The Deceit of Riches

by Val M Karren

  After the instructions and warnings from my handlers, the three agents somehow evaporated into the Moscow evening. One by one they simply slipped out of our train compartment and before I realized it, I was alone in the cabin, standing in front of the window watching the Moscow suburbs roll slowly by. I let out a huge sigh of relief that they had left me alone for a while, even though I knew that they weren’t far off.

  30. Moscow

  The sun was obviously in the western sky but was still bright and warm. In this pseudo summer warmth and yellow evening light, even the run down concrete apartment blocks on the city’s outskirts looked slightly romantic. The tangle of iron rails and switches on the ground mirrored the tangle of overhead electricity lines as we glided along the shifting metal roadway. The train’s passengers jolted with every pass over a switch which led us closer to that city center, filled with breathtaking cityscapes of both the magnificent and the repugnant.

  There is no place in the world I love and hate more than the city of Moscow, and Mother Russia for that matter. Both are filled with the contradictions and contrasts of the Russian soul that can be sincere, compassionate and heartfelt; yet at the same time callous and unmoved by the cruelties which the reality of modern society imposes with indifference to life and decency. There is for me, even as a foreigner, always something very nostalgic about summer evenings in Moscow, even during my first summer in the city before I had memories to even long for. Yet, I too felt that special longing for a more peaceful, stable time that those around me on the deck of the Zhukov remembered and shed tears for when we all sang Moscow’s unofficial anthem while docked up at the northern river station. In the evenings, it seems that one can sense the vastness of Russia and its sky better than during a summer day when the sun is as much a tyrant as was Stalin, and the humidity smothering. Muscovites, as well, are civilized and gracious people, proud of their city, proud of their culture; yet they are the first to tell you everything that is wrong with it, with a sense of shame and helplessness to do anything about it. Moscow, it seems, has a life of its own. It does not draw its energy from united communities of good people but does its best to grind them into the ground every day of their lives. To survive Moscow is to survive anything heaven and hell can conjure up to thwart one’s happiness. It draws in those from the surrounding land yet repels those it has held close to its bosom from childhood. A perfect Moscow evening is to be with friends and remember it the way it was before it became the way it is!

  The skyline became more familiar as we came closer to the Kazanskiy station, and the nostalgia was quickly replaced by the anxiety and fear that my short life could still come to a sudden end, even if I was able to succeed in helping the secret police apprehend my friend. Would they really just let me walk away knowing what I already had learned? Would they not just make us both disappear? I tried to push out the image of a bullet in my head, but somehow, I could feel it already lodged in my skull. I unconsciously rubbed the back of my head as I watched the rail lines spread out in preparation to line up next to waiting platforms. The speakers in the corridors of the train car squelched and demanded that all passengers prepare to disembark. Kazanskiy station was the end of the line.

  Stepping down from the train car I hesitated for two seconds to glance left to make an inventory of those who would be walking behind me as I turned right and headed for the hall of the station. The crowd bumped and jostled like only crowds in capital cities do. Nobody is really from the capital so nobody really knows each other, and they care even less about who they might offend. Those commuting wanted only to get in and get out as quickly as possible. I felt like a rat fleeing a burning building as we all pushed closer together to fit simultaneously through the exit doors from the platform to the street, circumventing the hall altogether. If anybody from Del’s team had been there to watch for me and to put a tail on me, as Sergey has suggested, I wished them the best of luck for even spotting me in the mosh of heads and shoulders. Somehow though in the crowd I felt safer. I felt less exposed. Maybe in Moscow, I could simply disappear and not be found. As the rush of bodies spilled out onto the pavements in front of Kazanskiy station I gasped for air, stepped quickly to the curb and turned to watch the crowd behind me. I looked to see who might also pause next to a wall, look the other way, tie a shoe or otherwise try to look as if they were paying me no attention. I scanned the faces and shoes of anybody who looked to be a credible tail for my trek across the wide city center. Nobody stood out. Not a soul stopped to look at me, nobody hesitated. The crowd, like a cloud burst of rain, flowed quickly to the gutters and out from under my feet. Soon I was alone with millions of other Muscovites on Komsomolskaya Square, facing the Yarolsavskiy station opposite, looking over the din and chaos of the evening commute. How my stomach growled at me. How dry my throat was! How I wished this all to be just a dream. How I just wanted to sit down for a moment. I pushed on to the metro station.

  Instead of taking the longer ring route around the city as Sergey prescribed I do, I decided to travel right under the Kremlin and Red Square to reach the other side of the city and then one stop further to Kyivskaya. I was curious to understand from any reaction that Sergey might give at the hotel about my choice of metro lines, to signal if I was really being followed by another colleague agent of his, or if these three were really working outside of official orders. From the platform of the ring route, or the brown line, I could just see the platform for the red line down a small flight of stairs, that would take me to the same place, but perhaps without an FSB tail. As I saw the wind of the approaching train begin to blow the hair of the travelers standing on the platform below me, I quickly darted down the half flight of stairs and stood at the bottom to see who else might come down them to follow me. I waited for the exiting crowds to pass to the exit tunnels and then slipped in-between closing doors of the red line cars. I watched the platform behind me to see if anybody would appear looking on helplessly as the train pulled away. Nobody appeared. Either I was quick enough to shake the FSB tail, or there was nobody following me through the underground tunnels that evening and Sergey was spinning tales—I wasn't yet sure which.

  I waited patiently in my hotel room in the Slavanskaya hotel watching both local and international news on the television. Not having watched television for nearly five months I felt like a kid again flipping through the different channels. I stopped on a random news report from the BBC. How professional the newsroom looked! How rich and clean London looked! After an hour, I took a shower and dressed again. I didn’t dare leave the room until I had made contact again with Sergey, so I ordered a late dinner from the room service menu. I fidgeted and paced the room waiting for my food. Sitting still seemed impossible. Being alone with my thoughts and the possibilities of the next day was frightening. I tried to watch a report on international cricket matches. I surfed channels on the television. At eleven o’clock Sergey let himself into the room. I didn’t ask how he had a key. It didn’t interest me. We looked at each other with suspicion.

  Sergey broke our mutual silence, “Good to see you kept our agreement.” I nodded without speaking. I kept my eyes on him.

  “We have about twelve hours until you meet Sanning across the street. Until then you must stay in this room until I come back tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. You may not use the telephone. Watch as much television as you like. Please, relax and enjoy some good American food tonight. The service in this hotel is better than any Russian hotel,” Sergey commented in a patronizing way.

  I nodded again without speaking. I was waiting for any comment from him about my stunt in the metro earlier. If he knew about it, it didn’t seem to bother him. I had to know.

  “Sorry about getting the metro lines wrong. I misread the signs. I was nervous and took the wrong line,” I lied.

  “You know your way around Moscow, do you? You seemed pretty confident when you lost our tail at Komsomolskaya, yet arrived here right on time,” he said with a smile, “Just don’t try something li
ke that again tomorrow. Tomorrow we will shoot you if we need to. Don’t test me again,” Sergey retorted.

  I nodded again submissively without offering excuses. He knew what I was doing, and we both understood that he had underestimated my familiarity with Moscow. Sergey left the room with visible displeasure. I bolted and chained the door as he left and collapsed on the bed and fell asleep, exhausted both physically and mentally from the intensity of last forty-eight hours.

  I slept until the sun of the following morning woke me around eight o’clock. I woke with a start and jumped to the window to try to remember where I was. As I pulled open the drapes the sunshine flooded in, and below me, I could see the snaking Moscow River and just across that the menacing skyscraper that houses the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that stood at the foot of the famous Arbat street. I could see the map in my head. We were just a mile or two from Red Square and the Kremlin. The Supreme Soviet building was just across the river to the north of the hotel and the American Embassy sat just behind that. If I started running I could be there in fifteen-minutes, if my legs would hold out and if my handlers didn’t spot me first, catch me and beat me. It was all too risky so I did my best to put the panic of out my head. I sat down on the bed again and waited for Sergey and ten o’clock.

  The chance that Del would have already anticipated this entire situation and had a plan was the only sliver of hope that I felt I had. I certainly wasn’t going to be able to slip away with guards in the hallways and the next room. I would have to wait until I was out in the open again with some distance between me and them. I turned it all over in my head again.

  Would they move quickly to apprehend Del? Would they really just let me go? Wouldn't they just take us both and dump us on the edge of town in a shallow grave? Would Del have the data with him? We didn’t talk about him bringing any data with him. Surely, if he had what the FSB was after he was keeping it someplace safe. If he really was an agent of the CIA, this information was already in the Embassy, or already long ago moved out of the country in a diplomatic pouch. What was Sergey really after? Why would Del stick his neck out for me if he even suspected I was being handled and managed by the FSB to get him to show his face? The questions were endless and they played over and over again on a loop in my head making me nervous and fidgety. At precisely ten o’clock there was a knock on the door.

  31. The Deceit of Riches

  At a quarter past twelve, I was standing in front of the Kyivskiy station facing Europa Square and looking again directly over the river to the same skyscraper I could see out my hotel window. It loomed large on the skyline, making it look deceptively close. Having walked most of Moscow the year prior, I understood that sprinting to a landmark in the distance in this city scape could easily turn into a marathon. Russia is a broad country and nothing is as close as it seems.

  While I stood waiting at the taxi stand to be found by Del, Sergey and his men sat in three different types of cars in the chaotically designed parking and waiting area. Each was accompanied by a local Moscow agent. With no perceivable order to the way cars and taxis should park, there was no way for the untrained eye to spot these tails as being focused on me and whoever should approach me. Even those local operatives who stood outside their cars and leaned casually against a fender, arms folded over pot bellies, seemed to fit right in. I worried that Del would not spot the trap. Another part of me hoped he wouldn’t. Del showing up meant a chance for my escape.

  Despite my familiarity with Moscow, it was still difficult for me to blend into a crowd of locals. My face, my hair, my clothes were always going to be different and the locals could sense it. While I waited on the curb I was approached by several cabbies asking for a fare. They would repeat poorly memorized phrases in English to attract my attention. Most would take me any place in Moscow for twenty US dollars. I thanked them all and brushed them off. I told them I was waiting for a friend to collect me from the curb. I waited and watched glued to that spot on the sidewalk to see Del emerge from the greenery in the park along the river, or out of the train station, and walk up behind me. I looked for an Embassy vehicle with diplomatic plates…and immunity! Instead, another taxi driver, unkempt, but courteous, approached me with his eyes downcast offering to take me any place in Moscow for seventy-six US dollars. My ears perked up. I spoke back in English.

  “Did you say seventy-six dollars?” I asked alertly.

  “Yes. That is correct. Seventy-six dollars. I take you anywhere in the city of Moscow for seventy-six dollars,” he repeated in a thick guttural accent, but in English.

  “Where would you take me for seventy-six dollars?” I asked again.

  “I know good place where friend is waiting for you,” he replied without naming names.

  “Ok, I’ll pay you seventy-six dollars to take me there,” I confirmed.

  “Please follow me to car.” he offered to take my backpack but I refused and carried it myself.

  As I stepped off the curb with the cabbie from 1776, the agents watching me stood at alert. Walking just a step behind my guide I gave a very small nod to Sergey in the white Lada closest to me to let him know that this cabbie was my contact and he would be taking me to Del. Sergey’s eyes told me he understood.

  The cabbie put me in the front seat of his light blue Volga sedan, an older model. The muffler sputtered on contact and all through second gear as we pulled out of the parking area and onto the Borodinskiy bridge over the river, and directly toward that ever-visible monolith skyscraper. A little further up Smolenskaya street the cabbie pulled over right in front of the Foreign Affairs ministry and motioned for me to step out. I was confused. There was no way I was about to walk right into that building and report myself as a spy! I looked back at him for further instructions.

  “You walk up Arbat Street. Go to the Losev House. Have coffee across from Losev House. Your friend will find you. No cars on Arbat allowed. Your friends who follow us cannot drive there,” he clearly instructed.

  “OK, I get it. Thanks,” I replied and with that stepped out of the taxi and walked toward and up the Arbat Sreet. I did not run, but strolled up the Arbat slowly and obviously so that Sergey or one of his team had time to also follow me up the street about half a kilometer.

  The Arbat Street is a pedestrian zone filled with street artists, theatres, sidewalk cafés and tourist curiosities, and new hip restaurants. Apart from Red Square and the gardens around the outside of the Kremlin walls, it was the only place I knew of in Moscow where cars are not allowed to drive. Del had anticipated that I would be followed and made it so that my handlers would have to step out of their cars, be on foot and be visible. With all the narrow one-way streets intersecting with and ending at the Arbat street, it would be difficult for the unprepared to position a car nearby. My steps began to grow in confidence as I approached the actors’ guild theater building on my right. As I came to the Losev House I stood and turned a full circle looking for a coffee shop. Before I found what I was looking for, I heard a familiar voice call to me.

  “Kid, hey kid! Over here,” Del shouted to me. He was sitting at an outdoor café table under a parasol, enjoying something cold and tall in his glass. He looked very relaxed. I was immediately annoyed.

  “Come on over. What can I get you?” he offered me a chair and a drink. “How the hell are ya’, kid?”

  “I’ve had better weeks,” I admitted with a stunned expression on my face.

  Now quieter, Del asked directly, “Are they following you?”

  I nodded.

  “Good, let them see us, and talk loud,” he ordered and then started again in his loud American voice. “Can I get you a beer?”

  I screwed up my face, “Not a Russian beer, please.” I said holding up my hands. “Does this place serve Pepsi with ice?”

  “Waiter!” Del bellowed. A sheepish young man shuffled over with a look of boredom on his face. “Can you bring a Pepsi Cola with lots of ice for my friend, please?”

  The young man looked b
lankly at Del. I ordered the same in Russian to make it clear. He came back with a cold bottle of Pepsi and a glass but without any ice.

  “Would you like some lunch?” Del turned to the waiter again. “Lunch menu, please?”

  This was such strange behavior for Del that I was beginning to get worried that in fact he didn’t understand what was going on and didn’t have a plan.

  After lunch was ordered Del began to behave a bit more like himself now that everybody who was following me had taken up their positions on the street and were waiting to pounce on him, and me.