abkhazia - all the hotels in Tbilisi are packed full of them - and no one in the world is taking any notice, is even reporting it. The so-called Russian 'peace-keepers' are pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing - driving out the Georgians - a process which the Russian government denies is taking place, or blames on the local commanders - and relations between the two countries could scarcely be worse. In that political climate what chance would I have of falling on my feet? No, if I am going to fail, common sense dictates that I fail in London, not in Georgia. So, London it is. I know it is possible to apply for an emergency visa there, by paying through the nose - money talks in London as it does

in Moscow - so perhaps I shall get to St Petersburg after all. Funny thing, I've hauled around with me all this time two rolled up classic Constable reproductions (yes, the Hay Wain and Salisbury Cathedral - View from the Meadows) intended for friends in St Petersburg, and if I finally hand them over they will have travelled some seven thousand miles, most of them pointlessly.

Right, my mind is made up. The decision is taken, to get out of here as quickly as possible, whatever the cost, and to London, so as to return to St Petersburg and the conference. Up stride to the lounge entrance, the insider side of passport control, round the corner where there is an ancillary lounge for the use of the junior passport girls waiting for their next scrutiny duty. There are two girls there. I tell them I want to see the Aeroflot official, turn my back, and return to one of the seats to continue pondering, facing the passenger exit door. The die is cast. There ought to be a through draught, but there isn't, and I'm not even in the offshoot room. I'm alone. Well, not quite. A solitary lady passenger has turned up, quiet and disconsolate, with luggage, seated near a wall, but as I feel worse than she looks I don't talk to her to find out her nationality, let alone her story.

Time passes. How much time I don't know. But it must have been about 5pm when I become aware of a flurry of steps behind my back. I don't turn round and I don't get up. It's the Aeroflot lady, and I don't want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me betray how glad I am to see her. But it isn't the Aeroflot lady at all. It's a man, and he's walking fast. He's also alone. He comes round in front of me and bends down. I look up. The face is vaguely familiar. He speaks English, but in a staccato manner. "You don't remember me, I suppose?" There's a slight pause, while I recognise my passport and visa that he's holding. He has an eager, hyper-active air. I murmur a first name that comes into my head - and I'm right. He does all the talking. "I am the most powerful man in Russia. You cannot leave this place. You must leave this place. I shall never leave you. I can do anything with visas. I am a master with visas. You want a visa?" "No, I want to go to London." He takes a microsecond to absor

b the new information. "When?" "As soon as possible." "To-morrow?" "To-morrow would be fine. And as early as possible." "Heathrow or Gatwick?" "Whichever." "But which would you prefer?" "Heathrow." He makes to leave me, but repeats, in a loud voice: "You must leave this place. You cannot leave this place. I shall never leave you." "How many girls have you said that to?" I ask, but he doesn't hear me, disappearing as suddenly as he had arrived.

Twenty minutes later and my would-be saviour is back. "You know, you are, well, under arrest." I refuse to be impressed. What difference does it make? "You cannot stay here. You cannot leave. You must leave with me. You can go to London to-morrow. Heathrow. Do you want? How will you pay for the ticket?" "I've got a credit card, but to use it I must sign my name." He gives a start, realising that I have a part to play as well as his all-powerful self. He disappears. .... And re-appears a minute later with another of the young grey-clad, forage-capped, passport ladies. We stride off together the relatively short distance to the main foyer of Sheremetevo-1, exactly the place where I had spent the night ten days before between arriving from Heathrow and departing for Tbilisi. The area is as crowded now as it was before. Somehow we are instantly at the front of the queue and I'm paying for the single ticket, $405. No questions. Just a signature on the credit card payment slip, and I have my tic

ket. Saviour says he must now get me a visa, a 24-hour visa as I do not want a three-day visa, the longest that is issued. But that will be no use to me for a week or more in St Petersburg. So he knows what to do. There are people, people of the old system, people who do not issue receipts, who will do this, he tells me. Off he goes, and back I go, escorted as usual. Without thinking, I enter the room where my rucksack still rests patiently on the luggage trolley. The door, which has never been shut before, closes behind me and is locked. Without warning, and from the outside. Locked! I didn't expect this. I am alone. there is no bell, no phone, nothing. It's warm, and getting warmer. Claustrophobia is imminent. And its cousin paranoia. My saviour had said he would never leave me, but he's not here now, and will he ever come back? What do I really know about him? Will he succeed? What was that nonsense about being the most powerful man in Russia? Will I be simply forgotten? It's time to panic. Or to find an alternative to panic. Break that window, perhaps? Hardly sensible. Drink some more of the precious water? I'm not thirsty.

I decide to try to pass the time meditating. But how? I wished I had paid more attention to the Hare Krishna fanatic, I'm sure he would have taught me, given me a crash course, had I asked. Breathe slowly, counting one's breaths, isn't that what one does? Give it a whirl. In. One. Out. One. In. Two. Out. Two. That's fine until I reach about ten when the counting becomes automatic, and the mind simply reverts to what it was trying to forget. Panic again. It's really hot now. Bright idea: I remove shirt, lie down, cover eyes and try to sleep. The first part helps, but as to sleep, some hope. Then the door is unlocked, and an official comes in - maybe I've seen her before, maybe I haven't. She asks if, now that I have a ticket, all I need is a visa, and I nod and say yes. As she goes out I beg her not to lock the door - it's obvious that I'm not going to escape. She shrugs, says something about a lieutenant, otherwise ignores me, and locks the door. Back to square one. Which makes me think of

chess. Tried and tested velcro travelling set is in rucksack. It's the set that never loses a chessman, thanks to velcro surface. If I were offered the single luxury allowed to an interviewee on "Desert Island Discs", I'd choose velcro.

Out comes the set, and the position that immediately comes into my head to set up is one that I had composed 40 years before, but in whose solution my good friend Walter Veitch soon found a cunning, obscure line putting the whole beautiful echoed stalemate plan in jeopardy. More than once I had tried to prove a draw in the crucial resulting position with rook against two bishops and a single central pawn - Walter's irritating discovery - but had never succeeded in making the analysis watertight. The study might still be sound, though, because the win wasn't crystal clear either - the pawn could come under attack in the course of the bishops' side's necessary reorganisation, in particular in mobilising a sidelined king.

[ d3e1 0160.12 f4g7h5.h7e5g4 3/5=.

New Statesman, 1958

1.Rf5! Bg6 2.h8Q! Bxh8/i 3.Ke3 Bg7/ii 4.Rg5! Bh6 pin-mirror model stalemate.

i) Bxf5+ 3.Ke3 Bxh8 mirror stalemate.

ii) The Veitch 'spoil': Kd1! 4.Rg5 Bb1! 5.Rxg4 Kc1! Win for Black? Or can White draw?

The 'theme' shows wR moving without capture or check onto a square where it can be immediately pinned: White's moves 1 and 4 do this with chameleon effect, ie first to the light, and then to the dark, bishop. It didn't impress the late, great Andrÿea Chÿearon, but I liked it then and I like it now.]

I looked at my watch. 20 minutes had passed. It was 7pm. The psychological strategy was succeeding, even if the chess one wasn't. Back to the chess. Suddenly an idea comes, out of the blue. Planes are taking off outside. A major difficulty with the defence is that attacking both bishops with the rook (or simultaneously attacking a bishop and the pawn) usually fails because of a check from a bishop, gaining time for the other bishop to move to safety. But suppose we moved our king first, before making the harrying move? This would work if there were a safe enough square for the king. And, by Jove, there is just such a square, retreating from e3 to e2! The move had never occurred to me before because it looked bad to distance the king from the crucial pawn on d5. I quickly jotted down the position and a line of play quite definitely leading to a draw. Why had this not occurred to me before? If only Walter were here now!

e3c1 0160.01 g4b1h8.e5 2/4 WTM.

1.Ke2!! Bf6 2.Rc4+ Bc2 3.Rc6 Bh4 4.Rc4 Bg3 5.Kf3 Be1 6.Rc5 e4+ 7.Ke3 Bd2+ 8.Kd4 e3 9.Re5 drawn.

It doesn't matter if these moves are all the best - they clearly aren't - but if they saved my sanity then they were the best, beyond question, for me. Besides, the move was a new idea, and it might find its application in other variations.

It's half-past seven, still early evening, and still hot. I lie on my back, again covering the eyes. A cool draught hits my upturned face. I'm imagining it - there can't be. I'm going mad, it's a feelie mirage, a hallucination of the sense of touch. I open my eyes, adjust my specs, and frown at the ceiling. I'd never noticed it before, but the ceiling some ten feet above me is a false ceiling. Two panels next to a dazzling lighting strip have been shifted, and there's a space, a dark space. Surely the fresh air is coming from there. There's a link to the outside! Visions of a James Bond escape through confined ducting drift before me, but apart from anything else I can't reach up there even by standing on the couch. A sound, a noise outside. Transit passengers are, well, transitting, on the other side of the locked door.

When I least expect it, the door is unlocked and opened to admit the now familiar lady passport official. She holds something. "You can go now. This is your visa. Please leave at once. Your friend is waiting." Retaining my dignity I slowly put on my shirt and say I am going to wash first and will be five minutes. She would have to wait. I wash and wish good luck - no time to teach her chess - to the solitary stranded lady, who seems not to have moved since she arrived.

Wheeling my trolley out of purgatory into the public arrival and departure area, I spy my saviour waving cheerfully, but obviously in a great hurry. We don't even shake hands. "Follow me." What choice do I have? He leads me outside and, trolley now abandoned, we weave our way among parked cars towards one that had a driver already in place. We loaded the haversack into the boot, climbed into the back, and drove off.

I looked at my companion, and he looked at me. "I am rich," he said. I was unimpressed, but wanted to know more. He didn't wait to be asked. He'd been in Armenia, he said, and had met Sergei. I knew he meant Sergei Kasparyan, son of the great composer deceased in December 1995. "Sergei gave me your book, the one about his father, the Complete Studies. I owe you something." I waited for him to got onto the topic of the visa. "Andrei and Yakov are not in Moscow. They left for St Petersburg two days ago. To prepare for the conference. You know, I had to hand in my own passport to get yours." Then he came to the 24-hour visa. "This type was tough. Of the old school. You came from Georgia, so I told him you were a Georgian employee of mine and I required a visa for you. He was not impressed. He said 'there's no agreement between Russia and Georgia - that will cost $600.' I said I was a powerful person. He shrugged. I said I could get him tickets for the Rolling Stones, about to give a concert in Moscow for the first time ever, thirty years after they were first refused entry. This did impress him. What if my 'employee' were Armenian, and not Georgian, I asked. 'That's different,' he said. 'There's an agreement between Russia and Armenia. So, 90 dollars.' And, you know, he even gave a receipt. I was surprised." And he handed me the receipt. I really ought to have repaid him on the spot from the dollars in my pocket, but it crossed my mind only much later. Besides, the bright late evening sun - it was well after 8pm - was showing the Moscow main streets and buildings in their clearest light. I had to look. We passed the Bolshoi, the Metropole Hotel, the Moscow Duma which in Soviet times had been the Gosplan office. All the major landmarks drove money out of my mind. It was clear I was in a chauffeured car, but where were we going? My companion answered his mobile phone's ring and then made a call of his own. To Nikolai. We were on our way, and Nikolai was giving directions. I was

going to stay with Nikolai after all, even if only for one night instead of three. It was well after nine before we saw patient, word-shy Nikolai standing on the edge of a pavement on the look-out for us. We picked him up and he directed us round a maze of high-rise apartment blocks to the one nesting his own, which was on the ninth floor. Nothing posh or munificent here, but the lift was working. Before my saviour and I parted company he agreed to send a car early next morning to collect me and take me back across Moscow to the other Sheremetevo, No.2 - a promise that he kept. Meanwhile he had work to do, work that I had, of course, seriously disrupted. But if ever I wanted a visa for Russia, all I had to do was ask. "You know, we are survivors. If I have to learn Chinese in order to survive, I shall learn Chinese. But chess is my real love. Earning money - and I'm good at it - is nothing. I try to explain to my French boss what endgame studies are all about, but he doesn't understand a t

hing." So we part after shaking hands. Minutes later and I was wallowing in real welcoming family hospitality, climaxing in a blessed bath. In a couple of hours I was sound asleep in the best bed in this tiny, standard flat where two adults and two children already dwelt. It was all thanks to... to what? To something illegal? To something corrupt? By Western standards the answer had to be 'yes', but did those standards apply in Russia? The answer had to be 'no'. In Russia, in 1998, there is a lower echelon of civil servants who, being basically honest, cannot break the rules to save their lives. True, they are not all like that, but you have to know the system to know when and how to pull strings... Above them, if you can reach, is a thinner layer of fixers, those who can break the rules, for the right price. In a way it's a system, and in a way it works. Just so long as it doesn't last and is replaced by something better. There is no sign yet of this 'something better' emerging on the fluid Russian political, social and economic scene.

At the outward bound passport control of Sheremetevo-2 I was asked by the prim look-alike debutante who examined my 24-hour visa if I had paid for my visa at Sheremetvo Consular section - and I had the presence of mind to say 'yes'. No further questions. A few hours later and I was back in England re-applying for a visa to Russia, but only after phoning the insurers for a claim form: it was a recorded announcement number asking for specific information to be left, so there was no dialogue, which was maybe just as well, for if there had been I might not have been given the insurers' approval for the further formidable expenses that I was about to incur. The ticket - single again, because my original return on 5th August remained valid - was the easiest part, on Austrian Airlines to St Petersburg via Vienna, on Tuesday 28th July, at a cost of њ204. Nothing untoward there, although I would dearly have liked to travel a day earlier. But the visa was another matter. It required an invitation, w

hich necessarily meant a pre-fabricated one, it required the Russian Consulate's short notice fee to be paid, and it required footing the passport and visa company's bill. The cost of all of that: њ320. When I collected the visa I saw that the invitation - there is a special line on the visa for this - came from the Moscow Regional Duma, and the purpose of my visit was recorded as 'discussions'!

Subsequent events included the following: Austrian Airlines lost my rucksack for two days; the Constables were delivered in pristine condition after the fruitless round trip, thanks to the sturdy elongated cardboard tube supplied by the National Gallery - which never once aroused suspicion; and another piece of good fortune (or was it?), when my visa was stamped by the conference hotel to cover the whole period of my visa despite my staying in the aforesaid hotel for only two days. The importance of this is that had my visa not been so stamped I would have been in another pickle, for, as is clearly stated on a Russian visa, all foreigners have to 'register' within three days of arrival, and the dates would not have matched.

Never have I shaken so many hands in such a short time as when I turned up at the conference. Everyone had heard rumours about me, and some of the rumours were even true. Anyway I did not waste time confirming or denying them. If the identity of my saviour was to become generally known, and quite a few knew already, then I was not going to be responsible.

The insurance claim for њ933, put in on my return to England - a claim supported by Exhibits 'A' to 'P' - is rejected in toto on 26th August, with the insurers referring to an exclusion clause.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

A Creative Bonus!

A genuine study, my first for a number of years, was composed on the morning of 24viii98, as a result of analysing the 'transit lounge' study.

e1c1 0161.01 g1a6h2g3.d3 3/4=.

1.Se2+/i dxe2 2.Rg6!/ii Bb5 3.Rg5 Bc4 4.Rg4 Bd3 5.Rg2! Be5 (for example) 6.Rxe2 Bg3+ 7.Rf2 (Kf1? Bh4;) Kb1 8.Kd2 draw!

i) Thematic try: 1.Rg2? Bxg3+? 2.Rxg3 d2+ 3.Kf2 d1Q 4.Rg1 draws, but 1...d2+! 2.Rxg2 Bxg3+ 3.Rf2 Kb1 wins.

ii) A second thematic try: 2.Rg2? Be5 (for example) 3.Rxe2 Bg3+, with (echo!) 4.Kf1 Bh4 (only) winning, or 4.Rf2 Kb1! (only) winning.

 

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