Freedom Bridge: A Cold War Thriller (21 page)

The cigarette lighter again!

Stunned, Adrienne realized there was no way she could quickly process what was going on. “Kurt, wait,” she called out.

Handing him the lighter, she turned to the reporters. “I’ve decided to accompany my husband to East Berlin and, if necessary, to Moscow. I hope to persuade him to change his mind. No more questions please,” she said as the flashbulbs resumed, holding a hand over her eyes to deflect the light.

Taking Kiril’s arm—ever the dutiful wife, she thought wryly, she steered him toward the executive jet.

She was still squeezing the tiny gold scalpel when something lurking in her subconscious surfaced. In the private room when her mother-in-law had clasped her hands and Adrienne, overwhelmed by emotion, had squeezed back—hard—she had felt a slight bruising sensation from the charms on Anna’s bracelet.

The bracelet Anna never took off. The bracelet that was missing a single charm, she’d told Adrienne years ago—and then told her what the charm was.

She had a flash-image of Kiril as he bent in the dirt to carve the shape of a tombstone—tiny letters inside for some grieving family.

His carving tool? A miniature gold scalpel.

She whirled around to face him. “God in heaven, Anna Brenner is your mother! And Kurt must be—”

“My brother Kolya.”

Chapter 43

M
ax Brenner sat up, awakened by a dull thud. “Anna?”

“Sorry. I dropped my shoe.”

“You can’t sleep?”

“It’s hardly surprising.”

He turned on the light and went to sit beside her on the other bed while she finished dressing. “It’s two o’clock in the morning. We have an early plane.”

“There are other planes to New York. We’ll catch a later flight.”

“Let me go with you. The streets will be empty.”

“Zurich is an old friend, Max. I want to be alone with her.”

“Then take a doctor’s advice,” he said gently. “So much pent-up emotion. Cry if you can.”

She touched his cheek. “I’m all cried out.”

She finished dressing and slipped out the door.

Zurich is an old friend.

It was a long walk down the hill from the Dolder Grand Hotel to the center of the city, but Anna knew she wouldn’t notice the distance.

She never had. How many times had she walked up and down this hill and along these streets just to pass the time? To make the waiting easier?

Because Zurich had been the mid-point—a bridge that straddled Berlin and New York. Germany and America.

It had been hard, the waiting in Berlin, because there had been so much to wait for.

For fear to be abated with every passing day by the growing conviction that she was safe from the long arm of Soviet retribution. For the visits of the young American surgeon she had met in Berlin, who had assisted in Kolya’s operation. For the surgeon to complete the last days of his two-year training program under the greatest heart surgeon in Germany, perhaps in all of Europe.

Then it was on to Zurich and more waiting.

For papers to come through which “proved” she was a native-born German. More papers which “documented” that the young surgeon was the father of her three-year-old son, Kolya. And, finally, for two American passports. One for Anna Petrovsky, the other for Kurt Brenner.

The day they set sail for the United States, the captain had married Anna Petrovsky to Max Brenner, the doctor whose surgical skills had helped save her son’s life. The man who had given her son an opportunity to live that life to the fullest.

Kurt had never fully achieved that goal
,
she thought
.
His spectacular achievements—and they
were
spectacular—had always been marred by a need for approval and a taste for flattery.

He’d been flattered by his first invitation to a widely publicized medical exchange in the Soviet Union—had accepted without telling her in stubborn defiance of her request that he never set foot in the U.S.S.R. She had made him back down by the sheer force of her will, making it unnecessary to tell him things she thought he was better off not knowing.

“You’re unreasonable,” he’d said to her then—and many more times since. “What have the communists ever done to you that you should detest them so?”

Nothing special
,
she thought now
.
Nothing the communists haven’t done to countless others.

Through the years, she had persisted in her refusal to enlighten him—a mistake, she realized now.

Worse than a mistake. A monstrous injustice.

But for you, Kolya, I would have returned to the Soviet Union. But for you I would not have abandoned your brother, Kiril. I would not have left him with a sister who was an Enemy of the People and in no position to protect him.

As snow began to fall, Anna trudged up the hill to the hotel, tortured by the thought that she had never made inquiries about what had become of her middle son, Kiril. Max had convinced her that any attempt to make contact would have been painful, possibly futile—and worse, it might have endangered Kiril’s life. Max had been right, of course. But that was a long time ago.

By the time Anna had re-climbed the hill, she’d made her decision.

It would be unsettling to set foot on German soil after narrowly escaping the Nazis so many years ago, but the truth about her son’s lineage was long overdue.

What better time, what better place, than tomorrow’s Medicine International symposium in West Berlin?

Chapter 44

A
s Kiril and Adrienne approached the executive jet that would return them to East Berlin, they were met by the pilot, who apologized profusely. There was a mechanical problem. One of the red wing lights was not illuminating and a short circuit indicator was appearing on the instrument panel. Dr. and Mrs. Brenner were welcome to board and wait with the pilot for the problem to be diagnosed and corrected, after which the Zurich airport would clear the plane for takeoff.

Kiril and Adrienne climbed the jet’s staircase, practically fell into some seats, and were soon asleep. Several hours later, the pilot gently nudged Kiril. The problem had been diagnosed as a burned-out circuit breaker, the part unavailable until now. The red wing light was functioning, the short circuit indicator normal. All that remained before departure was for the Brenners to fasten their seat belts.

“Will you
please
tell me your plan?” Adrienne implored as soon as their plane took off.

“I’ll tell you this much,” Kiril said evenly. “If anything goes wrong, you’ll wish you had stayed in Zurich.”

Lost in their own thoughts, neither one spoke for the rest of the flight.

At the sound of wheels jolting onto the runway, Kiril and Adrienne undid their seat belts. The plane rolled to a stop near an empty office building adjoining the terminal, and they prepared to disembark.

As he helped Adrienne out of the plane, Kiril could see an East German staff car that looked like an American Crown Victoria waiting for them on the tarmac.

Luka Rogov was in the driver’s seat.

Aleksei, rumpled and red-eyed from lack of sleep, surveyed them silently.

The office they entered, obviously having once belonged to some clerk, smelled of empty beer bottles. Papers were all over the desk and floors.  Wastebaskets were overflowing. File cabinet drawers yawned open, as if they’d been ransacked. Paper clips, staplers, unopened mail—the detritus of a once-busy place—was everywhere.

As the others stood around surveying the mess, Kiril began clearing debris off the chairs, making space for the four of them to sit.

He pulled out a chair for Adrienne.

She sat down and cleared her throat. “Where is my husband, Colonel Andreyev?”

“So you know.” Aleksei sounded weary. “I found out barely an hour ago. Your husband is in good hands. He’s recovering from the effects of a large dose of Valium.”

He turned to Kiril. “You played your part to perfection,” he said in Russian. “I know what you did in Zurich—what you told the Western press. Dr. Brenner told me about the elaborate preparations you made to defect. What I
don’t
know is why you came back.”

“I’ll tell you as long as we include Mrs. Brenner in the conversation by speaking English.”

“Aren’t we chivalrous,” Aleksei said drily—but in English.

“Actually, it was Adrienne Brenner who realized something which hadn’t occurred to me when I took her husband’s place. I’d just assumed you and your KGB pals would capitulate in the wake of all that publicity. That you’d send her husband back on the next plane. But, as she pointed out, I had managed to fool
her
—his own wife—so how hard could it be for you to convince a worldwide audience that her husband’s defection was real? Dr. Brenner was in your custody. All you had to do was keep feeding him drugs and parade him before the cameras every once in a while.”

Aleksei smiled. “My compliments, Mrs. Brenner. You are a very discerning woman.”

“Perhaps you should compliment
me
for knowing what Dr. Brenner’s ultimate fate will be. You will take him to Moscow where he’ll be installed in some nondescript cardiac hospital—if he’s lucky. More likely, he’ll disappear in the Gulag.”

“Consider yourself complimented as well, Little Brother. But I still can’t grasp why you came back.”

“Once I realized what I’d inadvertently set in motion, I had no choice but to return,” Kiril continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “And since I’m under no illusions about what’s going to happen to me—”

Adrienne gasped. “You’ve traded your life for Kurt’s?”

Ignoring her outburst, Kiril said, “Just so you know, I explained most of the story to his parents in Zurich last night shortly before we left. They’re expecting their son in Zurich tomorrow. You have no choice but to let him go. I’ve no idea what the blackmail was about—something that happened a long time ago when he was in the army. But whatever Brenner was so desperate to hide, it can’t be enough to hold him here. If it ever was,” Kiril added caustically.

Take the bait, Aleksei. Buy into the idea that I’m a self-sacrificing fool. That I’ve given up all hope of surviving
.

“It’s about time you and Mrs. Brenner are made privy to a sordid story,” Aleksei said irritably. “Chancellor Malik and I dropped hints of it at that Humboldt University Medical Clinic breakfast, but you had no way of knowing we were talking about Dr. Brenner.”

“Hints of what?” Adrienne asked cautiously.

“Of helpless, half-starved orphaned children who, after surviving a Nazi death camp, were rescued by the Red Cross and turned over to American servicemen. The Americans took over the care and feeding—literally—of these kids, hiding them until they could be placed in a DP camp and eventually sent to America. Your husband—for strictly self-serving reasons, I might add—betrayed them. As the Russians led these children across Glienicker Bridge into East Berlin, they chose death over Soviet custody.”

Adrienne was visibly shocked. Kiril’s face had turned ashen.

Aleksei pounded the final nail into Kurt Brenner’s coffin. “I know all this because I was there. So was Chancellor Malik. We recorded it.”

Aleksei learned forward to scrutinize Kiril’s face.

“Let me get something straight. In spite of the fact that Brenner was about to betray you and knowing full well I’d have had you shot, you came back here ready to sacrifice your freedom for his?”

“I did.”

“You hypocrite!” Aleksei exclaimed. “So much for a man who’s spent most of his life condemning altruism.”

Adrienne groaned inwardly. She felt as if she were trapped in a nightmare.

The nightmare turned surreal when she and Kiril were reunited with a groggy, disheveled-looking Kurt Brenner—a man who was usually buttoned-down neat. Next to him stood Kiril Andreyev, stunning in a tuxedo that nearly blotted out memories of his tired blue suit. To complete the absurdity, Kurt’s hair was still dark brown, Kiril’s completely white.

Aleksei snapped Adrienne back to reality.

“Once our aircraft is fueled and serviced—there seems to be some problem with a wing-tip safety light—all of us will leave for Moscow,” he announced. “You two are surprisingly docile,” Aleksei said, his eyes shifting from Brenner to Adrienne. “Getting resigned to a lengthy sojourn in Moscow? I hope you understand my position, Mrs. Brenner. I cannot possibly let you leave now.”

Adrienne shrugged. “My place is with my husband.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Brenner shouted as Luka moved to stand behind him.

“Where’s Galya? Isn’t she going back with us?” Kiril asked.

Aleksei touched Kiril’s shoulder in a genuine gesture of sympathy. “She’s dead, Kiril. She committed suicide right after you left for Zurich.”

Adrienne’s eyes filled with tears.

“No need to grieve, Mrs. Brenner,” Aleksei said thinly. “Our Miss Barkova was working for me. She was spying on you as well as
Kiril. Who do you think let me know when Herr Roeder passed you that incriminating package? You behaved like a well-trained homing pigeon, my dear, leading me straight to—”

“You tortured him to death, didn’t you?” Adrienne lashed out.

“As it happens, I didn’t. For what it’s worth, Herr Roeder died of heart failure—a vestige of scarlet fever when he was a child. There was a great deal of it going around at the time.”

He turned to Kiril. “Galina Barkova’s body is being loaded into the plane’s cargo hold as we speak—the least I can do. Don’t blame yourself. Her unrequited love wasn’t quite what it seemed. She was spying on you for the last two years in exchange for a few trinkets.” He paused. “She didn’t give you away in the end though, did she?”

Eyes closed, Kiril pushed back in his seat. He’d been virtually certain Galya had been co-opted—but with misgivings. Would she have committed suicide because he was leaving the country and in no position to take her with him? That may have been part of it, he reasoned, but guilt was more likely the greater part. He’d seen it too often in the camps. People clinging to life as they scrambled to survive just one more day. Another. Still another . . .

Checking his watch, Aleksei did a quick mental calculation. “It’s about time for Dr. Anna Brenner’s speech at Medicine International’s symposium in West Berlin. I suggest we listen while we wait for our plane to be ready. A comrade in West Berlin tells me she has some harsh things to say about you, Dr. Brenner.”

Aleksei nodded to Luka, who turned on a radio and fiddled with the dials until the radio coughed. Static muffled the background noise.

The symposium had begun.

Kiril and Adrienne leaned forward in their chairs, straining to hear. Aleksei was paying close attention. Brenner, looking mildly curious, had a pretty fair idea what his mother was about to say about his alleged defection. Luka, blank-faced, sat in the corner.

A Master of Ceremonies’ preliminary remarks signaled the start of the symposium, his mellow voice announcing the presence of an unscheduled but much respected speaker, Dr. Anna Brenner, mother of the esteemed heart surgeon Dr. Kurt Brenner, who had just told the world of his defection to the Soviet Union.

“I am here to speak the truth about my sons,” Anna Brenner said. “I chose to speak at Medicine International because my son, Kurt Brenner, is a peer of many in this audience. Until the mid-1920s when I married Max Brenner and became a German citizen, I resided in the Soviet Union. My name at that time was Anna Andreyev. My eldest son was, and perhaps still is, Aleksei Andreyev. My second son was Kiril. My youngest son, the eminent American heart surgeon Dr. Kurt Brenner, is about to learn that he was born—not in America—but in the Soviet Union. His name was Nikolai ‘Kolya’ Andreyev.”

Aleksei’s body turned to stone.

He noticed that neither Kiril nor Adrienne Brenner seemed surprised.

They must have learned about this in Zurich.

“—and it was because of a near-tragic accident that I received permission to take Kolya to Germany in hopes of saving the child’s life. I lost my eldest son Aleksei—politically, you might say—to his father and ultimately to the Communist Party. And once I made the painful decision to raise Kolya in a free country, I lost my son Kiril. Any attempt to communicate with him would have placed him in grave danger because of who I was—an Enemy of the People.

So this is what I wish to say by way of farewell to my son, Kurt, who has just defected to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”

* * *

The close of Anna Brenner’s speech brought silence in West Berlin as a distinguished
gathering of doctors, scientists, and politicians absorbed her shattering words.

In a small office at the East Berlin airport, three men and a woman looked at each other, pondering their new relationship.

You!
Aleksei’s eyes were fixed on the radio, as if Anna Brenner awaited his reaction.

Kiril’s mouth was twisted with the violence of his emotion.

Kurt Brenner’s near-hysterical laughter rose above a raucous mix of voices and static. “The Brothers Andreyev! It’s more like the Brothers Karamazov,” he said disdainfully, looking from Kiril to Aleksei as one would look at a couple of bastards who had abruptly sprouted on an impeccable family tree.

Aleksei’s hardened features melted into feigned amiability. “Little Kolya, is it?” he said, turning to Brenner. “And all these years I thought you were dead. My father—excuse me, I should say
our
father—never considered the possibility that German records could be forged. That citizenship could be so easily obtained. So the doctors gave you a forty percent chance of recovery? You certainly
have
recovered. Prospered, too. Time to share the wealth, Kolya—not literally, of course. Your operating skills will most certainly put our current heart surgeons to shame. But it’s your defection that has great propaganda value.”

“Dear God, the man is serious,” Brenner muttered, groping for Adrienne’s hand.

“Have you no sense of humor?” Aleksei mocked. “Has your soft American life bred it out of you? The joke is on our dear mother. Three sons, and the only one who merits her undying devotion—her precious Kiril—is the very one who tricked her and delivered you
back
into my
hands. And now, madam,”—his glance shifted to the radio—“Mother Russia has all three of your sons. How you must be suffering!”

The static yielded to the animated voice of the Master of Ceremonies.

“But the biggest surprise, ladies and gentlemen, is how the woman whose revelations set off the tumult you hear is bearing up. The mother of Dr. Kurt Brenner is waiting, microphone in hand, for people to quiet down, ready to answer all those painful probing questions many of you are eager to ask. Yet Anna Brenner is the very picture of that old cliché—calm, cool, and collected. In point of fact, she looks relieved—”

Aleksei shot to his feet and snapped off the radio.

It was dusk when the phone rang. Aleksei picked it up. “Well?” he asked, and waited for an answer. “Good.” He hung up. “Time to go,” he announced unceremoniously.

Kurt Brenner was terrified to the point of immobility.  He was silent as Luka Rogov twisted one arm behind his back and pushed him out the door. Adrienne and Kiril followed, heading for the waiting staff car.

Unwilling to risk losing his prize possessions, Aleksei ordered Luka to put Brenner in the front passenger seat, and then get under the steering wheel next to him. Aleksei himself sat behind Brenner. Telling Adrienne to sit in the middle of the back seat, he left the seat in back of Luka for Kiril.

As soon as Luka cranked the ignition, turned on his lights, and headed for the executive jet that would take them to Moscow, Aleksei was visibly relieved—though guardedly so.

Adrienne reached for Kiril’s hand, puzzled when he brushed off her overture.

Minutes into the ride—in a motion too swift for anyone to integrate—Kiril slipped one hand under his tuxedo jacket and removed a letter opener from his belt. He’d spotted it while he was clearing off the chairs in the clerk’s office.

Leaning forward, he placed the metal blade on the left side of Luka Rogov’s thick neck.

Aleksei blanched.

“This blade is resting on Rogov’s carotid artery, Aleksei,” he said.  “If I were to push it just an inch or so, there will be a gusher of blood that even Dr. Kurt Brenner would be unable to stop. Your alter ego will be exsanguinated. Tell him what that means, Kurt.”

Brenner turned and had the pleasure of seeing Aleksei Andreyev’s terrified expression. “It’s true, Colonel,” Brenner said with authority. “If Kiril cuts or punctures this man’s carotid artery, he’s finished.”

Kiril had always sensed that Rogov was an irreplaceable part of the psychological netherworld that Aleksei inhabited. That in some primal undefinable way, Aleksei would do almost anything to keep Rogov safe. He was relieved to find that, so far at least, he had been correct.

“Do whatever Kiril tells you, Luka,” Aleksei said. He couldn’t resist adding, “We will have our time soon.”