Val Karren: The Deceit of Riches

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 sling. 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.”