Freedom Bridge

by Erika Holzer

  “Are you going to tell me or not?”

  He saw her mouth move, that was all. He had lost every sense but one. He stood like a statue, hungrily drinking in the sight of her.

  “You are going to do this?” Her expression bordered on hatred.

  And even though he knew the hatred was meant for Kurt Brenner, he accepted it as penance for the wrong he had done her.

  Oh Anna, Anna. To have spent a lifetime of pain and guilt grieving over a hostage child not old enough to understand why you never came home. But when I was older, when I learned of Kolya’s injury, I knew you had a chance to raise him in a free country. And now you are suffering because, thanks to me, you think the beneficiary of that bitter sacrifice chooses to make his home in the Soviet Union. How can you endure it?

  He saw no forgiveness in her eyes.

  His eyes filled with tears. He forgave her instantly.

  Did you think I would hate you for leaving me behind? I have had but one lifelong obsession—to find you again. To tell you that what you did was right. To set you free of a guilt you never should have had to bear.

  But now the Soviets may learn that Kurt Brenner is Kolya Andreyev, citizen of the U.S.S.R., and they may never let him go. Forgive me for what I am about to say to the press. Then give me twenty-four hours and I will bring Kolya back to you. If I can…

  Before Anna Brenner could say another word, Kiril walked past Adrienne and opened the door.

  Reporters poured into the room, jockeying for position.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “my statement will be brief. I plan to practice heart surgery in the Soviet Union. My decision has been a long time in coming. It is final. I came here tonight because I want no doubt in anyone’s mind that the announcement I made in East Berlin several hours ago was true. There was no coercion. You asked about my immediate plans. They are to get back on the plane that brought me here so that I may begin my new life in Moscow.”

  The reporters gave way as soon as they saw Anna Brenner descend on him like an avenging angel.

  She slapped Kiril’s face so hard he staggered from the blow.

  A reporter mumbled, “The slap heard round the world… ”

  A wilted Max Brenner looked as if he were on the verge of collapsing.

  Adrienne, her mind whirling, leaned against the wall, watching with horror as the scene played out before her.

  Kiril’s head was reeling from the impact—from the terrible irony—as flashbulbs popped, recording Anna Brenner’s blow for a readership of millions. Cameras panned for reaction shots of a family in chaos.

  And retreat. Max and Anna Brenner were leaving.

  Adrienne hadn’t moved. “Ladies and gentlemen, listen to me! Will someone please listen to me?” she shouted over the din. “I have a statement of my own.”

  The commotion in the room collapsed into silence as Kiril walked over to her.

  “You can’t stop me,” she said.

  He grabbed her arm and pulled her aside before anyone could react. “Say one more word and you throw away the only chance I have of rescuing your husband.”

  “Rescuing him? You’re going back to East Berlin after what he—”

  “I must. But it has to be as Kurt Brenner, not Kiril Andreyev. If he and I don’t get out within twenty-four hours, make your statement then. Tell the world your husband was being blackmailed for something he did a long time ago. That he’s being held by the Soviets against his will.”

  Kiril removed the charm from around his neck and pressed it into Adrienne’s hand. “Convince them I was an impostor, and then give this to your mother-in-law. She’ll be able to back up your story.”

  After a brief hesitation, he handed her a cigarette lighter. “And if I don’t come back, give this to American intelligence.”

  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

  Max 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

  As 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.”