Erika Holzer - Freedom Bridge

Kiril had no such intention—but no way yet to let the Brenners know what he really planned to do.

With a touch of alarm, he realized that he was slipping into a state of deep fatigue, every last ounce of adrenalin draining out of him…

So much had happened without respite. Knocking Brenner out and taking his place. Fear that Adrienne Brenner would realize who he was. His exhilaration when the plane landed him in Zurich. The painful discovery that his long-sought freedom was illusory. The stunning realization that he’d found his mother but simultaneously caused her unbearable pain. The bleak resolve to go back for his brother. The disgust he’d felt when he learned what Aleksei had been holding over Kurt Brenner’s head. The desperate hope, as he and Adrienne returned to East Berlin, that he could come up with a workable escape plan.

“Before you truss me up like some pig,” Aleksei said, “why don’t we brothers share a last cigarette. After all, before long one of us will be dead. You, if we catch your merry threesome. Me, if we don’t.”

Kiril took a crushed pack of cheap Russian cigarettes out of his pocket, offered one to Aleksei, and without thinking used his lighter. When it failed to spark he tried again—and only then noticed Aleksei staring at the lighter, his expression half-shock, half-knowing.

“So you were the source of the microfilm,” he said. “It was you who gave it to Stepan Brodsky. You who was his backup. And inches from my face is the last surviving copy of the microfilm that would prove you are guilty of treason, you—”

Kiril shrugged. “Now there really are no more secrets between us.”

“Let’s finish up here,” he told Brenner.

As soon as Aleksei and Rogov were tied and gagged, Kiril took Brenner and Adrienne thirty feet away. “My original idea was to hijack the executive jet once Aleksei got us on board. It would have been hard but it might have worked. Without Aleksei, it’s impossible.”

“What can we do?” Brenner asked.

“We have at least four hours lead time, maybe more, before someone finds them or before they manage to free themselves and get to a telephone or a radio.”

“Then let’s end it here and now.”

“What’s the matter with you, Kurt?” Adrienne snapped. “We should stand by while you blow their brains out?”

“Don’t worry about Aleksei’s plane,” Kiril said in an effort to defuse the tension. “In the meantime, we’ll figure out a way to get to Potsdam.”

“You have friends in Potsdam?” Brenner asked.

“I think so.”

Kiril was remembering a handshake. A look of profound gratitude in a man’s eyes. Letters carved in dirt by a miniature scalpel.

Adrienne smiled. She was remembering it too.

And thanks to a strong retentive memory, Kiril thought he could recall an address…

“For now,” Kiril told them, we have to hide out until it gets dark tomorrow night.”

“Why”? Brenner pressed.

“Because Aleksei will be looking for this automobile.”

They made good time. It was almost dawn when they arrived at the outskirts of Potsdam in the powerful ZIN-110.

Knowing they had to get off the road soon before Aleksei sounded a quiet alarm, Kiril had pushed the automobile so hard it overheated twice and their petrol was almost gone.

He pointed out other factors in their favor. Aleksei would have to concoct some story about why he was looking for them—something that would take him off the hook for losing them in the first place. Which meant a large-scale search—lots of people in lots of places—was unlikely.

As the sun rose, they spotted a farmhouse deep off the road. “We have to chance it,” Kiril told them.

He drove down the road and parked behind a barn. The farmhouse was two stories of gray fieldstone with the top floor boarded up. The place looked abandoned. No farm animals. No outbuildings apart from the barn and a dilapidated shed.

But a plot of rich black soil in the back was plowed. Kiril smiled.

“We’re in luck,” he whispered as he moved to a window and looked inside. “A man and a woman. Retired farmers, probably. Too old to be put into a collectivization program.”

He took out his handkerchief. “Put your dollars and jewelry in this.”

“All of it?” Brenner asked. “Shouldn’t we save something for your pals in Potsdam?”

“If they help us it won’t be for money.”

Brenner looked skeptical but he emptied his pockets.

Adrienne unwrapped her scarf and handed Kiril a wad of greenbacks and a handful of jewelry.

Her gold-and-diamond wedding band included, Brenner noticed.

“Do we all go in?” he asked.

Kiril shook his head. “I’ll come back for you.”

In a few minutes he returned with food, water, and no jewelry.

“They were farmers. Owned a lot of land here. After the war, the East Germans seized most of it while the Russians took off with whatever animals and equipment they had left. ‘Reparations’ they called it,” Kiril said with disgust. “They’ve managed to eke out a living by cultivating the small plot in back and husbanding a few animals. We’re to hide the car in their barn. We’re leaving it for them, along with our money and jewelry. Their hope is to bribe their way out of East Germany. As soon as it’s dark, we’ll walk up to the house so they can help us get out of here safely.”

“Can we trust them?” Brenner asked.

“Maybe. Maybe not. But I can tell you this much. They detest communists.”

As soon as the three of them settled down in the barn, fatigue began to overtake Kiril. He started to doze on the hay-covered floor.

Adrienne shivered. The draft from under the barn door made her long for the cape she’d left behind in East Berlin.

“Cold?” Brenner whispered.

Without waiting for an answer, he covered her body with his.

“Kurt, don’t.”

“He’s asleep.”

“How do you know?”

“Listen to his breathing. Then listen to mine…”

“What if he wakes up?”

“What if we’re all dead tomorrow or the day after? I want you, Adrienne.”

But I don’t want you. Not now. Not ever again .

“Damn it, Kurt,” she hissed, trying to edge him off her body without making noise.

“You’re my wife. Ever heard of conjugal rights?”

As he bent to kiss her, she turned her head abruptly in the opposite direction—and saw that Kiril Andreyev was no longer lying flat on the floor of the barn. Were his eyes open?

… Did it matter even if they were? She knew Kiril wouldn’t feel free to intervene. Not when he had yet to call her “Adrienne” instead of “Mrs. Brenner.”

She struggled to free herself.

But her resistance had become a challenge. The more she fought each wordless demand on her flesh, the more she was convinced that Kiril’s eyes were wide open.

She jammed hers shut and concentrated on her first glimpse of him at an airport terminal. The look on his face as he crossed a banquet room to meet her. She pictured the morning his shadow had fallen across her body and blotted out the sun. His tortured expression as he kissed her passionately in the privacy of an airport lounge in Zurich—

Despite the hay, the floor was cold against her back, the night air colder. Neither were cold enough to bank the liquid heat that rushed into her limbs.

Oh no , she thought, realizing too late that the images of Kiril had betrayed her senses. Wanting him , not the man who was forcibly entering her body. Her fingers dug into the hay, her body arching, pushing past her protesting mind, greedily reaching for the unreachable and, with a shudder, finding it.