by Erika Holzer
“Are you telling me this combined effort has already begun?!”
“Several weeks ago. At midnight on August 12 to 13. East German Vopos and soldiers began to close the East to West Berlin border. Streets running parallel to the border were torn up. Barbed wire was strung. Four days later, the regime began to lay large concrete blocks. Guards were ordered to shoot anyone attempting to cross the border. According to Soviet intelligence, all of East Germany and East Berlin will in time be entirely sealed off from the West.”
“How exactly?”
“With chain fences. Concrete walls. Minefields in a no-man’s-land ‘death zone’ between what will later become two walls parallel to each other and snaking for miles. Vicious guard dogs will be caged and released to find and kill people trying to escape.”
“People whose only crime is wanting to be free,” she whispered.
“The entire East German population will be caged in,” he told her. “Family members will be sealed off from one another.”
Reaching for the wall telephone, he told Rolf Gruner in German to get as low as he could over what Kiril thought of as the early stages of The Wall’s construction.
“I’ll do my best,” Gruner replied after a moment’s hesitation. “But I can’t enter West German airspace and I sure as hell don’t relish getting shot down in the East.”
“Thanks,” Kiril said as Gruner swung as close as he dared to the East Berlin side of the wall. He translated for the others, making sure Kurt Brenner, as well as his wife, heard him loud and clear.
Adrienne had stopped taking notes. Pressing her face to the large window next to her seat, she followed the helicopter’s trajectory—treetop level. Her face felt oddly still… like a wax dummy’s. She zeroed in on the smooth gray of concrete. The grainy unevenness of cement. The still-intact wall of some forgotten home. An unbroken series of bricked-up doors and windows. She shivered as a bright gold speck signaled malevolently—the sun’s reflection caught and held by razor-sharp glass shards all along the top. Like a sewing machine needle on a band of retreating fabric, her eyes drilled down the wall. She spotted a roller device—lengths of pipe atop the wall that forged a path through the broken glass so that anyone groping desperately for a handhold would slip. Between the pipes she saw metal poles with outspread arms, taut wires stretching from one pole to the next. Electrified? she wondered, closing her eyes as she stifled the urge to weep for its future victims.
Gruner banked sharply.
“Our pilot wants to avoid not just West Berlin,” Kiril explained, “but what might be called ‘aggressive notice’ from East Berlin radar.”
They were flying low enough for Adrienne to see a large park with a huge bronze statue on a white pedestal. She asked Kiril about it.
“The park? It’s the East Berlin Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park.”
“A memorial to what?” Adrienne asked cautiously.
“More precisely, to whom. It’s a military cemetery—an enormous mass grave commemorating 5,000 Soviet soldiers who died in the battle for Berlin.”
Adrienne restrained a shudder. “What is it about mass burials and unmarked graves that seems so… so unsettling?” she wondered aloud.
“When a man dies, he should be permitted the dignity and solitude of a private resting place, not—” Kiril’s mouth twisted. “—not lowered into some anonymous collection of humanity.”
Luka Rogov understood virtually nothing of Kiril’s explanation. But his face brightened at the mention of the word “Treptower.” He’d heard about Treptower, all right. Tugging at Kiril’s sleeve, he said in Russian, “Look down there.”
“At what? I see the park, a bronze statue—and now the cemetery.”
“No, not cemetery of Great Patriotic War. Look at what comes after.”
“I see a field of some kind,” Kiril said, puzzled.
“Is secret, this field.” Rogov lowered his voice as if he were a fellow conspirator.
“Then why tell me?” Kiril asked warily.
“From kindness,” Luka said with a sly, setting-a-trap smile. “Field is new but not empty. You like know what is in it?”
He pressed binoculars into Kiril’s hands.
“I don’t like,” Kiril said, handing the binoculars back.
“Your friend Brodsky is in this field!” Luka announced triumphantly. “Your friend and other traitors, all together in one big hole, like garbage in garbage dump. Look!” Luka said insistently, brandishing the binoculars. “Still have time to say goodbye!”
Kiril’s head snapped back as if he’d just caught the sting of a whip.
Not Stepan. Not in such a place!
Swinging around in the small aisle until he faced Rogov, Kiril lunged for his throat.
With a swift upward motion, Rogov broke Kiril’s hold with one hand. With the other, he brought the butt of his Nagant revolver against the side of Kiril’s head. Staggering backward, Kiril fell against Galya and Brenner before dropping to the floor. Luka resumed his seat and holstered his gun.
His head bleeding, his mind reeling, Kiril pulled himself up as the others sat frozen in their seats. Reaching for the wall phone, he shouted orders in German to the flight deck.
Galya gasped.
“Godammit,” Brenner muttered, gripping the arm rests again.
Adrienne Brenner’s hand was shaking as she pressed a handkerchief against Kiril’s head wound.
Chapter 30
As soon the helicopter’s wheels touched the ground, Kiril thanked Rolf Gruner for setting down. “We’ll be staying only a few minutes,” he reassured the captain.
Opening the helicopter door, Kiril jumped down, Rogov right behind him. Galya and the Brenners followed.
Adrienne glanced back at the helicopter, its blades still rotating slowly, perched on the field like some wary bird poised for flight.
All five of them stood looking at a couple of uniformed soldiers headed in their direction, submachine guns in hand.
“Vopos,” Kiril told them. “Let me handle this,” he added with a warning glance at Brenner before walking toward the soldiers.
Brenner caught snatches of German, followed in short order by angry demands for an explanation. But Andreyev’s authoritative voice—he said something about it being an inspection—made the Vopos uncertain about what to do next. One decided he would go to the phone at the guard shack three hundred or so yards away.
The other Vopo’s mind was apparently made up for him, Adrienne thought, as she noticed what appeared to be some kind of a disturbance at the other end of the large field.
“What’s that about?” she asked Galya.
“Is better not know, better not be mixed in,” she whispered.
Adrienne shrugged and started to walk in Kiril Andreyev’s direction.
“Please to stay near helicopter,” Galya called after her. “We have no permit to be here. I heard Mongolian say field is mass grave. But not like Treptower. Not for heroes from Great Patriotic War. This is mass grave for traitors.”
Adrienne stared at her.
Like Paul Houston’s friend, Stepan Brodsky?
“Where do you think you’re going?” Brenner asked Adrienne.
“To see for myself,” she said flatly.
Her heels sunk into the black furrows of the freshly plowed field. It covered an area large enough for a hundred conventional graves, she thought. How many could be buried in a human dumping ground, a thousand? Two?
Dr. Andreyev, his Mongolian “shadow” a few feet behind him, was walking along a barbed-wire fence that surrounded the field. Adrienne groped in a side pocket of her bag for a slim silver object the length of a pocket comb. Avoiding the gaze of the pilots and the Vopos, but not particularly concerned about Dr. Andreyev’s nurse—or was Galya his girlfriend?—Adrienne slid the outer shell of the miniature Minox back and forth, exposing the lens as she snapped photographs of the field… the barbed wire… a couple of signs that said verböten.
The Minox back i
n her bag, she was about to rejoin the others when she caught a glimpse of Dr. Andreyev’s face. She was reluctant to infringe on his privacy. What changed her mind was the sight of his mouth. It was distorted by such pain that not even his dark glasses could mask it. Slipping out of her shoes so she could better navigate the pliant earth, she went over to him and touched his arm in a gesture of support.
“I have seen their barbed wire, their submachine guns,” he said slowly as if conversing with a total stranger. “I have been to their detention camps and their mental wards. I have seen how they punish the living. But this. This is a form of vindictiveness I had never imagined. To punish the dead? To rob them of a decent burial?”
“The dead are beyond punishment,” she said gently.
“What about the people who mourn them?” he countered. “A grave is for remembering. Why else do we return again and again to converse? To leave flowers? To say a silent prayer?”
Why else, indeed? she thought. Then he said something she would never forget.
“Now I must spend the rest of my life trying to forget this place.”
In an effort to distract him, she pointed out the disturbance she’d noticed at the other end of the field. “What’s happening over there?”
He shrugged. “I’ve no idea.”
“Why don’t we find out?”
As the two of them made their way back toward the fracas, Adrienne, lost in thought, was certain of one thing. Whatever his motives, her “tour guide” was no apologist for a totalitarian regime, neither East German nor Soviet. Kiril Andreyev was one of its victims.
* * *
Angry words nudged Adrienne out of her somber reverie.
“Are you denying what we both know? This is a burial ground!”
The angry words came from a short muscular man dressed in laborer’s clothes who was addressing a Vopo. Three other men stood next to the laborer, looking uncomfortable in their neatly pressed suits. One of the men had a protective arm around the shoulder of an old woman in black shawl and babushka.
… Not so old, Adrienne realized, moving closer. Just tired, bent, and weary, with deep crevices running down her parched cheeks.
“Can I help?” Dr. Andreyev asked in German, to the consternation of the Vopo.
“My name is Zind, Albert Zind,” the laborer said. The man’s hair was the color of sand. His blue eyes were expressionless.
“Erich and Gunther, my brothers. Our friend, Otto Dorf.” He pointed them out. “Our mother. We were told my sister’s body was here so we came all the way from Potsdam to visit her grave.”
Kiril translated for Adrienne.
“Our papers.” Albert Zind handed them to Kiril, who looked them over. “You can see they’re in order. And still they refuse to help us.”
“These people are a pack of fools,” grumbled the Vopo. “They claim to have special permission to visit some grave. Where do you see graves around here? Where are the headstones? Let them visit every cemetery in Berlin for all we care,” he said with feigned indifference.
“My mother is not well,” Zind persisted. “The trip has been grueling. I promised her she could say a few words at her daughter’s grave. Only a few words. Then we will leave.”
Again, Kiril translated for Adrienne. For once he was grateful that Luka Rogov was dogging his footsteps. The grim authority of Rogov’s military tunic, the red star emblazoned on his cap, spoke volumes to the East German Vopo.
With a friendly gesture in Rogov’s direction, Kiril said, “We insist that you allow this family to mourn. Unless, of course, you can prove to the appropriate authorities that their papers are false? If you cannot, my associate and I will file a report that you refused to follow our orders.”
The Vopo turned sullen, but he backed off.
“How did you learn of this place?” Kiril asked Albert Zind.
“I’m in bridge construction. Foreman on the repair work being done on Unity. That’s what they’re calling Glienicker Bridge these days, at least in Potsdam,” he said, making no attempt to mask his contempt.
“The bridge between Potsdam and West Berlin?”
“That’s the one. A Russian crashed into the bridge recently,” Zind said, looking at Kiril curiously now. “Poor bastard tried to make it across in some diplomat’s limousine. Almost did, from what I heard,” Zind added, making no attempt to mask his sympathy. “The minute word got out about burial arrangements, I asked a few discreet questions. That’s how I knew where to find my sister. Turns out she and your Russian friend had the same idea except that Eva tried it through a place not yet closed by the wall.”
This time when Kiril translated, Adrienne gasped.
Zind’s mother tugged at Albert’s sleeve. “But where is Eva’s gravestone? You promised me, Albert!”
“She’s here, mama. We don’t know exactly where. I told you how it would be, remember? I kept my promise. Now you must keep yours. Say a prayer for Eva and—”
She shook her head, uncomprehending.
Kiril dropped to his knees.
Adrienne watched, fascinated, as Kiril removed a tiny gold scalpel from a chain around his neck. Watched him smooth a patch of soil with his hand and outline the shape of a headstone.
At the very top of the “headstone,” Kiril carved four words in German: HERE LIES EVA ZIND.
“Eighteen years old,” Albert Zind said tonelessly.
“Number 13 Hollandische Siedlung, Potsdam,” said one brother.
Kiril bent to his task—tiny letters so Eva Zind’s age and address would fit inside.
“Beloved daughter of Frieda. Adored sister of Albert, Gunther, and Erich,” said Erich Zind.
“Beloved by Otto,” said another voice, husky with unshed tears.
The mother had already dropped to her knees beside Kiril, her lips moving in silent prayer. When he finally rose, Zind’s mother crossed herself and got to her feet without assistance.
Albert Zind gripped Kiril’s hand. His blue eyes were no longer expressionless.
Chapter 31
Drizzling water landed unceremoniously on Aleksei Andreyev’s head. He wiped it away, oblivious to the rain. In the last sixteen months he had been on and under Glienicker Bridge at least a dozen times since Stepan Brodsky died there while trying to defect.
The pressure from General Nemerov had been intense. Unrelenting. Aleksei could understand why. As he’d reminded Emil von Eyssen soon after the incident, Brodsky had been a Captain in the Soviet Air Force who had worked for Aleksei. Worse, it was Aleksei who’d put Brodsky in charge of security for the Four-Power summit! So what was Brodsky’s final act? Pushing a cigarette lighter into the Havel River before von Eyssen could confiscate it.
“Did you really think there was only cotton inside the lighter?” Aleksei recalled asking von Eyssen sarcastically.
No, Aleksei thought, Nemerov had every reason to be concerned that day and all the months since. He had to find the damnable lighter. Especially after reading Luka Rogov’s report about what had happened near the Treptower Park cemetery on the way back from Waren. About his brother’s strong reaction after learning that his friend Brodsky was doubtless buried in a mass grave. Would it so enrage Kiril that he’d throw caution to the wind and try to defect?
Quite apart from General Nemerov’s interest in the cigarette lighter, Aleksei had spent many a sleepless night worrying about the lighter’s contents. What if it contained something that might incriminate him in some way?
All of which motivated him, after several unsuccessful attempts with East German dredging equipment and operators, to bring in Soviet engineers and equipment.
They had systematically dredged the water on both sides of the bridge, then under it, then down and up the Havel River. Mud was sucked up and strained. Debris was examined. The detritus of decades, if not centuries, of dumping was sorted. Divers searched the muck by hand. And came up with nothing.
So here he was again. He had expected to be bored and irritable but, surprisingl
y, he found himself fascinated by the dredging. By the scooping device at the end of the boom that came up from the river looking like a giant dripping clamshell with a mouthful of mud.
A lanky man in a windbreaker stuck his head outside the door of the East German guardhouse. Aleksei barely noticed his approach. He was watching a sleek gray-green East German patrol boat pass underneath the bridge, its diesel engines belching clouds of black soot.
“What is it now, Mueller?” Aleksei asked, glancing up.
As Mueller cupped a hand to his ear, obviously straining to hear, Aleksei realized the noise from the dredging equipment and the patrol boats beneath the bridge were drowning out their voices.
“You’ve been working on repairing this bridge for how long, Mueller?”
“Nearly sixteen months. But it’s not fair to blame me, Colonel,” he said defensively. “The damn bridge was built in 1906 and nearly destroyed during the war.”
Aleksei cut him off. “This isn’t about blame. Is that Vopo around—the one who was on duty the night of Brodsky’s attempted defection?”
“I’ll send him out here right now, Colonel,” Mueller said, relieved.
The door of the guardhouse flew open and banged against a stone wall. The man walking toward Aleksei in long impatient strides had a raw, seething vitality not unlike Luka’s, Aleksei thought. But unlike Luka, the East German resented Russians. Pity. Men like Luka Rogov were becoming extinct.
“You wanted to see me…” the Vopo said, then added reluctantly, “sir?”
“I know we’ve been over this before, but I need you to answer a few more questions. Tell me again—Bruno, isn’t it?—where you saw Stepan Brodsky’s cigarette lighter go over the side. The exact spot.”
Bruno’s eyes went to the left-hand side of the bridge. Pointing to a space between two lower parallel iron bars just opposite a mass of newly painted steel supports, he said, “Right through there he pushed it.”
“Now tell me everything you saw and heard, from the moment Brodsky got out of the second limousine and walked over to the first one.”
