Val Karren - The Deceit of Riches

“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 fact, 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.

“Can you show me the injuries please?” she asked in a clinical way.

I pointed like an idiot to my upper left arm above my elbow, under my shirt without saying anything.

“Will you please remove your shirt so I can see what it looks like?” she said again as a matter of routine.

I unbuttoned my shirt and while trying to take my left arm out of the sleeve the nurse noticed the wincing and the slow stretch backward. I showed her the unwrapped gash from twenty-four hours earlier. It wasn’t bleeding anymore, but it was undressed after my shower and was deeply bruised.

“Are you sure you fell?” she looked at me with doubt in her eyes.

“I was mugged,” I reluctantly admitted with a bit of shame in my voice.

“Did they hit you with a metal baton?” she asked specifically looking at the shape of the bruising.

“Yes, I think so,” I admitted again with a whisper. “Hit me twice and or three times with it, and then kicked me a few times. I don’t know how many times.”

“Will you please show me your ribs? Are they as bad as your arm?” she ventured.

“Yes, very bad.” I lifted up my tee-shirt to expose the bruises. She winced but looked carefully.

“I see that you were hit at least twice in the ribs with that baton. So, I would count three hits in total. Did he hit you anyplace else?” She lifted the back of the shirt up to see a bruise but not as dramatic as the others. “That looks to be a bit different, less severe.”

The nurse wrapped my torso tight with broad bandages to support the ribs and treated the gash with iodine that made my eyes water!

“Can’t you all find something other than iodine in this modern age?” I squealed as she dabbed into the wound to disinfect it. My lower arm was streaked brown.

“I”m sorry, can you say that again? I don’t speak English,” she replied to my outburst.