Erika Holzer: Freedom Bridge

The nurses had prepped the patient. An anesthesiologist paced back and forth, and Kiril was on the thin edge of following him.

The operating room doors finally swung open. A man with curly gray hair confined under a green surgical cap strode in. “I have just learned of a catastrophe,” Dr. Mikhail Yanin growled. “For the surgical department of this hospital that bears my name. For Soviet medicine!” Yanin announced with characteristic melodrama. “Our trip to Canada was cancelled last night. No funding, they say.”

Dr. Yanin glanced at Kiril, aware that his protégé was gripping the sides of his chair even as he managed to keep his face expressionless. Kiril was even better at subterfuge than he was, Yanin realized with a touch of pride.

He knew what Kiril had to be feeling right now: a sense of loss and longing as piercing as his own. A Canadian medical-device company had developed a new heart-lung machine that was faster, more reliable, and much less expensive than anything on the market. In an effort to spur sales, CanMedEquip had invited hundreds of cardiac specialists from the developed nations for a weekend of dining, entertainment, and live demonstrations of their superior new machine.

And like Yanin, Kiril was no doubt thinking back to September 1945 and the notorious defection to Toronto, Canada of Soviet Embassy cipher clerk, Igor Gouzenko…

“The State giveth and the State taketh away,” Yanin said gently with a sympathetic glance in Kiril’s direction.

“Any chance they’ll change their minds?” one of the techs asked.

“Why should they?” Yanin snapped. “They’re in charge. The government has money for space stations but not for me to immerse myself in the latest surgical technology, courtesy of my Canadian colleagues. In spite of faulty equipment and seemingly endless shortages, I am expected to accomplish miracles. Worst of all, I am being robbed of a rare opportunity to observe Dr. Kurt Brenner, a world-class heart surgeon, at work!”

The doors swung open again, this time admitting two stone-faced men in dark suits.

Yanin stared at them, momentarily speechless. “How dare you enter my operating room unannounced? Get out. Get out at once!”

One of the men impaled Yanin with a laser-like glance and looked around the operating theater. “Dr. Kiril Andreyev?”

Kiril rose to his feet. “At your service,” he said flatly.

“Come,” said the man with a curt nod of his head.

“Please,” Yanin intervened in a subdued voice. He knew, now, who the men were. “We have a grueling schedule this morning. I need Dr. Andreyev to—”

“Get someone else.”

“You don’t understand.” Yanin’s voice was deferential. “Dr. Andreyev anticipates every move I make. He can hook up a heart-lung machine with his eyes closed. Dozens of things can go wrong in cardiac surgery. My plastic tubing is not of the best quality,” he said. “If it springs a leak during an operation, it would need immediate repair. Should the blood in the oxygenator drop below a certain level, air could be pumped into the patient’s blood stream. If the heart won’t start once the operation is over, we have only five minutes to get the patient back on the machine—five minutes or the patient will die.”

No answer this time. Stone-face motioned for Kiril to leave.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Yanin,” Kiril said… and deliberately took his time following the two men out.

A black limousine waited at the curb. Kiril slid in the back seat with the two goons. As he slipped his hands into the pockets of the hospital gown he’d had no time to remove, the limousine shot forward. He didn’t need to ask where he was going, or why. Glancing out the window, he saw a familiar banner. Gigantic, it swayed gently in the breeze.

He eyed a passing parade of faces, early risers on their way to work. People quick to grumble, he mused—but at what? The scarcity of oranges in December? The fact that caviar was available only to foreigners and government officials? He saw women in babushkas lined up for their tedious daily shopping queues. But did they ever direct their anger at the apparatchiks who had a stranglehold on the economy? Unlikely.

They had grown used to the system, he thought. They took for granted that they were slaves. And though his heart went out to these poor creatures whose lives had been reduced to day-by-day survival, he forced himself to look away. It was almost as if the mere sight of them might attach itself to his body like some infectious disease.

There was only one way to avoid that kind of living death, he knew. Never stop dreaming of freedom. From the time he was old enough to think, to reason, he never had.

The limousine pulled up in front of an imposing structure. With its row upon row of windows and glossy black marble facade, the building had a guileless look—a showplace on tourist itineraries said to house government offices. This was true. The spacious windowed offices were occupied by high-ranking members of the secret police. The windowless core of the building, not visible from the street, contained one of Moscow’s most infamous prisons.

Kiril entered a small anteroom. As usual, the wooden benches that hugged the walls were filled with an odd assortment of people. Young, old, middle-aged. Shabby suits and shapeless dresses. Tensed shoulders and averted eyes. The one thing they had in common was fear.

“Go right in please, Dr. Andreyev!” the secretary said officiously.

Kiril nodded his thanks, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of knowing he was nervous. As he walked toward a burnished oak door, it occurred to him that if his brother’s office had a sign, it would have said: DEFECTIONS AND CONFESSIONS.

He walked in. As usual, his brother’s desk was in friendly disorder. Papers, books, assorted pipes, a half-eaten sandwich—and files, files, files.

Aleksei Andreyev wore a loose, ill-fitting jacket. Bits of tobacco nestled in the wrinkles of his shirtfront. His eyes behind pale-rimmed glasses were light blue with a tendency to blink rapidly. He raised his head, acknowledging Kiril’s presence, and returned to an open file.

As he settled into a chair, Kiril thought of his friend Stepan. If Air Force Captain Stepan Brodsky had had an official job description, Kiril thought with a hidden smile, it would have been FOREIGN VIP SECURITY.

He wondered if Stepan knew the trip to Canada had been canceled.

“Well?” Aleksei said when he finally looked up. “What do you have for me?”

“As you can imagine,” Kiril said, “Dr. Yanin is upset about the trip to Canada being canceled. But does his anger and annoyance mean he was planning to defect when he got to Toronto?” Kiril asked rhetorically. “Absolutely not.”

“What makes you so sure?” Aleksei responded irritably.

“For one thing, Dr. Yanin is genuinely distressed about being denied the opportunity to meet Dr. Kurt Brenner, the famous American heart surgeon. Frankly, Aleksei, I wouldn’t mind meeting Brenner myself.”

“Frankly,” Aleksei said drily, “we wouldn’t mind getting our hands on him either.”

“Whatever I can do to help,” Kiril said with a straight face just as Stepan walked in and greeted him with a warm smile.

“I take it you won’t be needing my unit to handle Canada in the near future,” Stepan told Aleksei. “What I suggest—”

Not to worry, Stepan. Canada isn’t our only ticket out of here. I’ll keep trying, and so will you. God knows we’ve been at it long enough.

Kiril remained in his chair, waiting for Aleksei to dismiss him like an office boy. He didn’t have long to wait.