Freedom Bridge: A Cold War Thriller (15 page)

Chapter 32

A
leksei opened the curtains of his limousine, chasing the semi-darkness from the rear seat but admitting a different kind of gloom—a colorless landscape under a gray sky that had swallowed up an earlier promise of sunshine.

His eyes kept returning to the place next to his driver—Luka Rogov’s customary seat—now uncharacteristically empty.

He thought of Luka’s reliability. His soothing presence. His incredible strength. Just thinking of Luka’s strength gave Aleksei comfort, although he had never tried to identify the nature of that comfort.

He sat back and lit his pipe.

But as usual, along with his relaxed state of mind, memories invariably followed . . . .

Aleksei Andreyev was no more than three years old when he first encountered fear. He feared the fat boy on his block who’d grab Aleksei’s toys and run off with them. The skinny girl who’d kicked him in the ankle once and left a throbbing bruise. The red-bearded man who came regularly to his family’s flat, dragging huge clanking milk cans behind him. And his father—his own father!—whose booming voice and large rough hands would hoist him high in the air whenever his breath had that funny sour smell. Aleksei never wondered why such things made him feel helpless and bewildered. He took his fear for granted, as much a fact of life as the sidewalk in front of his building.

Until the day he made a double discovery. Grownups had fears too. And, wonder of wonders, he, Aleksei Andreyev
,
could make them afraid!

The day had started out like any other. School. Homework afterward. A visit to the home of his best friend, Ilya. The same old invitation to stay for supper. During the meal he had reached past Ilya for a platter of meat instead of asking for it as he’d been taught, and his elbow had knocked against a bowl of thick brown gravy.

Ilya’s older sister, Dasha, had leaped up in a rage. “Look how you’ve splattered gravy all over my dress, you clumsy fool!” she sputtered.

Aleksei jerked away from her, eyes squeezed shut with terror, sure that Dasha would strike him. Nothing happened. He opened his eyes a crack, then all the way. He saw it first in the eyes of Dasha’s parents, and then in hers as well.
Fear
. They kept pushing apologies at him. Dasha’s mother kept saying he shouldn’t tell his father. What did his father have to do with his bad table manners and the spilled gravy?

It was only when he was walking home that he realized what they were afraid of—his father. But why? Aleksei made up his mind to find out.

His father, he learned, was an early member of the
Cheka
in Moscow. Its full name was “The Extraordinary Commission for the Struggle against Counterrevolution and Sabotage”—whatever
that
meant. The
Cheka
was new to the Soviet Union, appearing almost immediately after the Great Socialist Revolution, and Aleksei’s father held an important position in the organization—“high-ranking,” someone told him. People spoke of it in whispers. But what did it mean?

Aleksei tried to understand what his father did but gave it up when he realized it didn’t really matter.
Whatever
his father’s job was, it made people like Dasha and her parents afraid. He heard two things over and over about his father. That he was a
powerful
man and that he was in
intelligence
, which meant looking into the secret activities of “counter-revolutionaries.” He shook his head over that one.

But no one had to tell him about
powerful
. His father, he discovered, could have whole families arrested or sent to Siberia. Or even shot.

Once he knew this, things began to happen—he
made
them happen. Like mentioning his father’s name in a roomful of people and waiting for the nervous coughing or stillness in the air that was suddenly thick with fear.

One day he made the most important discovery of all. In the face of other people’s fears, Aleksei forgot his own. He began to study people more closely. With a word or a hint, he found he could always get his way, and no arguments. He got lots of presents and invitations to parties. He began to experience a secret pride—and a heady new feeling of power. He became a sort of crown prince, reigning in the dark shadow of his father.

When he was about seven years old, the presents and invitations ceased abruptly. His mother had gone to Germany with his little brother Kolya and then disappeared. His father was blamed for letting her leave the country. At first Aleksei feared for his father’s personal safety but what happened turned out to be worse. Three judges from his father’s own organization held a “troika”—a secret trial—and his father was branded an “Enemy of the People” even though he’d been cleared of being a “co
-
conspirator” and a “wrecker.”

Aleksei had never particularly noticed his style of living, but he noticed its absence. No more five-room flat in Moscow filled with furniture and paintings and Oriental rugs. No more dacha in the country. Gone in the blink of an eye. One day the Andreyevs were at home. The next, they were living in a two-room flat shared by three other families in an apartment house on the outskirts of Moscow.

But physical discomfort and hunger weren’t the worst of it. Aleksei Andreyev, crown prince in a secure world, experienced a raw terror that transcended his old fears. This time, it was a
knowledgeable
terror. It sprang from the fear-inducing tools he had used against others that could now be used against him! He knew informers were planted, not just in factories, but in apartment buildings like the one he, his father, and his little brother Kiril lived in. His father complained endlessly that even thieves and murderers fared better when it came to punishment than “betrayers of the revolution.”

Aleksei  realized his father would never rehabilitate himself and resume his old career. His father was drinking himself into an early grave . . . On that same night, Aleksei made a solemn oath that someday he would win back the family honor. Someday, he would hold his father’s post.

In the midst of making bold plans, he noticed that the prospect of such a future brought him a sense of relief. That the terror he carried with him, like a heavy knapsack on his back, didn’t bear down quite so heavily.

* * *

It took him over twenty years, but by the time Aleksei was in his early thirties, the terror had disappeared. The years he’d invested in the Archives Section of the Information Directorate—his “mole years,” he was later to call them—had finally paid off. After being given access to the Classified Library, he set about learning its contents as no one ever had—lovingly, like a violinist with his Stradivarius. He became an expert researcher. He stole files. He honed his ability to ferret out and file away in a steel-trap memory the secrets and misdeeds of people who were in a position to help him. As to those who might do him harm, he became adept at applying just the right combination of hints and pressure, promises and threats, to keep his potential enemies at bay.

At first, he barely survived. Over time, he prospered.

Until the day he realized his career could be crushed as swiftly as his father’s had been—and by the same kind of sledgehammer.

His brother Kiril was leaving a trail of unhealthy rumors in his wake. Allusions were made to Kiril’s diversionist tendencies. His unpatriotic attitude. Some of the disreputable people he hung out with.

Cursing himself for his lack of foresight, Aleksei put into immediate operation a tight surveillance program. Even so, a feeling of vulnerability continued to dog him until the day—following a chance encounter on a Moscow street—Luka Rogov, who’d served under him during the Great Patriotic War, reentered his life. Luka, the fearless, incapable of entertaining a scruple inside that sluggish brain. Luka, the human torture machine. Luka, his loyal soldier, who—when necessary—took pleasure in meting out pain to Aleksei’s enemies. Over the years, they had morphed into an effective interrogation team with a conventional but effective approach: the carrot and the stick. Aleksei brought to the table a subtle mind, a patient literate reasonableness, and a carefully researched dossier on the subject of the interrogation. Luka, a symbolic presence in the interrogation room, was like a bulky piece of furniture—noticeable, but more often than not, unused.

The word got around, making it increasingly easy to deal with recalcitrant subjects. Plum security assignments came his way—most recently when Chairman Khrushchev had a good excuse to clash with General Eisenhower and cancel the summit.

In recognition of his achievements, Aleksei remained confident he was close to being rewarded with the biggest plum of all—a KGB intelligence position equivalent to the one held by his father in the
Cheka
.

Until a few months ago.

Until the night Stepan Brodsky had tried to defect and had almost pulled it off.

Aleksei’s pipe had gone out. Tapping it idly against one of the limousine’s jump seats, he followed the drift of cold ashes onto the rug. True, he thought, the Brodsky affair was no more than a blemish on his otherwise clean record. On the other hand, no one in intelligence could afford blemishes.

But Aleksei was a realist. He had mixed feelings about trying to get Dr. Kurt Brenner to defect. His plan, while a good one, had pitfalls. He thought of it as an intricate puzzle. So many pieces had to fall together in the right way for it to work.

Yet he had to admit that the average Soviet citizen with whom he had dealt over the years was no match for his interrogation skills.

Aleksei visualized a parade of faces: men, women, teenagers. One cowed subject after another. People who had grown used to his threats and the power of his office to make good on them.

But Dr. Kurt Brenner? A prominent American heart surgeon who was used to giving orders, not taking them? A man who had been raised in a decadent culture that nurtured independence?

Aleksei smiled.
There
was a challenge!

Chapter 33

“Z
um Wohle aller!” For the good of all!” The Direktor of the Humboldt University Medical Clinic smiled at his honored guest, Dr. Kurt Brenner of New York City, United States of America.

Glasses were raised. Champagne was passed around as, one by one, the array of doctors rose to toast Brenner’s good health in German, Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Czech.

Someone proposed a toast in honor of the ladies. Galya, seated unobtrusively near a desk in a corner of the spacious room, smiled shyly. Adrienne Brenner inclined her head in a silent “thank you.” Herr Direktor himself was toasted for having arranged such an excellent breakfast in the gaily-decorated clinic cafeteria.

Dr. Brenner did not imbibe.

Breakfast and toasting finished, the doctors began positioning their chairs in a loose semi-circle around Kurt Brenner.

Kiril, his chair arranged slightly behind Adrienne’s, whispered, “Now it begins. They are about to pick your husband’s brain about the latest techniques in cardiology and cardiac surgery. All through the meal and the toasts afterward, they have thought of nothing else. But first, they will waste time going through the required ritual of claiming that doctors in the People’s Democracies have the best of everything.”

“The best of our goods . . . sounds right up your alley,” Adrienne teased.

All except one doctor, Kiril thought. His mentor, Dr. Mikhail Yanin, wouldn’t dream of wasting valuable time extolling the Soviet Union’s inferior cardiac “achievements” when there was so much to learn from the eminent Dr. Brenner . . . and so little time in which to do it.

Dr. Yanin was on his feet.  Kiril leaned forward as Yanin asked a highly technical question about artificial hearts—the agenda of the upcoming symposium in West Berlin sponsored by Medicine International.

Dr. Kurt Brenner spoke with eloquence for almost fifteen minutes.

The cardiologists from the People’s Democracies was a poor followup as they segued into their ritualistic bragging . . .

“The Soviet Union’s electronic monitoring system is a huge success!”

“A patient’s heartbeat speeds up. A second attack seems imminent but we are ready with a new drug.”

“A thousand-volt electrical charge to the chest was perfectly timed.”

“So our vascular stapling machine has made suturing obsolete.”

“It was a surgical breakthrough in congenital heart lesions.”

“Medical helicopters swiftly dispatched to remote areas.”

Kiril almost recoiled at this last outrageous claim. After his three years of forced internship in the remote areas beyond the Arctic Circle, even
one
medical rescue helicopter would have been a godsend.

A door behind Dr. Brenner opened and Aleksei Andreyev came in. Only two people noticed—Luka Rogov and Kiril Andreyev.

Rogov sat a little straighter in his chair.

Kiril’s hand automatically went to his chest—as if something was banging to get out.

The moment of truth! As soon as Dr. Brenner turns, Aleksei will see the likeness for the first time. Will he remember the so-called eye infection—my only excuse for wearing dark glasses?

Uneasiness turned to near panic as Kiril realized that, the breakfast event being so early, he had completely forgotten to apply the lemon juice!

Brenner’s back was to Aleksei as he finished responding to an ersatz claim by a cardiologist from Bulgaria. “Medicine is international,” he intoned. “Great contributions come from every corner of the globe. America has much to learn from your countries. It’s why I have always applauded medical exchanges”

“Colonel Andreyev!” cried the Direktor, spotting Aleksei. “We are pleased and honored that you could spare the time to join us.”

The semi-circle opened as doctors turned to look and reluctantly moved their chairs.

As Kurt Brenner turned to greet Aleksei Andreyev, he steeled himself for the shock of seeing him across the chasm of sixteen years. “Colonel Andreyev,” he said brightly, “Herr Doktor Direktor tells me it was your idea for this lovely breakfast and the opportunity to talk with colleagues from around the world.”

Aleksei’s voice stalled like the engine of a car left too long in the cold.

How
is it possible?

After an awkward pause, his voice turned over. But even as he responded to the guest of honor, then to the director of the clinic, questions buzzed in his brain like annoying insects. . .

How could there be such an uncanny likeness to Kiril without my being aware of it? Why didn’t the Brenner file tip me off? What did I miss? Were there no file photographs?

He frowned, trying to remember, and then realized he
had
ordered a photograph from New York. Some bungler from the Soviet News Agency must have forgotten to wire it. He shook off his annoyance just as another door opened.

Chancellor Dmitri Malik entered the room and looked at Brenner with a benign smile.

Brenner paled.

The bastards have double-teamed me. Whatever game they’re playing, it looks like I’ll have the answers sooner than later.

Taking a conveniently empty seat next to Brenner, Malik said, “I understand you served in Germany during the Great Patriotic War.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. Seventh Army. I was very low on the totem pole. A mere sergeant,” Brenner said with a self-deprecating smile.

How bored you sound, Dr. Brenner, Aleksei thought, pulling out his pipe. And Mrs. Brenner? Genuinely bored. Even if she has no interest in war stories, she should be
very
interested in this one.

“I’m curious,” Dr. Brenner,” Malik said. “Where were you when the war ended—and when?”

“Berlin, 1945.”

“I thought as much,” Malik responded, as if warmed by the pleasure of reminiscence. “Odd, the things one remembers and the things one forgets. For me, the battles are a complete blank. Yet I recall with fondness some of the weapons with which we won those battles.”

Aleksei got his pipe going and said cheerfully, “Come now, gentlemen, enough of this wartime reminiscing.”

The relief in Brenner’s eyes was so
transparent Aleksei almost felt sorry for the poor bastard.

Do you believe, my big fish, that you have wriggled off the hook so easily?

“But I, too, spent time in Berlin after the hostilities, serving with Chancellor Malik years before our East German comrades implored him to accept the prestigious position he currently holds.”

The array of physicians, initially disinterested, were warming to the three-way conversation, intuitively sensing that there was more happening than met the eye.

“So many tragic stories,” Aleksei mused. “Some eighty thousand of my Soviet comrades died fighting to rid Berlin of the Nazi scum.”

Aleksei paused as Brenner reached into his pocket for a cigarette, his hand surprisingly steady.

I’m impressed, Brenner. Let’s see how long it lasts.

“I still have vivid memories of one story in particular. We ran up against a repatriation problem after millions of my fellow citizens had been kidnapped by the Nazis. But somehow a group of orphaned Ukrainian children—refugees from one of the Nazi death camps—became unwitting pawns in an exchange of favors between a Russian officer and an American GI. By the time the children were turned over to us to be repatriated to their homeland, they were in a frightful state, having been shunted from one place to another.”

Aleksei paused to shake his head regretfully. To more fully enjoy Brenner’s fixed stare at a vase of flowers on a coffee table.

“But those were chaotic times so no one thought to ease the transition for these innocents,” he said softly. “No one reassured them that a soldier in a Russian uniform was a far cry from a Nazi one. As they were being led away for repatriation by Red Cross volunteers, seven of the children committed suicide.”

Genuine gasps throughout the room.

“They leaped into the Havel River before anyone could stop them,” he continued. “Of course, you Americans could hardly criticize our well-intentioned repatriation policy,” Aleksei said, his eyes boring into Brenner’s. “Many of our people were able to return to their homeland with official American help.”

Adrienne had had enough. “You really are too modest about what America’s ‘official help’ consisted of, Colonel,” she said with acid contempt. “My country did indeed help your country repatriate over a million refugees. The program, if I’m not mistaken, was named Operation Keelhaul. I feel compelled to add that those unfortunates were so eager to be repatriated that many of them slashed their wrists, jumped off roofs, and dove out of windows rather than return to your Soviet paradise.”

Good girl,
Aleksei thought, aware that he and Malik were the only ones in the room enjoying the heavy silence and averted eyes. He looked pointedly at Kurt Brenner as if willing the man to read his thoughts.

Now you know what to expect should your lovely wife discover your sordid past. Your options narrow, Dr. Brenner. Defect, and you keep your dark secret. Defy me, and that secret will be exposed—and not just to your wife. To people all over the world who admire and respect you.

The director of the clinic glanced up as the door opened. Relief in his voice, he welcomed the new arrival. “Herr Roeder! Herr Ernst Roeder, ladies and gentlemen, here to take photographs for
Neues Deutschland
.”

Polite scattered applause followed.

Aleksei happened to note Adrienne’s recognition of the name but had no time to speculate about it. Luka Rogov had tapped him lightly on the shoulder, then whispered something in his ear.

“I fear my presence here has been somewhat disruptive,” Aleksei apologized to the room at large. “Please continue your discussion while I attend to a private matter.”

As he stood up, he gestured toward Kiril. “I feel sure my brother, Dr. Kiril Andreyev, will enjoy reciting the new oath our young physicians take before entering the profession. It should make a fitting photograph for
Neues Deutschland,
Herr Roeder, especially if you write some of your inspiring copy to accompany it.”

As Luka followed him out, Aleksei heard snatches of Kiril’s monotone “—work in good conscience wherever the interests of society require . . . guided in all actions by the principles of communist morality . . . remember one’s responsibility before the people and the Soviet State—”

Leaving the room, Aleksei tore open the envelope Luka had just been given by Lieutenant Barkov, not knowing what to expect from the microfilm in Stepan Brodsky’s cigarette lighter.

Stunned at what the print revealed.

“May 1, Andreyev, U2, Summit, Walkout, Leverage, Berlin, Nuclear”—seven words, followed by a date. In the bottom left-hand corner, he thought he saw a few more numbers and what looked like a Chinese character, but they were so tiny as to be unreadable and of no significance compared to what
was
legible.

The significance of the words and what they implied was devastating. Aleksei had assigned Stepan Brodsky to work out security arrangements. But in order to do his job effectively, he
had
to be made privy to the U2-summit plan. Knowing he’d be in Potsdam, only a half-mile from the West across Glienicker Bridge, Brodsky probably hoped to expose the state secrets of the U2 summit’s demise as a bargaining chip for exfiltration out of East Germany. The key words—only seven of them!—would have enabled him to recount the entire story.

But something must have gone wrong. Why else would he have made a run for the West side of the bridge?

Was anyone else in on the plan? Kiril, perhaps?

Aleksei quickly dismissed that possibility for three compelling reasons. The first was geographical. Kiril wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near Potsdam. The second was that Luka Rogov stuck to Kiril like flypaper—and for that matter, so did his lovely girlfriend, Galina Barkova.

Aleksei didn’t linger on the third reason . . . even as he felt himself slipping into the first stage of the old terror. He refused to entertain the possibility that his own brother had committed treason because it would spell the end of his career, if not his life.

Gradually, Aleksei’s survival instincts kicked in. Why not foist the blame on Colonel Emil von Eyssen? After all, Brodsky’s defection attempt took place in East Germany. It was von Eyssen’s responsibility to secure Glienicker Bridge. It made sense.

More important, it was plausible.

As for General Nemerov, Aleksei felt sure he could somehow finesse what he reported to Nemerov about the cigarette lighter’s microfilm—especially if he could sweeten the pot with Dr. Kurt Brenner’s defection.

Maybe, just maybe, he could get out of this mess with his skin intact.

As was his habit, Aleksei began talking aloud as he tried to organize the few facts he had. “If there’s microfilm, obviously there has to have been a camera of some kind. Who had access to one? What did it look like?”

Luka tapped his shoulder. “A flat, metal thing?” he asked.

A miniature camera. Of course!

“You saw somebody with one, Luka?”

“American lady keep one inside her pocket book. Is there every time I search. She take pictures only with big camera. But soon as helicopter land, me and Barkova see her use small camera for first time.”

“Go back inside and bring Galina Barkova to me,” Aleksei said.

The minute Galya stepped outside, the door swinging closed behind her, Aleksei said, “Tell me everything you know about Brenner’s wife using a miniature camera.”

The bitch hesitated.

Aleskei glared at her. “
Now
,” he snapped.

“It was when our helicopter landed on a plowed field—the mass grave where they bury traitors,” Galya said, her voice hushed. “I told her not to.”

“Go back inside,” he said. “You have
two
people to watch from now on.”

Aleksei waited a few minutes before reentering the clinic. Adrienne Brenner was engaged in what appeared to be a serious conversation with Ernst Roeder
.
Aleksei could not escape the thought of how the lady had recognized the mere mention of Roeder’s name.

Everything clicked into place.

What an amateur you are, Adrienne Brenner. You toss your anti-communist sentiments in my face, and then expect me to think you’re here to see the sights and participate in a medical exchange program that clearly bores you? You play the part of the dutiful wife even though your husband is so flagrantly unfaithful you haven’t lived with him for months? Shall I fit the pieces into my puzzle? From the microfilm to Emil von Eyssen’s photographer brother-in-law to you to the CIA in a nice neat recapture of the ball that Stepan Brodsky fumbled.

Over my dead body!

Aleksei gritted his teeth, a scissor-sharp pain making him long for numbness. He knew the signs. The old terror was accelerating.

When he managed to pull himself together, he played with the idea of pulling Luka off his brother and shadowing Ernst Roeder instead.

Much too obvious, he decided. If Roeder were alerted, he’d never make his move. Better to save Luka for a showdown in case Roeder proved to be obstinate.

He studied his most charming co-optee until she cringed under the scrutiny. “From now on,” he said
sotto voce
, “whenever Adrienne Brenner is not in her room, you will not let her out of your sight. That’s an order.”