by Erika Holzer
“I hope you’re right.” Aleksei glanced around. “Quite a mob scene. Every waiter seems like he’s on roller skates. Get refills for you and Mrs. Brenner, will you? I’ll have vodka. Tell the waiter not to bother with a glass.”
Kiril grinned. “Message received. I’ll be right back with a bottle.”
“No need to hurry, Little Brother,” Aleksei said with a sly smile. “I’ve got a head start on both of you.”
Adrienne giggled. “I beg to differ, Colonel.” She started to weave in her chair.
Kiril caught her just in time. “Coffee for you,” he said.
“I’m no spoil sport,” she pouted. “Besides, it’s Kurt’s fault. He should be here by now.”
“True enough,” Aleksei said as Kiril took off after a waiter.
Aleksei sat back, preoccupied. Absently turning a cigarette lighter over and over in one hand, he noticed Adrienne Brenner’s unlit cigarette and leaned forward to light it.
She almost fell off her chair.
An ordinary American lighter—Zippos, you call them… black wings of some kind. But Ernst, what on earth are they doing on Colonel Andreyev’s lighter?
When Kiril returned with the coffee, Adrienne ignored it and reached for her champagne. As Colonel Andreyev held up his bottle and the three of them shared a toast of some kind, her thoughts were so jumbled she could only marvel at his capacity to imbibe liquor without his head falling on the table! Actually, on closer examination, he did look bleary-eyed. But then she probably did too. As for Kiril Andreyev, she thought, he was sipping the bubbly like it was ginger ale!
Aleksei glanced at this watch, stood up on surprisingly steady feet, and announced that it was time for him to leave.
“Where to?” Kiril asked.
“The Brenner hotel suite, as it happens.”
“Please tell Kurt everyone’s waiting,” Adrienne said.
Aleksei looked faintly amused. “I’ll be sure to give him the message.”
* * *
The elevator’s swift descent to the 21st floor was a good omen, Aleksei thought. Act swiftly and you checkmate von Eyssen. Pull this off and no matter what happened on Glienicker Bridge, you return to Moscow in triumph instead of disgrace.
The elevator slowed. When Aleksei stepped off, Major Dmitri Malik was waiting in the foyer.
Kurt Brenner, looking refreshed and elegant in an impeccably tailored tuxedo, opened the door to his suite much as a genial host welcomes dinner guests. Although he showed them an untroubled face, both Malik and Aleksei were trained to see below the surface, and what they saw was extreme anxiety. Both men sat down.
“Have your people gotten rid of the bugs?” Malik asked.
“Of course,” Aleksei assured him as he motioned Brenner to a chair facing theirs and pushed a heavy glass ashtray to the center of the table. On his own side of the table, Aleksei placed a bottle of vodka. A connoisseur of wine, Malik limited himself to smoking. Aleksei reached across the table for the vodka, though in deference to his superior he used a glass.
“What’s this all about?” Brenner asked with a combination of impatience and hauteur, determined not to let them see even a hint of fear. “The phony invitation. The use of your names. The allusion to 1945 and the Ukrainian kids. Frankly, I’m beginning to wonder if the malfunction of the heart-lung machine was no accident. I wouldn’t put it past the two of you. And what’s this ‘Chancellor’ business, Dmitri?”
“Ah, Doc, Doc,” Malik sighed, warming to the business at hand. “Let’s just say that my administrative position at the oldest university in Germany—East or West—is a convenient platform from which I can oversee goals important to the national security of both the Motherland and, hopefully, the East German government. Suffice to say, I continue to be KGB and I still outrank Colonel Andreyev. But while I readily admit that what we’re about to propose was his idea, I should add that I approve wholeheartedly of the steps he’s taken.”
Making an effort to look nonchalant, Brenner said, “What ideas, gentlemen? What steps?”
Malik indicated a small briefcase which Aleksei had placed on the floor near his chair. “Colonel, please show Doc the ‘artifact’ we’ve been saving these many years.”
Aleksei put out his cigarette, opened the briefcase, and removed a large square box that dangled an electrical cord. Placing the box on the coffee table, Aleksei plugged the cord into the nearest outlet.
Brenner’s heart sank. He recognized the wire recorder. It was a World War II predecessor of today’s newer tape version. “God in heaven,” he whispered as if he were alone in the room, realizing that Malik and Andreyev must have recorded him when he sold out the Ukrainian children.
Unless they were bluffing. Even if they weren’t, maybe he’d been careful not to incriminate himself. Or maybe a wire recording this primitive could not survive the last fifteen years.
As if Malik were a mind-reader, he said, “No, Doc, we are not bluffing. And yes, a fifteen-year-old wire recording can indeed pass the test of time.” Smiling broadly, he stood up.
But instead of leaving, Malik leaned against the doorway with folded arms—as if, after all those years, he couldn’t resist witnessing Brenner’s frantic response to the blackmail.
Aleksei tossed back his glass of vodka in a single gulp, activated the recorder with the spool of wire… and released the past.
When it was over, Malik left the suite, as if he’d lost interest in what was to follow.
The first words that spilled from Brenner’s mouth were, “Name your price, Colonel.”
“Name your price,” Aleksei repeated, parroting Brenner. “Save your money, Doc. We have something else in mind. We want you to defect to the Soviet Union.”
Brenner shot to his feet. The idea that he would agree to spend the rest of his life in some squalid Communist dictatorship was so far removed from his rational zone of reference that he could only stare.
Aleksei shifted gears immediately, recognizing his mistake. All stick and no carrot…
“Your reputation precedes you, Dr. Brenner,” he said, feeding admiration in his voice. “You’re a humanitarian. Think how your considerable talents would be a boon to us. Think of the challenge! And let’s not forget your financial difficulties of late,” he added, managing to sound both pragmatic and solicitous.
“You’re delusional!” Brenner said, incredulous. “You expect me to leave my country for good, just like—like switching off a light bulb?”
“It need not be forever,” Aleksei said, recalling Kiril’s suggestion about turning this particular issue into a bargaining chip.
“You want me to desert my institute for, what—a couple of years? You want me to abandon my parents? My wife?”
Back to the stick.
“As to your charming wife, Adrienne, only a few hours ago she committed a serious crime against the German Democratic Republic, possibly against my country as well. I’m in a position to have her detained for taking photographs of a national security nature. Rest assured that I will detain her if you refuse my terms.”
“Terms? What terms?” Brenner asked shrilly. “You lose nothing. I give up everything!”
Aleksei smiled. “You capitalists believe in negotiating, do you not? Lend the Motherland a few years of your life. In return, I guarantee to keep your reputation intact so that ultimately you can reclaim everything you have lost. Refuse us—” he paused while he practically obliterated the remnants of his last cigarette, “and I promise you the consequences will be permanent.”
As he headed for the door, Aleksei couldn’t resist one last jab. Resting one hand on the doorknob, he said, “They tell me you are an imaginative man in the operating room, Dr. Brenner. Imagine this, then. Picture your colleagues, your family, your friends—everyone who admires those capable hands of yours for their capacity to save lives. Now picture those same people unable to look at your hands without seeing a permanent stain—the blood of innocent children.”
His superior havin
g left the scene, Andreyev ignored the glass and drank from the bottle of vodka.
“The clock is ticking, Dr. Brenner. Don’t keep me waiting too long. Don’t keep the press and the television cameras waiting.”
Chapter 39
Kurt Brenner stared at his image in the bathroom mirror. “I am Dr. Kurt Brenner,” he asserted, as if someone were challenging that fact. “I am not—I will not—be intimidated.”
His image, haggard-looking, was unconvinced.
“They cannot destroy my career.”
The image said they could.
“They’ll never get away with it! In a showdown, people will believe me, not them.”
The image looked doubtful.
His glance shifted to the coffee table in the next room, empty now except for a heavy glass ashtray. He strode over to it and sent the ashtray to the floor in a cloud of ashes.
Brenner sat down at the table and slowed his breathing, something he did just before a particularly complex operation. He thought of it as his “sniper mode”—a perfect, nearly impregnable state of calm.
A World War II “artifact” and a sixteen-year-old conversation—who would take it seriously? Who would take the word of the KGB over the word—the vehement denial—of a prominent American heart surgeon?
Who wouldn’t take them seriously? These people have proof. Facts!
Brenner thought of his own reverence for facts. How they kicked in the minute he stepped into an operating theater.
Fact. A clogged line in a heart-lung machine sends blood clots to the brain.
Fact. A patient five or six minutes off the machine will turn into a vegetable.
Fact. Every patient I operate on depends on my skills, my ability to choose without hesitation between life and death alternatives.
Now, ensnared in the worst crisis of his life, Brenner was caught between the unpalatable and the unthinkable. Defect to the Soviet Union? Ridiculous. See his past exposed, his career in a shambles? Never!
In the end, as in every major crisis in his life, he succumbed to the inevitable: the famous Dr. Kurt Brenner temper. What ignited the explosion was Andreyev’s smug parting remark.
“Picture your colleagues, your family, your friends, unable to look at your hands without seeing a permanent stain—the blood of innocent children.”
Brenner could picture it all too well. His hands, shaking as if he were some pathetic alcoholic with the DTs. How ironic, he thought with a tight smile. It was Andreyev’s last-minute threat that had galvanized him.
Seizing the telephone, he spoke rapid German to the operator. The last thing he told her was to see that the message was delivered promptly to Colonel Aleksei Andreyev, 38th floor, banquet room. Slamming down the phone, he began tossing things into a suitcase.
* * *
Shortly after Aleksei had rejoined the party and taken a seat at the table with Adrienne Brenner and his brother, a messenger handed him an envelope. He opened it, scanned it, and, without comment, handed it to Kiril.
Kiril never got past the first sentence. He had trouble masking his response.
Dr. Brenner was leaving. Now.
As he turned his chair slightly away to make sure Adrienne couldn’t read the note over his shoulder, he realized it was unnecessary. She looked… spacey. Too much champagne on an empty stomach.
He read the rest of Brenner’s note quickly. The tragic outcome of yesterday’s operation had left Brenner “too despondent to cope with the remaining events of the conference—so much so that he planned to cancel next week’s Medicine International symposium in West Berlin as well. Would Colonel Aleksei Andreyev please make arrangements for an immediate flight to Zurich so that he and his wife could join his parents there?”
“Let me see what I can do,” Kiril said to his grim-faced brother in Russian. He hailed a waiter and ordered a gin and tonic with a twist of lime. “Brenner’s drink of choice,” he told Aleksei. “Perhaps a sympathetic talk with another physician will change his mind. Can you stall things a little longer?”
“Why not?” Aleksei said, straddling between cold fury and bleak despair as he reached for his now half-empty bottle of vodka.
Kiril took the down elevator to the 21st floor, stopping first to pick something up in his own room before heading to the Brenner suite.
He found Kurt Brenner in the bedroom, one suitcase packed, and another half empty. “Given the stress you must be under, Dr. Brenner,” Kiril said evenly, “I thought you might need this.”
He held up the gin and tonic.
“I won’t need it much longer,” Brenner snapped, continuing to pack. “If you’re here to change my mind, you’re wasting your time.”
Kiril put the drink down on the coffee table in the other room. Without another word, he entered the bathroom, flicked on the light, and closed the door.
At the sound of running water, Brenner called out, “Don’t bother trying to drown out our voices. Malik already made sure your brother debugged this place.”
When the water in the sink turned brown, Kiril submerged his head one more time, toweled it dry, and stepped into the bedroom. Brenner, who was in the process of folding a sports jacket, looked up—and gaped.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Kiril said. “I know it must be a shock, our strong resemblance.”
“How on earth could I have missed it?” Brenner murmured, as if talking to himself. “I thought your hair was as brown as those dark glasses you never seemed to take off— Ah, yes, an eye infection according to your girlfriend,” he said drily, recalling Adrienne’s confusion at the beach. “A non-existent infection, I gather?”
“Yes. Even Galya has no idea it isn’t real.”
“What else isn’t real?” Brenner said snidely.
“Unlike yours, my hair really is dark brown. Before I left Moscow, I bleached it white, then used a brown rinse—a near-perfect color match. Look, call it coincidence, call it fate. All I know is that from the moment I saw your photograph, I knew I had a crack at the highest stakes in the world.”
“What stakes, money? You want money when your KGB brother sneers at it?”
“I’m not after money either—but for different reasons than my brother Aleksei. I’ve been observing you closely ever since you stepped off the plane, Dr. Brenner. The way you walk. How you light a cigarette. The way your voice sounds when you—”
Brenner took a startled step back. “You’re part of this outrageous defection plot, aren’t you? What’s next? You taking my place in front of the television cameras?”
It was Kiril’s turn to look startled. “Haven’t you paid any attention to what I’ve been saying? What I’ve been showing you and your wife ever since we met?” he said, exasperated. “The last thing I want is for you to defect. Everything I said and did was calculated to make you resist my brother’s blackmail.”
Brenner sat down on the edge of the bed. “I think I’ll have that drink now, if you don’t mind.”
Kiril got it for him. “Look, I have no idea what Malik and my brother have on you. But whatever it is, it can’t be worth the price they’re asking.”
“Then you’ll help me?” Brenner said eagerly. “You’ll stop them from revealing what they know?”
“I have no way to do that. Ironically, it’s you who can help me. I’d planned to approach you later tonight before you left in the morning but—”
Brenner shot him a look of suspicion.
“Let me explain. I met with a man this afternoon who’s agreed to help me defect—he has experience arranging such matters. Except for one thing. I need to borrow a passport. Yours, Dr. Brenner,”
Kiril pressed on doggedly, seeing that Brenner was about to refuse.
Brenner could only shake his head. “Preposterous” was too tame a word to describe his reaction. The idea that he would loan this Russian physician his American passport left him momentarily speechless.
“Look, as your tour guide I’ll be in the limousine that takes you to the airport. Here’
s how it works. The East German Vopos check passports only once—at the departure area—after which passengers are handed boarding passes. Your pass and your ticket is all you’ll need to board the Swiss Air flight to Zurich.” He drew in a deep breath. “Since you won’t need your passport after that, you could easily slip it to me right before we part company. That way my contact can get me out of East Germany.”
“And if something goes wrong?” Brenner asked, stringing him along because his instinct for survival had just kicked in… “What if I get tossed into some Commie jail? What’s the penalty for helping people defect? Ten years? Twenty?”
“Why should the airport authorities deviate from established procedure?” Kiril countered. “And once you reach Zurich, let alone the United States, no one could touch you.”
“Did you know your brother has some trumped-up charge against my wife in his bag of tricks?”
Kiril frowned. “I didn’t know. Maybe he’s bluffing. Has it occurred to you he could be bluffing about everything, including the blackmail?”
“It’s no bluff,” Brenner admitted. “They have proof. They showed it to me just now. I was very young… But your goddamn country—”
“Don’t expect me to make excuses for people like Malik and my brother Aleskei,” Kiril said with a tinge of bitterness. “I’ve been locked in a chamber of horrors my whole life. Did I say I was after the highest stakes in the world? What’s more precious than a man’s freedom? You take yours for granted. I expected that and it’s right that you should, it’s healthy.”
“You sound just like my wife,” Brenner retorted.
Kiril winced. Brenner hadn’t meant it as a compliment.
He made one last stab. “If I had been born in a free country, I would feel sympathy—no, empathy is the better word. I would want to help a man like me to break free of his chains if I could.”
“You make a powerful case, Dr. Andreyev,” Brenner said, aiming for sympathy—the correct word for me, he thought grimly. “I suspect anyone who grows up in America would have difficulty making real to himself what it’s like to live in a dictatorship. It’s no walk in the park, god knows. Maybe I will lend you my passport. It depends.”
