Erika Holzer - Freedom Bridge

“Yes. Even Galya has no idea it isn’t real.”

“What else isn’t real?” Brenner said snidely.

“Unlike yours, my hair really is dark brown. Before I left Moscow, I bleached it white, then used a brown rinse—a near-perfect color match. Look, call it coincidence, call it fate. All I know is that from the moment I saw your photograph, I knew I had a crack at the highest stakes in the world.”

“What stakes, money? You want money when your KGB brother sneers at it?”

“I’m not after money either—but for different reasons than my brother Aleksei. I’ve been observing you closely ever since you stepped off the plane, Dr. Brenner. The way you walk. How you light a cigarette. The way your voice sounds when you—”

Brenner took a startled step back. “You’re part of this outrageous defection plot, aren’t you? What’s next? You taking my place in front of the television cameras?”

It was Kiril’s turn to look startled. “Haven’t you paid any attention to what I’ve been saying? What I’ve been showing you and your wife ever since we met?” he said, exasperated. “The last thing I want is for you to defect. Everything I said and did was calculated to make you resist my brother’s blackmail.”

Brenner sat down on the edge of the bed. “I think I’ll have that drink now, if you don’t mind.”

Kiril got it for him. “Look, I have no idea what Malik and my brother have on you. But whatever it is, it can’t be worth the price they’re asking.”

“Then you’ll help me?” Brenner said eagerly. “You’ll stop them from revealing what they know?”

“I have no way to do that. Ironically, it’s you who can help me . I’d planned to approach you later tonight before you left in the morning but—”

Brenner shot him a look of suspicion.

“Let me explain. I met with a man this afternoon who’s agreed to help me defect—he has experience arranging such matters. Except for one thing. I need to borrow a passport. Yours, Dr. Brenner,”

Kiril pressed on doggedly, seeing that Brenner was about to refuse.

Brenner could only shake his head. “Preposterous” was too tame a word to describe his reaction. The idea that he would loan this Russian physician his American passport left him momentarily speechless.

“Look, as your tour guide I’ll be in the limousine that takes you to the airport. Here’s how it works. The East German Vopos check passports only once—at the departure area—after which passengers are handed boarding passes. Your pass and your ticket is all you’ll need to board the Swiss Air flight to Zurich.” He drew in a deep breath. “Since you won’t need your passport after that, you could easily slip it to me right before we part company. That way my contact can get me out of East Germany.”

“And if something goes wrong?” Brenner asked, stringing him along because his instinct for survival had just kicked in… “What if I get tossed into some Commie jail? What’s the penalty for helping people defect? Ten years? Twenty?”

“Why should the airport authorities deviate from established procedure?” Kiril countered. “And once you reach Zurich, let alone the United States, no one could touch you.”

“Did you know your brother has some trumped-up charge against my wife in his bag of tricks?”

Kiril frowned. “I didn’t know. Maybe he’s bluffing. Has it occurred to you he could be bluffing about everything, including the blackmail?”

“It’s no bluff,” Brenner admitted. “They have proof. They showed it to me just now. I was very young… But your goddamn country—”

“Don’t expect me to make excuses for people like Malik and my brother Aleskei,” Kiril said with a tinge of bitterness. “I’ve been locked in a chamber of horrors my whole life. Did I say I was after the highest stakes in the world? What’s more precious than a man’s freedom? You take yours for granted. I expected that and it’s right that you should, it’s healthy.”

“You sound just like my wife,” Brenner retorted.

Kiril winced. Brenner hadn’t meant it as a compliment.

He made one last stab. “If I had been born in a free country, I would feel sympathy—no, empathy is the better word. I would want to help a man like me to break free of his chains if I could.”

“You make a powerful case, Dr. Andreyev,” Brenner said, aiming for sympathy—the correct word for me , he thought grimly. “I suspect anyone who grows up in America would have difficulty making real to himself what it’s like to live in a dictatorship. It’s no walk in the park, god knows. Maybe I will lend you my passport. It depends.”

It was an eternity—it was a full thirty seconds—before Kiril could bring himself to ask, “Depends on what?”

“On whether you can convince me I won’t be in any real danger of getting caught. My wife tells me that Mongolian thug seldom lets you out of his sight. You even share the same room. How were you planning to deal with him?”

“Infused diazepam—valium.”

“Administered when?”

“When my ‘shadow’ is asleep. He’ll stay that way for at least four hours. I have some diazepam in my room. And I’m sure I don’t have to prove to another doctor just how fast the infused diazepam will kick in,” Kiril said eagerly.

“It’s a damned effective drug, all right. Next question. What happens if you run into trouble between here and the border? Were you able to smuggle in a gun?”

“No. They search us too well for that.”

“I take it you have an alternative?”

Kiril smiled. “Morphine sulphate. I picked up a bottle of it, along with a hypodermic needle, in the clinic this morning.”

“Powerful stuff. Your English is surprisingly good, Dr. Andreyev. Your American slang is even more impressive.”

“What’s the question?”

“Are you good enough to impersonate an American?”

“I’ve had long years of practice. They can’t jam all the foreign radio broadcasts. Sometimes they don’t even try.”

“Your plan won’t work.”

Kiril felt as if he were on a roller coaster—up and down up and down He closed his eyes. “Why not?”

“Our hair. How can both of us walk out of here with white hair?”

“Oh, that,” he said with a flood of relief. “What do you think I was doing in your bathroom? Washing the brown out of my hair.”

“But do you have enough? What if you run out?”

“I won’t. I had the foresight to fill an extra bottle with brown rinse. More than I’ll ever need.”

Brenner stood up, one hand gripping the iron bedpost for support, his decision made. “I have to go,” he said.

“So what’s the plan? You refuse to succumb to my brother’s blackmail and insist on leaving tonight or—”

“Not quite. As soon as I finish packing, my plan is to see a man about a trade—mutually beneficial, of course,” Brenner said softly. “Colonel Aleksei Andreyev hands off his damning evidence against me in return for my equally damning evidence about his brother’s defection plan. In exchange for my silence about diazepam, morphine sulphate, and brown hair rinse, he’ll hand over a primitive tape recorder and a spool of wire. The authorities here will never believe that Colonel Andreyev wasn’t in on his own brother’s escape plan. Brothers help each other.”

Brenner’s words were tumbling out one after another, as if he couldn’t wait to get out of a room that threatened to suffocate him.

“You people don’t operate on proof over here,” Brenner said, avoiding eye contact. “All your intelligence apparatchiks need are suspicious circumstances. He’s smart, your brother. He’ll agree to my terms now.”