Freedom Bridge: A Cold War Thriller (24 page)

Chapter 48

I
t was Tuesday evening. Everyone sat at the kitchen table while Albert and his brothers pored over a large topographical map of Potsdam and the surrounding area.

Gunther pointed to what looked like a small earthen bowl about 200 meters across and surrounded by a heavily treed area. The hint of a dirt trail ran to the bowl from the blacktop road about a mile away. The blacktop led to the Havel River. Glienicker Bridge was a half-mile beyond.

“What are we looking at?” Kiril asked.

“An old cobalt mine,” Erich said. “Been closed for years ever since the war. It was owned by the British.”

“The Brits left all their equipment there,” Gunther said. “Then our Soviet comrades carted most of it off it to Mother Russia in 1946.”

“We have a new plan,” Albert announced, “but we’ll need an additional day. We’ll hide the three of you in the mine until we’re ready to move on it.”

“So what’s new about your plan?” Brenner said impatiently.

“Yesterday I had battery trouble. Back at the yard last night I saw that a fan belt was loose.”

He looked at Adrienne. “The fan belt drives the generator, which, in turn, charges the battery.”

She nodded.

“I tightened the belt last night so there’d be no problem with the battery today,” Albert continued. “Tomorrow—Wednesday—the Vopo who drives us on and off the bridge returns to work. I have an okay relationship with him. I’ll have already picked up the bridge supports at the yard. The Vopo will remember the fan belt problem we had last Monday. I mention that I had the same problem again on Tuesday but the battery seems all right now. I’ll check it again later, I tell him. I have all day.”

Albert paused. “When no one’s looking,” he said grimly, “I open the hood and disconnect the fan belt. Sometime earlier that day, Gunther will have put a metal bar under a front tire. There should be enough leftover juice in the battery to start the truck—which means we’ll immediately run over the metal bar. My Vopo driver will stop short. Can’t be too careful. After all, there are tools lying all over the bridge. If we risk a flat tire, the truck would have to stay parked on the bridge all night. Can’t have that! I’ll have to look under the tire.  But I
won’t
until Bruno turns off the engine. I get out of the truck, return with the bar. The Vopo pushes the ignition. Nothing. Engine won’t start. Now I look at the fan belt. Disconnected—imagine that! Needs a special pry-bar to be reinstalled, but I can’t get one until early tomorrow morning. Can’t recharge the battery until then.”

“I love this part,” Erich said. “Bruno goes into panic mode.
What, and leave
the truck on the bridge until tomorrow? My superiors would never allow it!”

“So we mobilize guards and crew members to push the truck on the slight downward slope of the bridge and into the cobblestone square,” Albert said, picking up the thread. “The guards return to their posts in the middle of the bridge. The crew lines up for headcount. The East German and Soviet guards rush out of their guard houses. Can’t leave the truck blocking the mouth of the bridge—blocking most of it, anyway. So they find some chains and use their cars to tow the truck behind the East German guard house.”

“We’re back to a bunch of ‘maybes,’ are we?” Brenner said with disdain. “
Maybe
you’ll be able to disconnect the fan belt.
Maybe
you’ll get the driver to stop so you can get under the truck.
Maybe
someone in charge will be unwilling to leave the truck on the bridge overnight.
Maybe
some men will push it downhill.
Maybe
they’ll have chains.
Maybe
the truck can be towed around the corner in back of the East German guardhouse.”

Everyone in the room looked grim.

“There’s no other way,” Albert said.

Kiril, Adrienne, and Brenner spent the rest of Tuesday evening mulling over their own thoughts.

Kiril relived the years he had spent making plan after plan to defect from the Soviet Union.

Adrienne thought of the sham her marriage had become, wondering if Kurt’s love for her had been illusory from the start—and why she had no doubts at all that Kiril’s feelings for her were real.

Kurt Brenner’s mind was focused on more pragmatic matters. How to ditch the Brothers Zind before he practically suffocated to death in their six-feet-wide, three-feet-deep tool cabinet
.
Once he’d managed that, he would figure out how to make it to West Berlin on his own.

* * *

Late in the evening, the Zinds returned home. The tool cabinet false wall part of the plan had been executed flawlessly. The Studebaker was now parked behind the East German guardhouse with a disconnected fan belt. Construction on the truck cab and the cabinet was complete. “There’s more,” Albert told them. “In a little while we’ll take you to the old mine area. A few structures are still standing. They’ll provide some shelter. You’ll spend the rest of tonight there.”

Kiril noticed that Brenner had gone into alert.

“Before sunrise tomorrow—Thursday—you’ll make your way close to the guard houses at the mouth of the bridge. As you hide nearby, you’ll see the Studebaker parked in the back of the East German guardhouse. While it’s still dark,” Albert reminded them. “The three of you will enter the flatbed’s hidden compartment. After sunrise, I’ll show up to reconnect the fan belt, collect the bridge supports at the marshalling yard, return to load the work crew, and sit next to my East German Vopo pal while he drives us even closer to the middle of the bridge. You won’t be squeezed in that small compartment for more than a few hours,” he said, glancing pointedly at Kurt Brenner.

And was puzzled by Brenner’s expression. He seemed inattentive.

“Now we get to the tricky part,” Albert continued. “As we all know, there’s no way around it. So listen carefully because timing is everything from here on. I’m talking freedom or recapture. Life or death.”

Nobody moved. It seemed as if nobody breathed, Adrienne thought.

“Before we came home tonight,” Albert said, “we loosened the glass window in the back of the cab and replaced the back wall of the cabinet with sturdy painted cardboard. We also unscrewed the wood slats between the truck bed and the cab. They’re being held by bolts without nuts.”

Albert saw that Kiril was the only one who understood what was coming.

“The instant the work crew is off the flatbed and grouped behind it, Gunther will whistle as if it’s time to start work. Several things happen close together now. From the outside, Erich opens the driver’s door. I shove the Vopo out of the cab and jump outta the passenger’s side while Kiril—”

“Pushes out the cardboard wall, slides the six slats away, shoves the window into the cab, slips under the steering wheel, pushes the starter and engages the gears, and drives like hell to the West,” Kiril said vehemently.

He had a frightening flash image of Stepan Brodsky having done the same thing—until he realized that Stepan had commandeered his diplomat friend’s limousine
not f
rom the middle of the bridge, but way back at the guard houses. With East German and Soviet firepower covering both the guard houses and the watch towers, the odds of his friend making it across had been near impossible, he thought bleakly.

Chapter 49

K
iril, Adrienne, and Brenner entered a ramshackle Quonset hut. Debris was everywhere. Missing windows, twisted metal, empty file cabinets, upturned furniture.

Knowing none of them would get any much-needed sleep if Kurt pulled another attempted-rape scene, Adrienne deliberately kept Kiril between them, bedding down with some heavy blankets that the Zinds had left for them.

All three of them slept in their clothes, removing only their shoes.

The day’s events had taken a heavy emotional toll.

Kiril wondered whether he—whether all three of them—would live to see another night. Even though he was utterly fatigued, he forced himself to stay awake until he heard the rhythmical breathing of the others. Minutes later, he fell into a deep sleep.

When he awakened, he had a long moment of disorientation . . . Sunrise, he reminded himself. Thursday.

Adrienne was still asleep, her face in repose. He turned in the direction of Kurt Brenner.

Gone
.

“Adrienne,” Kiril whispered, gently shaking her awake. “Your husband’s not here.”

* * *

Kurt Brenner had feigned sleep until Adrienne and Kiril’s regular breathing told him they really
were
asleep. Carrying his shoes, he moved soundlessly through the Quonset hut. He knew that the dirt trail they’d walked down with the Zinds the night before would take him to the blacktop road—and from there to the Havel River.

Outside, he slipped into his shoes and, keeping off the trail, moved cautiously parallel to it through dense underbrush. He headed for the road with only a sliver of moon for light. Once he got there, he began to follow it while still keeping himself hidden in the underbrush.

Dawn was about to break when he stopped to rest. His plan was to reach the river in early daylight, then hide nearby until the fracas on the bridge started later in the morning. Then under cover of the ensuing chaos, he would swim for the west side of the Havel River—he was a powerful swimmer—and put an end to this long, drawn-out nightmare.

As Brenner crawled on his belly through the underbrush, obscured by foliage, he kept Glienicker Bridge and the Havel River in sight.

A watchtower Vopo noticed what appeared to be movement. Unsure if he could trust his eyesight because dawn had not yet broken, the Vopo looked away. But when he quickly looked in the same direction again, the movement under the foliage was even closer to the river.

Chapter 50

V
on Eyssen was halfway out the door when the buzzer rang on his desk. He frowned with annoyance, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t make him late for his appointment with a Soviet major general who didn’t like to be kept waiting.

“It’s some captain from the Potsdam checkpoint,” his secretary apologized. “He insists on speaking with you.”

Potsdam? The major general will have to wait.

“Put him through.”

“We’ve got him!” The voice from Potsdam was triumphant. “We’ve got the Russian spy. The one you’re looking for.”

“Kiril Andreyev? You’re certain?”

“It’s him, all right. I just checked out the latest bulletin. No question that it’s him.”

“What about the American couple?”

“Andreyev was alone.”

“Did you search him yet?” von Eyssen asked, trying to keep the concern out of his voice.

“No.”

“Do it the second we get off the phone.”

“Yessir.”

“Have the Russians been informed?” von Eyssen asked cautiously.

“They must have been. That’s how it always works with defectors.”

Too bad. What will Colonel Aleksei Andreyev do when they contact him? Make a run for Glienicker Bridge, of course. If Andreyev gets hold of his brother’s lighter first, he’ll destroy it and then I’ll be back where I started—his word against mine.

“You want me to search him before the Russians take him, Colonel?”

“Take him? Take him where?”

“I don’t really know,” the captain said. “That’s what happens every time with defectors. Our Russian comrades get them first. Then us.”

“Listen to me, Captain. I don’t care what you have to do, but search Kiril Andreyev before the Russians grab him. I want whatever you find. And the Russians are not to know, goddammit! Do you understand?”

The usually unflappable Colonel Emil von Eyssen smashed the phone down, sweat oozing from his armpits. Staring off into space, he wondered if he dared go anywhere near the damn bridge after what had happened with Stepan Brodsky last year. Any more trouble in the vicinity of Glienicker could prove to be a personal disaster, with severe criticism being the mildest punishment. On the other hand, if he were to get his hands on the lighter first, von Eyssen could prove that a Soviet—the brother of Colonel Aleksei Andreyevich Andreyev—was the traitor, not an East German citizen.

Not his late brother-in-law, Ernst Roeder.

* * *

“Out!” the East German captain ordered.

Those who were sitting shot to their feet. Everyone left.

Except Kurt Brenner, handcuffed to a radiator, who wasn’t going anywhere soon.

After the captain finished a quick but thorough body search, he picked up the telephone and called von Eyssen.

“Kiril Andreyev has nothing in his pockets. Nothing on him—period. Should I do a cavity search?”

“Don’t be a fool,” von Eyssen snapped. “Even someone as clever as Kiril Andreyev wouldn’t hide a Zippo cigarette lighter up his ass,”
he said, and hung up.

Brenner was stunned. So this Kraut, confused by his dark hair, had searched him looking for something important—a cigarette lighter. And apparently the captain had good reason to think the real Kiril Andreyev had the lighter.

Brenner felt an insane desire to laugh in the man’s face—just as a very sane idea came to him.

His instinct for survival hadn’t deserted him after all, he thought with an inner smile as he pictured a Studebaker truck just on the other side of the wall from where he sat.

Chapter 51

D
uring Brenner’s odyssey, Kiril and Adrienne had reached Albert Zind’s truck and secreted themselves in the tool cabinet’s small compartment.

It was close to dawn. Albert would soon be coming for the truck, Kiril thought. He heard Adrienne take a deep breath, then let the air out slowly. “How are you doing?” he whispered.

“There’s barely enough air for breathing and all I can think of is how desperately I want a cigarette.”

“I know what you mean. Legs getting tired?”

“Terribly. I think they’ll hold up.”

“Lean against me instead of the wall when you want to shift position. It will relieve some of the pressure.”

“Kiril?”

He closed his eyes.

“Why don’t you answer?”

“I wanted to hear you say it again”

“Kiril,” she said softly.

“We’d better stop talking the minute we hear voices outside.”

“There’s something I want you to know in case anything else goes wrong,” she said. “I agreed to accompany Kurt to East Berlin because—”

“Don’t explain. It was obvious from the beginning that you weren’t some apolitical wife along for the sightseeing. The questions you asked, the notes you took.”

Kiril closed his eyes, his mind on Stepan now. On their twin cigarette lighters. On the microfilm inside. He thought of their naïveté that the information would prove to be so valuable the CIA would help Stepan defect and somehow exfiltrate Kiril to get their hands on it.

And here I am, Stepan, not far from the place where you struggled to push your lighter over the side—your final protective act.

Your end and, perhaps, my beginning. Thank you, my friend, my fellow exile.

My true brother.

As Kiril held the lighter in one hand, his fingers automatically moving back and forth over it like a talisman, Adrienne reached for his hand. Her forefinger followed the outline of outstretched wings.

“What do they stand for?” she asked.

“The black wings? Somewhere in his travels, Stepan picked up a pair of American Zippo lighters and attached the emblems himself. They represent your American eagle. It was our symbol of hope. I’ve read your
Declaration of Independence
many times. Is it really the freest place on earth, the United States of America?” he asked wistfully.

Shifting her body, she leaned against his, needing a contact more personal than words.

“It’s still the freest place on earth,” she whispered. “And if we want to get there, now is the time to worry about what’s happened to Kurt. What he might be up to.”

“You really believe he’d betray us?”

Before she could answer they heard footsteps. A clanging noise. Someone puttering around at the front of the cab. The driver’s door opening. The ignition being cranked. The engine turning over. They winced in unison at the thud of the driver’s door slamming shut.

Albert . . . the battery.

The truck was ready.