Erika Holzer - Freedom Bridge

A glass of champagne in her hand, she tried to drink away her regrets, her desolation, her abject terror.

It took a while—an eternity—before all three disappeared.

It took what she herself set in motion as she walked about the room until she was quite breathless, head held high, arms slightly apart, stealing glimpses of herself in the mirror whenever she passed it.

Ending with a graceful pirouette.

She smiled one last time, indifferent to the tears because this time, her smile was right and true.

Then she returned to her own room.

How still he is.

Kiril should have revived by now, Aleksei thought. Could someone remain unconscious for three hours from a simple blow on the head—even a concussion?

And where the hell was Galina Barkova?

He leaned over Kiril’s body to press his fingertips along the back of his scalp.

He found the lump. Of course there was a lump! Why would Brenner lie about something like that?

There was no reason to be uneasy, he told himself, knowing damn well he’d been uneasy since he had first laid eyes on Kurt Brenner.

Uneasy, but not apprehensive. There was nothing unique about the strong resemblance between Kiril and Kurt Brenner. The Index was full of people who resembled one another. In some cases the men or women in question were virtually identical.

He shrugged off his anxiety. It was a trick of nature, nothing more.

But his “something-is-missing” feeling, liberated from the mental turmoil and stress of a long tension-filled day, persisted.

A clever man could turn a trick of nature to his advantage.

Could his brother be that clever?

Certainly Brenner would have had no conceivable reason to drug Kiril—

He forced himself to complete the sentence.

—but Kiril would have had damn good reason to drug Brenner.

Why didn’t the possibility occur to me sooner?

But he knew why. Too many distractions. The aftermath of Stepan Brodsky’s attempted defection on the bridge. Intense pressure from General Nemerov about the microfilm in Brodsky’s cigarette lighter. Organizing a time-consuming search for the lighter only to discover a security leak spelled out in seven ominous words. A false assumption that Ernst Roeder was in league with Adrienne Brenner, culminating in Roeder’s fatal heart attack. Talking a venomous Colonel Emil von Eyssen into joining forces for their mutual preservation.

What he’d had to cope with in a very short span of time would have distracted anyone, he thought, willing himself to remain calm.

He stared at the form on the bed, thinking that the hair looked peculiar. He pulled at a few strands, wishing he could pull Kiril’s brain into consciousness. Instead, he chose hairs at random.

No wig. The hair was real! It was also slightly damp.

He removed Kiril’s dark glasses, remembering that he was supposed to have had some sort of eye infection—the left eye? He lifted the lid.

Of course the eye was infected!

He turned to Luka with obvious relief. “See if Galina Barkova is back in her room.”

“Barkova woman asleep,” Luka said.

“Really? When did you check her room?”

“One hour ago, maybe two.”

“Wake her, please, and bring her to me.”

Luka was back in five minutes. “She won’t wake up,” he reported, his brow furrowed. “Not even when I shake her.”

Aleksei shot to his feet and rushed down the hall.

She was stretched out on the bed, fully clothed in a gown of some kind. “Galina?” he said sharply.

His voice trailed off as he noticed the belt of a black dress tied tightly around her upper arm. A syringe dangled from her forearm.

“ Why ?” he cried out.

But he knew why.

His own words came back to haunt him. When he’d tapped his “most charming co-optee” to spy on her lover, he’d spelled out what he was after.

There are things a woman can see—and sense—more easily than a man.

Had she sensed something that he had not? Come to think of it, what was the matter of “great urgency” she’d wanted to speak to him about while he was bartering with von Eyssen and, in a fit of temper, had sent her packing?

Aleksei had never sobered up so fast after so much vodka.

There are only two possibilities, he thought in a wave of panic . If it’s Kiril on the couch, Brenner will be back. If it’s Brenner, Kiril has defected.

He knew what would happen once the real Kurt Brenner was safely back in the United States. Brenner’s outrage and victimhood would drive him to display his psychological and physical bruises, confirming what the world had seen on its television screens—a clever impersonation by Kiril Andreyev, brother of KGB Colonel Aleksei Andreyev.

A successful defection in full view of a banquet-hall of East Germans, then broadcast around the world. The embarrassment of the century!

He glanced at his watch. Too late to stop the plane. They were already in Zurich.

Think! If ever I need my wits about me, it’s now. When I release Brenner tomorrow—

“When,” he said aloud, “or if?”

What if he claimed that Dr. Kurt Brenner had changed his mind about taking his wife to Zurich? That he’d decided to go directly to Moscow from East Berlin? Who could prove otherwise? Who knew for certain that it wasn’t Dr. Kurt Brenner who’d announced his defection for all the world to hear?

That would leave Kiril as the only loose end. He’d deal with that later.

Aleksei grabbed the telephone from the night table and gave the operator a Zurich telephone number. When he was through talking, he replaced the receiver cautiously.

“We still have a chance,” he told Luka shakily. “We may yet survive.”

On the flight from Schönefeld Airfield to Zurich, the executive jet suddenly shuddered as it banked steeply. The cabin seemed to roll precariously over on its side.

“We’ll be running into severe turbulence over the mountains,” the pilot announced.

The ultimate irony, Kiril brooded. I am going to die even as I escape from communism.

Beside him, Adrienne Brenner moaned, still on the edge of air-sickness from a surfeit of champagne. The promised explanation had never materialized. She had barely opened her eyes the whole time. Better that way.

The sky cleared abruptly, then turned calm. The plane shifted direction.

“Zurich,” he told her. “We’re going down.”

Adrienne nodded. Her eyes, opening for a moment, fell closed again.

Kiril stared out the window, his blank expression masking inner turmoil.

I am forty years old. I have no work, no money, no friends. I don’t even own the clothes on my back. Yet I have never felt so young. So confident of the future .

Future? He had never had the luxury of thinking about his future, let alone planning one. All the days were his now, he thought, realizing that he would need time to get used to the idea. What should he do with that precious new commodity, time?

Dream without restraint. Make plans. Change them if it pleases me. Buy an automobile. Travel with anticipation, not fear. What’s the American expression that sums it all up? No holds barred!

He stole a glance at Adrienne Brenner . Free to fall in love , he thought. However much he cared for Galya, he had never allowed himself to slip into a deeply emotional commitment. In the Soviet Union, to have a loved one—a family—was to forge your own chains. What kind of man plots escape when he’s locked in the grip of the hostage system?

He tensed with the sudden thud of the plane’s wheels on the runway, the vibrations coursing through his body—and nearly bolted from his seat. He had to grip both its arms as he counted the seconds. Taxiing… slowing… turning…