Another Man's Freedom Fighter

by Joseph Carter

  He went into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. As he spat, he heard his phone chirp. He went back to the corridor, picked it up, and read her answer ‘Same as always. We’re covered’.

  Mark sighed, connected the phone to the charger, made sure that the ringtone volume was all the way up, and went to bed.

  ✽✽✽

  “Listen up, Sebastian, in less than five days we took more than half your country from you. We have spared the civilian population best we could, infrastructure and foreign investments also, until now. If you prefer, we can do like our grandparents did. But I’m sure your lovely daughter would not approve, she would be the first to feel what we’ll do to your country.”

  Kedrov’s threats made Berka boil inside, but he had promised himself to stay calm and strong. Up until now, he had managed to keep his promise.

  “Kedrov, enough,” Startsev said calmly. “But he is quite right, President Berka. If you don’t agree to our generous terms to end the hostilities quickly, we must get compensation for the cost of this war another way.”

  Berka said nothing. Kedrov got up and left the room together with the cultural attaché slash SVR chief of station.

  “We will speak again, tomorrow,” Startsev said, and the three men got up and left. The young man who had sat in the far corner all this time walked up to the conferencing system and turned it off.

  ✽✽✽

  “Confusing his sense of time and feeding him false information on the state of the war was a good idea, Roman Konstantinovich. So far it did not produce the desired results, though,” the minister for foreign affairs said to the SVR director.

  “Not yet,” agreed Gleb Yevgenievich. “But we will get there.”

  Foreign affairs nodded and left through the high double doors.

  Gleb Yevgenievich put his hand on his protégé’s shoulder as they also walked toward the doors. “Getting a man to give up his treasures is hard and takes time. Maybe we have underestimated Berka, maybe he is not the weakling we had believed him to be.”

  ✽✽✽

  A gentle breeze coming in through the open window cooled the air in the Sanders’ bedroom. It had taken Mark about an hour before he had finally fallen asleep. Apart from Ofelia’s faint snoring, the condo was absolutely quiet.

  Then Mark’s phone rang.

  Twenty-Two

  Mark jerked up out of his bed. Oh no, please, he thought. He ran up to his phone and looked at the display. It showed a number starting with +48, a Polish number. He swiped to accept the call.

  “Who is this?”

  On the other end through a lot of wind noise a familiar voice shouted. “Mark, it’s me, Michał. I had to borrow a phone.”

  “Shit, Michał, are you okay?” Mark shouted back.

  “I’m in big shit, my friend. The Germans don’t let us cross the border because we’re military.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In Słubice, north of the bridge, in front of Pizzeria Europa. You remember the place, right? We are about 3,000 soldiers sitting on the levee. It’s totally crazy.”

  “And they’re still not letting you cross?” Mark asked incredulously.

  “No, we’re trapped. The Russians have arrived in Rzepin. I guess sooner or later they will be moving our way. They’ll take us prisoners for sure. We got a message from the General Staff that we may take off our uniforms and cross into Germany. It will not be considered desertion. If we had civilian clothes, we could blend in with the refugees. But we have no clothes. The townspeople don’t open their doors, they are too afraid. The bazar and the few shops in town have already been looted.” Michał explained the situation to his friend.

  “Okay, got it. Stay there. Save your battery and stay near that phone. I’ll be there in two hours max.” Mark shouted into the phone and turned on the lights in his bedroom.

  Mark looked at the time, just past 3:30 in the morning. He put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He ran into the kitchen and fetched a roll of big yellow garbage bags from under the sink.

  Back in the bedroom, Ofelia was already wide awake and sat upright on the bed. “Do we have to go?” she asked.

  “No, that was Michał. He and the Territorials, about 3,000 of them, are trapped in Słubice. They’re sitting ducks there. When the Russians arrive, they’ll either take or slaughter them.”

  Mark opened a first yellow bag and emptied his closet into it, polo shirts, pants, dress shirts, sweaters.

  “What’s with the clothes?” she asked while getting dressed herself in jeans and a long-sleeve shirt.

  “The Germans won’t let them cross in uniform for some bullshit reason. They’re letting civilians in but not military. They need civilian clothes to blend in.”

  Ofelia thought for a few seconds while Mark opened the drawers of his dresser and shoved more T-shirts and sports clothes into a second bag.

  “Got it. We still have that crowbar in the car, right?”

  “Yeah, why? I’ve got no time, babe, I have to go!” Mark shouted.

  “I know how to get hundreds of pants and shirts. But we need that crowbar. I am coming with you!”

  ✽✽✽

  “Who did you call?” Kapral Wolf asked his CO as Michał handed him back the smartphone.

  “An old friend, he might help. Good that we got the German cell signal here.” Michał replied. “Thanks for giving me the phone, I probably won’t have to tell you that there will be no reprimand for disobeying the express order not to bring smartphones to the exercise.” Michał joked.

  The private did not laugh. He looked at the hundreds of WhatsApp messages that suddenly popped up on his home screen.

  The captain held his hand over the phone and put the other hand on the private’s shoulder. “Save the battery, man. If it’s your family or your girl, write back that you are safe. Everybody else, ignore. Okay?”

  Wolf looked up and nodded.

  ✽✽✽

  Ofelia had packed Alexander into a baggy jumper in a hurry.

  The car was parked right in front of their building, facing toward the street, as always. As they approached, the intelligent key system of the Nissan X-Trail with four-wheel-drive unlocked the doors.

  Ofelia strapped Xandi into his safety seat while Mark flattened two of the three backseat elements to make room for their cargo. He threw in the two yellow bags and the roll of fresh bags, fumbled out the crowbar from next to the spare tire, plus a roll of black duct tape, and closed the rear hatch. He kneeled down and taped off his license plates.

  Many places in the area had charity drop-off containers on open parking lots. The first one was a chain supermarket they never shopped at. They drove up to the two containers. Mark got out, crowbar in hand, and left the door open. Ofelia got out as well and opened the hatch.

  Mark started with the container on the left. He shoved the straight end of the crow bar behind a solid metal latch locked with a simple padlock. He didn’t manage to move it much. He tried the bent side and pulled the straight end upward. The latch bent, and in the end, the padlock gave.

  The metal door opened with a loud screech and dozens of collection bags spilled out. Mark at them and threw the half-open bags toward the car. Ofelia rummaged through the pile, identified the men’s clothes, and shoved them into their yellow bags.

  Mark moved on to the identical right-hand side container and decided to try something new. He pushed the bent side behind the latch from below and then put his weight on the straight end. The padlock gave right away, and Mark was content having found the least exhausting way to steal from charity. He chuckled and comforted his conscience with the fact that he was merely cutting out the middleman, the clothes were needed where he would take them.

  They continued the routine another six times in six different parking lots. Mark pulled the duct tape off the plates one block over from their last crime scene. The Nissan was stuffed entirely with men’s jeans, shorts, dress shirts, pullovers, winter jackets.

  Ofelia had also
packed up oversized women’s wear. Everything that could cover a man’s body was okay. The guys would probably not mind walking over the bridge in a pink shirt with comic kittens if it saved their lives.

  Fortunately, Ofelia had just filled up the car the other day. They would not have to stop and could race the 80 miles east to the border at top speed. Once on the Autobahn der Freiheit, the German part of the Highway of Freedom, Mark put the pedal to the metal. As the Nissan’s 163 horsepower diesel engine accelerated, the hand of the speedometer smoothly went all the way to 120 mph.

  “I’m proud of you, baby,” Ofelia said.

  “What? Why?” Mark asked surprised to hear this now.

  “I know you were frustrated all the time since this war started, you wanted to do something, help in some way but you didn’t know how. The second Michał called, you knew what had to be done and you didn’t hesitate a second.” She leaned over and held his right arm with both her hands. “That’s one of the things I love about you. You are kind, fair, honest, and peaceful. But when someone you love is in danger, this teddy bear turns into a grizzly.”

  Mark smiled, he was touched. He took Ofelia’s hand and pulled it to his lips. “Thank you, honey,” he said and kissed her fingers. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” Ofelia kissed his shoulder and turned around to see if Xandi was still asleep. The boy’s eyes were open briefly, he mumbled a few incomprehensible things to himself, and then fell asleep again.

  When Mark realized they were halfway there, he decided to give Vitus a call. He activated his phone’s voice control with a button on the steering wheel. “Call Vitus Amberger,” he said.

  Siri’s mechanical voice confirmed the command and set up a call.

  “Amberger,” Vitus said. There was a lot of background noise.

  “Hey, it’s Mark. Are you in a car?” Mark shouted at the center console of his car.

  “Yeah, almost at the border.” The journalist told Mark and Ofelia that he was in a DriveNow just getting off the Autobahn. “Our local photographer called me earlier and sent me some really badly lit pictures. It was unbelievable, thousands of soldiers sitting on the riverbank. Looked like the beaches of Dunkirk.”

  Mark told him about their plan.

  “Great idea, I will tell the photographer to get set up near the bridge. Good luck, man. Hope this works out. And be safe!” Vitus thought about the story, it was front page material, that was for sure.

  The sliver of light on the horizon that Mark had first seen on the final miles of the Autobahn der Freiheit had by now turned into a beautiful sunrise on a cloudless morning. The Sanders family arrived in Frankfurt-on-Oder just before five in the morning.

  Mark stopped the car outside an iron gate painted green to match the wire-netting the fence was made of. He climbed over the gate and ran to the low building between the storage racks full of rowing boats and canoes. The door of the groundskeeper’s shack was made of soft wood. Mark took two large steps and threw his whole weight into the door. The lock tore out of the frame, and he was inside. His shoulder ached slightly, but he would have to forget the pain for now. In a small box on the wall next to the door, he fingered through a few keys and took the one labeled ‘Trainer II’ as well as one he hoped would fit into the main gate’s lock.

  Mark had trained with the Rowing Club of Frankfurt incorporated in 1882 as a student and had sometimes helped clean up after the exercise. He had a pretty good idea where old Gunther, the president and also groundskeeper of the club, would keep the keys.

  He opened the gate from the inside. Ofelia drove the car all the way to the end of the small lot. A small footpath led down to the jetty. Mark jogged down and removed the blue tarp from one of the red coach boats. Ofelia started unloading the yellow bags from the car piling them up next to the path.

  After Mark had quickly checked that he had the right key, he jogged back up and took four bags at a time, repeating this until he had loaded all their merchandise into the small fourteen-foot boat. He used the tarp and a rope to secure his payload, and finally, ran back up to the car.

  “Babe, you take the car to the university parking lot and wait for me there, okay?” he said and kissed his wife on her forehead.

  Ofelia answered with a nod.

  Mark grabbed his phone from the car’s center console and looked at his sleeping son through the gap between the front seats. From the glove department, he grabbed a washed out green ball cap and sprinted back down to the boat.

  The Alte Oder, Old Oder, is a side arm of the river no more than fifteen yards wide. It has next to no current and joins the main arm of the river right in front of Viadrina University’s campus.

  Mark stood in the boat that he had already untied and sent a text to the number Michał called from. It read ‘Be on the sandbank outside Pizzeria Europa in four minutes’.

  He pulled the ball cap far down over his forehead and started the engine. Getting used to the feel of the fifty-year-old East German boat took only a few seconds. The vessel made from glass-reinforced-plastic was easy to handle and had been lovingly maintained by Gunther. This ‘Trainer II’ had been updated with a fifty-horsepower Yamaha outboard motor just a few years earlier.

  Once Mark had turned the boat around, he pushed the lever to the table and shot out of the Old Oder. The boat rebelled when the current of the main arm suddenly slammed into its starboard side. Mark adjusted his course and headed straight downstream. The small boat’s hull was high on the water as the powerful Japanese outboard pushed it forward.

  Even at this early hour, a few dozen spectators had gathered on the boardwalk on the Frankfurt side. They and some Federal Policemen watched with amazement as the little boat sped past on the German half of the river. It must have looked like a tiny, overloaded garbage barge high on ecstasy pills.

  It took only thirty seconds for Mark to reach the bridge connecting the two towns. He looked up, camouflage-clad soldiers seemed to make up more than half of the people trying to get across. He steered the boat between the Frankfurt boardwalk and the first pillar, still at full speed. Then immediately after passing the bridge, he pulled the lever to neutral and swerved starboard. Inertia did the rest, and the vessel came to a smooth stop on a sandbank just north of the bridge on the Polish side of the border.

  Mark knew exactly where this sandbank was under the waterline. As a student, he had crossed the bridge almost daily and remembered exactly where the locals had stood in their waders fishing for carp. In arid summers it was visible, about eight yards from the actual riverbank.

  He untied the rope that held together the bulge of bags, then ripped open one of the yellow bags showing the surprised soldiers a pair of brown pants. It probably once belonged to somebody’s grandpa’s Sunday suit.

  The soldiers immediately got up, they howled and applauded. The ones nearest to his spot started running toward the boat through the ankle-deep water. He threw them the bags which they tore open on the spot, and each grabbed whatever he could get his hands on.

  Then he heard a familiar voice shouting, “Let me pass, that’s an order.” Michał, to the soldiers Captain Karasek, pushed through the excited men. He shouted a few more orders to the effect that the soldiers quieted down a little and took the bags to the riverbank where they distributed the clothing in a somewhat orderly fashion.

  Michał boarded the boat, and the two friends hugged. “Thanks for coming, stary, old boy,” Michał whispered into Mark’s ear.

  “You would do the same for me, man,” Mark replied.

  Michał took the brown grandpa pants and undressed in the boat. He did not bother with his white wife-beater undershirt, he simply kept it on. He put on the ill-fitting pants, packed his uniform into an empty bag which he tossed into the bilge.

  He looked at Mark. “What are we waiting for, idziemy, let’s go!” He ordered three men now dressed in soaking wet sports outfits to push them off the sandbank.

  While Mark backed up the boat and turned it upstream, h
e saw an old woman opening a window in the building next to Pizzeria Europa. A few seconds later, she threw out pants and shirts to the street below. Slowly, one by one. It seemed like she was liquidating her dead husband’s closet.

  As they drove back upstream on the German side, Mark noticed a black speck in the sky. At first it was small and distant but grew larger very fast. The Russian fighter jet approached along the river from the south and passed low overhead at three hundred feet or less. Mark and Michał heard the sonic boom just after it passed over their boat.

  Twenty-Three

  Looking aft, Mark and Michał noticed more clothes flying out of windows and a lot of commotion on the bridge. The soldiers on the levees right and left of the bridge got up and got moving.

  Michał patted his friend on the back. “Hero of the day,” he shouted over the loud roar of the outboard.

  Mark reduced the speed as they entered the Old Oder, and Michał jumped out of the boat below the pedestrian bridge connecting the University’s campus with an uninhabited islet.

  About a hundred fifty yards further up the Old Oder, Mark made fast at the rowing club’s jetty and covered the boat with the blue tarp.

  Just as he started to walk up the path back to the shack, two Frankfurt city policemen came around a corner.

  “Halt, stay where you are,” policeman number one shouted.

  Mark showed his hands even though both had their Walther P99’s holstered.

  They came closer slowly.

  Mark took off the cap with his right hand and wiped off the sweat on his forehead as an older man jogged toward the three.

  “Mensch, Mark, I totally forgot about you,” the man said apologetically. “Sorry, officers, it’s just a misunderstanding. This club member and I had agreed to meet here and take the Trainer out for a spin. He is interested in buying it.” He turned to Mark. “Well, I hope you still are. There are not many buyers for a fifty-year-old boat.”