Erika Holzer - Freedom Bridge

Take the bait, Aleksei. Buy into the idea that I’m a self-sacrificing fool. That I’ve given up all hope of surviving .

“It’s about time you and Mrs. Brenner are made privy to a sordid story,” Aleksei said irritably. “Chancellor Malik and I dropped hints of it at that Humboldt University Medical Clinic breakfast, but you had no way of knowing we were talking about Dr. Brenner.”

“Hints of what?” Adrienne asked cautiously.

“Of helpless, half-starved orphaned children who, after surviving a Nazi death camp, were rescued by the Red Cross and turned over to American servicemen. The Americans took over the care and feeding—literally—of these kids, hiding them until they could be placed in a DP camp and eventually sent to America. Your husband—for strictly self-serving reasons, I might add—betrayed them. As the Russians led these children across Glienicker Bridge into East Berlin, they chose death over Soviet custody.”

Adrienne was visibly shocked. Kiril’s face had turned ashen.

Aleksei pounded the final nail into Kurt Brenner’s coffin. “I know all this because I was there. So was Chancellor Malik. We recorded it.”

Aleksei learned forward to scrutinize Kiril’s face.

“Let me get something straight. In spite of the fact that Brenner was about to betray you and knowing full well I’d have had you shot, you came back here ready to sacrifice your freedom for his?”

“I did.”

“You hypocrite!” Aleksei exclaimed. “So much for a man who’s spent most of his life condemning altruism.”

Adrienne groaned inwardly. She felt as if she were trapped in a nightmare.

The nightmare turned surreal when she and Kiril were reunited with a groggy, disheveled-looking Kurt Brenner—a man who was usually buttoned-down neat. Next to him stood Kiril Andreyev, stunning in a tuxedo that nearly blotted out memories of his tired blue suit. To complete the absurdity, Kurt’s hair was still dark brown, Kiril’s completely white.

Aleksei snapped Adrienne back to reality.

“Once our aircraft is fueled and serviced—there seems to be some problem with a wing-tip safety light—all of us will leave for Moscow,” he announced. “You two are surprisingly docile,” Aleksei said, his eyes shifting from Brenner to Adrienne. “Getting resigned to a lengthy sojourn in Moscow? I hope you understand my position, Mrs. Brenner. I cannot possibly let you leave now.”

Adrienne shrugged. “My place is with my husband.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Brenner shouted as Luka moved to stand behind him.

“Where’s Galya? Isn’t she going back with us?” Kiril asked.

Aleksei touched Kiril’s shoulder in a genuine gesture of sympathy. “She’s dead, Kiril. She committed suicide right after you left for Zurich.”

Adrienne’s eyes filled with tears.

“No need to grieve, Mrs. Brenner,” Aleksei said thinly. “Our Miss Barkova was working for me. She was spying on you as well as Kiril. Who do you think let me know when Herr Roeder passed you that incriminating package? You behaved like a well-trained homing pigeon, my dear, leading me straight to—”

“You tortured him to death, didn’t you?” Adrienne lashed out.

“As it happens, I didn’t. For what it’s worth, Herr Roeder died of heart failure—a vestige of scarlet fever when he was a child. There was a great deal of it going around at the time.”

He turned to Kiril. “Galina Barkova’s body is being loaded into the plane’s cargo hold as we speak—the least I can do. Don’t blame yourself. Her unrequited love wasn’t quite what it seemed. She was spying on you for the last two years in exchange for a few trinkets.” He paused. “She didn’t give you away in the end though, did she?”

Eyes closed, Kiril pushed back in his seat. He’d been virtually certain Galya had been co-opted—but with misgivings. Would she have committed suicide because he was leaving the country and in no position to take her with him? That may have been part of it, he reasoned, but guilt was more likely the greater part. He’d seen it too often in the camps. People clinging to life as they scrambled to survive just one more day. Another. Still another…

Checking his watch, Aleksei did a quick mental calculation. “It’s about time for Dr. Anna Brenner’s speech at Medicine International’s symposium in West Berlin. I suggest we listen while we wait for our plane to be ready. A comrade in West Berlin tells me she has some harsh things to say about you, Dr. Brenner.”

Aleksei nodded to Luka, who turned on a radio and fiddled with the dials until the radio coughed. Static muffled the background noise.

The symposium had begun.

Kiril and Adrienne leaned forward in their chairs, straining to hear. Aleksei was paying close attention. Brenner, looking mildly curious, had a pretty fair idea what his mother was about to say about his alleged defection. Luka, blank-faced, sat in the corner.

A Master of Ceremonies’ preliminary remarks signaled the start of the symposium, his mellow voice announcing the presence of an unscheduled but much respected speaker, Dr. Anna Brenner, mother of the esteemed heart surgeon Dr. Kurt Brenner, who had just told the world of his defection to the Soviet Union.

“I am here to speak the truth about my sons,” Anna Brenner said. “I chose to speak at Medicine International because my son, Kurt Brenner, is a peer of many in this audience. Until the mid-1920s when I married Max Brenner and became a German citizen, I resided in the Soviet Union. My name at that time was Anna Andreyev. My eldest son was, and perhaps still is, Aleksei Andreyev. My second son was Kiril. My youngest son, the eminent American heart surgeon Dr. Kurt Brenner, is about to learn that he was born—not in America—but in the Soviet Union. His name was Nikolai ‘Kolya’ Andreyev.”

Aleksei’s body turned to stone.

He noticed that neither Kiril nor Adrienne Brenner seemed surprised.

They must have learned about this in Zurich.

“—and it was because of a near-tragic accident that I received permission to take Kolya to Germany in hopes of saving the child’s life. I lost my eldest son Aleksei—politically, you might say—to his father and ultimately to the Communist Party. And once I made the painful decision to raise Kolya in a free country, I lost my son Kiril. Any attempt to communicate with him would have placed him in grave danger because of who I was—an Enemy of the People.

So this is what I wish to say by way of farewell to my son, Kurt, who has just defected to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”

The close of Anna Brenner’s speech brought silence in West Berlin as a distinguished gathering of doctors, scientists, and politicians absorbed her shattering words.

In a small office at the East Berlin airport, three men and a woman looked at each other, pondering their new relationship.

You! Aleksei’s eyes were fixed on the radio, as if Anna Brenner awaited his reaction.

Kiril’s mouth was twisted with the violence of his emotion.

Kurt Brenner’s near-hysterical laughter rose above a raucous mix of voices and static. “The Brothers Andreyev! It’s more like the Brothers Karamazov,” he said disdainfully, looking from Kiril to Aleksei as one would look at a couple of bastards who had abruptly sprouted on an impeccable family tree.

Aleksei’s hardened features melted into feigned amiability. “Little Kolya, is it?” he said, turning to Brenner. “And all these years I thought you were dead. My father—excuse me, I should say our father—never considered the possibility that German records could be forged. That citizenship could be so easily obtained. So the doctors gave you a forty percent chance of recovery? You certainly have recovered. Prospered, too. Time to share the wealth, Kolya—not literally, of course. Your operating skills will most certainly put our current heart surgeons to shame. But it’s your defection that has great propaganda value.”