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.
Epilogue
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.
United States of America.
Coming Soon from Erika Holzer
With scalding suspense and a plot ripped out of the headlines, Eye for an Eye explores urban violence and retribution.
Karen Newman is a smart savvy executive whose sole contact with violence is abstract, and whose soft-on-crime inclinations are in striking contrast to her hard-headed business acumen.
Until violence strikes a much-loved member of her family and sends her life spinning out of control.
Confronted with the spectacle of street gangs and sadistic young killers free to kill again, an increasingly enraged Karen finds herself the object of recruitment efforts by people who promise “vigilante justice.” Mildly curious, she takes the first tentative step, cynically anticipating a bunch of bat-swinging amateurs — and is caught off guard by the professionalism she encounters.
Despite her initial reluctance, Karen finds herself seduced by what she sees and hears firsthand. Gradually, she is drawn into the inner circle of a fascinating, chillingly organized group. Its name: VICTIMS ANONYMOUS. Its structure: secret cells in far-flung major American cities.
Its motto: Vengeance is mine.
Knowing her particular business expertise is needed to catapult a growing organization into a national phenomenon — a force to be reckoned with — Karen tries to convince herself that Victims Anonymous is a force for good. In the face of mounting evidence that the police and the courts are increasingly unable to cope with violent crime, she no longer needs much convincing.
She makes the ultimate commitment.
It does not waiver until she crosses swords with a man who shares that commitment — a passion for justice that equals her own. A man she must deceive before he can bring the entire edifice crashing down upon the heads of everyone and everything she cares about.
Eye for an Eye is the story of a gutsy woman’s personal struggle to balance genuine compassion for the abandoned victims of a collapsing criminal justice system with a dangerous romance and a growing conviction that vigilantism, however well intended, is a magnet for evil.
Nelson DeMille, best-selling author of The Panther, has said that:
“Eye for an Eye is a serious and disturbing look at street gangs, urban violence, and the criminal justice system. It is also a story about the uniquely American response to crime—vigilantism.