“You’re still my wife, damn you,” Brenner hissed, fury in his eyes. “‘My place is with my husband,’” he mimicked. “That’s the noble little sentiment you shared with that mob of journalists when you and this—this stand-in—were about to return to East Berlin.”
“I was stalling for time.”
“Are you forgetting about the night when you were cold and I—”
“That was rape.”
“It may have started out that way,” he admitted, “but that’s not the way it ended. Or am I being too crude?”
Resisting the impulse to slap the smugness off his face, she said, “I’m not crude enough to tell you why it ended the way it did. Just so you know, Kurt, I’m locking you out of the room we’ve been sharing for appearance’s sake so that your ‘stand-in’ and I can go to bed.”
Turning their backs on him, she and Kiril walked upstairs hand in hand.
Chapter 48
It 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—”