‘How exciting,’ I said, in an unexcited voice.
‘I don’t expect you to believe me right off, of course,’ said Frenkel. He sat back in his chair. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you at all. It’s highly secret. It has galvanised the highest levels of government, I can tell you that. It’s big. I, personally, have spoken to the General Secretary himself about it.’
‘How exciting,’ I said again. ‘To meet the General Secretary,’ I added, for the benefit of Trofim’s scowling expression.
‘Now, just listen for a moment,’ Frenkel said. ‘You’re the only person in the entire world I can have this conversation with. Do you understand that? Because you and I have shared a unique experience.’
‘Does Comrade Trofim know our secret?’
‘I trust Trofim,’ said Frenkel. Trofim sat up more straightly in his chair. But Frenkel immediately added, ‘Comrade, would you mind going and standing over by the door?’
‘The door?’ replied the huge fellow.
‘Just for five minutes. I have something personal to discuss with my old friend.’
A little awkwardly, Trofim extracted his treetrunk legs from beneath the caf’ table and stood. He made his way ponderously to the door, turned, and stood motionless beside it.
‘He’s well trained,’ I observed.
‘Listen!’ said Frenkel, urgently. ‘If I were to say to you that I have proof that aliens are amongst us, that would be a big enough secret. But if I were to say to you… the aliens are here, and I have proof, and they — they — they are appearing exactly as we wrote them, in that dacha in the 1940s on Comrade Stalin’s express order — what then? Because only you and I, in the whole world, know about that fiction!’
‘If you were to say that?’ I observed. ‘And if I were to find it hard to credit?’
‘But it’s true. How would you explain it?’
‘I’m not sure what you’re asking me to explain.’
I glanced at Trofim, by the door. He stood unnaturally still, like a robot with the power supply switched off. The three of us were the only people in the restaurant; a fact which struck me, for the first time, as very peculiar. A central Moscow restaurant, at the end of a working day? Shouldn’t it be crowded with people? The windows were black, as if the sun had given up on the day and sulked off. The clock on the wall showed four in the afternoon, but it felt much later. I felt suddenly exhausted. Ready for bed. This tiredness gave me a little push of inner annoyance. ‘This whole conversation,’ I announced, ‘is most idiotic.’
‘The truth sometimes is.’
‘Let’s be clear,’ I said. ‘The six of us concocted that story of space aliens.’
‘We did.’
‘We didn’t base it on anything factual at all. We invented radiation aliens. Crazy, really. I don’t believe a single one of us even approximately understood the physics of radiation.’
‘That’s right.’
‘It was fiction. It was our fiction. We made it up. It’s not real.’
‘Fictional and unreal are not synonyms,’ said Frenkel, smiling as if he had articulated a piece of profound wisdom.
‘Ivan, you’re saying that the story we invented is somehow, I don’t know, happening in the real world? That there’s proof that radiation aliens are invading?’
‘There is! There’s evidence!’
‘Then the evidence is hoaxed. It is fictional. Maybe somebody has found out about our plan, and is going to the trouble to reproduce it in the real world.’
‘But why should they?’
‘I’ve no idea. I’ve really no idea.’
‘More to the point, how could they know? Only you and I know, in the whole world!’
‘As to that,’ I said. ‘I assume somebody kept a record. It must be filed somewhere.’
‘It isn’t.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I know because I’ve looked. I have access to those sorts of files, and it’s not there. And anyway, who would file it?’
‘Malenkov?’ I suggested.
‘Him? He didn’t keep records of anything at all! Secrecy was his whole life. He didn’t even keep a diary. No, not him. And none of us, none of the writers concerned, we wouldn’t have the chance, even if we wanted to. No records!’
‘Then no records were kept. It’s only in our memories, yours and mine. And therefore, unless we are capable of shaping the real world with our mental fantasies — perfectly unconsciously, in my case — any resemblance between our story and the real world is merely coincidental.’
‘I have proof!’
‘Jan,’ I said. ‘You’ve come across certain reports of UFO activity, and you fancy a resemblance between those reports and that ridiculous story we concocted years ago. But its coincidence. It must be. The resemblance is pure chance.’
‘Radiation aliens,’ he hissed. ‘Listen: do you remember the American spaceship that exploded?’
‘Last month, you mean? That was in the news. What was it called?’
‘[Challenger,]’ he said in English. Then: ‘It means Aggressor!’
‘It was a launchpad malfunction, I believe.’
‘That’s what they’re saying, of course that’s what they’re saying. But I have seen top-secret reports that it wasn’t anything of the sort. I have seen the reports! The craft was hit by a beam of concentrated radiation energy in flight!’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
Frenkel was positively bouncing in his seat now, like an excited child. ‘Everything is about to change,’ he said. ‘Our government is talking to the Americans at the highest level, with a degree of openness never seen before. D’tente is the watchword. It will be the end of Communism — Gorbachev is planning it, I’m certain. He’s planning an alliance with America to fight the space threat together!’
I looked over at Trofim by the door. ‘Jan, it’s—’
‘Ivan!’ he snapped.
‘Ivan, of course. Ivan: it’s been a pleasure meeting you again, but…’
‘Think through what we planned. The aliens would attack power stations, remember? Long Island, do you remember that? The Long Island disaster we planned? That power station that went into meltdown?’
‘I think we got the wrong name for the New York island.’
‘We planned they would explode an American rocket on launch, remember? They would—’
‘Coincidence,’ I interrupted, ‘Launching rockets is an inherently risky business.’
‘But the aliens?’ he hissed. ‘The aliens themselves? You think they’re not here? Right now — in this place?’
This made an unpleasantly insectile sensation scutter along my spine. It chimed with my sense of there being something wrong in that place. Ghosts in the room. Goosepimples on my forearms. But of course — nonsense. I said so, and speaking the word solidified the fact of it: ‘Nonsense.’
‘I have met them!’ said Frenkel, with disconcerting intensity.
‘You have?’
‘I was driving,’ he said. I can’t express how little I wanted to hear this particular confession, but he was in spate. ‘My engine died. I saw a light — and it came right down to earth. It landed in a field beside the road I was on.’