by Val M Karren
“Quick, turn those off!” I rasped at him emphatically.
The hall was quickly dark again.
“Hans, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’ll get out before they figure out which apartment I am in. I won’t let them know where I was hiding!” I whispered in the dark.
“Peter, there’s a fire up the street. They aren’t coming to find you. Look, you can see the smoke and the fire from my bedroom window,” he said standing in his bedroom door.
I stood paralyzed with fear but felt the relief come quickly. My legs became limp and I felt that I would faint. I braced myself against a wall to catch my breath and equilibrium.
“Peter, go lay down. Everything is okay.” Hans sympathetically ordered.
The sirens of the fire trucks came wailing under our third-floor balcony as we stood in the warm night and watched the black smoke billowing up over the block. Down below the street was filling with students from the technical school dormitory across the street.
Hans yelled down to them. “Guys, guys! What’s burning?”
“The university building is burning! Come with us to help the fire fighters!” was the cry back from the group of students moving quickly together toward Minin Street.
Hans turned to go back in the apartment to find his clothes and shoes to go watch, if not help. As he stepped from the balcony into the living room, the pieces came together in my mind.
“Hans!” I called out. “It’s the Linguistics School. It’s the American Library! They’ve set fire to the American Library!” I felt my stomach sink. Guilt and shame came over me because of what I had brought on everybody due to my recklessness. How could I face the world again? Oh, God! Please don’t let there be any victims in this fire, I prayed in my sick, churning gut.
“You’d better stay here then, Peter! I’ll go check it out,” he yelled back to me from inside the apartment.
“No Hans! I’d better go before they find me here,” I cried.
“Sit your ass down! And don’t go anywhere until I get back!” he ordered me. I sat on the couch and cried quietly in fear and despair. How could I have let it get so far? What had I done? Why hadn’t I walked away earlier? The regrets and guilt piled on me like heavy bags of concrete. I hid my face in the couch and curled up, frightened for my life.
Hans woke me with a shake to my shoulders as the first day light was just visible through the balcony door. It was four-thirty. I had slept for about two hours.
“Peter, you were right. Somebody threw a Molotov cocktail through each window of the university building. It wasn’t an accidental fire.”
“It just couldn’t have been anything else!” I said blinking sleep from my eyes. I seemed to be in my right mind now after a night of hysterics. My eyes stung with fatigue and tears.
“Peter, you need to get out of town,” Hans confirmed what I already knew.
“Why? What has convinced you?” I pushed.
“On the front of the building they sprayed: Yankee Go Home!” Hans was embarrassed to tell me.
“Do you know if anybody was hurt?” I carefully asked.
“No, the place was empty. Nobody was found inside,” Hans confirmed.
“Oh good. That’s a huge load off my mind,” I sighed.
“They think the fire was done for political reasons…,” he reported.
“No, it's not! They did it to destroy the CD database because they saw all the materials I was able to find out about them in just a few months. They are very, very nervous!” I felt the panic coming up again into my throat and my heart was thumping quickly again. I wanted to run!
“You gotta get out of here, Peter!” Hans reconfirmed.
“OK, I’ll get going, friend. Can you do one last favor for me, please? Will you go check up and down Minin Street if you see a black Lada with two goons sitting inside smoking?"
“There are so many people still in the street that I wouldn’t be able to tell who is who,” Hans commented.
“OK, I’ll just go quickly across Minin and head down the Upper Embankment toward the stairs and I’ll catch a cab from the river station to the train station. Maybe it’s too early for anybody else to be out and about.” I was lacing up my shoes as I was talking.
I gave Hans a firm, thankful handshake, picked up my backpack and bade him farewell and slipped out the door and on to the street. The air was rank with smoke and vapors. My nose and lungs burned and I jogged down the street and sprinted through the intersection at Minin street toward the river. I didn’t stop to look to see if the ‘British Knight’ was loitering around with his driver. I passed by Mr. P.’s residence at number eleven on the far side of the street; to my relief nothing more than the lights from his security office on the ground floor were burning. The house was still.
As I started gingerly down the river bluff stairs under the Chkalov monument I heard a car pull up behind me and glimpsed quickly the lights of the black Lada. I ducked down so my head wasn’t visible from above and crouched as I continued down the stairs, now at a quick clip trotting as fast as my ribs would allow. I heard the car rev its motor in the morning silence, spin around and head quickly down Georgiyevskiy Syezd to the lower river embankment. Luckily that road was in the opposite direction of where I was headed before it switched back in the direction of the river station. I had a few minutes to go and hide myself in the alleyways of the lower old city or in the shadows of the kremlin walls.
Halfway down the stairs I veered left instead of descending the entire staircase which intersects with the lower embankment boulevard, and jogged a bit toward the Conception Tower of the Kremlin to stand behind the ramparts and watch the black Lada race by. As I reached the tower I heard the frantic motor of the small car zip by below behind the trees. For now, I had eluded them. I continued walking along the wall of the Kremlin between the Conception Tower and St. John’s tower in view of the chapel of St. John the Baptist. From there I could see the river station in the morning sunshine at the junction with the Oka River. I stopped with the realization that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the train station and if I did, they would be waiting for me there, anticipating that I would run, as I wasn’t in my apartment. I stood still and watched the few cars down below the slope zipping around the squares and alleys. I was frozen with fear and could feel the net closing in around me. I slowly descended the stairs rounding St. John’s Tower and was resigned that if I ran, they would catch me. If I stayed still, they would eventually find me. I was hungry and I hurt all over after the running and the jarring on the stairs. I just wanted to lay down and let whatever was going to happen, just happen. I sauntered further down gradual slopes of Ivanovskiy Syezd having given up. I walked casually through the intersection and headed toward the river bank where I knew I could at least be hidden from the street above as I slowly made my way toward the bus stop in front of the river station.
As I emerged from the buildings I glanced left and saw the tail lights of a lone black Lady waiting in front of the river station five blocks further up. I walked out from the buildings and crossed the street as if I was in no hurry, showing no intent to hide myself from anybody. The brake lights went out and the Lada lurched forward to make a u-turn and head in my direction. I did not hurry my pace. I reached the riverside and trotted down the embankment stairs to the mooring berths for the river boats and began walking toward the station. I could hear my pursuers up above speeding toward me but I could no longer see them, and they couldn’t see me.
As I paced myself up the moorings and along the boats tied up for the overnight stay in Nizhniy I could hear the crews cooking below decks, preparing breakfast, and an officer giving orders above deck to prepare for departure. As I passed the Pushkin, a long, low sitting boat that was half the size of what I had become used to the summer before, I noticed another. Just as one would bump into an old friend and not recognize her for a split second, there was the Giorgiy Zhukov sitting in the water right behind the Pushkin, tied up and quietly bobbing up and down with the
river’s current. How many times I had been so happy to see this noble boat after a long, scary day in Moscow, or after my harrowing visit to the hospital in Kazan! Now again the relief was immediate as I knew that I had friends and refuge in sight. Without any hurry or rush I sauntered down the gangplank and stepped on board, like I had arrived home.
I ducked inside the open door of the upper deck dining room and hid myself behind the bulkhead of the boat where no windows would betray me. Just sitting down was relief enough. Here I would be safe and could find the rest and refuge I needed with people I trusted with my life.
25. Stowaway
After two hours, the lights of the ship’s dining room were switched on, at seven o’clock. I woke from my half sleeping state, groggy and exhausted from very little sleep and too much excitement. I was immediately aware of the pain all over my body. Feeling that enough time had passed to have certainly eluded the henchmen trying to catch me, I slipped below deck before the crew found me stowed away in the dining room, to find Nikolai. I headed straight to the bar. Before I could make my way to the bow of the vessel I saw him standing alone on the water side railing enjoying his breakfast of a cigarette and orange juice, gazing at the morning sun on the river’s current.
As I opened the door from the broad stairwell he turned to greet who he thought would be a fellow smoker. When he realized it was me, he nearly dropped his glass into the water. He gave me a warm man hug and a kiss on both cheeks while exhaling smoke out of his nose. His bristly, unshaven cheeks didn’t make it any more enjoyable.
“Peter, what a huge surprise! Nobody told me that you would be joining us so early. I thought you would join us in July!” He was sincerely pleased to see me.
“Well, if I’m welcome to join you all this week, while the school holidays are still on, then I’d be happy to sail with you this week,” I tried to hide my desperate situation from him, at least for some time.
“Well, we just completed the ship’s manifest last night and submitted it to the river authority but I am pretty sure that Irina could amend it with the captain this morning. I just don’t know if we have a spare cabin,” he was all business.
“Friend, can I ask you not to report me as a passenger on the ship please?” I looked him in the eyes with a pleading gaze.
“Is there something wrong? You know that if you aren’t on the passenger manifest that they could take you off the boat at any port. You know this.” Nikolai began to suspect something wrong.
“I know, I know, but, I am….I am in a very difficult situation right now. I am in some trouble and I need to vanish for a few days and not be on any manifests. I can stay on the boat without going ashore if we see that a river authority is going to tick the boxes anywhere. We both know how to get around that anyway, right?” I proffered.
“What is so bad, Peter? Why do you have to hide? What’s happened?” Nikolai pressed me for details.
“Let’s just say I got on the bad side of a local criminal group. They are determined to close my mouth one way or another. I have to get out of Nizhniy and to Moscow without being noticed and I can’t take the train or a taxi in town without somebody snitching on me,” I confessed to my friend.
“Peter, this sounds very serious. Have you gone to the police?” he asked.
“Nikolai, that’s pretty rich coming from a guy like you!” I quipped. He chuckled at the irony. “I can’t go to the police because the mayor is also involved…and the FSB. I am sure that all three groups are looking for me right now.” I added the last bit quickly so as not to call too much attention to this latter fact.
Nikolai nearly swallowed his cigarette. “What in the name of the Virgin Mary have you been doing?” he coughed while exhaling.
“My friend, it’s a very long, complicated story,” I said heavily while leaning over the railing to gaze at the Volga. I didn’t want to look my friend in the eye and admit that tomorrow I could be floating face down in the river.
“Well, I’m glad you used your time well, Peter. But the FSB just doesn’t turn up for no reason,” he said sarcastically and turned to watch the rising sun with me.
“I know. I know. This little circle of friends I’ve discovered is somehow connected to military aviation and I think that is why the spooks are involved. Can you keep me hidden on board until we reach Moscow? After that I’ll slip away on the buses to the airport,” I said calmly, already having made a plan.
“That would be fine, my friend, but we’re heading the other direction, to Volgograd on this voyage. We’ve just come from Moscow, and you know in Moscow that they always tick the boxes on the manifest when we arrive,” he warned me.
“Volgograd, eh? Is that a ten-day round trip then?” I asked.
“Eleven days this time. I don’t know why.” Nikolai clarified, “but we’ll back to Nizhniy in one week. We’ll dock here again next Sunday morning, wait a day before sailing back up the river.”
“Can you keep me on board until we get back to Nizhniy next week?” I asked again.
After a thoughtful pause and a long gaze over the river and a long drag on his second cigarette, he said without looking at me, “We’ll do our best,” and he flicked the smoking butt into the water. “Let’s go find Irina. Can’t keep her in the dark. You’ll need her help.”
Irina was shocked to see me. Not because I was unexpectedly on board her boat but because I was so pale, looked so tired and couldn’t stand up straight. I was listing left.
“Peter, what has happened to you?” she asked with concern.
After Nikolai told her an edited story of my situation, she scolded me “I thought we taught you how to avoid these situations! You’re not supposed to take the bull head-on with these types! You need to stay with us and we’ll get you fixed up.” She saw the desperation in my eyes and didn’t make me ask to sail with the group for the next week.
“We will register you on board as a crew member. This way, you can’t be considered a stowaway, and the authorities never check the crew manifests. The harbor masters are only after the extra fees that the passengers can pay when something irregular is ‘discovered”.
I was given a cabin to myself which seemed like too much space for me and my one backpack. Once I was alone in my cabin I passed out on the lower bunk and slept soundly until the early afternoon. I hadn’t had a more comfortable and cleaner bed for over five months. The tiny closet shower felt like a rushing waterfall after having nothing other than a broken bathtub to bathe in for months, and I I felt like I been welcomed to the Ritz Hotel, with the fresh white towels. In Russia, there was no better way to spend a holiday than on these floating hotels.
After a shower, I felt many times better, even though the gash on my arm didn’t look good and my rib cage was badly bruised with deep splotches of purple and pink. I avoided looking at myself shirtless in the mirror. It was too much for me to look at. Not looking helped me to deny the worst part of what happened in the last twenty-four hours.
By the time I was cleaned up and looked half presentable, the boat had long left the quays at Nizhniy Novgorod and was sailing southeast toward Kazan. I just glimpsed the tall bluff of the old city off the stern of the boat as we passed the river island near Kstovo, a wretched little suburb of Nizhniy filled with country dachas and broken industrial estates. Seeing Nizhniy disappear behind the bend I felt that I could relax. I knew that those looking for me had no idea about how I vanished into thin air when they were so close to nabbing me. I imagined what the ‘British Knight’ was telling the chief henchman at this point. I chuckled aloud at my luck. My ribs reminded me that the score was one to one and that the match was not over yet.
Irina found me on deck watching Nizhniy disappear around the bend, and commented from behind me before I sensed her presence. “I imagine that this is a big relief to you to get away for a week to let things calm down.”
“Yes, very much so!” I said with relief. Turning to her familiar voice and face. “I don’t think I can go back, Irina. In fa
ct, I know I can’t.”
“You must have made somebody very angry with you,” she commented but didn’t want to know more. She continued, “Peter, I have spoken with the ship’s nurse. I told her that you are a crew member for this voyage, a translator, and asked her to look at your injuries.”
“That was very kind of you, Irina, but I don't want to be a burden,” I apologized.
“Nonsense. You get patched up and get some lunch and I will make you work for every crumb and bandage. We can use you on this voyage.” She smiled and then went off with her usual long, purposeful strides to help smooth out another problem another passenger was having. She was always on high receive and understood how to make her guests comfortable.
I found the nurses station on the lower deck at the front of the boat. It was simply a double size cabin with a stock of first-aid supplies and local elixirs for different common ailments for passengers not accustomed to living on a boat. I knocked politely and waited for the nurse to answer. There was no answer. I expected that she had waddled herself above deck in her sterile white orthopedic shoes and tunic and was taking the blood pressure of another geriatric American who was a bit worked by a bit of indigestion. As I turned to leave, the cabin door opened and a doll faced, rosy-cheeked, slender young woman in a gauzy blouse and black slacks cinched tight at her waist asked how she could help me. I stood transfixed and couldn't speak.
“I, I, I am Peter. Irina sent me.” I stammered trying to find room in my mouth for my tongue between all my teeth, “Are you the nurse?”
“Yes. Please come in. I was expecting you a little earlier, but I guess you had just arrived and needed to sleep a bit.” She was as sweet as morning sunshine! “What happened to you?”
“I fell running for the bus to get to the boat on time,” I lied and looked away.