“Pushes out the cardboard wall, slides the six slats away, shoves the window into the cab, slips under the steering wheel, pushes the starter and engages the gears, and drives like hell to the West,” Kiril said vehemently.
He had a frightening flash image of Stepan Brodsky having done the same thing—until he realized that Stepan had commandeered his diplomat friend’s limousine not from the middle of the bridge, but way back at the guard houses. With East German and Soviet firepower covering both the guard houses and the watch towers, the odds of his friend making it across had been near impossible, he thought bleakly.
Chapter 49
Kiril, Adrienne, and Brenner entered a ramshackle Quonset hut. Debris was everywhere. Missing windows, twisted metal, empty file cabinets, upturned furniture.
Knowing none of them would get any much-needed sleep if Kurt pulled another attempted-rape scene, Adrienne deliberately kept Kiril between them, bedding down with some heavy blankets that the Zinds had left for them.
All three of them slept in their clothes, removing only their shoes.
The day’s events had taken a heavy emotional toll.
Kiril wondered whether he—whether all three of them—would live to see another night. Even though he was utterly fatigued, he forced himself to stay awake until he heard the rhythmical breathing of the others. Minutes later, he fell into a deep sleep.
When he awakened, he had a long moment of disorientation… Sunrise, he reminded himself. Thursday.
Adrienne was still asleep, her face in repose. He turned in the direction of Kurt Brenner.
Gone.
“Adrienne,” Kiril whispered, gently shaking her awake. “Your husband’s not here.”
Kurt Brenner had feigned sleep until Adrienne and Kiril’s regular breathing told him they really were asleep. Carrying his shoes, he moved soundlessly through the Quonset hut. He knew that the dirt trail they’d walked down with the Zinds the night before would take him to the blacktop road—and from there to the Havel River.
Outside, he slipped into his shoes and, keeping off the trail, moved cautiously parallel to it through dense underbrush. He headed for the road with only a sliver of moon for light. Once he got there, he began to follow it while still keeping himself hidden in the underbrush.
Dawn was about to break when he stopped to rest. His plan was to reach the river in early daylight, then hide nearby until the fracas on the bridge started later in the morning. Then under cover of the ensuing chaos, he would swim for the west side of the Havel River—he was a powerful swimmer—and put an end to this long, drawn-out nightmare.
As Brenner crawled on his belly through the underbrush, obscured by foliage, he kept Glienicker Bridge and the Havel River in sight.
A watchtower Vopo noticed what appeared to be movement. Unsure if he could trust his eyesight because dawn had not yet broken, the Vopo looked away. But when he quickly looked in the same direction again, the movement under the foliage was even closer to the river.
Chapter 50
Von Eyssen was halfway out the door when the buzzer rang on his desk. He frowned with annoyance, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t make him late for his appointment with a Soviet major general who didn’t like to be kept waiting.
“It’s some captain from the Potsdam checkpoint,” his secretary apologized. “He insists on speaking with you.”
Potsdam? The major general will have to wait.
“Put him through.”
“We’ve got him!” The voice from Potsdam was triumphant. “We’ve got the Russian spy. The one you’re looking for.”
“Kiril Andreyev? You’re certain?”
“It’s him, all right. I just checked out the latest bulletin. No question that it’s him.”
“What about the American couple?”
“Andreyev was alone.”
“Did you search him yet?” von Eyssen asked, trying to keep the concern out of his voice.
“No.”
“Do it the second we get off the phone.”
“Yessir.”
“Have the Russians been informed?” von Eyssen asked cautiously.
“They must have been. That’s how it always works with defectors.”
Too bad. What will Colonel Aleksei Andreyev do when they contact him? Make a run for Glienicker Bridge, of course. If Andreyev gets hold of his brother’s lighter first, he’ll destroy it and then I’ll be back where I started—his word against mine.
“You want me to search him before the Russians take him, Colonel?”
“Take him? Take him where?”
“I don’t really know,” the captain said. “That’s what happens every time with defectors. Our Russian comrades get them first. Then us.”
“Listen to me, Captain. I don’t care what you have to do, but search Kiril Andreyev before the Russians grab him. I want whatever you find. And the Russians are not to know, goddammit! Do you understand?”
The usually unflappable Colonel Emil von Eyssen smashed the phone down, sweat oozing from his armpits. Staring off into space, he wondered if he dared go anywhere near the damn bridge after what had happened with Stepan Brodsky last year. Any more trouble in the vicinity of Glienicker could prove to be a personal disaster, with severe criticism being the mildest punishment. On the other hand, if he were to get his hands on the lighter first, von Eyssen could prove that a Soviet—the brother of Colonel Aleksei Andreyevich Andreyev—was the traitor, not an East German citizen.
Not his late brother-in-law, Ernst Roeder.
“Out!” the East German captain ordered.
Those who were sitting shot to their feet. Everyone left.
Except Kurt Brenner, handcuffed to a radiator, who wasn’t going anywhere soon.
After the captain finished a quick but thorough body search, he picked up the telephone and called von Eyssen.
“Kiril Andreyev has nothing in his pockets. Nothing on him—period. Should I do a cavity search?”
“Don’t be a fool,” von Eyssen snapped. “Even someone as clever as Kiril Andreyev wouldn’t hide a Zippo cigarette lighter up his ass,” he said, and hung up.
Brenner was stunned. So this Kraut, confused by his dark hair, had searched him looking for something important—a cigarette lighter. And apparently the captain had good reason to think the real Kiril Andreyev had the lighter.
Brenner felt an insane desire to laugh in the man’s face—just as a very sane idea came to him.
His instinct for survival hadn’t deserted him after all, he thought with an inner smile as he pictured a Studebaker truck just on the other side of the wall from where he sat.
Chapter 51
During Brenner’s odyssey, Kiril and Adrienne had reached Albert Zind’s truck and secreted themselves in the tool cabinet’s small compartment.
It was close to dawn. Albert would soon be coming for the truck, Kiril thought. He heard Adrienne take a deep breath, then let the air out slowly. “How are you doing?” he whispered.
“There’s barely enough air for breathing and all I can think of is how desperately I want a cigarette.”
“I know what you mean. Legs getting tired?”
“Terribly. I think they’ll hold up.”
“Lean against me instead of the wall when you want to shift position. It will relieve some of the pressure.”
“Kiril?”
He closed his eyes.
“Why don’t you answer?”
“I wanted to hear you say it again”
“Kiril,” she said softly.
“We’d better stop talking the minute we hear voices outside.”