‘And here outside,’ I said, ‘it’s just you, me and comrade streetlamp here.’
He slapped the metal pole amiably. The light was pouring down upon him, as if in a shower. And then, perhaps believing that what he had to communicate to me was better uttered in the decent darkness of the space in between the streetlamps, he took hold of my arm at the elbow and walked on. ‘Top secret.’ He repeated.
‘I’m agog.’
‘Ms Norman and I flew into Moscow from Kiev,’ he said.
I stopped and bowed my head. ‘I shall keep this profound secret in my innermost heart, and undertake never to tell a soul.’
‘That’s not the secret,’ he said, with a sharper tone, tugging harder on my arm as he walked on. ‘Unless you realise why we were in Kiev?’
‘Perhaps you were visiting the celebrated Kiev opera?’
‘No no,’ he said. ‘Like I said, I’m a safety inspector. I’m part of a top-secret exchange programme between the Soviet and American governments. I bring my expertise in nuclear safety to a number of Soviet reactors. That’s how I know Saltykov.’
‘You knew him before his taxi-driving days?’
‘[Oh he knows a tremendous amount about nuclear power,]’ said Coyne, reverently. [That’s his training. That used to be his career. He’s fallen out with the administration over some footling nonsense, dissent or something. But he knows. I’ve had dealings with him before, and there’s nobody whose knowledge of nuclear power I respect more.]’
We were walking now in the dark between streetlamps. Indeed, I noticed that the next streetlamp along was not illuminated. A broken bulb, I supposed. Twenty metres further down the street the next light along hovered in the air like a beacon. Then the strangest thing: just as I was looking at this it suddenly went out. All the lamps along Zholtovskovo, to that point where the street bends through ninety degrees, snuffed out.
Buzz, buzz. One by one, clicking off into darkness.
Though the night was moonless, things were not completely black; many of the windows in the buildings were illuminated, and there was a glow over the rooftops from the Garden Ring, one block behind. But it was pretty dark, for all that. ‘Localised power failing,’ I said.
Again: that weird miniature crescendo of a mosquito’s buzzing.
‘[Power,]’ said Coyne, in English. ‘[A word with many meanings. I visit Soviet power stations. The Soviet authorities get the benefit of my expertise in beefing up their security. The American government gets to feel it has an agent inside the Soviet system, checking up on an enemy state’s nuclear capacity. Of course I’m only ever allowed inside civilian installations. But it’s a mutuality thing,]’ and he switched to Russian. ‘It’s a sign of the increasing thaw between our two nations. It is dark, though, isn’t it?’
Directly above, between the architectural margins of the two lines of rooftop, a few stars were visible. One, winking at me as if to take me into its confidence, slid steadily along the sky. A plane.
‘Is this the top secret thing that you wanted to tell me?’
‘That’s not the top secret thing,’ said Coyne. ‘Or, to speak precisely: that is top secret — it’s [classified], as we say in the States. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about. I have something more important to tell you. All that jabber, back in the chess club. UFOs? You believe?’
‘I like to think of myself as a rationalist,’ I said. It was cold, and I crossed my arms and hunched my shoulders beneath my coat.
‘Quite right. Most of those UFO stories, they can be dismissed. But there are a few that are hard to dismiss, no? A small proportion, granted. But consider any phenomenon in the world, I mean, for instance, natural phenomena. Most phenomena in the world are mostly chaff, with a small proportional kernel of truth. Ask yourself this: What if a UFO were to provide us with hard evidence?’
‘That would clear up some of the uncertainty on the subject,’ I conceded, not really very engaged with the conversation.
‘Agreed. And that would be good, no?’
‘Certainty may be preferable to uncertainty,’ I said, unsure where Coyne was going.
‘The only question then,’ he said, speaking more rapidly, as if excited by his own words, ‘is: What constitutes evidence? An alien craft? Some alien pilots? Embalmed alien bodies to stick in the Smithsonian behind perspex? A chunk of alien machinery in the Moscow Polytechnical Museum, yeah?’
‘That would be something.’
‘[But how would we know it to be alien?]’ he went on, slipping into English. ‘[Might it not be, say, a prop? How will we know? How will we know, in this reality or another reality? By its effects, that’s how. By their fruit shall ye know them. Not something that looks like a raygun, because you might have taken that from a film set. But something that actually shoots destructo-rays.]’
‘[You have one of those rayguns about your person?]’ I asked. ‘[Now that the lights have gone out, I find myself become alarmed at the prospect of muggers.]’
He stopped. ‘[Really?]’
‘[Not really, comrade. There are no thieves in Russia, because Communism provides for all needs.]’
‘The effects, not the artefacts,’ said Coyne, more slowly, in Russian. ‘No? That’s what I want to talk to you about. Imagine they had a weapon that could lay waste to eastern Europe, western Russia.’
‘They?’
‘You know whom I mean by they.’
‘Scientologists?’
Humour slid past him. ‘No — no — aliens. Imagine it! They might — what’s the word, [brandish] it…’
‘Brandish,’ I said.
‘Sure, exactly. Say these aliens brandished their weapon, and world leaders said: I don’t believe you, you’re bluffing. OK? Now, what if it was actually used, the weapon was fired and Europe and Russia were devastated — you couldn’t argue with that, could you?’
‘Stop for a minute,’ I said. ‘I need to catch my breath.’ We stopped. I panted. My lungs are not those of a young man; and neither are they the lungs of a non-smoker. ‘Let me just see whether I understand you correctly,’ I said, when I had the puff. ‘Hostile UFO aliens have a weapon that will devastate Europe and Russia. They plan to use this weapon.’
‘That puts it very well.’
‘And you believe in these aliens?’
He didn’t answer for a few moments. Finally he said, ‘The business of surveying nuclear reactors is an immersive business. You know? You go around inside these reactors, and your attention is very minutely focused on the internal details: pipes and cladding; spent fuel pools; reactor cores. But every now and then I put my mind out from the inward details, and picture the whole system of nuclear reactors — all of the reactors in the world, spread out beneath the sky, all round the curve of the earth. Hundreds of them. I imagine myself soaring suddenly high in the sky, looking down. Do you know how that makes me feel?’
‘Vertiginous?’
‘Worried. Vulnerable, that’s how it makes me feel. If I were an invading alien force — well, I would be looking down upon a spread of fantastically powerful bombs, that my enemy had thoughtfully arranged right in the heart of his territory, just waiting for me to trigger them.’
We started walking again. Eventually he spoke again. ‘How well do you know Kiev?’
‘Kiev?’ I shrugged, and folded my folded arms more tightly against the cold. ‘I passed through there during the war. There wasn’t much to see.’
‘It’s been rebuilt. There’s a lot of rebuilding there. Digging and filling in. Uncovering the past. Building tends to involve that. Reitarskaya Street. Is that an address that means anything to you?’