London, UK
February 2019
There was a low mist hanging over Kensington Gardens and a chill in the air. It was mid afternoon but felt later, as London winter does. I had walked up from Westminster, through Sloane Square and Knightsbridge until I entered the gardens. Now, I was sitting on a park bench overlooking the Round Pond, with Kensington Palace behind me.
It was definitely him. I watched as he walked towards me, even though he was still a couple of hundred metres away. The same girth, although a bit more spread now under an overcoat, wearing glasses and his hair with streaks of grey, shorter and with a neat side part instead of the dark mop it had been when we met.
Finding him had been easier than I’d expected. In the intervening years since my Tbilisi adventure and subsequent warning-off, the internet had evolved, sprouted social media, its tentacles reaching into every corner and nook and cranny of the world. Even so, I hadn’t expected to find Nino so quickly on a basic Facebook search: now apparently the father of at least one child and with a pretty wife, but not the same girl he’d been driving around when we visited all those years ago. Nino with a Facebook profile that featured a lot of friends with massive, bulging muscles, shaved heads and sleeve tattoos. Pyotr had zero social media presence and I was unable to decide whether the Revaz Rustaveli that I found was the one I’d met. He certainly looked older, if it was. I found an article discussing several Tamaz brothers who had been asked to answer some pointed questions relating to missing gold from the Georgian government. Could that be the same Tamaz?
And now here was George, walking towards me.
Most surprisingly of all, I never would have found him without a throwaway remark from none other than Neville Rhodes. We had found ourselves at the same party at Quay Restaurant in Circular Quay, and it seemed churlish not to go over and say hello. In fact, years after the events, Neville clearly had moved on as well because he seemed genuinely happy to see me and readily laughed as he reminisced about his own adventures, or misadventures, in Tbilisi, on the goldmining front as well as his wine ambitions.
‘I wonder where George is now?’ I had said, more rhetorically than anything.
‘Giorgi Aramhishvili?’ Neville said. ‘That rogue. He is now, will you believe, Mr George Kensington Esquire, living large in one of the better pockets of London. In fact, get ready for it, in Kensington. He is Mr George Harrison Kensington, of Kensington.’
‘Giorgi from Georgia is now Mr Kensington from Kensington?’ I said. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Absolutely. He has been a director of several mining companies, the occasional one of which has even been semi-legitimate,’ Neville said. ‘He’s had a few adventures along the way, in Singapore and Hong Kong, going by some of the juicier articles or legal transcripts, but mostly, I think life is pretty calm for Mr Kensington.’
I couldn’t believe it, and armed with this new information I found myself Google searching after I returned home from the party. Sure enough, there was George Harrison Kensington on everything from LinkedIn to, yes, company warnings. It would seem George had dabbled in petroleum companies, all kinds of mining, and even as a consultant to 3G phone network rollouts across the former Soviet Union.
I had spent more than a decade wondering if he was even alive. He had been living and working under his new name all this time. And so, on a whim, I had reached out and mentioned I’d be in London soon . . .
He approached me now and smiled as he held out a leather-gloved hand.
‘John Baker. What a lovely treat,’ he said, his English flawless.
‘Hello, George. It’s been a long time.’
‘It certainly has. How are you, old friend? How is your life?’
George sat on the bench, creaking down as though he had bad knees. He was younger than me and had seemed considerably younger in the Tbilisi days but now I felt he was a bit of an old man. Maybe it was just the cold English weather.
‘When did you leave Tbilisi, George? Was it then? I’m sad to think you’re not there anymore. You were always so passionate about your country and your city. I remember you toasting the Mother of Georgia statue. It meant so much to you.’
He shrugged, resigned. ‘Sometimes life takes you away from the things or the ones you love, John. Sometimes you have to begin again. It was time for me to leave, to remove my family from that place. It was definitely the right choice, if I even had a choice. I am not sure you could understand. Anyway, Tbilisi was no longer what it had been in my youth. Nowadays, it is all fucking infinity pools, tourists and American chain stores.’
I didn’t know what to say to that. But George just chuckled.
‘So now I’m a geezer,’ he said in a fair approximation of an East End accent. ‘London is not so bad. It has good football games – go, Chelsea – and there is a shop specialising in Georgian wine not far from this park.’
We chatted for a while about my life and his, catching up on the years. He was predictably a little evasive about the fine detail of his work, what he did now and what he had done. He volunteered that he had children now, and they were UK citizens. He had no plans to return to Tbilisi to live, he said.
‘I’m sorry things worked out the way they did, John,’ he finally said, after we’d chatted for twenty minutes or so. ‘I know how much work you put into the cellar and I would have loved to have completed the sale with you.’
‘I never knew why it all got shut down, George,’ I said. ‘I didn’t even know if you were alive. Pyotr dropped by my shop in Sydney and warned us off. Were you behind that?’
George grimaced. ‘John, these are unpleasant things to revisit after all this time. I think Pyotr was doing you a favour but no, I was otherwise engaged at the time. I’m glad you had the sense to heed the message.’
We sat and looked at a squirrel darting out from behind a tree, regarding us and then not bothering to hide, deciding we were both harmless. I wondered if that was true.
‘George,’ I said. ‘Can I ask: what happened to the wine? In all these years, I’ve never been able to stop wondering. Those three bottles of 1847 Yquem, they’d be worth a million dollars on their own. And all the other Yquems! Plus, the dozens of Margaux, the Mouton, the Lafite, all the rest. So many treasures and with all that astonishing history attached. What happened to them? Where are they now? Are they still there?’
George looked out over the park and smiled, then turned his head to me, still grinning broadly.
‘John, that is Georgian business. How could I know? I’m a Londoner.’
I shook my head but had to smile as well.
‘Fair enough, George. I’ll just keep on wondering. I have one last question.’
‘If you must,’ he said.
‘Can I buy you a drink, George? For old times’ sake? We can talk about Josef Stalin, Nicholas the Second, French wine and sulphur baths.’
George smiled broadly and carefully stood up from the bench.
‘Absolutely, John, my friend. I would like that very much. Should you be the tamada, or should I?’
‘Maybe we can take turns,’ I said. ‘The only thing, George, and I’ll be honest, is that after we’ve had a couple of drinks, there’s a strong chance I might ask you where the wine is.’
George laughed and put a big hand gently on my back.
‘Well, that remains the question, John,’ he said as we started to walk. ‘That is the question.’