by Val M Karren
As the car crossed the bridge we entered into a wide intersection with lanes branching out in multiple directions at varying angles. Our driver, Dimitri, veered slightly left, off of the New Arbat street, ignoring all oncoming traffic and the traffic lights and flung us through a near miss with an oncoming Volvo. He accelerated again through the broad plaza of chaotic cross traffic and with great skill and precision sped up Konyushkovskaya street, right past the huge white building of the Russian parliament on our left again. Without warning or slowing, the car veered hard right and fish-tailed as the driver moved us down a side street just in view of an American flag billowing behind the embassy’s compound wall. Accelerating at full RPMs the driver was determined to out manoeuvre the Volga sedan tailing us in order to give me time to safely enter the embassy. In the blink of an eye, there was a second vehicle that had pulled out in front of us from a side street on the right, blocking the road. I expected our driver to slow down, but instead, he gunned the engine to a frenzied pitch and bore down on his steering wheel. Just before impact, Dmitri pumped his breaks and the released them again. The energy of the accelerating car was thrown into his bumpers and fenders and it nearly flung the blocking car parallel to us and nearly let us pass. I could see the stunned driver and passenger out my window, the driver pinned inside his car by our right fender and passenger door. The only thing between me and him was the safety glass, tinted and bulletproof. The driver’s airbag had deployed and the windshield had become a shattered web from the high-speed impact.
Major Dobrynin jumped out of the car and opened fire on the two FSB agents in the car that tried to block us, hitting them quickly. I watched as they both flailed and jerked with the second bullets from Dobrynin’s pistol. The Major motioned for me to quickly follow him out of the door. Dmitri also had his door open by now and was staggering out. Behind us, the black Volga that followed us over the bridge was heading up the street toward us now at a quick pace. Dobrynin pushed me behind the open car door and also took up position behind it.
“Peter, you run to the guards at the embassy! Go now and use the Mercedes for cover. Keep your head down!”
On his command, I turned and ran to the uniformed American guards that were taking up a defensive position at their gates, alerted by the collision and the gun shots on the street just outside. The Russian police agents tasked with guarding the embassy’s exterior having seen the collision of an official FSO car were moving to assist the major and Dimitri who were now in a standoff with the driver and passenger of the unmarked black Volga sedan, guns drawn, taking cover behind the smashed and steaming Mercedes. I sheltered myself behind a brick pillar of the embassy’s perimeter wall and looked back to the smashed cars, the two dead FSB agents and waited to see what would happen. Major Dobrynin looked back to see if I had made it safely into the embassy. As he turned to look at me, a second black car was heading down towards us from the other end of the street.
“Peter, get inside now!” he yelled and kept his gun trained on the fast approaching car.
I darted from my cover behind the brick pillar and ran toward the American marines as fast as my injured body would take me.
One of the soldiers ordered me to stop. “Halt, stay still or we will shoot!” he commanded with his own weapon drawn.
As I tried to stop my momentum and stop in my tracks, the third car coming toward us from the other direction also stopped at the same moment with the skidding of tires and blocked the entire street, stopping diagonally across both narrow lanes just short of the other side of the embassy’s guard post. The driver stepped out with his weapon drawn and aimed it at me while the passenger from behind his open door did the same. Shots rang out again! I flinched expecting to feel another bullet enter my body. A million thoughts ran through my mind in a tenth of a second. Instead of feeling the sledge hammer hitting my chest I watched the driver jerk violently and fall backward out of sight behind his car. I turned to see Dobrynin taking aim on the passenger and open fire on him, with three shots, hitting the heavy steel doors of the Volga.
“Peter, go now!” Dobrynin yelled again to me to run.
I advanced toward the marines again. One of them now had his own weapon trained on the passenger hiding behind his car door, and the other on me and both were retreating behind the steel plated gates of the embassy compound, watching me carefully as I walked quickly with my one good hand raised with nothing it. As I stepped behind the closing gate, Dobrynin loosed three more shots into the door of the car to keep the FSB agent’s head down and his gun from being raised. As the gate closed shut with a deep metallic thud, I let out a huge sigh of relief. Police sirens from the surface streets could be heard approaching from different directions. We could hear a car backing up quickly and leaving the street, while voices could be heard shouting instructions and urgent commands to each other.
“Stand still!” commanded one of the marines with a pistol pointed directly at me. “Keep your hands where I can see them!”
“I only have one good one!” I explained while it was high above my head. “My passport is in my back pocket.” I turned myself around facing away from them. I felt a hand in my pocket take both my wallet and passport and before I could turn around the guard frisked me from shoulders to toe. I flinched when he patted down my wounded shoulder.
“What happen to you?” the guard asked.
“I was shot through the shoulder!” I confirmed with a grunt. He gave no response and asked no further questions.
“He’s legit,” the one guard said to the other and with that assurance the pistol aimed at me was holstered.
“Please come with us.” I was instructed and walked between the otherwise silent guards into the main embassy building and was shown into a security office and turned over to a civilian embassy officer. The guards passed my wallet and passport to the embassy officer, turned and without further ceremony returned to their guard posts while sirens and commotion happened just outside the gates.
“Are you the cause of all the commotion out back?” the officer commented as he looked over my passport, and then quickly looked up at me with a start, “Was Mr. Arkadin expecting you?”
“No. I’m sure he wasn’t. I didn’t even know I was coming until about ten minutes ago,” I replied with a shaky voice not even recognizable to myself.
“You’ll need to wait for Mr. Arkadin to return for a debriefing, young man,” the officer confirmed.
“Do you think I could sit down? I’m not feeling too well,” I heard myself say as the room spun and went dark.
When I came to, the fluorescent white lights of the embassy clinic were buzzing in the ceiling. I felt the wax paper covering the examination table crinkle under my legs as I shifted them to sit up. The stolen jacket from the TsKB was gone as well as the scrubs. The bandages around my shoulder stained with blood again from the inside. The nurse on hearing me stir stood up from her desk and entered the examination room.
“How do you feel now?” she asked in a sterile way.
“Hungry, very, very hungry,” I replied with a bit of dismay at myself.
“We will need to change that dressing before we get you something to eat,” she replied. With all the supplies laid out on a rolling tray table, she began to cut away the gauze and bandages.
“Can you tell me what the wound is?” the nurse asked.
“Gunshot,” I revealed.
“Was this dressed in a Russian hospital?” she asked with caution.
“It’s okay. I was treated at the Kremlin clinic. The place was up to standard. No worries,” I replied as if it was just everyday business to have been shot and treated at the most elite hospital in the country.
“Well, I’ve been instructed not to discuss things with you until you've been debriefed by our security chief, so we’ll leave it at that,” she was warming up a bit.
After the wound was cleaned and the dressing restored the nurse made sure that my arm could be free to get dressed before she secured it with a slin
g. She brought me a sweatshirt from Georgetown University to wear, as the scrubs from the TsKB were also somewhat blood stained after all the action of the evening.
“It looks good on you. You should think of enrolling!” she joked as she secured a sling for my right arm, “I will let Mr. Arkadin know that you are ready to talk with him.”
“Ma’am, what time is it please?” I asked in a pitiful voice.
“Two o’clock in the morning,” she answered and left the room.
I was taken to an interview room by a guard and after a few moments, a very tired looking Arkadin came in with a cup of coffee in his hands. His five o’clock shadow was coming in well. He looked like he had been sleeping at his desk.
“I’ve asked the guard to bring you a sandwich and a Coke,” Arkadin muttered warmly, quite out of character. I thanked him.
“Peter, I don’t like it when I get called at ten o’clock at night and I’m told that there has been a good old fashioned international incident outside my embassy gates. Nobody here witnessed a thing and further nobody can put the pieces together to make any sense of it. The Russian’s foreign minister is saying it is an internal affair and is being tight lipped about it. What they don’t know is that you emerged from the crossfire without warning. Now, why would a bunch of Russian cops start shooting each other up outside the American embassy gates, and how the hell did you get in the middle of it all? I don’t think it was coincidence. Please, I’m all ears,” he slowly sipped on his mug of steaming black coffee, but then stopped and added, “and please, Peter, don’t shovel me any bullshit. It’s too late, or too early for that. Just tell me everything I want to know.”
“The police officers outside your gates tonight were from two different divisions. I saw six agents from the FSB. They were after me and the major from the FSO who had just grabbed me from the TsKB in a raid with guns and speeding cars. Major Dobrynin was the officer in charge of investigating the shooting at the Tretyakov Gallery on Wednesday, where I, as you know, was shot. I know that three FSB agents were shot and killed by Major Dobrynin. As we didn’t hear any more shots fired after I got inside the compound gates, I don’t think anybody else was killed,” I explained.
“Peter?” Arkadin said from inside his coffee mug and gave me a look that said ‘go on’.
“Major Dobrynin had started an informal investigation regarding the missing data disc that you are also looking for, which Sanning stole from a now dead mafia boss in Nizhniy Novgorod. After that discussion with his superior officer, the FSB tried to run him and his driver into the Moscow river. He then came straight to the hospital to get me because he rightfully feared that the corrupt agents at the FSB would try to get to me at the hospital with help from his own chain of command in the FSO.” I paused and looked at Arkadin to see if it was enough yet.
“Can you tell me why the FSB has your name. Should I be worried about your allegiance, Mr. Turner?” Arkadin remarked with a raised eyebrow.
“The FSB kidnapped me from Nizhniy, thinking as you do, that I know how to contact Sanning after he made off with the disc that they were wanting to lift from the middle man. They brought me to Moscow after I had set up the meeting that your team photographed on the Arbat street,” I confessed.
“Do you have the disc?” he asked more alert this time.
“No, sir. Sanning said he destroyed it. He used the gallery meeting to bluff the Chechens. Make them think it was a real drop. He was very careful to make sure the FSB agents were able to follow us easily. I figure he knew that when he passed the claim tab from the wardrobe to the Chechens at the gallery that the FSB would go after them, leaving me to walk away. Instead, everybody got killed, Sanning disappeared, I went to hospital and have been in police custody since,” I finished with a deep breath.
“And you have been cooperating with the FSO, Major Dobrynin?” he queried with some irritation in his voice.
“I had no choice, sir. He already had so much circumstantial evidence on me that I couldn't not tell him the whole story. It was that or be treated as a suspect,” I pleaded.
“So, you would happily cooperate with a Russian intelligence officer instead of aiding representatives from your own country? Is that how we should understand this?” he poised his questions so loaded that only one answer was possible to keep on the good side the line. I did not answer his questions immediately but thought pensively for a moment.
“Mr. Arkadin, sir, do you know what is on that data disc that you are searching for?” I asked suspecting they weren't sure why they wanted it.
“We have our suspicions,” he replied evasively.
“The technology on the disc was developed by Ivan Sergeyevich S., an aviation engineer from the Sokol research and development plant in Nizhniy Novgorod. It is the state property of the Russian Federation. It is not, nor ever has been, property of the United States of America. If I was to help you find this disc and export it to the USA, I would then be a co-conspirator in espionage against the Russian state, and then they could lock me up. At this point, I have still done nothing against the law for which I could be legally detained. Helping the Russian police establish motive for mass murder in a public place of innocent tourists and six state security agents by giving a statement to the investigating police is not a crime punishable by our laws either. I have been caught up in this involuntarily and plan to keep my hands clean,” I declared.
“Fair enough. Fair enough.” Arkadin conceded, “What more can you tell me about the technology we’re looking for?"
“While I’m still in Russia? Absolutely not another word,” I admitted.
Arkadin chewed on his lower lip for a moment in thought and then spoke again, “We were not able to retrieve the backpack you said you had checked in the museum’s left luggage area. Our contact told us that it had already been seized as evidence. Information about the disc without any connection to Santander leaves you in a poor position for withholding any information, Mr. Turner.”
“I have been able to recover the telephone number with the help of the FSO. Dobrynin returned my address book to me on the ride over here.” I reached in my front pants pocket and laid it on the table. Arkadin looked at it, picked it up and flipped through the pages and the tossed it back to me.
“Would we even know if we called the right number if we called every number in that book?” he asked the right question.
“Nope!” I looked at him with a slight gloating in my face, but handed him immediately an olive branch, “As soon as you have me back in the USA, out of the reach of the Russian police and FSB, I will provide you with a full description of the technology that is on the disc and I will even help you to recover it using my connections with Sanning.”
Arkadin stood up slowly from the table and stretched his legs and then grumbled to me, “Go get some sleep, kid. It’s a long flight back to Washington. I’ll make the arrangements for tomorrow afternoon. The nurse has prepared a cot for you in the infirmary.” And with that, he turned and shuffled out of the room.
“Good night, sir,” I called after him.
He answered with just a tired wave above his head as the door closed behind him. He knew he’d been checkmated.
35. Two Years Later
For the last few days my hands had been shaking with nerves and my heart raced every time I turned the small, thin key of my mailbox. I had waited already what seemed like an eternity to receive the evaluation of my thesis defense. Today, my heart stopped for a few beats and legs fell slightly weak as the first envelope I pulled from my post box bore the university logo in two bold letters: GW. This was not a tuition bill as it was from the Elliot School of International Affairs.
I had no patience to wait and open this in ceremonial fashion with my family and my girlfriend in an upscale restaurant with drinks and hors d'oeuvres. With my hands visibly shaking and my heart now beating in my ears, I ripped the envelope open with the blunt notches of my apartment key. I had envisioned the moment already many times behind my desk
where I had written the thesis, with a sharp letter opener and wearing white gloves. Nobody in the room would be allowed to breathe. Instead I stood there in the stairwell of the Washington DC apartment building struggling to pull a one-page letter from a paper envelope, cursing under my breath as I dropped my keys on the floor. The letter finally unfolded, I turned to the dim light in the entryway. My eyes quickly scanned the letter, skipping the niceties and greetings of a formal letter. Had I been successful?
‘Dear Mr. Peter Turner…We are pleased to inform you…Master thesis defence...Organized Crime in the Former Soviet Republics: the USA’s most pertinent security risk…. successful… We congratulate you…award you with a Master of Science degree….’
The rest of the letter was irrelevant. I had done it! I let out a ‘Hoop!’ of joy that echoed up the stairwell. As I bent down to pick up my keys, I bumped my head on the sharp edge of the open post box door as I stood up. I cursed under my breath and slammed the door out of disgust. The flimsy metal door bounced open and as the door swung open again it pulled with it a postcard that landed face down on the floor at my feet. Latching the post box door closed this time, I bent down a second time to pick up the postcard at my feet. I flipped it over in my fingers as I stood up and as I was able to make out the chaotic scene of the picture, my blood froze! I stood paralyzed as I looked at the tragic scene of the Morning of the Execution of the Streltsiy in miniature, printed on glossy card stock. I instinctively flipped the card over. It read:
‘Hey Kid, Congrats on the thesis! Need a job? Ray’s Steak House, Arlington 19:00’
The elation of the moment of achievement turned to horror as I looked again at the dramatic scene on Red Square on the postcard and remembered the terror of being shot and witnessing six others lose their lives in front of my horrified eyes. I felt that I needed to run. I tucked both my letter from the university and the postcard into my book bag and exited the apartment building on to F Street and turned right on 18th Street and at the corner of H street walked straight into the Hampton Inn and booked a room for the night. I paid in cash.