Kiril and Adrienne climbed the jet’s staircase, practically fell into some seats, and were soon asleep. Several hours later, the pilot gently nudged Kiril. The problem had been diagnosed as a burned-out circuit breaker, the part unavailable until now. The red wing light was functioning, the short circuit indicator normal. All that remained before departure was for the Brenners to fasten their seat belts.
“Will you please tell me your plan?” Adrienne implored as soon as their plane took off.
“I’ll tell you this much,” Kiril said evenly. “If anything goes wrong, you’ll wish you had stayed in Zurich.”
Lost in their own thoughts, neither one spoke for the rest of the flight.
At the sound of wheels jolting onto the runway, Kiril and Adrienne undid their seat belts. The plane rolled to a stop near an empty office building adjoining the terminal, and they prepared to disembark.
As he helped Adrienne out of the plane, Kiril could see an East German staff car that looked like an American Crown Victoria waiting for them on the tarmac.
Luka Rogov was in the driver’s seat.
Aleksei, rumpled and red-eyed from lack of sleep, surveyed them silently.
The office they entered, obviously having once belonged to some clerk, smelled of empty beer bottles. Papers were all over the desk and floors. Wastebaskets were overflowing. File cabinet drawers yawned open, as if they’d been ransacked. Paper clips, staplers, unopened mail—the detritus of a once-busy place—was everywhere.
As the others stood around surveying the mess, Kiril began clearing debris off the chairs, making space for the four of them to sit.
He pulled out a chair for Adrienne.
She sat down and cleared her throat. “Where is my husband, Colonel Andreyev?”
“So you know.” Aleksei sounded weary. “I found out barely an hour ago. Your husband is in good hands. He’s recovering from the effects of a large dose of Valium.”
He turned to Kiril. “You played your part to perfection,” he said in Russian. “I know what you did in Zurich—what you told the Western press. Dr. Brenner told me about the elaborate preparations you made to defect. What I don’t know is why you came back.”
“I’ll tell you as long as we include Mrs. Brenner in the conversation by speaking English.”
“Aren’t we chivalrous,” Aleksei said drily—but in English.
“Actually, it was Adrienne Brenner who realized something which hadn’t occurred to me when I took her husband’s place. I’d just assumed you and your KGB pals would capitulate in the wake of all that publicity. That you’d send her husband back on the next plane. But, as she pointed out, I had managed to fool her—his own wife—so how hard could it be for you to convince a worldwide audience that her husband’s defection was real? Dr. Brenner was in your custody. All you had to do was keep feeding him drugs and parade him before the cameras every once in a while.”
Aleksei smiled. “My compliments, Mrs. Brenner. You are a very discerning woman.”
“Perhaps you should compliment me for knowing what Dr. Brenner’s ultimate fate will be. You will take him to Moscow where he’ll be installed in some nondescript cardiac hospital—if he’s lucky. More likely, he’ll disappear in the Gulag.”
“Consider yourself complimented as well, Little Brother. But I still can’t grasp why you came back.”
“Once I realized what I’d inadvertently set in motion, I had no choice but to return,” Kiril continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “And since I’m under no illusions about what’s going to happen to me—”
Adrienne gasped. “You’ve traded your life for Kurt’s?”
Ignoring her outburst, Kiril said, “Just so you know, I explained most of the story to his parents in Zurich last night shortly before we left. They’re expecting their son in Zurich tomorrow. You have no choice but to let him go. I’ve no idea what the blackmail was about—something that happened a long time ago when he was in the army. But whatever Brenner was so desperate to hide, it can’t be enough to hold him here. If it ever was,” Kiril added caustically.
Take the bait, Aleksei. Buy into the idea that I’m a self-sacrificing fool. That I’ve given up all hope of surviving.
“It’s about time you and Mrs. Brenner are made privy to a sordid story,” Aleksei said irritably. “Chancellor Malik and I dropped hints of it at that Humboldt University Medical Clinic breakfast, but you had no way of knowing we were talking about Dr. Brenner.”
“Hints of what?” Adrienne asked cautiously.
“Of helpless, half-starved orphaned children who, after surviving a Nazi death camp, were rescued by the Red Cross and turned over to American servicemen. The Americans took over the care and feeding—literally—of these kids, hiding them until they could be placed in a DP camp and eventually sent to America. Your husband—for strictly self-serving reasons, I might add—betrayed them. As the Russians led these children across Glienicker Bridge into East Berlin, they chose death over Soviet custody.”
Adrienne was visibly shocked. Kiril’s face had turned ashen.
Aleksei pounded the final nail into Kurt Brenner’s coffin. “I know all this because I was there. So was Chancellor Malik. We recorded it.”
Aleksei learned forward to scrutinize Kiril’s face.
“Let me get something straight. In spite of the fact that Brenner was about to betray you and knowing full well I’d have had you shot, you came back here ready to sacrifice your freedom for his?”
“I did.”
“You hypocrite!” Aleksei exclaimed. “So much for a man who’s spent most of his life condemning altruism.”
Adrienne groaned inwardly. She felt as if she were trapped in a nightmare.
The nightmare turned surreal when she and Kiril were reunited with a groggy, disheveled-looking Kurt Brenner—a man who was usually buttoned-down neat. Next to him stood Kiril Andreyev, stunning in a tuxedo that nearly blotted out memories of his tired blue suit. To complete the absurdity, Kurt’s hair was still dark brown, Kiril’s completely white.
Aleksei snapped Adrienne back to reality.
“Once our aircraft is fueled and serviced—there seems to be some problem with a wing-tip safety light—all of us will leave for Moscow,” he announced. “You two are surprisingly docile,” Aleksei said, his eyes shifting from Brenner to Adrienne. “Getting resigned to a lengthy sojourn in Moscow? I hope you understand my position, Mrs. Brenner. I cannot possibly let you leave now.”
Adrienne shrugged. “My place is with my husband.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Brenner shouted as Luka moved to stand behind him.
“Where’s Galya? Isn’t she going back with us?” Kiril asked.
Aleksei touched Kiril’s shoulder in a genuine gesture of sympathy. “She’s dead, Kiril. She committed suicide right after you left for Zurich.”
Adrienne’s eyes filled with tears.
“No need to grieve, Mrs. Brenner,” Aleksei said thinly. “Our Miss Barkova was working for me. She was spying on you as well as Kiril. Who do you think let me know when Herr Roeder passed you that incriminating package? You behaved like a well-trained homing pigeon, my dear, leading me straight to—”
“You tortured him to death, didn’t you?” Adrienne lashed out.
“As it happens, I didn’t. For what it’s worth, Herr Roeder died of heart failure—a vestige of scarlet fever when he was a child. There was a great deal of it going around at the time.”
He turned to Kiril. “Galina Barkova’s body is being loaded into the plane’s cargo hold as we speak—the least I can do. Don’t blame yourself. Her unrequited love wasn’t quite what it seemed. She was spying on you for the last two years in exchange for a few trinkets.” He paused. “She didn’t give you away in the end though, did she?”