Freedom Bridge: A Cold War Thriller (10 page)

“Sir?”

“Keep your lip buttoned. You, too, Brenner. The fewer people who know about this the better. It never happened.”

* * *

Under the protection of the CO, and with the connivance of other troops during the few weeks after the Americans moved into their occupation zone, the Ukrainian children were also moved several times. They were being cared for by one of the few remaining orders of Catholic nuns Hitler hadn’t decimated. Most of the GIs who’d been helping the children initially had moved on, losing track of them.

Kurt Brenner hadn’t thought of them at all, too preoccupied with how to speed up his pending discharge. He’d already been admitted to Harvard Medical School, but there was a problem. He wasn’t due to be discharged for three more months—October 1945—and classes began in late August. Harvard had made it clear that if Brenner couldn’t start with his class, he’d have to wait until the following academic year.

Like hell I will.

“Medic!” a voice shouted.

Brenner finished his sandwich, tossed a half-full can of beer into the muddy river, and watched as the swift current sent it spinning downstream. He hurried up the steep incline of the riverbank to Glienicker Bridge, where the American Corps of Engineers, aided by liberated Ukrainian workers, had floated an unstable pontoon bridge across the Havel River.

Permanent repair work was progressing well. At nearby Ceceilienhof Palace in Potsdam, GIs were replanting hedges. A line of slow-moving 21/2-ton Army trucks, loaded with building materials, headed for the Palace to repair walls, ceilings, and moldings. Brenner had been detailed to the general area as a medical corpsman—by then, mostly treating GIs with construction injuries.

He wrinkled his nose.

I wish they’d repair the smell around here.

It was going on three months since Berlin had fallen, but the stench of open sewers and the occasional dead body still permeated the air. It was an ongoing complaint with the GIs. The goddamn Krauts had emptied their cesspools into the Havel River.

“Medic! Where the hell
are
you?”

Still here, unfortunately
,
he brooded.

Brenner stepped over planks and stray pieces of iron, keeping carefully to the side of Glienicker that was propped above the water line by wooden pedestals parallel to the pontoons.

At the bridge, while he attended to a soldier’s cuts and bruises, he fell into a conversation with a Russian officer he knew, but whose job was a mystery to him. He and Major Dmitri Malik had played chess a few times. While Brenner could beat the man with his eyes shut, he usually let Malik win against the day Brenner might want a favor. Then, too, there was the profitable black market business that the two of them were engaged in.

Launching into his usual complaint, Brenner mentioned that he was going to miss the start of medical school and lose an entire year. That guys who’d arrived in Europe—mostly infantrymen—were rotating home before he was.

They had been speaking English. So when the major suddenly looked around, lowered his voice, and switched to German, Brenner was startled.

“Tell me, Doc, what do you need to get orders moving you out sooner?”

“That’s what frustrates the hell out of me, Major. It takes next to nothing. Just a clerk at division—probably a corporal—who inserts an earlier date on my transportation orders and sticks them in some box. Why do you ask?”

“I have friends everywhere,” Malik said, dodging the question.

Of course you do, Major.

They ran into each other on the bridge a few days later. After the usual pleasantries, Malik said, “How would you like to leave Berlin in a week or so, Kurt?”

Brenner thought he hadn’t heard right. After a moment he said, “You can pull it off
that
quickly?”

An eloquent shrug. “That depends on you,” Malik replied.

“Anything, Major! Penicillin. More medical supplies. Petrol. Dope.”

Malik looked bemused.

“If it’s money,” Brenner said, his mind racing, “I’ll send you some as soon as I get back to New York—within reason, of course. A few thousand? Maybe five?”

“I have something else in mind,” Malik said, his smile enigmatic. “You’ve always wondered what my position was but never had the nerve to ask. I’m NKVD—Soviet Intelligence. My work is with Operation Keelhaul.”

Chapter 22

I
t was dark as Brenner left Soviet headquarters in East Berlin and picked his way gingerly through brick-littered streets, stopping only to show his pass to a pair of Russian soldiers at Checkpoint Charlie before crossing from the Soviet zone back into the American.

It was all arranged. Tomorrow morning the Ukrainian kids would be picked up by Soviet authorities, including the Communist version of the Red Cross. Malik had assured Brenner that under Operation Keelhaul, the children would be well taken care of.

His young subordinate, Lieutenant Aleksei Andreyev, had reinforced Malik’s assurances. “We have a great deal more to offer these children than placing them in foster care—or worse, stuck in some displaced-person camp,” Andreyev told Brenner.

“Come now, Kurt,” Malik interjected, picking up on Brenner’s skepticism. “If at the Yalta Conference, the President of the United States—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, no less—and now his successor, Mr. Truman, promised to ‘encourage’ repatriation for some larger political end, who are you to question the judgment of two American presidents?”

An unanswerable argument, Brenner told himself. Besides, why would anyone want to harm a bunch of kids?

It hadn’t been easy finding them—not at first. Eventually, Brenner had tracked down First Sergeant Al Rosen, who remembered him from when the Red Cross guy had rescued the children. A couple of drinks loosened Rosen’s tongue. The children had been moved from place to place until they’d ended up with the nuns, he told Brenner. Arrangements were being made to have them moved to a DP camp in France.

After leaving Malik and his aide, Brenner walked aimlessly for hours, concentrating on the formidable obstacle course typical of post-war Berlin: broken pieces of pavement, mounds of rubble, collapsed buildings, gaping holes camouflaged by a thin layer of gray-black dust—

And came to an abrupt halt at the sound of angry voices. He realized he’d ended up practically at the main gate of the nunnery.

The criminal automatically returning to the scene of the crime?

It was where the Ukrainian children would spend their last night before being repatriated in the morning. So why was a Soviet truck parked in front right now? Brenner wondered.

So much for “tomorrow’s” arrangements.

The Russians always kept one step ahead of you, he thought. It was worth remembering.

Ducking into the shadows, Brenner watched a group of Russian soldiers emerge through the nunnery gates led by—no surprise—Major Dmitri Malik. Ten whimpering children were hustled into the back of a truck. Brenner watched the truck pull away headed, no doubt, for Potsdam in East Germany.

An American jeep roared out of the shadows. Brenner almost jumped out of his skin. Joe Cherner flung open the door on the opposite side of the jeep. “Good timing, Kurt,” he said tightly. “I’ve been watching the nunnery off and on for weeks. Figured something like this might happen. Hop in. Let’s see where the Russkies are off to. What are you doing here so late?”

“Same as you, Joe,” Brenner said quickly. “I’ve been keeping an eye out from time to time. The Ivans are good at staying one step ahead of you,” he added as an afterthought. It was true enough.

Keeping well behind the Soviet truck, Cherner followed until he was pretty sure where they were headed. “Glienicker Bridge,” he muttered.

By the time they got there, a Russian truck had pulled up at the West Berlin end of Glienicker Bridge. Two American sergeants sat in a jeep facing West Berlin. Cherner skidded to a gut-wrenching stop right behind Ivan’s truck.

“This bridge is officially closed to vehicular traffic until repairs are completed,” one of the GIs announced.

“No problem, sergeant,” Malik said politely. “We will walk.” He signaled to his men, who proceeded to hustle the children out of the truck.

The column moved to the center of the bridge, Major Dmitri Malik in the lead, followed by other Russian soldiers who were hustling the children along. A grim-faced Lieutenant Aleksei Andreyev brought up the rear.

“Don’t let them through!” Cherner yelled to the sergeant behind the wheel of the jeep.

“I can’t stop them if they’re walking, sir!”

“Then
I
will!” Cherner’s voice was choking with rage.

Brenner shivered—and not from the cold night air. The bridge’s emergency lighting was a blessing. In the dim light, he couldn’t see the expressions on those small faces. But there was no way he could miss Irina. The girl was clutching the tiny three-year-old in her arms.

The sound of footsteps mingled with the slapping of waves against Glienicker’s damaged side. As Irina moved to the unobstructed section of the bridge, the children following behind her, she teetered slightly at the edge.

“Keep to the other side!” Malik warned—in English first, then Russian.

Brenner’s breath caught in his throat. It suddenly occurred to him that the children couldn’t understand either language!

It must have occurred to Joe Cherner too. He had leaped out of his jeep and was racing toward the middle of the bridge. Raising his sidearm, he fired into the air.

Malik and his soldiers turned into statues.

As if on cue, Irina paused. A ruptured support beam from one side of the bridge hung in the water like a broken limb, leaving a narrow breach. A few feet beyond, the pontoons bobbed in the water. The darkness made it hard to tell where the sky ended and the river began.

Suddenly Irina cried out and leapt into the breach. Three older boys followed instantly, three others hesitated but only momentarily. Two children—the youngest—froze. Russian soldiers scooped them up.

As Joe Cherner reached the scene, tears running down his face, the only thing his probing flashlight picked out was a shadowy patch being dragged downstream that might have been Irina’s hair floating on the gray-black surface.

“Don’t look down,” Malik said philosophically, appearing suddenly at Brenner’s shoulder. “By next week, you’ll be saying goodbye to all this.”

Thanks a lot, Major. Let’s hope Joe Cherner is so distracted that your remark didn’t register.

But it was Malik that Cherner pointed his weapon at. And not for long. The barrel of a rifle was pressed against the back of Cherner’s neck.

“Show some sense, Lieutenant,” Malik said coolly. “I have ten men here. Lousy odds, ten against one. My advice? Walk back to your jeep and move on. Forget this ever happened.”

Cherner hesitated before holstering his .45. He turned on his heel and walked slowly toward his truck.

His friend Joe was smart enough to move on, Brenner thought, but forget? Never.

He wondered if the same was true of him.

Chapter 23

K
iril stood on a stretch of unprotected tarmac at Schönefeld Airport, the major civilian airport of East Germany and the only one that served East Berlin. It was a cold, gray afternoon with no buildings or foliage to serve as a windbreaker. His fedora was soaked. His threadbare raincoat slapped against his trousers. Dark glasses obscured his eyes.

Beside him, Galya shivered uncontrollably even in a long coat lined with down, marveling at how Kiril could be so oblivious to the cold.

His mind was elsewhere. Would Dr. Kurt Brenner succumb to blackmail? he wondered. Damn Aleksei’s secretiveness and his need-to-know rules! In Moscow, he had shown Kiril bits and pieces of the Brenner file, but not enough to get a clear picture of Dr. Kurt Brenner, famous heart surgeon—or Kurt Brenner, private citizen.

Then go over what you
do
know, he told himself wearily.

German father and mother. Both naturalized American citizens, both employed by their son’s cardiac institute. Dr. Brenner’s flamboyantly successful medical career. A long bachelorhood followed by marriage to a journalist. Brenner’s widespread and apparently earned reputation as a humanitarian because of his nonprofit cardiac clinic for indigent children. Temperament: Brenner was known to cancel an entire day’s surgical schedule
and lock himself in his office on the rare
occasion
when a patient died on his operating table
.

A man of contradictions, Kiril mused. A renowned surgeon who had declined every invitation to medical exchanges in Iron Curtain countries, yet heaped extravagant praise on Medicine International’s Peace through Medicine activities in such places.

Why had Brenner accepted
the
invitation to East Berlin with such
alacrity?

Kiril thought about some Western physicians who’d come to Moscow from time to time.

How everyone in Dr. Yanin’s operating theater, from Yanin on down, had been excited at the mere prospect of learning about new ideas and technologies. The Americans, in particular, were open and generous about sharing their medical expertise—and friendly. But not judgemental. They saw—there was no way they could help seeing—the rigid control the Soviet government exercised over its citizens. No free exchange of ideas. No opportunity for hosts and guests to be alone. He recalled one American doctor who had given him a politically harmless detective novel in exchange for a volume of Russian poems but hadn’t even noticed that both books had been examined by the KGB minders as if their pages contained a coded plot to overthrow the Kremlin.

Kiril’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of two limousines. During their research, Kiril and Stepan had learned a lot about Western vehicles—cars and trucks manufactured in the Soviet Union after World War II by reverse engineering of a classic American automobile: the Packard Super-8. The Soviet “Packard,” a ZIS-110 sedan, had a 6-liter, 8-cylinder engine under the hood, 140 horse power, and could reach a top speed of nearly ninety miles per hour—fast for those days. Stalin was rumored to have owned several Packards, so the story went, and he wanted the Soviets’ first effort to manufacture a luxury automobile patterned after a stellar American car of the 1940s. Indeed, the ZIS-110 was so popular that Communist leaders from around the world—Mao, Tito, and Walter Ulbrecht of East Germany—favored them. So Kiril wasn’t surprised to see two of them on the tarmac.

The lead limousine pulled up to where Kiril and Galya were standing, the second just behind it. The first vehicle’s right rear door opened and a trim uniformed Vopo emerged, snapped open a black umbrella, and helped a short man wearing a top-hat to get out of the car. Top-hat carried a large piece of cardboard in the shape of a key.

The mayor of East Berlin bearing a symbolic key to the city for Herr Doktor Professor Kurt Brenner?

When Kiril had been stationed in Murmansk, he’d picked up a lot of American slang. The slang word he thought of now was “corny.”

The second car disgorged a huge woman wearing clodhopper shoes, serge trousers, and a heavy wool overcoat. Her close-cropped gray hair was immediately soaked. As her car door was closing, Kiril glimpsed a man sitting in the rear seat.

“Here they come!” Galya exclaimed.

Kiril squinted toward the horizon and saw a tiny speck. As he watched it grow larger, the speck became a flying fish skimming over dark clouds. He felt a surge of optimism. Whatever else he might be, Brenner was an American. He would never succumb to a blackmail threat—not if the price were his way of life, his freedom.

The fish metamorphosed into a smooth silver body. Circling for a landing, the plane taxied to a halt in front of the small group.

The man and woman who emerged from the plane were Americans, all right. You could sense it in the lift of their heads. In the way they moved. Kiril focused on Kurt Brenner’s walk—jaunty, with a brisk authoritative step. Unlike his own more deliberate way of moving. He burned the image into his brain. He would need to replicate Brenner’s walk until it was second nature. Brenner was swinging a trim briefcase the way an American movie hero might cross a patio swinging a tennis racket. Another indelible image. He zeroed in on Brenner’s hair. It was thicker than his, but not by much. He made a mental note to pick up some hair tonic.

The inventory stopped abruptly. He scrutinized Kurt Brenner’s face, now only a few yards from his own.

I have a good chance of making this work!

He was so elated that he forgot the standing order he had given himself. Monitor people’s reactions—especially Galya’s.

He needn’t have worried about Galya. She had barely noticed Brenner, too preoccupied with studying his wife. As he readied himself for making small talk, he glanced at Adrienne Brenner. She was tall, with an almost cat-like grace. She wore a forest-green cape, gold braid running across the shoulders and along the raised collar. Copper glints were all he could see of her hair, most of it captured under a wide-brimmed hat.

He couldn’t quite grasp why something about this woman made him uneasy, nor why he slipped his arm around Galya’s waist.

Adrienne Brenner took in the size of what had been billed as “the largest airport in East Germany.” She thought about the research she’d crammed into the last few days. It hadn’t prepared her for the moment when their plane was close enough for her to notice tethered goats. They were grazing on grass, on tarmac that was weathered and cracked . . . like rows of abandoned country roads going nowhere. She saw planes next to a hangar—only three? And men with submachine guns standing like uniformed statues at strategic points around the field. She’d been forewarned about that. Still, it unnerved her.

Frustrated that she couldn’t put her small camera to work, she turned a polite face to the two officials who’d emerged from their limousines and managed to nod agreeably through ponderous introductions in German. As soon as the formalities were over, she extended her hand in silent greeting to the blonde woman who’d been staring at her—lovely, but oddly disconcerting. The man in raincoat and dark glasses was not so much disconcerting as . . . intense.

Amenities over and the key to the city presented, Kiril, per Aleksei’s instructions, waited to see what the seating arrangements were to be.

The gray-haired woman took Dr. Brenner’s elbow and guided him toward her limousine. With obsequious deference, she opened the ZIS’s right rear door for Brenner, waited until he got in, and then joined the driver up front.

Not surprised at seeing who his seat-mate was, Brenner was nonetheless shocked at his appearance. Sixteen years had been good to Major Dmitri Malik.
Straight black hair, streaked with gray now. A mocking quality in the not-quite-hidden recesses of a remembered smile. Eyes the same glacial pale gray.

“Hello, Doc,” Malik said cheerfully with no trace of an accent. “The world has a habit of continuing to turn, don’t you think? Vodka?” he asked, leaning forward to a built-in bar facing them.

“Thank you, no.”

“A cigarette, then.”

“Why not?” Brenner said.

He noticed that the window between them and the driver was closed.

Not that the two people up front couldn’t be tuned into the conversation electronically . . .

Malik’s manner, as he lit Brenner’s cigarette, was deferential. “Your first trip to East Berlin, Dr. Brenner?”

Brenner almost choked on the smoke in his lungs.

The sonofabitch is toying with me. Okay, you bastard, I’ll play your game until I see what the score is.

“I was here during the War,” Brenner told him. “But that’s a tale too long to relate in a short drive to my hotel,” he said, getting in the last word.