Val Karren - The Deceit of Riches

The apartment was quiet. Raiya and Natasha were still visiting with family further up the street. The apartment was dark when I entered and seemed colder than usual. Maybe they left the kitchen vents open, I thought. I fumbled for my keys in the dark with my uninjured right arm. Bending to pick them up was painful. Finally, I got the key into the lock and turned it. I was met by a stiff breeze rushing from my room into the hallway. I was very confused and disoriented by the rush of the air. Something was not right! I flipped on the light. The curtains were wide open and flapping in the wind. A pane of glass was broken and lay in pieces on the floor inside the apartment. The other windows had been left wide open. No effort was taken to conceal the crime. The room had been turned upside down. Every book had been shaken and thrown on the floor and their spines were broken. My table was on its side and the chairs smashed. My shortwave radio lay smashed in pieces on the floor. All my clothes were thrown out of the wardrobe and my bed was ripped apart. All the drawers were pulled out and overturned as well as the cabinet doors in the hutch. Everything I owned had been pulled out and strewn on the floor. For owning so little it had made a tremendous mess.

The timeline of the day’s events became clear as I stood there gaping at this violent scene of recent intrusion; not having found my research notes in my apartment the intruders stole my bag from my person. Mr. P. had to be sure before Monday’s meeting that I had no more materials and notes in my possession to potentially use to interrupt his hotel project, a project that would bring the big sharks to Nizhniy Novgorod and raise the bar of illegal and violent crime in the city. All the loose ends were being cleaned up now. Had Valentina been just a loose end too? I sat down on the couch and cried quietly a few tears of fright and helplessness.

After a few moments of despair, I dried my eyes and gathered up some clothes into a backpack. I changed from my ripped slacks into denim jeans, put on a new shirt and my orange rain coat and found my gray cap in the mess. I found my black shapka near the door and my address book among the broken books and stuffed them as well into my bag. I took my passport and wallet as well out of my bloodstained jacket and then threw it on the floor with the rest of the mess for dramatic effect. Taking mental stock of the scene, I retreated to the bathroom that seemed to have been untouched by the burglars. Being injured I took a stool from the kitchen instead of climbing on the edge of the bathtub and pushed on a small panel in the ceiling open to find my money belt and airplane ticket that I had hidden there a few weeks earlier, after retrieving them from Yulia’s apartment. I thought about writing a note for my housemates, but had second thoughts of involving them any further. l closed the double paned windows tight, the broken pane on the street side. I pulled the curtains closed, turned out the light and just before I locked the door behind me, I remembered the card Del gave me just before we parted. I found my slacks in the pile of clothes and took the card and put it in the jacket of my passport for safe keeping. Out of habit I locked the doors and took my keys with me, but knew I would not be returning.

When I left the apartment again only fifteen minutes had passed, but in that quarter hour, a resolve had developed in my core so that I knew exactly what I needed to do. I was determined to make the evening train to Moscow. From there I would take a taxi directly from Kazanksiy Station to the airport and catch the first flight out of Russia, using my Aeroflot ticket, or if necessary, winging it to any safe European capital and from there back to the United States. I was determined not to spend more than one more night in Russia.

The Moskovskiy station was all but empty at nine o’clock that evening. Only a few travelers were crossing the dusty granite floors and just a few taxi drivers were waiting for a fare. The city was still celebrating tonight in concerts and festivals in the old city. Nobody was traveling.

A feeling of despair and panic rushed through me when I found the ticket window closed for the holiday. The trains were idle for the fifty years anniversary. There were no departures listed for that night. I turned and looked again at the empty hall. My ribs throbbed, and in the gash on my left arm I could feel every beat of my racing heart and my head was spinning as I hadn’t eaten all day. My thoughts raced with all the horror scenarios that could happen in the next forty-eight hours if I wasn’t on an airplane by Monday morning. Del had told me specifically to be gone by Monday morning. Why? What was going to happen on Monday morning? Was Del going to try and stop Mr. P’s meeting with the mayor by exposing them both? The next train to Moscow wouldn’t be until Sunday evening at ten o’clock. Where could I hide out for the twenty-four hours? I couldn’t call Del anymore. Returning to and sleeping in my apartment was only asking for trouble; if they wanted to find me again I would be an easy target. I needed to stay hidden. Yulia was away in Moscow. Staying in a hotel would be just as unsafe as sleeping in my own apartment. Nothing happens in the hotels without the police and mafia goons knowing about it before it happens. Then my thoughts caught a flash of hope: Hans! Where is Hans tonight? Hans should be at home! I stepped quickly to the taxi stand.

I asked the taxi driver to take me only as far as Senaya Square via the lower embankment and the Kazanskiy Syezd so that if later questioned by any operatives of Mr. P., they would think of, and look first at Del’s apartment and not a few blocks further up at Hans’s apartment on Proviantaksaya street. The walk was a little too much for me with my entire body aching. I stopped several times and sat on benches near bus stops and in the occasional courtyard of another apartment building. I used this as a chance to see if I was possibly being followed by anybody. I highly doubted that anybody would have had the chance to follow me as I had moved quickly from my apartment to the train station by metro and then by taxi to the old city again. As the taxi driver hadn’t sent nor received any radio messages while I was in his cab, not even to radio his destination for his dispatch coordinator, I was pretty confident that nobody who might have been watching for me would have had the chance to be in place at Senaya Square where I exited the taxi. I walked along Bolshaya Pecherskaya instead of Minin Street down to Hans’s street. If I had been tasked with keeping an eye for myself, Minin Street is where I would have been waiting, and so I stayed in the twilight shadows a street over instead of walking right past the American Library again. There was nobody on this street; no automobiles, no footsteps, no street cars. There was not a single soul visible up and down the street as far as I could see. I needed to hurry.

Following a young family through the ground floor entrance of the building and off the street as they returned home from the festivities on Minin Square, I felt already a bit safer. At least, if needed, I could hide anonymously in this random stairwell if Hans wasn’t at home. Not wanting to sound and look panicked I waited a few moments until the adrenaline subsided and I caught my breath again before I headed up the stairs to Hans’s door. The building and the stairwell were quiet, the street even more so.

I rang Hans’s bell and waited to hear movement behind the door. I rang the bell again and then a third time in short bursts. This time somebody inside was stirring and padding quickly to the door. From the peephole a flash of pinpoint light pricked the darkness of the landing. The spy glass went dark. I could feel Hans blinking at me. I removed my cap and waved at him. The latches eventually were opened after a moment of hesitation and the door opened letting light spill from the apartment’s hallway on to my feet and legs. Hans stood shirtless behind the door, poking his head into the gap between door and door jam.