by Erika Holzer
Why had Brenner accepted the invitation to East Berlin with such alacrity?
Kiril thought about some Western physicians who’d come to Moscow from time to time.
How everyone in Dr. Yanin’s operating theater, from Yanin on down, had been excited at the mere prospect of learning about new ideas and technologies. The Americans, in particular, were open and generous about sharing their medical expertise—and friendly. But not judgemental. They saw—there was no way they could help seeing—the rigid control the Soviet government exercised over its citizens. No free exchange of ideas. No opportunity for hosts and guests to be alone. He recalled one American doctor who had given him a politically harmless detective novel in exchange for a volume of Russian poems but hadn’t even noticed that both books had been examined by the KGB minders as if their pages contained a coded plot to overthrow the Kremlin.
Kiril’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of two limousines. During their research, Kiril and Stepan had learned a lot about Western vehicles—cars and trucks manufactured in the Soviet Union after World War II by reverse engineering of a classic American automobile: the Packard Super-8. The Soviet “Packard,” a ZIS-110 sedan, had a 6-liter, 8-cylinder engine under the hood, 140 horse power, and could reach a top speed of nearly ninety miles per hour—fast for those days. Stalin was rumored to have owned several Packards, so the story went, and he wanted the Soviets’ first effort to manufacture a luxury automobile patterned after a stellar American car of the 1940s. Indeed, the ZIS-110 was so popular that Communist leaders from around the world—Mao, Tito, and Walter Ulbrecht of East Germany—favored them. So Kiril wasn’t surprised to see two of them on the tarmac.
The lead limousine pulled up to where Kiril and Galya were standing, the second just behind it. The first vehicle’s right rear door opened and a trim uniformed Vopo emerged, snapped open a black umbrella, and helped a short man wearing a top-hat to get out of the car. Top-hat carried a large piece of cardboard in the shape of a key.
The mayor of East Berlin bearing a symbolic key to the city for Herr Doktor Professor Kurt Brenner?
When Kiril had been stationed in Murmansk, he’d picked up a lot of American slang. The slang word he thought of now was “corny.”
The second car disgorged a huge woman wearing clodhopper shoes, serge trousers, and a heavy wool overcoat. Her close-cropped gray hair was immediately soaked. As her car door was closing, Kiril glimpsed a man sitting in the rear seat.
“Here they come!” Galya exclaimed.
Kiril squinted toward the horizon and saw a tiny speck. As he watched it grow larger, the speck became a flying fish skimming over dark clouds. He felt a surge of optimism. Whatever else he might be, Brenner was an American. He would never succumb to a blackmail threat—not if the price were his way of life, his freedom.
The fish metamorphosed into a smooth silver body. Circling for a landing, the plane taxied to a halt in front of the small group.
The man and woman who emerged from the plane were Americans, all right. You could sense it in the lift of their heads. In the way they moved. Kiril focused on Kurt Brenner’s walk—jaunty, with a brisk authoritative step. Unlike his own more deliberate way of moving. He burned the image into his brain. He would need to replicate Brenner’s walk until it was second nature. Brenner was swinging a trim briefcase the way an American movie hero might cross a patio swinging a tennis racket. Another indelible image. He zeroed in on Brenner’s hair. It was thicker than his, but not by much. He made a mental note to pick up some hair tonic.
The inventory stopped abruptly. He scrutinized Kurt Brenner’s face, now only a few yards from his own.
I have a good chance of making this work!
He was so elated that he forgot the standing order he had given himself. Monitor people’s reactions—especially Galya’s.
He needn’t have worried about Galya. She had barely noticed Brenner, too preoccupied with studying his wife. As he readied himself for making small talk, he glanced at Adrienne Brenner. She was tall, with an almost cat-like grace. She wore a forest-green cape, gold braid running across the shoulders and along the raised collar. Copper glints were all he could see of her hair, most of it captured under a wide-brimmed hat.
He couldn’t quite grasp why something about this woman made him uneasy, nor why he slipped his arm around Galya’s waist.
Adrienne Brenner took in the size of what had been billed as “the largest airport in East Germany.” She thought about the research she’d crammed into the last few days. It hadn’t prepared her for the moment when their plane was close enough for her to notice tethered goats. They were grazing on grass, on tarmac that was weathered and cracked… like rows of abandoned country roads going nowhere. She saw planes next to a hangar—only three? And men with submachine guns standing like uniformed statues at strategic points around the field. She’d been forewarned about that. Still, it unnerved her.
Frustrated that she couldn’t put her small camera to work, she turned a polite face to the two officials who’d emerged from their limousines and managed to nod agreeably through ponderous introductions in German. As soon as the formalities were over, she extended her hand in silent greeting to the blonde woman who’d been staring at her—lovely, but oddly disconcerting. The man in raincoat and dark glasses was not so much disconcerting as… intense.
Amenities over and the key to the city presented, Kiril, per Aleksei’s instructions, waited to see what the seating arrangements were to be.
The gray-haired woman took Dr. Brenner’s elbow and guided him toward her limousine. With obsequious deference, she opened the ZIS’s right rear door for Brenner, waited until he got in, and then joined the driver up front.
Not surprised at seeing who his seat-mate was, Brenner was nonetheless shocked at his appearance. Sixteen years had been good to Major Dmitri Malik. Straight black hair, streaked with gray now. A mocking quality in the not-quite-hidden recesses of a remembered smile. Eyes the same glacial pale gray.
“Hello, Doc,” Malik said cheerfully with no trace of an accent. “The world has a habit of continuing to turn, don’t you think? Vodka?” he asked, leaning forward to a built-in bar facing them.
“Thank you, no.”
“A cigarette, then.”
“Why not?” Brenner said.
He noticed that the window between them and the driver was closed.
Not that the two people up front couldn’t be tuned into the conversation electronically…
Malik’s manner, as he lit Brenner’s cigarette, was deferential. “Your first trip to East Berlin, Dr. Brenner?”
Brenner almost choked on the smoke in his lungs.
The sonofabitch is toying with me. Okay, you bastard, I’ll play your game until I see what the score is.
“I was here during the War,” Brenner told him. “But that’s a tale too long to relate in a short drive to my hotel,” he said, getting in the last word.
Chapter 24
So far, so good, Kiril thought as he sat on a jump seat in the Mayor’s limousine, facing him and Adrienne Brenner. It was an opportunity to take the American woman’s measure. Her window was down.
When they pulled up in front of a low brick building at the airport’s exit, an East German civilian walked over and politely asked for her passport. “There will be no need for you to leave the car, Frau Brenner,” he said in English. “I will be happy to attend to the formalities inside.”
Adrienne handed over her passport. Opening her door, she said, “I’d like to have a quick look inside, if you don’t mind.” She got out without waiting to see if he did.
When the man hesitated, Kiril told him in German, “Not to worry. I’ll see to it.”
Inside was as commercial as a monastery, Adrienne thought. No gift shops. No displays of magazines and candy bars. No books or newspapers, of course. There was only one small dining area behind which a waitress with dark circles under her eyes and indifference in the shape of her mouth was serving soft
drinks and sausages to a half-dozen customers.
“Our terminal is not impressive, I’m afraid,” said a voice behind her.
“You speak English.”
“I do,” Kiril replied.
But with a thick Russian accent, she noted. “I gather you’ve seen airport terminals in the West?”
“Only in the cinema,” he said with a faint smile. “Until yesterday, I was never out of the Soviet Union. Perhaps you have questions, Mrs. Brenner? If so, I’ll be happy to answer them.”
She was tempted to ask, Why are a couple of Russians—you and your girlfriend—our escorts instead of East German apparatchiks? And what’s with the man in the soiled military uniform who never takes his eyes off you? As if I couldn’t guess.
“—my job to see that your trip to East Berlin is a memorable one. We Russians have a motto,” Kiril told her. “Показывать их в наших товаров. ‘Show them the best of our goods.’ I must apologize for this inauspicious beginning. If you like, I can give you a brief preview of some of the best the Deutsche Demokratische Republik has to offer before we proceed to your hotel.”
“I’m game, Doctor… ?”
“Andreyev. Kiril Andreyev.”
He waited for Luka Rogov to sit up front before giving the driver directions.
“The new civic center,” Kiril announced as they drove by. “Forty blocks of office buildings, housing units, shopping arcades. Over there, an expensive new theater. Next to it, a concert hall.”
Adrienne took in the huge circular plaza ringed with tall buildings. Spacious pedestrian walkways, but with few pedestrians. A wide boulevard with virtually no traffic. According to the most recent statistics, fewer than one East German in twelve owned a car.
“Your hotel.” Kiril pointed to a high rise with an expansive sweep of his hand. “Over forty stories and three thousand modern rooms. I think you will enjoy your stay there. Our famous television tower.” He indicated a thin tubular structure. “The second tallest edifice of its kind in all of Europe—almost twelve hundred feet high,” he said with a tinge of pride. “The People’s radio and television broadcasts come from there.”
Adrienne nodded politely, not wanting to offend her guide. If American movies were his one source of familiarity with the West, you’d think the contrast would be more than enough to dampen his enthusiasm!
“Any questions?” he asked as the limousine moved on.
She thought for a moment. “Do the women in East Germany—in the Soviet Union, for that matter—have what Americans call equal rights?”
Kiril smiled his approval. “Women in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik have many rights, Mrs. Brenner. And I assure you, many Russian women have the same. In Moscow, it is a common sight to see women directing traffic, driving trolleys, climbing telephone poles, and working alongside men on construction sites. Depending on their fortitude, they dig ditches and haul heavy equipment. Some women are nurses, like my friend Galya.” He paused. “But I think very few are physicians.”
“You are an excellent guide, Dr. Andreyev,” Adrienne said, pulling a notebook and pen out of her shoulder-bag.
You are a treasure trove of information.
“What am I looking at over there?” she asked, pointing.
“Neue Wache. Literally, New Guardhouse.” It’s a memorial to the victims of militarism and fascism.”
She saw Greek columns and heel-clicking, goose-stepping East German soldiers.
“They change the guards every hour,” he told her.
“Unter den Linden!” he announced with a touch of awe. “The Soviet Embassy. A museum, an opera house. Over there is Humboldt University. It has a newly renovated clinic where your husband’s medical conference will take place.” Kiril ordered the driver to stop, eager to see what Adrienne Brenner’s reaction would be.
The famous Unter den Linden, Adrienne thought. A vast boulevard enlivened by four parallel rows of linden trees on each side. It was the most chillingly barren street she had ever seen. There were red flags on official black limousines parked along the street’s center island. More red flags hung from the long, thin necks of lampposts. They bent obediently over the pavement and made her think of tall gaunt men, tagged and hunched in silent agony.
The boulevard reminded her of an abandoned parking lot but with one appalling exception. Where Unter den Linden began—or ended—she spotted some people. East Germans. They were milling about aimlessly. Despite a mass of shrubbery, nothing grew quite high enough to block the stone columns of Brandenburg Gate—and beyond the columns, the just-begun new Berlin Wall. “Can we stop the car for a moment?” she asked Andreyev.
Kiril nodded. “Halt.”
Adrienne leaned out the window, wanting to see beyond the columns from the same perspective as an East German, hungry for a tantalizing glimpse of West Berlin, now beyond her grasp. She pulled out her notebook and did a quick sketch—poor substitute for a camera—but she didn’t want it confiscated.
“Marx-Engles Platz,” Dr. Andreyev said.
“Why does that sound familiar?” she wondered out loud.
“Probably because it was once part of the famous Lustgarten. Strange how history repeats itself. Hitler held huge rallies and military parades there. Now the East Germans do. Just last evening I witnessed a stunning torchlight parade of tanks and marching soldiers. Do you like parades, Mrs. Brenner?”
“Just the American kind. Kids marching with high school bands and drum majorettes displaying their legs. No tanks. They can be hell on the roads,” she said drily.
She had thought her bluntness would offend him. Incredibly, he seemed pleased. A real enigma, this Dr. Andreyev.
As the limo moved on, she couldn’t help wondering why she sensed a grim purposefulness underneath his running commentary, like a discordant musical theme that contradicts the melody.
“We’d better wrap up this brief preview and head for the hotel before my husband thinks I’ve been kidnapped,” she said reluctantly.
Chapter 25
“Zum Wohle aller!” Kiril said. “For the good of all!”
A smiling Galya repeated the toast in her halting English, and then passed around glasses of champagne.
Kiril tipped his glass in a mock salute to an unsmiling Luka, who stood off to the side.
Adrienne Brenner took a single sip of champagne before setting her glass down. “I’m sure you’re eager to check out the clinic, Kurt. Give me a few minutes to unpack a few things,” she said, and walked into the adjoining bedroom.
Kiril eagerly looked around. He had never been inside a modern hotel suite before. His own room down the corridor—his and Rogov’s—was one used by the hotel’s travelling auditors. Just a couple of narrow beds with the barest essentials. The Brenner suite was spacious. And cheerful, he thought. A sitting room with a nubby couch and two matching chairs. A bedroom nearly as large, with an armoire of glossy oaken wood, flanked by dressers that took up the entire wall. An enormous four-poster bed—
An observation he quickly pushed out of his mind.
He sensed that the Brenners were not impressed—a point in Kiril’s favor. People accustomed to luxury would be reluctant to give it up. He added up the morning’s other favorable points. On the first leg of his impromptu mini-tour, Adrienne Brenner had been both genuinely curious and remarkably open about her obvious distaste for most of what he’d called to her attention. She had not felt the need to be diplomatic about what she was seeing. Nor had she made any attempt to avoid politically awkward subjects. Even in his wildest imagination he had not been prepared for a woman who was so disarmingly direct. Her candor and independence intrigued him. He mentally transported her to Moscow and tried to imagine her standing before some bureaucrat, being told what to do, how to live, what to think. He could not imagine it.
If a police state were as real to her as it seemed, there was virtually no chance she would ever consent to live in one—certainly not in East Germany, let alone the Soviet Union.
Would her husband defect without her? Unlikely.
His eyes drifted to Galya, still smiling, talking animatedly to Dr. Brenner. Flirting? He watched her cut through an elaborate cellophane-wrapped basket of fruit.
“Compliments of Colonel Aleksei Andreyev,” Galya told Dr. Brenner.
Kurt Brenner felt as if he’s been hit with an electric charge.
First Dmitri Malik. Now his former subordinate. Does this Aleksei Andreyev think I’ve forgotten his name after all these years? Or is he counting on my remembering? A colonel, now, doubtless KGB, with the same last name as our “tour guide.” What have I gotten myself into? What in god’s name could they possibly want?
As Dr. Brenner excused himself to join his wife in the bedroom, Kiril saw Galya scan the room’s plush appointments. Her focus shifted almost imperceptibly to Adrienne Brenner’s clothes. They were casually strewn across the four-poster.
At first I’m captivated by the heroine’s clothes, her jewelry, even her high-heeled shoes! Then I notice how she acts so casual about the things I long for.
Poor dear Galya. It pained Kiril to see her listless posture. Her not-quite-lifeless eyes. The smile that never quite reached her eyes because she had not quite given up. How much longer before she did once she was condemned to spend the rest of her life in the Soviet Union?
As the five of them rode the elevator down—Galya and the Brenners in front, Kiril and Rogov in the rear—Kiril caught the faint scent of Adrienne Brenner’s perfume. While they waited for their limousine, he felt in league with the wind—urging it on as it blew the folds of Adrienne Brenner’s garment around her legs.
Wondering about the body underneath the cape.
Chapter 26
“The Humboldt University medical clinic!”
