‘The door opens inward, comrade,’ I said.
The wood around the handle was splintered and frayed. He pulled his right arm into the sleeve jacket, and using the fabric as a makeshift glove to protect his skin from splinters, he took hold and hauled the door towards him. It gave way with a noise of snapping wood, and once again he almost fell backwards. But at least his exit was clear now.
In the open doorway he turned around to face me. ‘They should keep you in a fucking lead-lined room!’ he said. He aimed the pistol at my chest.
I did not experience any spike or fear, or excitement. My heart kept beating smoothly.
‘Hey!’
This was my doctor’s voice. I heard running footsteps in the corridor outside. The redhead turned and waved his pistol at them. ‘KGB business,’ he barked. ‘KGB business.’
‘Murdering my patients in their beds is nobody’s business,’ cried the doctor. Ah! But she was fearless, my wonderful Dr Bello. I learned afterwards that she was not alone; the banging and thumping had roused half a dozen hospital staff, and they had all come scurrying down to see what the fuss was about. I daresay the red-headed man contemplated gunning them all down; but it was not a likely calculation.
‘Get out!’ snapped Dr Bello. She had reached the door, now, and was looking with horror at the mess of splintered wood. ‘Damaging hospital property? Breaking down doors? Threatening hospital patients with a gun? I’ll call the Militia, KGB or no. I’ll speak to your superiors! I’ll take it all the way to the top. I know people.’
The redhead growled, and looked at me, and then he growled again. ‘You want,’ he said, speaking in a low tone, ‘to put him in a fucking lead-lined room.’ And he stalked away.
And then they all came hurrying into my room, and fussing about me, and reconnecting my drip. Dr Bello took the Geiger counter from my lap. ‘Doctor,’ I told her. ‘You have saved my life.’
‘It is a doctor’s business,’ she said, in a plain voice, ‘to save the life of her patient.’
After that there was a great deal of fuss. The Militia came to see me again, and a guard was placed on my room. I was visited by a senior KGB officer. He was very old, and in uniform — a vast, stiff concoction of cloth and braid, upon which a great many medals clustered like bees upon a beehive. His face was prodigiously weathered by age, and lined with a series of deep creases in the vertical and the horizontal, giving him the appearance, almost, of crumbling brickwork.
‘Comrade,’ he said, in a voice like rust. He did not tell me his name.
‘Comrade.’ I nodded.
‘You fought in the Great Patriotic War,’ he said.
‘As did you,’ I replied, nodding towards his medals. ‘And now, you are in the KGB?’
He smiled, and leaned a little towards me. ‘Confidentially, now,’ he croaked. ‘As one old soldier to another.’
‘As one old soldier to another.’
‘People think the KGB is a unity,’ he said to me. ‘But it is not so.’
‘No?’
‘No. There are different… sects, shall we say. Different tribes. Shall we say different tribes?’
‘We can say tribes.’
He leaned back again. ‘My subordinate will take a statement,’ he said, shifting his weight in the chair, and groaning slightly, either with the effort of moving himself or else with the world-weariness of having to go through these formalities. Then he said, ‘Colonel Frenkel is presently under investigation.’
‘He’s a colonel? I had no idea he was so elevated.’
‘Between you and me,’ said the senior KGB officer, ‘and in confidence as one old soldier to another, he is not — universally liked.’
‘You astonish me,’ I said.
‘I have seen the report on your war service, and I have seen the report on Colonel Frenkel’s war service, and frankly yours is more glorious.’
‘Yet he is a colonel in the KGB, and I am an out-of-work translator in a hospital bed in Kiev.’
‘You were never going to get on in the world, once you’d decided to work as a translator,’ croaked the senior KGB officer. ‘Who can trust translators? Living in two languages? How can speaking like an American not corrupt the soul a little?’
‘There may well be something in that,’ I conceded.
‘As one old soldier to another,’ said the fellow again, wearily. ‘Colonel Frenkel had been put in charge of a section, tasked with a certain highly secret long-term mission, by Chernenko himself. It is sometimes the case that, with the death of a general secretary, the missions inaugurated by that general secretary possess enough inertial velocity to…’ But he seemed to lose his thread. He peered at the bright window, and then he yawned.
Everyone, it occurred to me, seemed very tired. I, of course, felt tired myself.
‘Did this project have to do with UFOs?’ I asked.
‘It is secret business,’ said the senior KGB officer. ‘But as one old soldier to another? Chernenko certainly believed in aliens from space, like a credulous boy. This is, in fact, a matter of public record. Other general secretaries have shared this belief. A great quantity of military, and KGB, resource has been wasted chasing UFOs around the Soviet Union. Wasted.’
‘You do not believe in UFOs?’
‘Of course not. And neither do you. I require that you give a statement to that effect. Write this: James Coyne, the American, was murdered by people — do not say government agents, say counter-revolutionaries — in a crude attempt to make it appear he had been kidnapped by space aliens. Say that.’
‘And we are certain,’ I said mildly, ‘that he was?’
‘Of course he was,’ said the senior KGB officer. When he became irate, his voice rose from a croak to the sound of a metal file rasping on metal. ‘Hum hum! You told the Moscow Militia so! He was hauled up by a rope around his ankle, like a deer in a snare!’
‘The Militia never found the rope.’
‘What does that matter? You don’t think it truly was aliens?’
I searched my mind. It had, before the explosion, been a cluttered and rather oppressive mind to live inside; but now it was clear and brightly lit: long elegant hallways and wide shining windows and order. I must concede it was an improvement. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I do not.’
‘There we are then! It’s nonsense. Poisonous and decadent nonsense, imported mostly from the USA, with films such as Warring Stars and Intimate Embraces of Three Different Kinds, and other such pornography.’
‘I have not seen these films.’
‘Quite right. They are banned. Nevertheless dedicated groups of counter-revolutionaries stage illicit screenings.’
‘Comrade,’ I said. ‘If I may? As one old man to another. This talk of counter-revolutionaries and so on — it is old-fashioned, you know. The Soviet Union is undergoing a process of reform and restructuring.’
He grunted at that. ‘Make a statement: say that persons unknown murdered the American. State categorically that there are no such things as space aliens, and that no UFO hovered over Moscow that night. Do not mention the events in the nuclear reactor. That is still a secret matter. But it is important we issue assurances to the Soviet people that they are not being menaced by UFOs.’
‘Very well,’ I said.
‘Do that, and you will be released from KGB arrest.’
‘No charges?’ I said.
‘It is my belief,’ he grumbled, by way of reply, ‘that you attempted to prevent the traitor Trofim from detonating a grenade inside the nuclear reactor. For that all Soviet people are grateful. We express our gratitude by informing you that, if ever you make public what happened in that place, we will arrest and charge you immediately. But otherwise you will be free to resume your work as a,’ and he chewed the word a little before speaking it, ‘translator.’