“Quick, turn those off!” I rasped at him emphatically.
The hall was quickly dark again.
“Hans, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’ll get out before they figure out which apartment I am in. I won’t let them know where I was hiding!” I whispered in the dark.
“Peter, there’s a fire up the street. They aren’t coming to find you. Look, you can see the smoke and the fire from my bedroom window,” he said standing in his bedroom door.
I stood paralyzed with fear but felt the relief come quickly. My legs became limp and I felt that I would faint. I braced myself against a wall to catch my breath and equilibrium.
“Peter, go lay down. Everything is okay.” Hans sympathetically ordered.
The sirens of the fire trucks came wailing under our third-floor balcony as we stood in the warm night and watched the black smoke billowing up over the block. Down below the street was filling with students from the technical school dormitory across the street.
Hans yelled down to them. “Guys, guys! What’s burning?”
“The university building is burning! Come with us to help the fire fighters!” was the cry back from the group of students moving quickly together toward Minin Street.
Hans turned to go back in the apartment to find his clothes and shoes to go watch, if not help. As he stepped from the balcony into the living room, the pieces came together in my mind.
“Hans!” I called out. “It’s the Linguistics School. It’s the American Library! They’ve set fire to the American Library!” I felt my stomach sink. Guilt and shame came over me because of what I had brought on everybody due to my recklessness. How could I face the world again? Oh, God! Please don’t let there be any victims in this fire, I prayed in my sick, churning gut.
“You’d better stay here then, Peter! I’ll go check it out,” he yelled back to me from inside the apartment.
“No Hans! I’d better go before they find me here,” I cried.
“Sit your ass down! And don’t go anywhere until I get back!” he ordered me. I sat on the couch and cried quietly in fear and despair. How could I have let it get so far? What had I done? Why hadn’t I walked away earlier? The regrets and guilt piled on me like heavy bags of concrete. I hid my face in the couch and curled up, frightened for my life.
Hans woke me with a shake to my shoulders as the first day light was just visible through the balcony door. It was four-thirty. I had slept for about two hours.
“Peter, you were right. Somebody threw a Molotov cocktail through each window of the university building. It wasn’t an accidental fire.”
“It just couldn’t have been anything else!” I said blinking sleep from my eyes. I seemed to be in my right mind now after a night of hysterics. My eyes stung with fatigue and tears.
“Peter, you need to get out of town,” Hans confirmed what I already knew.
“Why? What has convinced you?” I pushed.
“On the front of the building they sprayed: Yankee Go Home!” Hans was embarrassed to tell me.
“Do you know if anybody was hurt?” I carefully asked.
“No, the place was empty. Nobody was found inside,” Hans confirmed.
“Oh good. That’s a huge load off my mind,” I sighed.
“They think the fire was done for political reasons…,” he reported.
“No, it’s not! They did it to destroy the CD database because they saw all the materials I was able to find out about them in just a few months. They are very, very nervous!” I felt the panic coming up again into my throat and my heart was thumping quickly again. I wanted to run!
“You gotta get out of here, Peter!” Hans reconfirmed.
“OK, I’ll get going, friend. Can you do one last favor for me, please? Will you go check up and down Minin Street if you see a black Lada with two goons sitting inside smoking?”
“There are so many people still in the street that I wouldn’t be able to tell who is who,” Hans commented.
“OK, I’ll just go quickly across Minin and head down the Upper Embankment toward the stairs and I’ll catch a cab from the river station to the train station. Maybe it’s too early for anybody else to be out and about.” I was lacing up my shoes as I was talking.
I gave Hans a firm, thankful handshake, picked up my backpack and bade him farewell and slipped out the door and on to the street. The air was rank with smoke and vapors. My nose and lungs burned and I jogged down the street and sprinted through the intersection at Minin street toward the river. I didn’t stop to look to see if the ‘British Knight’ was loitering around with his driver. I passed by Mr. P.’s residence at number eleven on the far side of the street; to my relief nothing more than the lights from his security office on the ground floor were burning. The house was still.
As I started gingerly down the river bluff stairs under the Chkalov monument I heard a car pull up behind me and glimpsed quickly the lights of the black Lada. I ducked down so my head wasn’t visible from above and crouched as I continued down the stairs, now at a quick clip trotting as fast as my ribs would allow. I heard the car rev its motor in the morning silence, spin around and head quickly down Georgiyevskiy Syezd to the lower river embankment. Luckily that road was in the opposite direction of where I was headed before it switched back in the direction of the river station. I had a few minutes to go and hide myself in the alleyways of the lower old city or in the shadows of the kremlin walls.
Halfway down the stairs I veered left instead of descending the entire staircase which intersects with the lower embankment boulevard, and jogged a bit toward the Conception Tower of the Kremlin to stand behind the ramparts and watch the black Lada race by. As I reached the tower I heard the frantic motor of the small car zip by below behind the trees. For now, I had eluded them. I continued walking along the wall of the Kremlin between the Conception Tower and St. John’s tower in view of the chapel of St. John the Baptist. From there I could see the river station in the morning sunshine at the junction with the Oka River. I stopped with the realization that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the train station and if I did, they would be waiting for me there, anticipating that I would run, as I wasn’t in my apartment. I stood still and watched the few cars down below the slope zipping around the squares and alleys. I was frozen with fear and could feel the net closing in around me. I slowly descended the stairs rounding St. John’s Tower and was resigned that if I ran, they would catch me. If I stayed still, they would eventually find me. I was hungry and I hurt all over after the running and the jarring on the stairs. I just wanted to lay down and let whatever was going to happen, just happen. I sauntered further down gradual slopes of Ivanovskiy Syezd having given up. I walked casually through the intersection and headed toward the river bank where I knew I could at least be hidden from the street above as I slowly made my way toward the bus stop in front of the river station.
As I emerged from the buildings I glanced left and saw the tail lights of a lone black Lady waiting in front of the river station five blocks further up. I walked out from the buildings and crossed the street as if I was in no hurry, showing no intent to hide myself from anybody. The brake lights went out and the Lada lurched forward to make a u-turn and head in my direction. I did not hurry my pace. I reached the riverside and trotted down the embankment stairs to the mooring berths for the river boats and began walking toward the station. I could hear my pursuers up above speeding toward me but I could no longer see them, and they couldn’t see me.