The Deceit of Riches

by Val M Karren

  I slipped my folded plane ticket and passport into the front pocket of my pants just in case. I then reluctantly turned my bag over to the stone faced middle aged ladies on the other side of the counter and received in return a red triangular claim tab made of hard plastic with the number 375 engraved in white digits on it which I could redeem again for my personal belongings. I had a strange feeling that I would never see the bag and its contents again. As soon as I returned to my small group Tatyana stepped out in front of me and Del and led us through the corridors to the main exhibitions and up a wooden staircase to the third floor. As we climbed the stairs Del held his hand out to me and looked me in the face without speaking. I did not understand what his open hand was waiting for.

  “The claim tab. I’m going to need it,” was all he said.

  I slipped it to him, quickly sensing that this was something that should be done discretely but unsure of what was going to happen.

  We passed by the museum visitors and through the gallery halls quickly passing some of Russia’s most famous and most precious cultural treasures. After a number of turns and long walks down corridors and rooms painted in varying shades of dark and light greens lined with framed paintings both large and small, sculptures and antique furniture we came to a large open hall with white walls and a large skylight in the ceiling. The floor throughout was the classical white birch inlaid pattern found in most formal or official buildings in Russia. Tatyana ushered us into the room that Del had specifically requested and started to explain the significance and relationship of the paintings that hung here. On the three complete walls of the hall hung three very large framed paintings, all dramatic and highly detailed. Between them were rows of smaller studies and portraits and small antique display cases with fragile etchings or sketches on centuries’ old brittle paper. The room was full of visitors two or three rows deep in front of each of the paintings, all entranced with the sheer scale of the paintings as well as the emotional detail with which each had been rendered.

  The painting of The Morning of the Execution of the Streltsiy is a dramatic scene of chaos and grief expressed as another mutineer is led away by a guard in a black dress uniform with a long shining sabre in his right hand to the gallows towering visibly behind the crowd of people gathered to say goodbye and mourn the loss of the mutinous regiment. All this is staged in front of St. Basil’s cathedral and the Moscow Kremlin walls with regents, boyars, and priests looking on haughtily from horseback and a royal carriage. I could feel the mud of Red Square under my feet, and hear the wailing of a grieving wife and son, widow and orphan to be. I couldn’t help but be moved by it even though my own fate could possibly be that of the mutineers if my own situation didn’t resolve itself soon. Del stood entranced as he listened to Tatyana and asked questions, completely detached from the reality that the dragnet was closing in around us quickly.

  After a few minutes, the crowd in front of the painting thinned out and the three of us stood directly in front of this tragic rendering, Tatyana between me and Del, pretending that this painting was the reason for our visit to the gallery. In my feeling of impatience and vulnerability I looked about the room to see how easily trapped we would be should Sergey and his team close in on us. Over my right shoulder, I recognized one of the FSB team waiting by the wider of the two exits but couldn’t see another one directly. I put my attention back on the painting and held my breath.

  Another small group came to stand with us in front of the scene of execution to the left of Del and began snapping photographs of each of them with the painting as a dramatic background. The last of the four to pose fumbled with his camera as he posed, dropping a number of items, sending them skidding across the floor in front of us. The man looked embarrassed and apologized in a language that I didn't recognize as he bent down to collect this hotel room key, loose change, and his own red triangular claim tab. Del bent down to assist the man as a few of the items slid to lay directly at his shoe tips. Tatyana scolded them in Russian and they all looked sheepishly ashamed. In just the blink of an eye, I watched Del’s fingers deftly swap my claim tab with that of the clumsy tourist in a slight of hand that called to it absolutely no attention. Adrenaline flooded my blood stream and I felt the pupils in my eyes expand. My body tensed up, my heart began to race and my stomach and throat synched up ready for the threat that I felt closing in on us. I was ready to fight or flee.

  From over my right shoulder a commotion rose that I didn’t comprehend quickly enough nor did I anticipate. With my back to the room and my attention theatrically fixed on the painting and Del’s switch of claim tags with the clumsy tourist, I couldn’t find the presence of mind to break my act to turn to see what it was tens of others in the room were moving quickly away from. Just as I was able to shake myself out of my adrenaline-induced paralysis and turned my head to see what was happening behind me, I was struck with a force that spun me around and into Tatyana who let out a scream just as I toppled over on top of her to the hardwood floor. I couldn’t breathe. Each second was a struggle to live. As my lungs finally filled again it felt as if my whole right side had been sheared off. It felt as if the endings of all the nerves in my right side were being rubbed with sand paper. I couldn’t even scream the pain was so overwhelming. I wretched and gasped face down on the floor

  As Tatyana struggled to get out from under the deadweight of my body more gunshots rang out from the left and the right. In the immediate shock and haze of my own pain it seemed that everybody at the museum had opened fire on the person next to them. I tried hard to stay oriented. I rolled over onto my back with my neck propped up against the wall under the frame of the painting. My right shoulder felt as if it was on fire! Confusion reigned. Next to Tatyana, who was now laying on her side, curled up in a ball screaming in horror with her hands and arms over her head and ears, I saw the bulging eyes of the clumsy tourist to whom Del had given my claim tab with blood running out of the corner of his mouth. The dead man’s friends had, out of thin air, produced hand held sub-machine guns and were spraying the room with bullets. I could see Del hiding behind an overturned red velvet bench. I couldn’t see if he had a gun or not. I couldn't imagine how he had gotten over there so fast.

  As the gunmen in the corner stopped to reload their weapons, two single shots from different guns flashed at the other end of the hall and hit their marks, dropping two men efficiently to the ground. Just as the second of the shots had been loosed the third machine gunner opened another volley at the FSB agents in a sweeping motion from left to right, piercing the walls and splintering the moldings of the door frames penetrating through the walls on both sides of the doorway. The thud of bodies was heard dropping to the floor on the other side of the wall. A pistol slid across the floor and came to rest in the door way just out of reach of the hand of the dead FSB agent sprawled face down on the floor. Around the corner of the second exit, a pistol and the right side of Sergey’s face appeared to take aim at the last machine gunner. I saw Sergey at the same moment as the gunman. As quickly as my eyes could move right to left again, he tugged again on the uzi’s trigger again and spat out a burst of twenty bullets, splintering the woodwork along the door frame that Sergey was sheltering behind, just as Sergey’s bullet found the forehead of his own assassin. Both men flopped violently, simultaneously to the floor.

  Del sprang from his flimsy cover behind the overturned bench and snatched up one of the miniature machine guns and covered the room. He kicked the other uzis out of the reach from the other dead shooters, a habit of professional precaution.

  “Kid, kid! You awake? You alive?” Del called out to me.

  I moaned an answer that was not quite a word, yet just enough to acknowledge I was alive. Tatyana was still screaming in terror but was otherwise uninjured. Del moved quickly to help Tatyana to her feet and pulled her behind him and pushed her out of the hall through an external fire exit. Bodies of tourists lay scattered across the floor. Some obviously dead, others crying for help. Sirens of the
museum’s emergency alarm echoed through the still halls around us. Instructions to calmly leave the gallery blared from intercom speakers. Nobody else around me moved.

  I closed my eyes to concentrate on moving a wave of pain through my body. Del crouched over me and lifted my shoulder from the floor and put his hand under me. I felt my whole body involuntary recoil in pain from Del’s probing of the wound and I screamed in agony and surprise. I felt like I was going to pass out. His hands were red with my blood.

  “Kid, you’ll be okay. It passed through your shoulder,” he said trying to reassure me.

  He took off his light jacket and placed it under my shoulder and laid me directly on top of it, tightly packed. He then removed his own button-down shirt, his muscular shoulders and biceps visible under his tee shirt, and wadded it up in my hand and told me to hold it tightly with my left hand over the exit wound. The pressure was initially sharp and painful, then finally soothing. I tried to breathe normally through my clenched teeth. I closed my eyes to concentrate and when I opened them again, Del was gone. I lifted my neck to look for him performing triage on other wounded tourists, but didn’t see him anymore. I looked back to the dead gunmen to my right and into the open eyes and hand of the clumsy tourist. Where Tatyana had been lying next to me I saw the claim tab Del had taken from me at the wardrobe. Pulling my left arm over my body I rolled and stretched with all my might, causing horrible pain in my right arm and shoulder but was able to snatch the plastic triangle and tuck it into my pants’ pocket

  The next movement I heard and saw was that of heavily armed police agents wearing helmets, bullet proof vests moving in assault formation through the adjacent hall towards me. They shouted to each other and other colleagues behind them “CHIESTIY!” or ‘clear’, and then more and more footsteps. Voices and cries for help were heard from the injured nearby. As the armed squad entered the room where I laid bleeding and sweating I felt a wave of pain-free relief pass over me and watched the room spin and go black.

  33. Dobrynin & Yeltsin

  It was dark outside my window, but the hall from the nurses’ station glowed fluorescent through the observation window’s thin drapes. I could sense somebody in the room with me but was still too groggy to be alert enough to track him or her. My eyes fluttered open like I was waking from a light sleep. They then rolled back up in my head again and I slept for another few hours.

  When I gained consciousness again the sky was lighter but the sun had not yet risen. My shoulder felt heavier than lead. I didn’t dare try to move my right arm. I twitched my fingers out of concern. I moved my head to see my fingers move. I was awake.

  A soft feminine voice to my left whispered, “Good morning. How do you feel?”

  I slowly turned my head to see a woman, a nurse, changing a fluids bag over my bed. Its tube undoubtedly was inserted someplace into my body. I twitched my left hand and felt the needle in the back of it. Found it.

  “May I have a drink of water, please?” I rasped back in English, barely audible.

  “Once again?” she hadn't understood me.

  “Water? Give me please some water to drink,” I repeated, but this time in Russian. She returned to the bedside with a cup of water and put a straw in my mouth. It was cold and refreshing. I drank the cup dry.

  “Thank you,” I said clearing my throat. Just that small action caused my whole torso to scream at me to “Hold still!”.

  She left the room again to take away the cup and straw but re-entered and came to stand at my bedside. She waited to see that she had my attention.

  “Do you know where you are?” she asked kindly.

  “In a hospital,” I responded with a whisper.

  “Do you know why?” she continued.

  “No.” I lied and closed my eyes and pretended to need to sleep more.

  “Do you know that you are being guarded?” she whispered.

  My eyes opened again with a bit of alarm, “By whom?” I asked with a bit more voice, a bit more alert.

  “You are in the TsKB, The Kremlin Hospital in Moscow under the guard of the FSO,” she confirmed.

  “Not the FSB?” I asked but then wished I hadn’t.

  “No, the Federal Security Guards,” she confirmed.

  I smiled with relief and asked if I could sleep a while longer. She left the room, closing the door quietly behind her. I watched her pass the observation window and disappear out of sight.

  I was woken again by a knock at the door. This time I woke easily as the room was full of light from the sunshine. Out my window I saw acres of nature; woods, grass, walking paths and an endless Russian sky with bright morning clouds. I figured I was about four stories up. The door opened and a doctor in a white coat entered, followed by another man in his mid-thirties, trim and trained, looking bright in the eyes, healthy and robust. He was wearing a sharp dark suit and a conservative dark tie. He came across very formal. He spoke English perfectly. The doctor stood by to observe his patient’s condition.

  “Mr. Turner, good morning. I am glad to see you conscious. My name is Major Dobrynin of the FSO. The nurse tells me that she informed you about where you are,” he said to me formally.

  “Yes, she told me some things, but to be honest I don’t know what it means,” I admitted honestly.

  “What did she tell you, exactly?” the officer asked kindly.

  Switching to Russian I repeated as carefully, word for word what the nurse told me.

  “Yes, that is correct, you are in the Central Clinical Hospital in the Kuntsevo district of Moscow. This hospital is under the guard of the President’s security guards. All the living victims from the museum shooting on Wednesday have been brought here and will be questioned and protected as witnesses to those events. When you are feeling well enough, I will come again and take your statement about what happened. Do you understand?” His tone was explanatory, not accusatory.

  I nodded and asked, “What day is today?”

  “It is Friday,” he replied matter of factly. “Do you want to ask your doctor for anything while he is here?”

  “No, thank you. I’m fine for now,” I answered.

  As they turned to leave the room I asked the major, “Am I under arrest, sir?”

  The major stopped and turned again to the bed to speak directly to me. “No, you are not under arrest but you are in protective custody for your own safety.”

  “Protection from who, can I ask?”

  His reply turned my blood cold. “You witnessed a violent attack by one of Moscow’s most violent mafia groups which killed six FSB agents and thirteen civilians including several foreign nationals. Your safety is being safeguarded from both the mafia gang involved and the FSB, as the agents killed were not acting under official orders at the time. We expect both groups to try to influence your statement and eventual testimony and you are therefore being kept here in this secure location as a matter of both personal and state security.”

  I said nothing in return but nodded my head and looked straight ahead to the wall in front of me.

  “Does my government know that I am here? Has anybody contacted the American Embassy?” I asked after a brief pause to take in the weight of the situation.

  “Yes, a consular has already applied to visit you. We are formalizing his visit as quickly as possible,” and with that reply, he turned and left my room. The doctor looked at me, nodded and closed the door behind him.

  Alone again I started to cry. It started deep down in my loins and moved up my abdomen and convulsed my entire body until I was wailing in despair, crying from pain, shedding tears of relief and joy all at the same time. The last ten days had been the making of nightmares and to have survived one mafia group and one round of FSB agents I was now a target all over again. I feared for my freedom and my life as I laid in my hospital bed alone and cried into my pillow.

  “The doctor says it would be very good if you could get up and walk a bit,” the nurse said as she was busy changing the dressings on my shoulder.
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  “I will give it my best try,” I said as she pulled the bandages tight across the wound. I winced. I remember Lara having done the same with my battered ribs to offer support to the bruised muscles.

  “Sister? Did the police leave any of my belongings?” I asked quietly.

  “You can call me Nelya. Yes, they are in your bedside drawer,” she said in a friendly way and reached to open the drawer for me.

  I saw immediately my passport, plane ticket, wallet and wrist watch. I wondered about the claim tab.

  “I had a bag checked at the museum and had a claim tab. Do you maybe know where that tab is?" I inquired with concern.

  “No, I am sorry. Your clothes are in the closet, but you will need new shirts as they were blood soaked - and had holes in them,” she looked at me with pity.

  “Would you maybe ask the right people? I had an address book in that bag that I need. I have some people to inform,” I politely asked.

  “I’m sorry, but you are not allowed to contact anybody. I cannot let you use a telephone or have any communication that you are alive. It’s for your security,” she apologized.

  I stood up from the bed slowly with the help of my left hand to steady myself when I got to my feet. The room tilted just a little bit. I stumbled half a step backward. Nelya caught me with a hand on the small of my back and helped to steady me. After a few shuffles across the floor, my balance came quickly. The dressing the nurse had prepared stabilized the wounded shoulder and with that, I was able to move rather well. Nelya accompanied me downstairs to walk in the gardens for ten minutes through the pine groves and past flower beds and ponds. I was in wonder that such a calm, peaceful place so isolated from the din of the city could exist anywhere near Moscow. What a far cry these grounds were from the building site of the Kazan regional hospital I had experienced a year earlier. I felt somewhat ashamed of myself for enjoying the luxury and individual attention I was receiving from nurse Nelya as I remembered the old man bleeding from his head, begging for a simple pillow while he lay dying in the corridor. The disparity of privilege between citizens of the same city seemed to me repulsive and evil.