Erika Holzer - Freedom Bridge

“So, Kiril! What are you—a modern version of the Prisoner of Zenda? Don’t try to bring literature to life by playing the King of American surgery just because you look like the man. I would hate to part with you.”

I would too, Galya thought, realizing for the first time why Kiril had looked at her in Moscow as if he’d never expected to see her again.

Kurt Brenner stared at the ceiling. He had locked himself in the bedroom of his hotel suite, not even bothering to make his excuses about missing lunch. He knew his East European colleagues understood and sympathized, having been told in advance that he invariably shut himself away on the rare occasion when a patient died while under his knife even though, like today, it wasn’t his fault.

So why this acute anxiety?

He wasn’t quite sure, but he could make an educated guess.

In recent years he’d begun to cultivate his reputation on a broader scale, making round after round of media appearances coast to coast and abroad. Being interviewed, feted, lionized—

Unbidden, the thought of a renowned publicity-loving pianist of his acquaintance came to mind. The man had admitted approaching the stage with trepidation whenever he had neglected his practicing… fearful, he’d admitted, of blowing the performance.

So when Adrienne tapped gently on the bedroom door—closed even to her—and in a voice thick with genuine sympathy told him she was going for a walk, it wasn’t her voice he clung to, but the awe in heart surgeon Dr. Mikhail Yanin’s voice earlier in the day as he turned to his colleagues and announced: “Dr. Kurt Brenner can accomplish in forty-five minutes what it takes most surgeons two hours to attempt!”

Kiril chose a grouping of chairs near the hotel lobby’s only row of telephone booths to the left of the bank of elevators. As he took the end chair, Luka Rogov sank heavily into the next one. Kiril had deliberately skipped lunch because of the cafeteria just off the lobby. If Rogov got hungry enough…

He eyed the telephone booth almost wistfully. One call and he would know where he stood.

What if Stepan’s contact had moved away? What if he’d been caught?

The number Stepan had made him memorize was less than a year old, he told himself. Surely nothing could have changed in so short a time.

He leaned forward in sudden anticipation. Adrienne Brenner had just emerged from an elevator and was heading in his general direction.

But as she walked past without noticing him—intent, like everyone else in the lobby, on some urgent errand of her own—Kiril sat back again, eyes lowered in disappointment.

“Yes, Colonel.” Galya hung up the receiver, reached for her purse, and rushed down the corridor, propelled by a gust of nervousness. Keep in mind what this means for your future, she told herself.

Not that I have any choice—not anymore .

She stepped quickly into an express elevator. As soon as the door slid open, she spotted Kiril. Her first inclination was to tear across the lobby and tell him what she suspected—desperate to hear him tell her that it wasn’t true. But all she had time for was a smile and a wave as she hurried through the lobby and into the street. And not a moment too soon. Adrienne Brenner had just crossed the plaza and was about to enter a ground-floor shopping arcade.

Adrienne checked her watch. Three o’clock sharp. Sauntering past a refreshment booth, she paused to watch a woman as she arranged thick meat patties on a large iron grill.

“Would you care to sample one, Mrs. Brenner?”

She turned. “Herr Roeder! How nice to see you again.” She gestured at the tray. “I’m really not hungry.”

“Perhaps I can tempt you with a drink?” He tilted his mug so she could see the pink liquid inside. “Weisse mit schuss. Beer and raspberry juice. It’s especially popular with Berliners in the summer.”

She smiled. “I’m game—even if it is the color of bubble gum.”

They sat down at a small table. As he signaled a waitress, she saw that his hands really were enormous. Maneuvering a miniature camera had to be child’s play compared to what she’d been going through.

“How do you like it?” he asked.

“Refreshing,” she said. It really was.

“Do you have children, Mrs. Brenner? If so, might I suggest a souvenir of some kind?”

“No children. Just a couple of nephews. What did you have in mind?”

“Wooden toys from the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.” He led her to a toy counter and picked up a wooden figure. “Look at the labor that has gone into this. See how easily you can move the tiny limbs about?”

“Looks very flexible. How is it done, with elastic?”

But he was no longer examining the toy. His eyes scanned the arcade’s long, uncrowded aisles.

“So once again, Paul Houston is poised to expose the dark side of your country’s State Department,” he said, his voice low.

Not just the State Department, Herr Roeder, she thought. Our mutual friend, Paul Houston, may be CIA.

Aloud, she said, “I gather Paul Houston has more in mind than just avenging Stepan Brodsky’s death.”

Roeder nodded. “Soviet-American negotiations are in the making as we speak. New concessions to the Soviet Union head the agenda. Paul Houston’s revelations about the sham summit in Potsdam last year will shatter them,” he said with a guarded look around. “It was Stepan Brodsky who fed him the information.”

“Is that what the microfilm in Brodsky’s lighter was all about?”

“It was a trade—or so Stepan hoped. But after the State Department balked, he made a last-ditch attempt to escape—an impossible gamble. Even so, he came close to beating the odds. Did Paul mention how he spent his last seconds on earth?”

“No,” she said gently, remembering that Ernst Roeder had been a friend of Brodsky’s.

Roeder’s eyes were moist even as his hands were clenched in anger.

“Stepan dragged himself forward, inch by excruciating inch, until with one outstretched hand, he pushed his lighter over the side of Glienicker Bridge.”

“Do you know why?” she asked.

“Only from what Paul told me afterward. Stepan wanted to keep the identity of a close friend from falling into the wrong hands.”

Wincing at the image in her mind, she asked him about the lighter.

“An ordinary American lighter—Zippos, you call them—with an emblem on one side. Black wings of some kind.”

“What happened to the friend, I wonder?”

“I have also wondered. I never knew his name. Just that he would try to buy his way out of the Soviet Union.”

“How?” she asked, intrigued.

“With the microfilm in a cigarette lighter identical to Stepan’s.”

Microfilm as good as buried in Moscow, Paul Houston had told her in a burst of frustration …

Roeder’s eyes made one last sweep of the arcade. “And now I think it the better part of wisdom to conclude our business.”

He signaled a saleswoman at the far end of the toy counter. “You will find what you expect wedged behind the left leg of one of the figures. I cannot vouch for its quality, mind you. Even with high-speed film, there were floodlights instead of a flash. I had to shoot quickly—and with a miniature camera. Come,” he said, “I will walk you out.”

He handed her the wrapped package as if it were nitroglycerine.

As if, at any moment, it might explode in his face.

Adrienne took hold of his arm protectively.

Standing at the far end of the arcade, Galya saw the prominent East German photographer hand a package to Adrienne Brenner—the signal she’d been waiting for.