Freedom Bridge: A Cold War Thriller (7 page)

Chapter 16

A
leksei reentered the room to find Kiril sitting, trance-like, the Brenner file open on his lap.

“I see from your expression that you found Dr. Brenner’s lack of sympathy for his own country disturbing,” he said cheerfully
.
“Your hero—”

“Has feet of clay,” Kiril snapped. “He’s no patriot. As for the word
despicable
, it’s an apt description of the bastard.”

Aleksei laughed. “I agree, but for different reasons.”

“You never did answer my question, Aleksei. What business could the KGB possibly have with Kurt Brenner?”

Aleksei began filling a pipe, his fingers milky white against the dark wood of the stem. “What would you say were the chances of someone with Dr. Kurt Brenner’s impressive credentials defecting to the Soviet Union?”

“Whatever else you are, Aleksei, you’re no fool. Would-be defectors head for the West, not the East. There’s also the problem of medical facilities. Ours can’t begin to compare with what the West has to offer. You mention Brenner’s impressive medical credentials. What would be in it for him?”

Aleksei lit up and watched the lazy upward drift of the smoke. “Suppose it were a question, not of what Brenner had to gain by defecting, but of what he stood to lose?”

“I thought your specialty was extorting confessions,” Kiril said drily, “not seducing westerners to Mother Russia.”

“How shortsighted of you. Think of me as an expert at collecting the fascinating bits and pieces that form the mosaic of a man’s past. Anyone who could reverse the usual direction of defections and persuade a prominent figure like Dr. Kurt Brenner to ‘relocate’ from West to East would be held in great esteem in certain circles.”

“No doubt.  And by ‘persuade,’ I take it you mean blackmail?”

“What else? Not that I’m so naïve as to think I could pull off a coup like that,” he said sourly.

“What if you could?” Kiril said slowly.

“Could what?”

“To hell with Medicine International’s symposium in West Berlin next year! What if the Soviet Union were to hold its own medical conference in
East
Berlin—say a one- or two-day affair? What if you scheduled it for a few days
before
Medicine International’s symposium in West Berlin? Brenner would still have an opportunity to work with Dr. Yanin and our heart specialists in East Germany. Knowing how it must have rankled him when the Soviet Union abruptly withdrew from the West Berlin symposium, Brenner would almost certainly accept.”

Clever of you, Little Brother. First you push me to send you to Canada, supposedly in the name of science but in fact so you could defect. Now you want me to send you to East Berlin—right where your pal Brodsky almost pulled it off. On the other hand . . .

“Brenner
would
be unlikely to refuse, wouldn’t he?” Aleksei said thoughtfully. “Especially if we were to invite some prominent heart surgeons from the People’s Democracies. The West Berlin symposium doesn’t happen for what—another sixteen months?  I’d have plenty of time to make plans.”

“And plenty of time to implement them,” Kiril observed.

Aleksei’s pipe had gone out. Switching to cigarettes, he offered one to Kiril and held out a match. “Why the sudden desire to cooperate with the KGB, Little Brother?” he said, pushing back his chair.

“I’ll cooperate even more if you’ll let me. In case you’re busy just before the conference, I’ll entertain Brenner.”

“Don’t you think Dr.Yanin would be a more suitable substitute host?”

“He would if he spoke English.”

“But you don’t know Berlin. You don’t know East Germany.”

“You’re wrong,” Kiril countered, not having to feign bitterness. “Thanks to Stepan, I know a great deal about both. From time to time, he would describe East Berlin in great detail. Shall I anticipate your next ‘problem’? That I lack the credentials for the job? I’m your brother. I’m also a longstanding member of Dr. Mikhail Yanin’s surgical team—much of it, I admit, behind a heart-lung machine. Before that, I was a doctor with nearly twenty years of experience. I’d say that qualifies me to describe the life of a Soviet heart surgeon. In glowing terms, of course.”

“You amaze me, Little Brother. Why do something so out of character?” Aleksei said softly, leaning forward to stare at Kiril.

Kiril, his face impassive, felt like an insect being examined under a magnifying glass. “If Brenner
does
defect, which, frankly, I doubt, I could say that observing the undeniably brilliant Dr. Kurt Brenner at work would enliven things at the Yanin surgical center. I could say that whatever else he is, Brenner is a heart surgeon without peer. That he’d need his own surgical team here in Moscow. I’m egotistical enough to think I could persuade him to train me as chief assistant surgeon. I’m tired of watching from the sidelines,” he said, feeding weariness into his tone. “Given half a chance, I could be as good as Yanin, maybe better.”

“So childhood ambition dies hard,” Aleksei said. I have to admit that the thought of
you
as my co-optee in this enterprise is intriguing.”

“Co-optee, as in cooperate? I find
that
amusing,” Kiril countered.

More than amusing. If Kiril could help me pull Brenner in, isn’t it a risk worth taking?

“I’ll do it,” Aleksei said without ceremony. “But on one condition, Kiril.”

He waved Luka Rogov back inside.

The Mongolian’s head was shaved, his face flat. His eyes were deep-set and slanted, his skin neither brown nor yellow, but some of each. The coarse black hairs of his full mustache framed his mouth.

“Tell my brother about
your
credentials, Luka.”

“In 1945 I help liberate Berlin. I was six years in Red Army,” Rogov said, his eyes gleaming with the memory.

“I discovered Luka Rogov during the war, lost track of him, then found him years later on a Moscow street. He comes from a small town near the Mongolian border. His name has been modernized, but not his soul. Can you guess why the Lukas of this world are invaluable in security matters? They know how to obey orders. I don’t think I need to add that Luka enjoys his work.”

Aleksei studied Kiril’s indifferent expression. “Let me clarify my position,” he said. “When you were a child, you used to fear me. I see that this is no longer the case, even though you have much more reason to fear me now. If I permit you to visit East Berlin next year—let alone play host to Kurt Brenner—Luka will be your constant companion. If you make any move to follow in the footsteps of your late friend Brodsky, Luka will take ‘extreme measures.’ There’s a story that circulates among my colleagues about the sister of a general, picked up in Moscow for black market speculation. The police who contacted the general expected him to dismiss the charges. I still have in my possession a copy of his order. ‘Speculation during wartime is treason. Shoot her.’ Any questions?”

“Just one.” Kiril tossed the Brenner file folder onto Aleksei’s desk. “What makes you think Brenner will accept the invitation? Dr. Yanin tells me Brenner has consistently declined invitations from communist countries—apparently because of his wife’s anti-communist bent.”

“Not this time, he won’t. Not after his recent May Day reaction in New York to the Potsdam incident. Not after his eagerness to defend our country at the expense of his own. And certainly not after his disappointment over our withdrawal from September’s Medicine International symposium in West Berlin.”

“I see.”

“Then too,” Aleksei mused, “I suppose Brenner could claim he was eager to visit his birthplace.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He was born in what is now East Berlin.”

“You’re not serious!”

“Oh, but I am. Not that it matters one way or the other. Herr Dr. Kurt Brenner will accept our invitation for only one reason. Fear.”

“Mind telling me what you’re blackmailing him about?”

“I do, actually.” Aleksei smiled thinly. “We intelligence types play by the need-to-know rules.”

Chapter 17

I
n the days after he left Aleksei’s office, Kiril noticed that Galya’s attitude seemed to have changed. She acted more guarded. Paid close attention to everything he said—especially about the East Berlin medical conference he was working on for the following year.

Once he surmised that Aleksei had recruited Galya to spy on him, Kiril spoke guardedly and with circumspection. Still, her presence in his life made it difficult for him to prepare for his attempted defection. He had never been to East Berlin and knew little about the city generally, even less about its geography. Without calling attention to himself, he’d had to study East and West Berlin’s geographical relationship to each other, and theirs to East and West Germany. He pored over street maps of Potsdam and West Berlin. Learned all he could about Glienicker Bridge and the Havel River that flowed beneath it. Made a mental note to find out about the East German launches that patrolled under the bridge. None of this was easy to do in a police state, let alone while under ongoing surveillance by a woman with whom he had a professional, as well as a personal, relationship. By snatching some time here and there, visiting libraries with plausible excuses, talking to the few friends he could trust, walking casually through museums, Kiril had to admit he was making progress, albeit much too slowly.

* * *

Aleksei Andreyev had no such constraints. Immediately after his intriguing chat with Kiril, he turned his researchers loose in Moscow and tasked the New York and Washington KGB stations with turning the life of the eminent Dr. Kurt Brenner inside out. He already knew Brenner had been born in what was now East Berlin, and he was privy to Brenner’s war record. But he wanted to know more about the years in between. Much more. More, perhaps, than Kurt Brenner knew about himself.

In the next several months, the intelligence flowed in a steady stream. Because of the lack of pre-Revolution records, the civil war following the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power, and then two world wars, Aleksei’s researchers could ascertain only that Brenner’s mother had been born in Czarist Russia sometime around 1901. After that, all traces of her had disappeared in Russia and in the Soviet Union until the 1920s, when she surfaced in Berlin, married a German citizen, and had a son.

Aleksei had learned earlier that in 1922, Brenner was born in what later would become East Germany. He even knew the name of the borough: Pankow.
Aleskei surmised that in 1931, the Brenners, in the wake of the Nazi rise to power and apprehensive of the threat facing assorted groups—Jews, Communists, Democratic Socialists—had emigrated to the United States.

Brenner’s mother and father were physicians. Their son, Aleksei learned, had been a prodigy as early as age ten. School work was never a problem. Kurt Brenner consistently mastered scientific games designed for his age group. His parents had subscribed to magazines on his behalf,
Popular Science
among them. When he was twelve, Brenner started to hang around his parents’ medical office, asking questions. Harvard College accepted him in 1936 when he was only fifteen—a pre-med major, a biology minor. Three years later, he had his B.S., and in February 1942 his Ph.D in microbiology.
There was no doubt that Kurt Brenner was a wunderkind.

But there was a dark side, Aleksei noted with considerable interest. Prodigy or not, Brenner never seemed to be surrounded by a circle of real friends. He was aloof and driven. Even more intriguing, few of his peers trusted him. He had a reputation for breaking his word. For being late to some affair or not showing up at all. For infuriating a pal whose girlfriend was supposed to be off limits. Relationships with girls were invariably short-lived. When he was older, his love life followed the same pattern—casual affairs that ended badly.

Several months before his graduation from Harvard, Brenner had coolly assessed his situation. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and were racking up gains throughout Asia. The Germans had declared war on the United States and were rolling through Europe. Brenner would become a physician—a heart surgeon.  That was carved in stone. But being twenty-one years old and soon to lose his graduate school deferment, he was about to be drafted—which meant he would have no control over what they’d do with him despite his fluent German and his stellar academic credentials. A classmate who had been drafted the year before, and who had a Ph.D in advanced civil engineering, was stuck in the infantry—not a pleasant prospect.

Typically, Brenner came up with a plan, a report of which had found its way into the KGB archives. He had convinced an Army recruiter into believing he had a job offer from a microbiology foundation that was doing classified research for the government—something vaguely having to do with chemical warfare, and that he was entitled to an “essential industry” deferment like, say, coal miners.
If
he took the job, that is. But what he really wanted, he’d told the recruiter, was to enlist and be trained as a medical corpsman. That way, he would get a jump on medical school.

Several weeks later, Kurt Brenner—prodigy, Bachelor of Science, Doctor of Microbiology—had become, in three years, Sergeant First Class Brenner. Called
Doc
by the soldiers he served with, Brenner was back in Germany, the land of his birth.

Aleksei scanned the report.

Brenner will rue the day he did that. It’s what led to our hold on him.

He dug into the more recent threads of Kurt Brenner’s life. After medical school at Harvard and a residency at a famous Texas heart institute, Dr. Kurt Brenner was awarded several prestigious surgery fellowships. He joined the cardiology faculty at New York’s Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where he soon began to shine as an outstanding heart surgeon. He borrowed money to start the Manhattan Pediatric Heart Institute. He was the recipient of many medical and philanthropic awards.

Aleksei reached for a file labeled “miscellaneous.”

Parents unreservedly proud of their son.

Marriage in 1955 to Adrienne Kalda, journalist and outspoken anti-communist
.
No children.

Excessive drinker, but not alcoholic.

Profligate with money.

At least two extra-marital affairs in the past five years, one with Grace  Manning, wife of Medicine International’s Russell Manning.

Aleksei smiled, reminded that Medicine International’s Artificial Heart Symposium, scheduled for September, was proceeding apace but there were a host of problems.

According to his sources, by the time Russell Manning returned to New York in late winter after an extended vacation, Kurt Brenner had sent M.I. a list of conditions before he’d accept their formal invitation. As the undisputed star of the show in the forefront of international artificial heart research, Brenner was demanding a lot of perks. Private chef. Large suite on the hotel’s top floor. His own heart-lung machine operator from New York. An American assistant surgeon and anesthesiologist—both of them board-certified. His own translators. Even his favorite operating room nurse.

Which may explain why Brenner is having trouble convincing his wife to accompany him.

There was more. The West Germans were being skittish about sharing the billing with French surgeons. The French wanted Brenner to operate on a Frenchman. Financing from either the German government or the Soviet Union could not be guaranteed. The hosts might have insufficient hotel space. And on and on.

Aleksei savored the moment.

Looks like it’s time to invite the illustrious Dr. Kurt Brenner to the other half of Berlin
.

* * *

Brenner was stunned.

The letter had arrived via a special courier from Washington, D.C. He held the single sheet of paper as though it had been dusted with anthrax.

Rising from his soft camel-colored leather office chair, Brenner crossed the room and closed the door. He returned to his chair and reread the letter from the German Democratic Republic, Washington, D.C.

My dear Dr. Brenner:

The Ambassador of the German Democratic Republic was delighted to note recently in The New York Times that you have accepted an invitation from the highly regarded Medicine International organization to participate in its Artificial Heart Symposium several months from now.

His Excellency was disappointed to read that while the Symposium will explore recent developments and examine the technological advances that are just beyond the horizon in the fast-moving field of artificial hearts, there will be no hands-on demonstration.

It is in that connection that I write.

By the oddest coincidence, about a week before the Medicine International symposium in West Berlin, the Humboldt University Medical Center in East Berlin is sponsoring a conference on a related topic: “Does the future of cardiology belong to artificial hearts, or to human transplants?”

His Excellency, the Ambassador, cordially and with utmost sincerity, has asked me to invite you to deliver the keynote address and perhaps honor the faculty and invited guests by performing a simple open heart procedure—possibly something like a mitral valve replacement.

When the Ambassador mentioned his idea to the Chancellor of Humboldt University, the Chancellor enthusiastically embraced my issuing this invitation, and suggested that it include Mrs. Brenner, the noted journalist.

Again coincidentally, Chancellor Dmitri Malik recalls having met you during World War II and looks forward to seeing you once again. The Ambassador told me that he understood from Chancellor Malik how extremely disappointed he would be if you were unable to attend. Apparently he believes there is much to recapture about what he referred to as “the old days.”

The favor of a prompt and affirmative response would be greatly appreciated.

With sincerity and the utmost respect, I remain your faithful servant,

Dr. Gerhardt Hans Walter Spiegel,

Special Assistant to the Ambassador

German Democratic Republic

“Jesus Christ,” Brenner said softly to himself. “Jesus Christ.”

He focused on the seventh paragraph, realizing that the rest was window dressing. Dmitri Malik wanted him in East Berlin. If Brenner didn’t accept the invitation, Malik was threatening to expose the Glienicker Bridge incident.

And they wanted Adrienne.