Erika Holzer - Freedom Bridge

“Instantly?” von Eyssen said, incredulous.

“Instantly,” Brenner repeated. It was true enough.

“Let’s go.” Von Eyssen practically pushed Brenner out the door.

As soon as they began walking, he waved the bridge guards aside.

They were halfway to the middle when a Soviet limousine skidded into the square on the rain-soaked cobblestones at the mouth of the bridge. Out leaped Aleksei Andreyev, followed by Luka Rogov. As von Eyssen and Brenner walked toward the middle of the bridge, Aleksei and Luka froze in place.

Hearing the car, von Eyssen said under his breath, “We’re going to turn around slowly, our backs to the West.”

They turned.

“Now start walking backward very slowly,” von Eyssen ordered.

As soon as he saw the two men start to turn, Aleksei grasped what von Eyssen was up to. He’d made a deal. Set Kiril free in return for Kurt and Adrienne Brenner’s hiding place—and, most important, for the microfilm in the cigarette lighter.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Kiril will lie—who wouldn’t? And whatever else he is, von Eyssen isn’t stupid. What’s he up to? One thing is certain. They must be stopped.

Von Eyssen and Brenner continued to walk carefully backward.

Aleksei and Luka ran toward them, slipping and sliding on the wet pavement, Aleksei cursing under his breath at their slow progress.

As they closed the distance, von Eyssen said, “They’re only a few yards away, Dr. Andreyev. It’s now or never. Either you tell me where the Brenners are or I’ll blow your brains out.”

“They’re in the truck,” Brenner told him.

“Truck? What truck? Where?”

“They’re hiding in the Studebaker behind the guardhouse.”

Von Eyssen smiled. “Just in time,” he said as Andreyev and the Mongolian reached them. He raised his revolver and shot Brenner in the right eye.

Kurt Brenner’s body sank to the pavement.

“You fool!” Aleksei yelled as sirens blared and guards rushed to the bridge. “With Kiril dead, we’ve lost our only lead to the cigarette lighter!”

Von Eyssen smiled inwardly.

If you only knew how close you are to it.

Aloud, he said innocently, “You always said there was no love lost between you and your brother. Is that really why you’re so angry?”

“Frustrated, not angry. I’d have put Kiril before a firing squad once the dust settled,” Aleksei said, nudging Brenner’s head with the toe of his boot.

They saw it simultaneously—dark brown stains seeping into a puddle under Brenner’s head. A small patch of white hair slowly growing larger in the water.

“You idiot! You stupid Kraut!” Aleksei screamed. “You just shot the wrong man! You killed a famous American heart surgeon who just told the world he intended to defect to the Soviet Union!”

Aleksei knelt down, oblivious to the muddy water seeping into his pants. Seizing Brenner’s head with both hands, ignoring the ghastly hole in one eye, he pulled at a patch of hair. Another. Another.

White, all white!

“Look! Look at his hair, you moron. It’s you who’s going before a firing squad!” he screamed.

“You think so?” von Eyssen said, leveling his revolver at Aleksei’s chest.

Luka Rogov dropped von Eyssen with one shot to the head.

Utter chaos erupted.

Guards running. Voices screaming. Sirens wailing.

And lying amidst it all, the hollow-eyed corpse of Dr. Kurt Brenner.

Gunshots.

From the flatbed’s compartment Kiril and Adrienne had heard the commotion.

“What’s going on?” Adrienne whispered.

“I don’t know. But it’s time to leave.”

“Do we have a chance?”

“A chance, yes. Can we make it from here? Maybe.”

Ironic , he thought. I’m as far back from the middle of the bridge as Stepan was.

Ripping the cardboard away, he exposed the six slats and the rear of the cab. Sliding the slats away, he kicked out the cab’s window and slid under the wheel as Adrienne jumped into the passenger seat.

The Zinds had done their work well.

Kiril engaged the Studebaker’s gears, swung round the guardhouse and, slipping and sliding through the cobblestone square, headed for the mouth of the bridge, pressing the truck’s air horn as if his life depended on it. Which, in fact, it did.

The unearthly sound of the air horn on the bridge stopped everyone in their tracks. There was no way people could miss that oncoming behemoth of a truck in the distance.

Everyone sprinted to the sides to avoid it.

Everyone except a stunned Aleksei Andreyev and a puzzled Luka Rogov. They stood frozen in place as if, by the sheer force of their combined will, they could stop the juggernaut hurtling toward them.

Confused by the chaos on the bridge, the watchtower guards held their fire. A signal from Aleksei would have instantly sent a torrent of machine gun bullets to drench the bridge with death.

Aleksei, recognizing what was happening, signaled Luka to move away from the middle of the roadway.

Kiril had just passed the mouth of the bridge.

A straight run to the middle, then West Berlin and freedom!

“Crawl under the dashboard—now, Adrienne!” he shouted as he floored the accelerator. His brother had just signaled the watchtowers to fire.

Aleksei was nearly halfway to the middle of Glienicker when the watchtowers, joined now by some of the soldiers and guards on the bridge, opened up with everything they had. Most of the rounds missed because of the truck’s speed.

But Kiril knew how vulnerable they were, just as Stepan had been. The tires, he thought—as one of the truck’s eight rear tires blew.

The Studebaker slowed but didn’t stop. Kiril kept to the middle of the blacktop road.

West Berlin just ahead .

Off to the right, Kiril spotted Aleksei and Luka Rogov. Seconds before he had to decide, he hesitated.

Monsters. They deserve to die!

At the last second, he swerved away.

But Luka Rogov stepped into the middle of the road, aiming his submachine gun at the Studebaker as if it were some huge animal he could bring down.

Kiril had no choice but to run him over.

Bullets raked into the right side of the truck. The cab’s front left tire blew. Through the driver’s door, Kiril took a 30-caliber round in his thigh.

Seconds later, Kiril and Adrienne burst into West Berlin.

W hen Dr. Kiril Andreyev qualified to practice medicine in New York City, he and his parents took over the Dr. Kurt Brenner Medical Center for Underprivileged Juveniles. Despite the many wrongs Kurt had committed, continuation of the Center’s work would rightly commemorate his many contributions to helping young heart patients.

Adrienne Andreyev turned over her husband Kiril’s microfilm to Paul Houston, who still claimed he was employed by the Department of State.

Two years later, with the help of unknown persons somehow connected with Houston, the entire Zind family was ransomed out of East Germany and settled in West Berlin.

No one ever learned what became of KGB Colonel Aleksei Andreyev.

In 1992, a year after German reunification, Dr. Kiril Andreyev returned to Berlin. A search of Stasi records had revealed that Stepan Brodsky had not been buried in Treptower Park’s mass grave after all.

Kiril had tracked down Stepan’s younger sister, a longtime anti-communist, who knew of Kiril through her brother. He persuaded her to allow disinterment of Stepan’s remains from a family plot near Frankfurt.

Air Force Captain Stepan Brodsky was reburied in Kensico Cemetery, Hamlet of Valhalla, County of Westchester, State of New York.