Jeffery Deaver - Ice Cold

The woman nodded. “It’s a small pill but it would be better if it were ground up.”

She laid a cloth, which Gerhard used to wipe Monika’s face, on a rock, and placed the pill on it, mashing it with the spoon. Then she combined it with a spoonful of food and fed it to Monika, who immediately swallowed it. Success. Gerhard could never have done it as well.

He appreciated her help, but now she had to go. However, she continued to feed Monika the rest of the jar. He wanted to yank it out of her hand. Time was wasting.

She said, “She needs to have her diaper changed.”

Gerhard realized he couldn’t place Monika in the compartment with a dirty diaper. The guards would smell it, as he had for some time now. He produced a diaper. He hadn’t been looking forward to changing her. To his amazement, the woman deftly changed Monika’s diaper, wiped her off, and handed him the dirty one, folded up.

“Thank you again. You’ve been very helpful.”

Monika was getting sleepy. The pill was working. It was obvious she wasn’t going to eat any more. Gerhard put her back in the car. He thanked the woman once again. She said what a beautiful baby Monika was and wished them well. He drove away.

Gerhard still had to hide Monika. He went around the corner and stopped again. This time he looked around more carefully. He didn’t see anybody. He wrapped her in the blanket. She was asleep. He opened the hood. The floor of the luggage area was loose. He lifted it out and placed Monika in Gunter’s box underneath it. She just fit. He touched her innocent cheek and then closed the box and replaced and screwed in the luggage floor. He took his suitcase from the backseat and laid it in the storage space.

Nobody could tell there was anybody underneath. Gerhard hoped she didn’t wake up in there. He threw out everything that belonged to a baby, including the diaper. The smell lingered in the car. He opened the windows and drove away, hoping it would dissipate.

As Gerhard approached Checkpoint Charlie from the East German side he noticed the spot on the seat where Monika had spit up the food. Damn. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and frantically rubbed at it. It was hardly noticeable—he hoped. He surreptitiously threw the handkerchief out the window as he came up to the guard shack.

He felt strangely calm as he handed his passport and visa to the guard. He’d done everything he could. He and Monika were in the hands of the fates.

“Step out of the car, please.”

The guard spoke excellent English. Gerhard hoped this was a good sign. He popped the hood, as requested, confident the guard wouldn’t find anything amiss. The young man opened the suitcase and gave the contents a cursory look. He also took a peek through the rear window at the backseat, which was empty. Gerhard thought he was going to let him go.

The guard stood in front of Gerhard and looked at him. “How did you get the bruise on your jaw?”

His jaw? Where Klaus had struck him with his elbow. Gerhard had been ignoring the pain and the fact that he couldn’t open his mouth very wide.

“I-I…” Stop stuttering. “I was helping my aunt move some furniture down the stairs. I slipped and lost my hold on a dresser and it hit me in the jaw.”

It sounded hokey. Would the guard buy it? He examined Gerhard’s jaw from close range. Another guard came up to them and spoke in German to the first guard, telling him there was a phone call for him. Guard number two stood with Gerhard, while number one went into the guard shack. He didn’t speak, and Gerhard didn’t either.

Several minutes dragged by. When would Monika wake up? Was the phone call about a certain black VW they should be on the look-out for? Gerhard felt like jumping into the car and making a run for it, but the barrier in front of him had been strengthened since somebody had crashed through it, and after a couple of convertibles had managed to slip under it and escape. There was no way…

Finally, the first guard came ambling back, taking his sweet time. He had a serious look on his face. When he got close he spoke to the other guard in German. He said they had to go to a meeting. He waved Gerhard through. The barrier was raised.

Gerhard saw the path to freedom open. He jumped into the car and drove away before they could change their minds.

The letter was from a cousin of Gerhard who lived in East Germany. They had never met. He hurriedly opened it. He’d had no news of Brunhild in the two months since he’d brought Monika across the border and taken her to Buffalo, New York, USA. Brunhild hadn’t answered his letters.

The letter was written in German. It said Brunhild had asked him to write. She was in an East German prison. So was Gunter. Klaus had died from his wounds. Brunhild wanted Gerhard to write to the cousin and tell how he and Monika were doing. The cousin would pass what he said on to her.

Gerhard sat for a long time, trying to absorb this information. It made him very sad. The plight of Brunhild and Gunter, not the fact he’d killed a man. There had been no other way. He called to Monika who was walking, or rather running, now, and asked her to come to him. She raced over and he sat her on his lap. She looked solemnly into his eyes, as if she knew this was serious. She was very intuitive that way. Gerhard was sure she was wise beyond her age. He showed her the letter.

“Honey, this letter has news from where you used to live. The people there who love you are in trouble. They gave up what freedom they had for us, and we will always be grateful for what they’ve done. We are going to help them all we can.”

Monika smiled and seemed to nod. Then she slid off his lap and went racing after the kitten he’d brought home for her.

In the New Hampshire island community of New Castle, Michael Smith spent nearly a month conducting a surveillance op at an oceanfront park called the Great Island Common. It was small, with a tennis court, gazebo, and picnic tables and benches scattered on a scraggly green lawn. There was a stone jetty sticking out into the near channel, from where ships entered and left nearby Portsmouth Harbor to the Atlantic, and across the narrow channel was the state of Maine.

Near the stone jetty was a good downstream view of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, which had been building warships for the U.S. Navy since 1800.

It was now one year after the hammer-and-sickle flag had been lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, and sitting in a rented blue Toyota Camry, Michael thought it ironic that his work and the work of so many others was still going on, despite peace supposedly breaking out everywhere.

Cold war or hot war, there was always plenty of work to be done.

He stepped out of the Camry, started walking to the jetty. It was a warm day in late May. As with every previous Wednesday, his target was sitting on a park bench adjacent to the jetty, an old man with a metal cane balanced between his legs, looking down the channel, at the buildings, cranes, and docks of the shipyard.

Michael walked around the park bench, sat down, and gave a quick glance to the man about three feet away. He seemed to be in his late sixties, wearing a white cloth jacket, partially zippered up, a blue baseball cap with the U.S. Navy emblem in the center, dungarees, and black sneakers that had Velcro snaps. He looked over at Michael, then turned his gaze back to the shipyard. His nose was large with big pores, his face leathery and worn, white eyebrows about the size of butterfly wings.

“Nice day, hunh?” Michael asked.

There was a pause, and the man said, “Yeah, it sure is.”

“But I bet fog can come up pretty quick, thicken everything up.”