Erika Holzer - Freedom Bridge

Afterward she lay on the cold ground, eyes open to the sky.

Kiril , she whispered, but only in her mind.

She wept as silently as she had fought.

It was dawn when the farmer rapped his knuckles on the barn door.

“You can change clothes in the house while I’m getting the bicycles,” he told them.

The room they entered was all wood—floor, ceiling, walls, furniture. But no firewood to spare, Adrienne realized. The stone fireplace was pristine. The place smelled of raw potatoes. An old woman, indifferent to their presence, was slicing the potatoes at a pitted sink. Adrienne turned her back and slipped into the clothes Kiril handed her. The hem of the long dress—a faded yellow—stopped just below her knees, the fabric straining under her arms and over her breasts. “I have my own scarf,” she told Kiril, turning around—then smiled mirthlessly even as Kiril shook his head.

A designer scarf from Bloomingdale’s? Yes indeed, Adrienne.

S he folded a square of rough yellow cotton and tied it, babushka-style, on her head.

“Good fit, even if they’re slightly threadbare,” Brenner remarked as he examined the trousers he’d just pulled on.

Kiril wore a similar pair—coarse serge, wide and gathered at the waist.

Both he and Brenner put on formless grey caps.

“Ready?” he asked, holding the back door open.

A tall dignified man with thick steel-gray hair waited outside. He looked more like a businessman than a farmer, Kiril thought.Three bicycles leaned against the back of the house, their scrawny tires and tinny-looking bodies giving them the look of pre-war relics. The old man rattled off a few sentences in German and went back into the house.

“He wished us good luck,” he told Adrienne. “He said this is a good hour to enter the town because people will be leaving work.”

“Let’s hope he meant it,” Brenner said drily.

“They need the money. The jewelry’s worth a lot on the black market. They won’t turn us in,” Kiril reassured him.

But will you? Adrienne wondered silently as a man on a motorbike with slicked-back hair and no helmet fixed them with a curious stare as he passed.

Will you turn us in? she asked a shabbily clothed family who examined them closely before pedaling off in the opposite direction.

Will you be the ones? she wondered, her question aimed at a couple of Vopos who stood just inside the Potsdam city limits while she tried to ignore a sign too prominent to miss:

UNDYING FRIENDSHIP AND ALLIANCE

WITH THE SOVIET UNION!

Don’t turn us in , she pleaded whenever Kurt or Kiril paused to ask directions, leaving her to envy them their flawless German.

They walked their bicycles down narrow cobblestone streets, every face, every frown, looming as a potential threat. Even the unbroken gray stucco on both sides of the street seemed less like rows of connecting houses than solid impregnable walls.

Only when gray stucco gave way to red brick did Adrienne’s fear give way to hope. She saw signs of a cheerful Dutch influence in the high rounded tops of the attached houses. In the black shutters with their white trim.

It was she who spotted the sign on an iron post: Hollandische Siedlung.

She who spotted number “13.”

When Kiril pulled the bell cord, she slipped her hand into his. The tightness of his answering grip became a substitute for breathing.

The door opened. A pair of expressionless blue eyes looked them over, curiously at first, then intently.

“Come in. Quickly!” Albert Zind said.

Adrienne was stunned. Not because she thought Albert Zind and his family wouldn’t help them. After taking his measure in East Berlin, she had felt sure that he would.

What she hadn’t expected was that he spoke English!

As soon as all three of them were inside, the door was closed and bolted behind them.

Albert Zind sat in the cab of an ancient truck parked on the middle of the bridge. It was a huge 1942 Studebaker, one of thousands sent by the United States to the Soviet Union during World War II.

It had four sets of double wheels in the rear, and two more up front. It could carry up to 2½ tons of cargo, had heavy springs and shock absorbers, and boasted a powerful diesel engine. The height of the Studebaker’s sides was increased by six horizontal slats around all three sides, making the cargo area roughly six feet high. The height of the bed’s sides were increased even more by U-shaped struts that could be fitted to them. A tarpaulin, if tossed over the top, would completely enclose the rear of the truck.

Zind had built an armoire-like structure in the bed of the truck just behind the cab for storing tools and other supplies. The vehicle’s front and rear bumpers were massive. And though not fast, the truck was a veritable juggernaut when rolling. Its front windshield could be raised, removing any impediment to the driver’s line of sight in inclement weather. The glass window in the rear was roughly four feet wide and two feet high.

For a man like Zind, who was in the construction business, it was the ideal vehicle to own.

For a tough-guy type like his Vopo “pal” Bruno, who drove Zind and his crew on and off the bridge every day, it was pure pleasure—an opportunity to change seats with Zind, get behind the wheel of the powerful ’42 Studebaker, and drive!

Seemingly absorbed in thought, Zind was acutely aware of what was going on. Bruno had tried—unsuccessfully—to start the engine. Three times the diesel motor almost caught. Three times it died. Bruno was well aware that if he continued to crank the heavy-duty battery, he would kill whatever power the truck still had.

Shooting a sideways glance in Albert Zind’s direction, Bruno said, “Cat got your tongue, Zind?”

“Just wondering what the foreman will say when he finds out I pulled the crew off an hour early.”

Bruno shrugged. “Who could work in all this rain? Those twenty guys in the back of the Studebaker are already soaked. You’re a foreman same as me, Zind. Foremen are supposed to take care of their men, am I right?” he said good-naturedly.

“The problem is that my foreman is nervous about completing the repair job on this bridge,” Zind said. “He’s being pressed, so naturally he’s in a big hurry to get it done. Glienicker Bridge handles way too much traffic—particularly going from East to West.”

There has to be some way to take advantage of that.

This time when Bruno hit the starter, the engine struggled to life and turned over—barely. Bruno revved it for a few minutes until the battery was charged, then left the bridge and pulled to a stop at the cobblestone square between the East German and Soviet guard houses. Yanking the hand brake, Bruno killed the diesel engine and got out of the truck.

“You better check that battery, Zind,” he chided.

“Will do.”

“See you Wednesday. Tomorrow I’m off duty,” Bruno reminded him.

“Wednesday it is,” Zind acknowledged as he slid behind the wheel.

The bridge crew scrambled off the back of the truck and lined up for the headcount.

The “headcount” triggered a reminder of its own… How the Wall was being haphazardly thrown together, and what desperate East Germans were doing to escape. During the past several weeks, some would-be defectors were leaping from windows and rooftops to freedom even as other windows and doors were being bricked up, other rooftops sealed, entire buildings demolished.

Sewers were one way out, Zind mused, but there was a price tag attached—the risk of drowning from a sudden rainfall, like today. Or suffocating from accumulated gas. Or being blocked by iron grates and manhole covers that had been welded shut.