– Sergey Borisovich.
– Quiet and “yes, sir”, you scribbler! Damned putsch in ninety-one… Well yes, in ninety-one! And you say “yes” and list-ten, what if there is a reason why I, an old stub with the brain cancer, am telling you the same for the third time. About death, about funerals, about the fact that I have never been in the Zone, never stood a foot. So get this, writer! Maybe repeating makes sense, think about it. And you tell me about your putsch.
– I'm listening.
(Finishes the water)
– Is Antipov still flying?
– Still flying.
– Pour some more water. The water from the “neutral” is delicious. Where was I? Yes. Accordingly, we are very fortunate that the Americans fall under the Lightning182, that's the thing. There was no way to hide the Zone because of them. Although Gorbachev, and then even Yeltsin, gave their civilian subordinates instructions to submit such proposals, and then Yeltsin even delegated the question to the General Staff. I know this for sure. I had been transferred from Chernobyl to Kapustin not just because, I was present at all their tea-drinking meetings, have been wasting the time directly from the Lightning, from Ryzhkov's commission. That one, you won't remember. At all, starting from the first, on New Year's eve in eighty-nine…
– Sorry, you said “we are very fortunate with Americans”, Sergey Borisovich. Who are “we”?
(Pause)
– Humanity, damn it. Such an ufologist you are.
(Pause)
– I'm listening.
– So then yes, sir, listen. The Americans… Now what…
(Highlights “now”)
– …we are fortunate – it's understandable why. The internationalization of the Zone, albeit under a moratorium, is not going anywhere. But even then! In ninety-one, when I ran out of money all at once – Americans helped out. And earlier, straight away. In all the editorial offices of the Commission for the Zone affairs there were Americans. There are, for example, Yeltzin, Gorbachev and Nazarbaev sitting down and here is Matlock in a corner, rubbing his glasses. He went there like it was his work. Although, of course, there were secret meetings too. I'll tell you later… maybe. I remember that time I was agreeing with all of them, say, that would be good if the quarantine would be tight, up to the idea that the administrative border with Kazakhstan, at that time still a republic, should be moved for at least thirty kilometers off the exclusion zone around Kapustin and the rest of the test-site, like in Chernobyl, for fifty kilometers – even better. To decide something about the river, to start a project for a bridge across Ahtuba near Kotly, the highway and the railway to Astrakhan through it, through the floodplain… and total unity in military command. And of course, all this is sponsored by Americans. That's what was the politics… In the Soviet Union, until it was over, it would have still been possible, at least at the level of decision-making. We did not have enough time.