Seizing the telephone, he spoke rapid German to the operator. The last thing he told her was to see that the message was delivered promptly to Colonel Aleksei Andreyev, 38th floor, banquet room. Slamming down the phone, he began tossing things into a suitcase.
Shortly after Aleksei had rejoined the party and taken a seat at the table with Adrienne Brenner and his brother, a messenger handed him an envelope. He opened it, scanned it, and, without comment, handed it to Kiril.
Kiril never got past the first sentence. He had trouble masking his response.
Dr. Brenner was leaving. Now.
As he turned his chair slightly away to make sure Adrienne couldn’t read the note over his shoulder, he realized it was unnecessary. She looked… spacey. Too much champagne on an empty stomach.
He read the rest of Brenner’s note quickly. The tragic outcome of yesterday’s operation had left Brenner “too despondent to cope with the remaining events of the conference—so much so that he planned to cancel next week’s Medicine International symposium in West Berlin as well. Would Colonel Aleksei Andreyev please make arrangements for an immediate flight to Zurich so that he and his wife could join his parents there?”
“Let me see what I can do,” Kiril said to his grim-faced brother in Russian. He hailed a waiter and ordered a gin and tonic with a twist of lime. “Brenner’s drink of choice,” he told Aleksei. “Perhaps a sympathetic talk with another physician will change his mind. Can you stall things a little longer?”
“Why not?” Aleksei said, straddling between cold fury and bleak despair as he reached for his now half-empty bottle of vodka.
Kiril took the down elevator to the 21st floor, stopping first to pick something up in his own room before heading to the Brenner suite.
He found Kurt Brenner in the bedroom, one suitcase packed, and another half empty. “Given the stress you must be under, Dr. Brenner,” Kiril said evenly, “I thought you might need this.”
He held up the gin and tonic.
“I won’t need it much longer,” Brenner snapped, continuing to pack. “If you’re here to change my mind, you’re wasting your time.”
Kiril put the drink down on the coffee table in the other room. Without another word, he entered the bathroom, flicked on the light, and closed the door.
At the sound of running water, Brenner called out, “Don’t bother trying to drown out our voices. Malik already made sure your brother debugged this place.”
When the water in the sink turned brown, Kiril submerged his head one more time, toweled it dry, and stepped into the bedroom. Brenner, who was in the process of folding a sports jacket, looked up—and gaped.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Kiril said. “I know it must be a shock, our strong resemblance.”
“How on earth could I have missed it?” Brenner murmured, as if talking to himself. “I thought your hair was as brown as those dark glasses you never seemed to take off— Ah, yes, an eye infection according to your girlfriend,” he said drily, recalling Adrienne’s confusion at the beach. “A non-existent infection, I gather?”
“Yes. Even Galya has no idea it isn’t real.”
“What else isn’t real?” Brenner said snidely.
“Unlike yours, my hair really is dark brown. Before I left Moscow, I bleached it white, then used a brown rinse—a near-perfect color match. Look, call it coincidence, call it fate. All I know is that from the moment I saw your photograph, I knew I had a crack at the highest stakes in the world.”
“What stakes, money? You want money when your KGB brother sneers at it?”
“I’m not after money either—but for different reasons than my brother Aleksei. I’ve been observing you closely ever since you stepped off the plane, Dr. Brenner. The way you walk. How you light a cigarette. The way your voice sounds when you—”
Brenner took a startled step back. “You’re part of this outrageous defection plot, aren’t you? What’s next? You taking my place in front of the television cameras?”
It was Kiril’s turn to look startled. “Haven’t you paid any attention to what I’ve been saying? What I’ve been showing you and your wife ever since we met?” he said, exasperated. “The last thing I want is for you to defect. Everything I said and did was calculated to make you resist my brother’s blackmail.”
Brenner sat down on the edge of the bed. “I think I’ll have that drink now, if you don’t mind.”
Kiril got it for him. “Look, I have no idea what Malik and my brother have on you. But whatever it is, it can’t be worth the price they’re asking.”
“Then you’ll help me?” Brenner said eagerly. “You’ll stop them from revealing what they know?”
“I have no way to do that. Ironically, it’s you who can help me. I’d planned to approach you later tonight before you left in the morning but—”
Brenner shot him a look of suspicion.
“Let me explain. I met with a man this afternoon who’s agreed to help me defect—he has experience arranging such matters. Except for one thing. I need to borrow a passport. Yours, Dr. Brenner,”
Kiril pressed on doggedly, seeing that Brenner was about to refuse.
Brenner could only shake his head. “Preposterous” was too tame a word to describe his reaction. The idea that he would loan this Russian physician his American passport left him momentarily speechless.
“Look, as your tour guide I’ll be in the limousine that takes you to the airport. Here’s how it works. The East German Vopos check passports only once—at the departure area—after which passengers are handed boarding passes. Your pass and your ticket is all you’ll need to board the Swiss Air flight to Zurich.” He drew in a deep breath. “Since you won’t need your passport after that, you could easily slip it to me right before we part company. That way my contact can get me out of East Germany.”
“And if something goes wrong?” Brenner asked, stringing him along because his instinct for survival had just kicked in… “What if I get tossed into some Commie jail? What’s the penalty for helping people defect? Ten years? Twenty?”
“Why should the airport authorities deviate from established procedure?” Kiril countered. “And once you reach Zurich, let alone the United States, no one could touch you.”
“Did you know your brother has some trumped-up charge against my wife in his bag of tricks?”
Kiril frowned. “I didn’t know. Maybe he’s bluffing. Has it occurred to you he could be bluffing about everything, including the blackmail?”
“It’s no bluff,” Brenner admitted. “They have proof. They showed it to me just now. I was very young… But your goddamn country—”
“Don’t expect me to make excuses for people like Malik and my brother Aleskei,” Kiril said with a tinge of bitterness. “I’ve been locked in a chamber of horrors my whole life. Did I say I was after the highest stakes in the world? What’s more precious than a man’s freedom? You take yours for granted. I expected that and it’s right that you should, it’s healthy.”
“You sound just like my wife,” Brenner retorted.
Kiril winced. Brenner hadn’t meant it as a compliment.
He made one last stab. “If I had been born in a free country, I would feel sympathy—no, empathy is the better word. I would want to help a man like me to break free of his chains if I could.”
“You make a powerful case, Dr. Andreyev,” Brenner said, aiming for sympathy—the correct word for me, he thought grimly. “I suspect anyone who grows up in America would have difficulty making real to himself what it’s like to live in a dictatorship. It’s no walk in the park, god knows. Maybe I will lend you my passport. It depends.”