Erika Holzer - Freedom Bridge

If Mrs. Brenner meets with the photographer, Ernst Roeder, and if anything passes between them—anything at all—get word to me immediately.

Stepping into a phone booth, careful to avert her face as Adrienne Brenner and Ernst Roeder left the arcade together, Galya pulled the booth shut, inserted a coin, and dialed.

Adrienne was talking animatedly, half-turned in Ernst Roeder’s direction as they walked down the aisle of the arcade, when Roeder froze.

Luka Rogov stood in the doorway of the arcade, blocking their exit.

“Get the hell out of my way,” she told Rogov. “My husband and I are honored guests. You, on the other hand, are a poor excuse for a bodyguard. The man you’re supposed to be watching isn’t even here.”

Hopeless , she thought. Dr. Andreyev spoke only Russian to his “shadow.” On the few occasions she’d heard Rogov expand on his vocabulary, it was delivered in cave-man English.

“Give me toys,” Rogov demanded, reaching for the package.

“Go to hell, she hissed.”

“Give it to him, Mrs. Brenner,” Roeder urged.

Adrienne tossed the package on the floor so the goon would have to stoop to pick it up.

“You come with me.” Rogov gripped Ernst Roeder’s arm.

“Let go of him, damn you!”

“Please, Mrs. Brenner. It’s all right, I will be all right,” Roeder said.

Despite the unmistakable terror in his eyes, Adrienne knew she had no choice. She stepped aside. “I’ll see you later, Herr Roeder,” she promised, knowing damn well she might never see him again.

From the other side of the plaza, Galya watched Adrienne Brenner leave the arcade and head for the hotel while Luka Rogov hustled Ernst Roeder toward a waiting limousine.

So it was the prominent photographer they wanted, not Adrienne Brenner…

I don’t care, she told herself. If this Roeder has nothing to hide, he has nothing to worry about.

But who doesn’t have something to hide—especially from Colonel Aleksei Andreyev?

I don’t care, she repeated with uneasy defiance in a fruitless effort to convince herself.

Kiril would be alone now, she realized. For once, he was pried loose from his revolting bodyguard. She made a bee-line for the hotel.

As she stepped into the lobby, she relaxed. Kiril was right where she’d spotted him earlier—standing next to the row of telephone booths, although she couldn’t tell if he was still waiting to enter the booth or if he’d just stepped out.

“Kiril,” she called out with relief. “I must speak with you!”

“Not now, Galya, please. I have to—”

“But it’s important. It can’t wait.”

“It will have to.”

He walked out of the hotel.

She stared after him, thinking that she was nothing to him anymore. Not even someone to be courteous to.

It’s not like him to be rude or insensitive , an inner voice reminded her.

Because he has other things on his mind, she shot back. How foolish of him, how short-sighted. She had no choice now but to make a full report. For his own good, she added quickly, taking her cue from what Colonel Andreyev had told her at the outset. Men like Kiril needed to be protected from themselves.

But as usual, her inner voice had the last word.

Protected how, Galina Barkova — and from whom ?

The limousine was spacious enough to accommodate four passengers—six, if the jump seats were used. Luka Rogov, enjoying the novelty of sitting in back, sprawled comfortably across two seats.

Ernst Roeder sat as close as he could to a window on the opposite side of the vehicle.

Rogov had upturned his military cap and rested it on one large knee. Chuckling, he began rolling the toy figures around inside the cap, clearly enjoying the sound of wood against wood.

As Roeder stared out the window, a trapped-animal look in his eyes, he automatically dug into his pocket for a small bottle and slipped a pill under his tongue. Barely ten minutes later, no longer able to evade the knowledge that his breathing was much too labored to be normal, he went back to the well and pulled out his pill bottle.

Luka Rogov’s burly arm whiplashed across the aisle and caught Roeder’s wrist in mid-air.

Ernst Roeder recoiled as if he’d been struck by a snake.

“Medicine,” he said hoarsely in Russian. “It is only medicine.”

Luka sniffed the contents of the bottle, shrugged, then dropped the bottle into his cap with the wooden figures.

Roeder sat back and closed his eyes.

He was so ashamed. He had worked hard to prepare for this moment, to meet it without fear. He had calculated the risks well in advance, even preparing himself for the prospect of a firing squad. He could have left East Germany long ago but had chosen to remain—his way of defying his own countrymen and their obscene edicts on how he should live and what he should think!

A poor weapon, his stark photographs that graced the grim pages of underground publications, and now Das Wort whenever he could smuggle them out. But he knew that his way of fighting back had kept his spirits up all these years.

He knew also that defiance came with an inevitable price tag. It was time to pay up.

But with dignity, Ernst, with dignity!

Why couldn’t he stop the palpitations? Why couldn’t he forget a certain month and a year—May, 1945—from his mind?

Foolish question. The answer sat on the other side of the limousine.

He forced himself to look at the shaved head. The flat Mongolian face. Slanted eyes that gleamed at the sight of helplessness, of fear.

Ernst Roeder’s mother had warned him well in advance, even though he was eighteen years old and knew the score. In May 1945, Russians and Mongolians were turned loose on Berlin—the last stronghold of the Third Reich. What they found were mostly old people, women, and children.

The first thing Ernst did after his mother disappeared was to blacken his sister’s face with coal dust. His mother had told him how all the women were doing it to make themselves ugly to the Soviet soldiers.

But his sister hated the coal dust. Complaining that it was itchy, she kept rubbing it off. So he made her wear a pair of his trousers—the baggiest he could find—and as a further precaution, he hid her long blonde hair under a cap.

But his sister was fourteen and her figure was becoming harder to disguise. So he kept her with him constantly while he foraged for food, afraid to let her out of his sight.

He had found a vacant cellar months ago and managed to rescue a dilapidated mattress from a garbage dump, scrubbing it clean with rags. His sister slept on the mattress. He slept nearby on hard cement.

He had trained himself to be a light sleeper—to bolt upright at the sound of a slight noise—and was proud of the fact that he awoke early each morning so the two of them could go on the hunt for food, water, clothing—anything that could help them survive.

But one night, weakened from lack of decent food the last few days, he overslept. He was sleeping soundly when he heard a string of Russian curses followed by boisterous laughter. As he bolted upright, he gagged on the overpowering smell of fish, sweat and leather in time to see his sister stir in her sleep, her cap loosening a long golden strand—

They went at her like a wolf pack, tearing at her clothes, smothering her screams with their laughter.

Roeder flung himself at these savages in soldiers’ uniforms, but he was knocked aside, his head smashing into concrete.

Dazed, sobbing, he kept calling his sister’s name.

He was still calling it after they left, but his sister wouldn’t answer.