Yellow Blue Tibia (20 page)

As the car pulled away I looked back to see the red-faced, bulging-eyed enormity of Trofim bursting from the building’s main entrance, plaster dust smoking from his bashed-up-looking head.

The car swung away, and I saw Trofim recede in vision as he shook his hands in impotent fury, those terrible, man-killing hands.

I was too surprised to be relieved.

I was not alone in the taxi. Sitting beside me was Leon Piotrovich Lunacharsky from the chess club. ‘Lucky we were here, comrade,’ he beamed. ‘[ Jolly luck of the Irishmen,]’ he added in English. ‘[Or is it that it should is,]’ he added, getting tangled in his excitement. ‘[ Jolly luck of the science fictioneers?]’

‘What?’ I stuttered. ‘What?’

‘It took me a little while to process what you told me,’ said the driver. ‘It is a function of my syndrome that sometimes mental processing takes a little while. But I usually
will
process mental information, given time.’ The driver, of course, was Saltykov.

‘Saltykov,’ I said.

‘Reactor Four,’ Saltykov said, without looking round. ‘The American had found out not only the location, but the reactor number, too. He got the information to you before he was killed.’

‘Bless him!’ sang Lunacharsky. ‘Bless him for an American saint! He will save many lives!’

‘And you trusted me enough to tell me, too! But I was distracted,’ Saltykov went on in his implacable, unpassionate voice. ‘The policemen were attempting to lay hands upon me, even though my syndrome renders such contact intolerable.’

‘We waited outside the police station,’ said the bubbling Lunacharsky. ‘Then we saw the KGB take you away in your big car. We
followed
them. We thought you were as good as dead!’

‘As good as,’ I confirmed. ‘Since 1958.’

‘When that ape took you into that building . . .’

‘Leon Piotrovich Lunacharsky wanted us to drive away,’ said Saltykov, proudly. ‘I insisted we stay.’

‘And I am very grateful indeed that you stayed,’ I said.

‘And now,’ said Leon Piotrovich Lunacharsky, like a radio continuity announcer, ‘we shall take you to Dora Norman, the American.’

CHAPTER 12

I had previously only encountered Lunacharsky in the darkness of the Pushkin Chess Club, and it was a strange thing to see him by the light of the day. He seemed, somehow, less robotic. He had a broad face, with wideset eyes, slightly downward-pointing at their outside points. There was a streak of white in his thick, black broadbrush mane of hair, like a badger. His moustache lay languid, like a black odalisque, across his plump upper lip. Forty years of age, or thereabouts, I would guess.

Saltykov’s taxi crossed into a right-hand feeder lane and turned into a new road. It blended with the dusty, rusty mass of Moscow traffic and swept passed a series of industrial buildings.

‘I’m more excited than I can say,’ Lunacharsky bubbled. ‘To be in the same car as the great Skvorecky!’

I was having difficulty with my breath.

‘Oh dear,’ said Saltykov, from the driver’s seat.

My nerves were enormously jangled. ‘Oh dear?’

‘I have come the wrong way,’ said Saltykov. ‘That was an incorrect turn.’

‘What?’ I snapped. ‘Saltykov, where on earth are you going?’

He became, as far as his buttoned-down manner permitted it, annoyed. ‘It is because you have distracted me by talking! You should not distract the driver of a vehicle!’

‘Don’t distress yourself, my friend,’ said Lunacharsky, whose mood was perfectly irrepressible. ‘I see where we are! We need to turn right again and make our way back onto the ring road.’

‘If you
talk
to me,’ Saltykov said, with a mosquito whine curled into the words, ‘then I will be
unable
to concentrate properly upon the driving.’

‘Don’t upset yourself, my friend. Take the right turn that is - never mind, you missed it. There’s another right turn, up here. Take
this
one and . . .’

‘Could you please,’ I said, ‘tell me what is going on?’

‘I shall explain everything!’ boomed Lunacharsky.

An open-topped lorry, trailing a huge conical sleeve of dust like a crop-spraying plane, thunderously overtook the little taxi. Our car shook monstrously in the wake. ‘Speed up!’ I bellowed.

‘I am driving at the optimal speed for fuel efficiency,’ retorted Saltykov in no placid voice.

‘Come, my friend,’ Lunacharsky told him. ‘Simply circle round, circle round. We need to get back on the correct road. Mademoiselle Norman is waiting!’

‘Yes! Yes!’ Saltykov peeved, as another car swept past, its horn howling. ‘Do not talk to me, or expect me to talk to you, because if you do so I will be unable to concentrate upon the driving!’

‘He suffers from,’ said Lunacharsky, turning in the seat to face me, ‘a particular syndrome . . .’

‘I gather,’ I replied.

‘But he is an expert man! He knows
everything
about nuclear power stations!’

‘Comrade, I would be obliged if you could tell me,’ I said, as the car slowed, turned, and accelerated again, ‘what on earth is going on?’

‘I shall explain everything! By the time we arrive at our friend Saltykov’s flat, where Mademoiselle Norman is sequestered - by the time we arrive there, everything will have been explained to you! You will know
everything
. And therefore you will understand how high are the stakes.’

‘At the moment, I am completely in the dark,’ I said. ‘So there is a lot you need to explain.’

‘You underestimate the extent of your knowledge,’ he replied. ‘You know more than you think. You know Frenkel, for example. You understand the nature of the threat we face.’

‘I knew him a long time ago.’

‘I meant to say how much I admired your attitude in the chess club yesterday,’ gushed Lunacharsky. ‘Negation! When we threw questions about Project Stalin at you, you simply
negated
them. It was
more
than denial, because when somebody denies something it always bears the imprint of its opposite. If an official denies something it is tantamount to an admission! But you - you
negated
. It was gloriously dialectical. In this, I assume science fiction has prepared you. Because the worlds created by a science fictional writer do not deny the real world; they antithesise it!’

‘You are,’ I said, a little uncertainly, ‘complimentary.’

‘Indeed! You see, that is also the
nature
of the UFO phenomenon. It is
dialectical
. In the club the other night, you stated the thesis.
You
could do this, because you were personally involved, with Frenkel, in the original project. Your thesis is: there are no UFOs, we are alone in the cosmos. The antithesis was advanced, often foolishly, by the other members: yes there are UFOs, they visit us nightly! But without the thesis to counter this antithesis, there could be no synthesis. And the synthesis is . . .’

‘Is what?’

He looked down his long nose at me, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘It is a mistake to assume that extraterrestrials must be material. Or immaterial. What if they exist in a dialectical superposition of the two conditions?’

‘And if you spoke the same sentence in Russian rather than gibberish?’

He beamed at me. ‘My dear friend, I am being too
general
. Let me fill you in on specifics. The American, and his lady friend, entered the Soviet Union at Kiev. Now, there was a
reason
why they entered the Soviet Union via Kiev. A crucial reason.’

The motion of the car slowed. We stopped.

At this point my conversation with Lunacharsky was interrupted. Saltykov had stopped his taxi at a red traffic light. Somebody, outside the vehicle, was shouting. It was a pedestrian who was yelling. Then, startlingly, the door was hauled open, with the result that the noise from outside spilled in. Lunacharsky turned, and began to say, ‘Comrade, this taxi is already full . . .’ but the shouting drowned him out.
Out of the car! Or I shall shoot
, swam into focus.

I recognised the voice; hoarse, but distinct. And glancing across I recognised the meaty fist. It was holding a pistol, and the pistol was pointed in through the open door.

‘Saltykov,’ I bellowed. ‘Drive! Go!’

‘The traffic light is red,’ said Saltykov.

‘All of you!’ Trofim was yelling from outside. ‘
Out - of - the - car—
!’

His huge hand, with its monstrous reach, came snaking into the back of the cab like Grendel reaching for prey; or like the octopus in
Twenty Thousand Leagues Underneath the Oceans
trying to winkle submariners from the
Nautilus
.

Lunacharsky was trying to remonstrate through the open passenger door: ‘Comrade, it is a misunderstanding, comrade, please put the gun down.’ He had, I noticed, planted one of his feet against the inside of the car, next to the open door. A great force was hauling at him and trying to draw him out. Trofim shouted at us to get out of the car.

‘Never mind the fucking colour of the light,’ I yelled. ‘Go! Accelerate! He has
a gun
on us!’

‘It is against the rules of driving. More to the point it contradicts common sense, to drive through a junction when the light is red,’ said Saltykov. ‘Other cars would collide with us, and immobilise the . . .’

‘
Weave
through the traffic, you idiot - weave - just
go now
. He’ll kill us all!’

‘This is the KGB! Out of car!’ shouted Trofim. He had thrust his huge, troll-like left hand inside the taxi, and had taken hold of Lunacharsky’s lapels. ‘Let go!’ Lunacharsky yelped, bracing both his feet now against the frame of the car’s door. I could see Trofim levelling the pistol with his other hand.

‘Go!’ I shrieked at Saltykov. ‘What are you doing? Press your foot onto the accelerator!’

‘The traffic light is red,’ insisted Saltykov.

‘I don’t care! Go! Go!’

‘The traffic light is green,’ said Saltykov.

With a noise from the tires like a soprano’s top note, and a rush of acceleration that yanked me back against the seat, the taxi roared away.

The strain on its engine was such that the exhaust backfired deafeningly.

For a moment Trofim’s arm was still inside the vehicle as we moved away; but then the huge hand lost its grip and slipped out of view. I looked back to see the giant KGB man rolling ponderously in the gutter.

The passenger door slammed to, bounced open again, and slammed once more. I reached over Lunacharsky to grab the handle and heaved with all my might. From being a ridiculously cautious driver, Saltykov was now driving with absurd abandon. We swerved, spun sharp left, and zoomed away. ‘The engine backfired!’ he hooted.

‘I heard it,’ I replied, speaking loudly enough to be heard over the roar of the engine. Relief sparked into rage. ‘What were you
playing
at?’ I shouted. ‘Why did you just sit there? That was Trofim. Did you drive past exactly the same place you picked me up?’

‘I took a wrong turn,’ he replied, peevishly. ‘Because you insisted on
talking to me
as I drove! Both of you. I was distracted from the concentration necessary to drive an—’

‘So you took a wrong turn! Surely you didn’t need to retrace
exactly the same route
to get back on track?’

‘My mind is methodical,’ he insisted. ‘That was the only way I knew.’

‘Your mind is insane,’ I yelled.

‘If you had left me alone and not talked to me,’ he wailed. ‘If you had left me alone to drive, instead of pestering me with questions, I would never have got lost! It’s your fault.’

Lunacharsky seemed uncharacteristically silent. But I was still full of outrage at what Saltykov had done.

‘You drove
directly
past the house in which they’d been holding me,’ I said, slapping the back of the driver’s seat with my fist in petty rage. ‘Trofim was still
standing there
! Exactly where we left him! And then you stopped the car!’

‘Stop slapping my seat! That is distracting to the driver! Please do not distract the driver!’

‘Of course he was still standing there,’ I said. ‘He’s an ox. Where would he go? And you drove along the same road, and then you
stopped the car
. Right in front of him!’

‘The traffic light was red!’

‘And if it was? You could jump the light. People have been known to jump red lights. Have you never seen a
film
?’

‘I was of course conscious of the need to make a rapid escape,’ he insisted, ‘but I was, equally, conscious of the danger of collision with another vehicle were I to drive through the red light. How could we make good our escape in that circumstance? What if we were injured, or killed, in the collision? How would that serve our purpose?’

My attention, now, was distracted by Lunacharsky. He was staring at me with a unpleasant intensity. I returned his gaze. ‘Your car did not backfire.’