The reporters gave way as soon as they saw Anna Brenner descend on him like an avenging angel.
She slapped Kiril’s face so hard he staggered from the blow.
A reporter mumbled, “The slap heard round the world… ”
A wilted Max Brenner looked as if he were on the verge of collapsing.
Adrienne, her mind whirling, leaned against the wall, watching with horror as the scene played out before her.
Kiril’s head was reeling from the impact—from the terrible irony—as flashbulbs popped, recording Anna Brenner’s blow for a readership of millions. Cameras panned for reaction shots of a family in chaos.
And retreat. Max and Anna Brenner were leaving.
Adrienne hadn’t moved. “Ladies and gentlemen, listen to me! Will someone please listen to me?” she shouted over the din. “I have a statement of my own.”
The commotion in the room collapsed into silence as Kiril walked over to her.
“You can’t stop me,” she said.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her aside before anyone could react. “Say one more word and you throw away the only chance I have of rescuing your husband.”
“Rescuing him? You’re going back to East Berlin after what he—”
“I must. But it has to be as Kurt Brenner, not Kiril Andreyev. If he and I don’t get out within twenty-four hours, make your statement then. Tell the world your husband was being blackmailed for something he did a long time ago. That he’s being held by the Soviets against his will.”
Kiril removed the charm from around his neck and pressed it into Adrienne’s hand. “Convince them I was an impostor, and then give this to your mother-in-law. She’ll be able to back up your story.”
After a brief hesitation, he handed her a cigarette lighter. “And if I don’t come back, give this to American intelligence.”
The cigarette lighter again!
Stunned, Adrienne realized there was no way she could quickly process what was going on. “Kurt, wait,” she called out.
Handing him the lighter, she turned to the reporters. “I’ve decided to accompany my husband to East Berlin and, if necessary, to Moscow. I hope to persuade him to change his mind. No more questions please,” she said as the flashbulbs resumed, holding a hand over her eyes to deflect the light.
Taking Kiril’s arm—ever the dutiful wife, she thought wryly, she steered him toward the executive jet.
She was still squeezing the tiny gold scalpel when something lurking in her subconscious surfaced. In the private room when her mother-in-law had clasped her hands and Adrienne, overwhelmed by emotion, had squeezed back—hard—she had felt a slight bruising sensation from the charms on Anna’s bracelet.
The bracelet Anna never took off. The bracelet that was missing a single charm, she’d told Adrienne years ago—and then told her what the charm was.
She had a flash-image of Kiril as he bent in the dirt to carve the shape of a tombstone—tiny letters inside for some grieving family.
His carving tool? A miniature gold scalpel.
She whirled around to face him. “God in heaven, Anna Brenner is your mother! And Kurt must be—”
“My brother Kolya.”
Chapter 43
Max Brenner sat up, awakened by a dull thud. “Anna?”
“Sorry. I dropped my shoe.”
“You can’t sleep?”
“It’s hardly surprising.”
He turned on the light and went to sit beside her on the other bed while she finished dressing. “It’s two o’clock in the morning. We have an early plane.”
“There are other planes to New York. We’ll catch a later flight.”
“Let me go with you. The streets will be empty.”
“Zurich is an old friend, Max. I want to be alone with her.”
“Then take a doctor’s advice,” he said gently. “So much pent-up emotion. Cry if you can.”
She touched his cheek. “I’m all cried out.”
She finished dressing and slipped out the door.
Zurich is an old friend.
It was a long walk down the hill from the Dolder Grand Hotel to the center of the city, but Anna knew she wouldn’t notice the distance.
She never had. How many times had she walked up and down this hill and along these streets just to pass the time? To make the waiting easier?
Because Zurich had been the mid-point—a bridge that straddled Berlin and New York. Germany and America.
It had been hard, the waiting in Berlin, because there had been so much to wait for.
For fear to be abated with every passing day by the growing conviction that she was safe from the long arm of Soviet retribution. For the visits of the young American surgeon she had met in Berlin, who had assisted in Kolya’s operation. For the surgeon to complete the last days of his two-year training program under the greatest heart surgeon in Germany, perhaps in all of Europe.
Then it was on to Zurich and more waiting.
For papers to come through which “proved” she was a native-born German. More papers which “documented” that the young surgeon was the father of her three-year-old son, Kolya. And, finally, for two American passports. One for Anna Petrovsky, the other for Kurt Brenner.
The day they set sail for the United States, the captain had married Anna Petrovsky to Max Brenner, the doctor whose surgical skills had helped save her son’s life. The man who had given her son an opportunity to live that life to the fullest.
Kurt had never fully achieved that goal, she thought. His spectacular achievements—and they were spectacular—had always been marred by a need for approval and a taste for flattery.
He’d been flattered by his first invitation to a widely publicized medical exchange in the Soviet Union—had accepted without telling her in stubborn defiance of her request that he never set foot in the U.S.S.R. She had made him back down by the sheer force of her will, making it unnecessary to tell him things she thought he was better off not knowing.
“You’re unreasonable,” he’d said to her then—and many more times since. “What have the communists ever done to you that you should detest them so?”
Nothing special, she thought now. Nothing the communists haven’t done to countless others.
Through the years, she had persisted in her refusal to enlighten him—a mistake, she realized now.
Worse than a mistake. A monstrous injustice.
But for you, Kolya, I would have returned to the Soviet Union. But for you I would not have abandoned your brother, Kiril. I would not have left him with a sister who was an Enemy of the People and in no position to protect him.
As snow began to fall, Anna trudged up the hill to the hotel, tortured by the thought that she had never made inquiries about what had become of her middle son, Kiril. Max had convinced her that any attempt to make contact would have been painful, possibly futile—and worse, it might have endangered Kiril’s life. Max had been right, of course. But that was a long time ago.
By the time Anna had re-climbed the hill, she’d made her decision.
It would be unsettling to set foot on German soil after narrowly escaping the Nazis so many years ago, but the truth about her son’s lineage was long overdue.
What better time, what better place, than tomorrow’s Medicine International symposium in West Berlin?
Chapter 44
As Kiril and Adrienne approached the executive jet that would return them to East Berlin, they were met by the pilot, who apologized profusely. There was a mechanical problem. One of the red wing lights was not illuminating and a short circuit indicator was appearing on the instrument panel. Dr. and Mrs. Brenner were welcome to board and wait with the pilot for the problem to be diagnosed and corrected, after which the Zurich airport would clear the plane for takeoff.