As I paced myself up the moorings and along the boats tied up for the overnight stay in Nizhniy I could hear the crews cooking below decks, preparing breakfast, and an officer giving orders above deck to prepare for departure. As I passed the Pushkin, a long, low sitting boat that was half the size of what I had become used to the summer before, I noticed another. Just as one would bump into an old friend and not recognize her for a split second, there was the Giorgiy Zhukov sitting in the water right behind the Pushkin, tied up and quietly bobbing up and down with the river’s current. How many times I had been so happy to see this noble boat after a long, scary day in Moscow, or after my harrowing visit to the hospital in Kazan! Now again the relief was immediate as I knew that I had friends and refuge in sight. Without any hurry or rush I sauntered down the gangplank and stepped on board, like I had arrived home.
I ducked inside the open door of the upper deck dining room and hid myself behind the bulkhead of the boat where no windows would betray me. Just sitting down was relief enough. Here I would be safe and could find the rest and refuge I needed with people I trusted with my life.
25. Stowaway
After two hours, the lights of the ship’s dining room were switched on, at seven o’clock. I woke from my half sleeping state, groggy and exhausted from very little sleep and too much excitement. I was immediately aware of the pain all over my body. Feeling that enough time had passed to have certainly eluded the henchmen trying to catch me, I slipped below deck before the crew found me stowed away in the dining room, to find Nikolai. I headed straight to the bar. Before I could make my way to the bow of the vessel I saw him standing alone on the water side railing enjoying his breakfast of a cigarette and orange juice, gazing at the morning sun on the river’s current.
As I opened the door from the broad stairwell he turned to greet who he thought would be a fellow smoker. When he realized it was me, he nearly dropped his glass into the water. He gave me a warm man hug and a kiss on both cheeks while exhaling smoke out of his nose. His bristly, unshaven cheeks didn’t make it any more enjoyable.
“Peter, what a huge surprise! Nobody told me that you would be joining us so early. I thought you would join us in July!” He was sincerely pleased to see me.
“Well, if I’m welcome to join you all this week, while the school holidays are still on, then I’d be happy to sail with you this week,” I tried to hide my desperate situation from him, at least for some time.
“Well, we just completed the ship’s manifest last night and submitted it to the river authority but I am pretty sure that Irina could amend it with the captain this morning. I just don’t know if we have a spare cabin,” he was all business.
“Friend, can I ask you not to report me as a passenger on the ship please?” I looked him in the eyes with a pleading gaze.
“Is there something wrong? You know that if you aren’t on the passenger manifest that they could take you off the boat at any port. You know this.” Nikolai began to suspect something wrong.
“I know, I know, but, I am… I am in a very difficult situation right now. I am in some trouble and I need to vanish for a few days and not be on any manifests. I can stay on the boat without going ashore if we see that a river authority is going to tick the boxes anywhere. We both know how to get around that anyway, right?” I proffered.
“What is so bad, Peter? Why do you have to hide? What’s happened?” Nikolai pressed me for details.
“Let’s just say I got on the bad side of a local criminal group. They are determined to close my mouth one way or another. I have to get out of Nizhniy and to Moscow without being noticed and I can’t take the train or a taxi in town without somebody snitching on me,” I confessed to my friend.
“Peter, this sounds very serious. Have you gone to the police?” he asked.
“Nikolai, that’s pretty rich coming from a guy like you!” I quipped. He chuckled at the irony. “I can’t go to the police because the mayor is also involved… and the FSB. I am sure that all three groups are looking for me right now.” I added the last bit quickly so as not to call too much attention to this latter fact.
Nikolai nearly swallowed his cigarette. “What in the name of the Virgin Mary have you been doing?” he coughed while exhaling.
“My friend, it’s a very long, complicated story,” I said heavily while leaning over the railing to gaze at the Volga. I didn’t want to look my friend in the eye and admit that tomorrow I could be floating face down in the river.
“Well, I’m glad you used your time well, Peter. But the FSB just doesn’t turn up for no reason,” he said sarcastically and turned to watch the rising sun with me.
“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.