Midnight Hunter

by Brianna Hale

  I’ve been walking through the woods for twenty minutes with no sign of anyone, let alone a checkpoint office. The blood loss is taking its toll. Adrenaline is keeping me going. Evony is keeping me going. The desire to murder Heydrich is keeping me going. If he’s hurt Evony I will make him suffer whole universes of pain.

  There’s a gleam of a black car up ahead, a Mercedes-Benz. The checkpoint appears through the trees and the barriers are closed. The guards are sending cars back the way they came.

  Looking down at myself I see bloodstains down the front of my uniform and dirt and leaves on the trousers. I have to keep out of sight.

  As I’m carefully approaching the checkpoint office I hear her through the open window.

  “Go to hell.”

  Relief blazes through me. That’s my girl. I can picture the pale oval of her face, stubborn, defiant, as she once looked at me. As no one ever dared look at me. If anything happens to her I will kill everyone responsible and then myself. There is no world, no life for me without her.

  “As you wish,” comes Heydrich’s reply. He’s fighting to keep his voice even but I can hear his frustration. “But I hope you know that there’s nothing to be gained in protecting your lover any longer. If you speak I can see to it that you don’t spend the rest of your life in prison.”

  Silence stretches. I picture her glaring at him. But when she speaks there’s despair in her soft, cracked voice. “All right. I’ll tell you everything.”

  I ease myself closer to the window and peer inside. The captain’s standing over her, her head hanging in defeat.

  But when she raises it her eyes are blazing. “I love Oberstleutnant Reinhardt Volker. He is a loyal citizen of the GDR and is faithful to the Party. I’ve been working with him all this time to expose you as sneaking, undermining idiot who can’t capture two dozen defectors when they’re handed to you on a plate. How does it feel knowing you’ll always be second best, captain? How does it feel knowing that you’ll never measure up to a man like Reinhardt even with all your half-baked schemes?”

  He stares at her, the look on his face almost comical.

  Evony keeps talking, barely pausing for breath. “You’re pathetic, you’re a fool, and when we get back to East Berlin I’ll tell everyone how you botched this as well and Reinhardt got the better of you yet again. Yes, keep looking at me like that, the memory of your stupid face will keep me warm on all the long nights I’ll spend in Hohenschönhausen. That’s were I’m going and I’m not afraid.”

  My heart swells with love and pride. This is my brave girl, who can face a thousand trials, heartbreak, even death, and still hold her head high. I lived half a life before I found her, this young woman who stands on the precipice of death and ruin without flinching.

  But she’s taken it too far. Heydrich knows that he’s lost and anger floods his face. He raises his hand to strike her—

  I don’t watch any more. I bolt for the door, not caring who might see me. But as I burst into the room the sight that greets me is not the one that I was expecting. Heydrich is yelling, and Evony has her teeth clamped to his thigh. He got too close and she bit him. I barely have time to marvel at the comical sight of Heydrich trying to free himself as the other guards are rushing forwards to help him, none of them noticing me in the doorway. I grab a handgun from one of the guard’s holsters while he’s distracted.

  “All of you, stay where you are,” I call in Bulgarian. None of them pay me any attention and I shout again and fire two warning shots into the floor. They turn and look at me in surprise. Heydrich is screaming at them in German but they don’t understand a word he’s saying. There’s a good chance they don’t even know what’s going on. I keep speaking in Bulgarian. “I’m Oberstleutnant Maier of the Staatssicherheit and this man is in violation of East German law. If you comply you will face no disciplinary measures. If you do not I will shoot to kill.”

  The clear orders from a superior officer in their own language works. They all turn to me expectantly. I motion to one of them. “You, take her outside. If anything happens to her it will be more than your life is worth.”

  He crosses the room to help Evony up. I turn to Heydrich, and I’m greeted by a terrible sight.

  He looks like a madman on the verge of a breakdown, his face purple and his eyes wild. He looks between Evony and me and reaches for the gun at his hip, and with dawning horror I see what he means to do. He wants me punished for thwarting him again. He wants me to suffer. And he’s just realized how he can make it happen.

  He draws his gun and the barrel swivels toward her head, each microsecond ticking out with excruciating slowness. I’m going to watch her be killed in lingering detail, each moment etched onto my brain as long as I live.

  “Nein!” I lunge forward. I’m not going to make it in time. Evony’s staring at me, her eyes wide with confusion, unaware of what’s about to happen but able to see from my face that it’s something terrible. A guard crosses in front of me in an attempt to disarm Heydrich, but he’s too late. A gunshot rings out.

  I can’t see anything but I know she’s dead. He’s killed her.

  I fight my way forwards, needing to get to her even though it’s too late. I pull the guard out of the way.

  Someone takes the gun from Heydrich’s hands. It’s twisted around. Another shot rings out. The report is an explosion in my ears and Heydrich looks down at himself, fumbling with his uniform. A dark bloodstain is spreading down his chest.

  Evony’s holding the gun. I don’t understanding what I’m seeing but she seems to be in perfect control as aims the gun and shoots him again, this time right through his heart.

  “You bitch,” Heydrich says in wonderment, and falls to the floor, dead.

  Evony’s eyes are wide and her face is flecked with Heydrich’s blood. She remembers the gun in her hand, shakily puts the safety on and hands it to one of the bemused guards. Then she stands up and walks slowly toward me, staring as if she’s seen a ghost. She reaches out and touches my uniform jacket, tracing the bloodstains with her fingers.

  I pull her to me and hold her close. We both reek of blood and gunpowder.

  “Reinhardt,” she gasps in my arms, her eyes filling with tears. “You came back.”

  “Always. I’ll always find you.” I stroke the hair back from her face. “He had the gun pointed right at your head. How did he miss?”

  She swallows and takes a deep breath. “It was your face. I’ve never seen anyone look so terrified and I suddenly knew what was about to happen. I flung myself forward just in time.” She turns and peers at the wall. There’s a deep bullet hole in the plaster.

  I’m staring at it, seeing how close I came to losing her, when Evony reaches out to touch my blood-soaked collar. “Reinhardt. You’re a mess.”

  I look down at my uniform and see that she’s right. I start to laugh but black spots fill in my vision. Suddenly I can’t bear the weight of my body with my legs. She tries to hold me up but I’m too heavy for her and we sink to the floor.

  The last thing I hear is Evony’s frantic voice. “Quick, call for an ambulance. Doctor. Vrach. No, not with that. The radio’s broken. Please. Isn’t there a telephone somewhere? He needs a doctor.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Evony

  There’s a fresh breeze blowing against my cheeks. The scent of gentle sunshine on clean sheets. The casement window is propped open by a chipped and slightly rusted hook. There are no curtains and the fresh sea air is blowing away the faint mildew scent of rooms that have been closed up for too long. The space beside me in the bed is empty.

  Sozopol. It’s exactly how Reinhardt said it would be. Sleepy, sunny, pretty. Ordinary. There are guards here of course and portraits Zhivkov, the Bulgarian leader, in the square and on some of the houses. But no one seems to pay them much mind and the guards don’t button their uniform jackets. From the living room window last night I watched the fishing boats coming back to the docks, the twining cats lining up in the dusky ligh
t, tails raised and expectant, waiting to be thrown the guts and fish-heads from the day’s haul.

  I’m so tired after the events of the last week that I should go back to sleep, but I keep my eyes fixed on the window because if I close them I see too much blood. Heydrich’s spraying against my face. Reinhardt’s seeping unrelentingly through my fingers as I try to staunch the wound in his neck. The remembered terror of that drive to the hospital. His gray, unconscious face.

  “You’re awake.”

  I look over and see him standing in the doorway, one shoulder against the doorjamb, hands deep in his trouser pockets. There’s a large white plaster on the side of his neck and apart from a slightly paler cast than usual to his skin he looks as he always did. Sleek and powerful. Handsome. His eyes search mine. Perceptive eyes. Worried eyes.

  We barely talked after he was discharged from hospital. He held my hand for most of the two hundred miles to Sozopol. Last night I stayed in the car while he knocked on someone’s front door and I heard loud, excited voices talking. Reinhardt brought us here and I went to bed almost straight away.

  He comes and sits next to me on the bed. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  I pluck at the sheets, not meeting his eyes. “Everything’s wrong. I don’t know why we came here. Bulgaria is spoiled for us.”

  Heydrich is dead by my hand but I haven’t even got time to deal with that because we’re not safe here and I don’t know what’s going to happen to us. Sozopol isn’t nearly far enough away from the havoc of that final border crossing.

  “Spoiled how?”

  “We were supposed to get into Bulgaria without being noticed. After what happened at the border—”

  He covers my hand with his own, his voice gentle and reassuring. “It’s all taken care of, meine Liebe.”

  I look at him, perplexed. Reinhardt is resourceful and clever but surely even he can’t undo the mess we made getting into Bulgaria. Not in less than a day, and not without more upheaval. “But how?”

  “By a few things. Bribes for the guards. An unmarked grave for Heydrich. A Polish intelligence report that will soon arrive in East Berlin detailing the captain’s defection to the West via Danish fishing vessel.”

  Bribes. How much of our starting over money has he spent? And I consider how it will look to the Stasi back in East Berlin that Heydrich followed us in pursuit and ended up defecting. “Heydrich wouldn’t turn like that. Not when he was so close to… Oh, unless he failed. Is that what you implied in your report, that he lost us and couldn’t face returning to East Berlin?”

  Reinhardt smiles. “Implying. I’m working on the report now and I’ll send it to one of my contacts in Poland to deliver to HQ.” He’s silent for a moment, watching me. “It’s too soon to hope that we might get away with our dramatic entry into this country. But looking at you, my beautiful girl, whole and safe and by my side, I find that I have hope anyway.”

  He draws me to him and I put my arms around him. I feel it too. Hope. We’ve battled our way here and we’re in one piece. We love each other. If it comes to it we’ll keep fighting, but the gentle sea breeze that caresses us, the soft buzz of bees in the spring garden, seems to herald the end of our flight.

  “What’s next Reinhardt? What now?”

  “Now? Now nothing. You’re going to rest.” He looks at me closely. “And you’re not going to feel guilty about what you had to do. If you hadn’t killed Heydrich he would have killed you.”

  Do I feel guilty? Part of me wishes that I didn’t have to shoot him, but the other part is viciously glad I did. I didn’t know that this part of myself existed. “I wanted him to die. That’s probably the hardest thing to admit.”

  Reinhardt wraps an arm around my shoulders and kisses my forehead. “It will never not be a difficult memory, Liebling. But it will begin to make sense for you in time, I hope.”

  That’s more comforting than platitudes or telling me I did the right thing. I will always remember what I did, and why. I won’t forget any of this, but it will mean I treasure every peaceful moment in our life from now on.

  “Where will we live?”

  He smiles in mock astonishment. “Where? Here, of course. This is our new home.”

  I gaze around the beautiful sunlit room. Though it’s careworn and musty the little stone cottage has charm, what I’ve seen of it. “But how?”

  “Thanks to a very old friend of mine. That’s who I went to see last night. Our grandfathers were friends and we knew each other as boys. I’ve helped him out over the years when he’s needed it, and now he’s helping me.”

  I wrinkle my nose, suspecting the sort of help Reinhardt could offer. “Shady secret police things?”

  “In a way. His niece met an Italian at university and fell in love with him. I helped with the papers to she could emigrate to the West and be with him.”

  My eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “You know, Reinhardt, you’ve got a stupidly soft heart inside that hard Stasi exterior.”

  He smiles, and kisses me gently. “It’s not Reinhardt, it’s Alexsandr and Lina Lyubomir.”

  Oh, yes, our new secret identities. That will take some getting used to. All this will take a lot of getting used to. But I’m ready to start trying.

  “Would you like to see the rest of the house? It’s been standing empty for some time and there’s a lot of work to be done on it.”

  He helps me out of bed and I smile and take his hand. “But it’s ours?”

  “It’s ours, and I’m going to do everything in my power to see that we’ll be safe here.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Reinhardt wasn’t exaggerating. There’s so much work to do on the house but in the days that follow I enjoy scrubbing floors, making curtains and scouring the meagre shops for the things we need. The activity keeps the worry from my mind. As in East Berlin there are shortages of things like cooking pots and other household items, but there’s plenty of fresh food to come by. We search the market for second-hand furniture and Reinhardt turns out to be quite good at making shelves and rehanging doors. In the evenings I learn Bulgarian from him, a German–Bulgarian dictionary and the local newspaper.

  As the days pass I feel myself slowly unbending. It was hard at first to leave the house on my own. I was afraid that I’d come home to find that Reinhardt had been arrested, or that I’d be arrested in the streets. But the sleepiness of the town is soothing. So is lying beside Reinhardt in bed at night and listening to his steady breathing. All I’ve wanted from my life is to be with the people I love and to be happy with them. The West was the answer at first because it was the place my father wanted, that Ana wanted, and there’s still sadness in my heart that I can’t be with them. But I think I can be happy here, with the man I love.

  Reinhardt smells of sawdust and varnish these days, and there are paint smears on his shirt and wrists. We make love in the middle of the day in the sunshine-filled bedroom, or on the new rug that he rolls out on the living room floor. I haven’t taken the pill in weeks.

  As we sit in candlelight one evening I say to him across the kitchen table, “Please don’t join the secret police here.” The electrics are being repaired and tangles of old wires hang from all the light switches.

  Reinhardt looks up from the newspaper in surprise. Then he smiles, and I see the ghost of the hunter in his eyes. He’s always there, lurking at the edges. “But Liebling, I have to do something and I’m so good at that.”

  “I know you are. Very good. But can’t you find something else that you’re good at? Something that’s not so…cruel?”

  He leans forward and kisses me softly. “For you, of course.”

  But he’s agreed too readily and I’m suspicious. I scramble to add more conditions. “Something that doesn’t hurt anyone, body or mind. Something that helps people.”

  Reinhardt smiles a wide, amused smile. “Would you like me to become a fairy godmother perhaps?”

  I give his chest a little shove. “Ha ha. I’ll settle for you doing som
ething that doesn’t hurt or terrorize anyone. Is that agreeable?”

  He pretends to think on this for a moment as if it’s a great sacrifice. “Well, all right.”

  “You could get a job from the State,” I point out. “You could teach History or Politics. You know enough about both.”

  Grimacing, he says, “Mm, I don’t think so, meine Liebe. I would grow bored, and you wouldn’t like me when I’m bored.”

  I can imagine. I’ve already noticed that he doesn’t seem to know how to sit still for very long. His mind is always ticking over with the next things to do. I open my mouth to make more suggestions but he kisses me into silence.

  “I’ll think of something,” he assures me.

  I reach for some of the newspaper and the language dictionary so I can translate it. “Good, you’re going to need a job. Because I’m pregnant.”

  He freezes, and I see an old fear flicker in his eyes. I look at him over the newsprint, my heart in my mouth.

  He takes a deep breath. “Are you sure?”

  I nod, tears prickling my eyes. “Pretty sure. I think it must have happened almost straight away. I’m two weeks late and I’m never late.”

  His hand reaches for mine and holds on as he searches for the right words. “I just want you to be safe, Liebling. I’m happy, I promise.”

  But. The unspoken word hangs in the air. He’s told me that if I’d died by Heydrich’s hands he would have died as well. He would have taken his own life rather than go through all that pain again. Childbirth has risk. Children die young from disease, from accidents. I take a deep breath. “It will be hard, and we will worry, but I didn’t come with you to live half a life. I want to be in this house with you, loving you, and loving our children.”

  He nods, and when I return to my translating I can feel his eyes on me, watchful.

  As the weeks pass and my belly grows he’s by turns anxious and curious. He never had this the first time, I realize. He never got to see Johanna’s belly grow, or watch her demolish half a loaf of pumpernickel bread at eleven at night, or sit shiny-bellied in a bath full of warm soapy water. He puts his hands on my stomach, feeling for the baby and waiting long periods for it to kick. He’s fascinated by every change in my body. I watch his face sometimes and my happiness is bittersweet. I always assumed that I would have this so I can just get on with things, but he never did. It must seem like a strange dream to him.