Val Karren - The Deceit of Riches

“No thanks needed,” she replied surprised.

“Say, I don’t plan to sleep tonight. I’m too crazy. I was going to watch the stars tonight off the stern. Would you like to join me?” I invited.

“Only if we can sit out of the wind,” was her only condition.

Wrapped in the blankets from the two bunks in my cabin and with warm tea in hand we sat on the deck and watched the villages and other boats pass in the night. There was no moon that night so the stars were more brilliant than usual. It felt like we could pluck the stars from the sky if we stood up and reached out for them. They sat as low as the horizon and reflected on the water in the wider stretches of the river. We watched the river locks close behind us and lift us to a new level and we watched again as the red and green flashing lights of the river’s bulwark faded behind us and around a black bend in the night. The night was all shadows and stars.

“What will you do with the information once you arrive in the USA?” she asked me serenely with her head on my shoulder.

“I suppose it’s nothing that other people don’t already know, but because it’s original material I’m sure I can use it for a thesis to finish my degree. Nobody here wants it!” I speculated.

“Why didn’t you stop when you knew it was getting dangerous?” she pushed.

“The momentum just carried me through. Every way I turned, it was just in front of me. This one mobster dominates the business community, legal and illegal. I tried to stop, but nobody would believe that I had stopped,” I explained.

“And now look at you. You’ve gone from an intelligent academic to a street urchin with a barge puller’s accent. You could fool your own mother now,” she admitted.

“You know, I was just thinking the same thing before you knocked on my door,” I said with glee.

“So, you’re having fun now?” she slapped my arm.

“Thanks for staying with me tonight. I’d be too nervous to sit alone in my cabin and watch the shadows on the water. It would have driven me crazy.” I said quietly.

“No thanks needed,” and she rested her head on my shoulder again.

It was three-thirty when we saw the first hint of dawn on the eastern horizon. Lara took that as her signal to head for her cabin and get a few hours of sleep. As she stood to leave, she bent over and kissed my lips softly, looked me in the eyes, said nothing more and disappeared below deck. I felt that I would never see her again, and let her go without a protest.

At five-thirty in the morning the Zhukov chugged into her home port and docked at the Nizhniy Novgorod river front, very near the station house as the berths were mostly empty that morning. As the boat cleared the bluff with the old city perched on top I was on the top deck viewing the river front through the old military binoculars I had bought in Saratov. From my vantage point I could see the lower embankment street fairly well. The only part of the boulevard I couldn’t see was directly behind the river station’s passenger terminal, but, I figured, they wouldn’t park there as it gives no overview of an area. If someone was watching they would want to sit and be able to see the lower promenade where passengers disembark. I saw no black Lada loitering in the morning sun. I saw no duo of thugs hanging about on benches or under lamp posts. The river front seemed rather deserted except for the tourist buses that were pulling in on schedule to carry the boat’s passengers around town that day. I sighed with relief but still kept watching until the boat was tied up to the docks and the turbines shut down.

The first train from Nizhniy to Moscow was at two o’clock that afternoon. The second would be the night train leaving at ten-thirty in the evening. I had hoped to get the two o’clock and then overnight in Moscow wherever I could get a room. By Monday afternoon I planned again to be in the air. As the Zhukov had docked so early I had some time to kill. Breakfast would be at seven o’clock, the tours would start at nine o’clock. If I remembered right, a crew shift should happen at around eleven o’clock. The sailors who had just worked for ten straight days would get ten days off and a new crew would arrive and take over their duties. I would depart the boat at eleven as the young and middle-aged men in working clothes would move as a group to the bus stop and I would blend in with them and walk past any henchman sent to watch the river front for my reappearance. I did not go below deck for breakfast but held my solitary watch, too nervous to eat.

I watched the tourists disembark, mill about on the pier and then be led like sheep by their tour guides from the waterfront into waiting buses. They filed away in an orderly manner and the busses, once full, departed leaving just a plume of diesel fumes. I scanned the street and the cross streets again with my binoculars and still noticed nothing usual; nobody loitering, no police cars on a stakeout up and down the entire water front. Everything was going to plan. I rechecked my bag to make sure my passport, money and plane ticket were still there and easy to reach. I made sure my visa was still tucked safely in the jacket of my passport. Everything was ready. I paced the deck in my track suit and sun glasses and killed another ninety-minutes until I began to see more and more people arriving, being dropped in cars, stepping off the buses and moving toward the boat. Here came the crew change!

Twenty to thirty young men with crew cuts, most wearing track suits, some wearing locally made denim and tee shirts starting milling about on the pier, smoking lazily while they waited for their counterparts to make room for them in the crew quarters and head home for a well-deserved rest. They carried with them clothes and supplies for ten days of sailing in cheaply made plastic carry alls, with zippers that split after three months of use. I slipped downstairs to the boat’s main passenger door and stepped to the shore and mixed with the newcomers. As more exited the boat and walked to the bus stops in small groups I walked in the middle of them wishing them all a good break, wishing them good weather, hoping their girlfriends would treat them well. The little crowd at the bus stop thinned as different buses passed the station coming and going in different directions. It was my turn to step onto the bus headed to the Moscovskiy station and Zarechnaya. I waved my temporary comrades goodbye still in character and boarded my bus. I sat alone, sprawled over two seats with my sunglasses on and a cigarette behind my ear. Nobody paid me any attention. The bus was nearly empty. I watched out the back window for signs of anybody scrambling to a car, running with a message. No cars fell in behind the bus to follow it. I let out a sigh of relief and rested the back of my head against the grimy window behind me. “I could just possibly pull this off!” I said to myself. But then the critical voice in my head made me remember that there had been nobody watching. “You haven’t passed any test yet!” was my own response.

As the bus pulled up to the train station, I could see again that it had not been a busy morning, but that activity was picking up. More people were flowing out of the metro station carrying bags of merchandise to set up a makeshift Sunday bazaar. That was a good sign. The more people around the better; I would have more people to blend in with. I stepped off the bus and stood by the public telephones near the taxi stand and pretended to call somebody. I used the time to scan the area again for anybody else who was standing around, loitering, doing nothing, sitting in a car and going no place. I talked to myself on the telephone which was now giving me the signal tone to hang up the handset and try again. I thought about punching in Yulia’s number, but knew it was too long until the train departed. I had ninety minutes still to kill and didn’t want to alert anybody who was potentially listening to her phone to know that I was nearby. Surely, I would be putting everybody into further danger should I have called her.