– And Matlock? Was he there at the time?
– And Matlock was listening, sipping tea… Or whatever was in his thermos. Coca-Cola. We always kept his own thermos. And an interpreter. He spoke Russian, but not very well.
– And then?
– And he says: I think, he says, the opinion of Arkadiy Natanovitch is a deeply thoughtful opinion (it is full of thoughtful thought). And everyone immediately became silent. Impressive! It's horrendous what would have happened if there had been no quarantine.
– M-m, yes… And Strugatsky, did he also say nothing about an aliens, about UFOs?..
– I'm telling you, ufologist: with Gaidar they were birds of feather. Smart people, but father-in-law was experienced, been there. A drinker, a person who understands. But they both also knew how to keep quiet. And this book… About stalkers… He did write it, invented it in his head! When I was reading it, I did not believe my own eyes! Ten years before the Lightning… even more! With his brother… The book itself spoke for him. Even Yeltsin read it afterwards, I know this for sure… His brother, a scientist, was also at the meeting once… And in general I had a strange feeling that he, this Arkady, somehow knew something more, and knew it in advance. After all, Gorbachev reported object to the Commission about Zhitkur-9 not instantly, but when he had already signed his resignation. In January of ninety-one… The soviet Union was already finished.
(Laughs)
– That moment everybody lost the gift of speech. Yeltsin whacked his chair into the wall, consequently Primakov dropped the glass with kefir… And Gorbachev is just sits there, calm, blinks, fidgeting with a pen in a hands… So, this Arkady Strugatsky, in my opinion, didn't even change his face expression… Set that aside. Listen, ufologist, I lied to you, listen! Gaidar was not even there, at the first meetings! But Strugatsky already was present. He already attended the meetings in eighty-nine, Pavlov was there, Ryzhkov, Khryuchkov, of course, and no Yeltsin in sight, I had been flying from Ukraine… At Yazov's call.. Exactly!
– It is strange.
– Do you understand? Even I do not know everything, okay? Officially, I was transferred to Kapustin on the fifteenth of November, and on the twentieth, the first meeting of the Commission was held with Yeltsin invited as the president of the RSFSR. Because this was still the Soviet Union, not CIS… But Nazarbayev, yes, was already the president. Of the republic. And he was worrying a lot. Such a horror was happening in the Kazashsky Corner of the Zone. The terrifying walls of the fire, this plasma lava… Well, you saw the movie.