Freedom Bridge: A Cold War Thriller by Erika Holzer

Author:Erika Holzer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Madison Press
Published: 2013-04-14T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 30

As soon the helicopter’s wheels touched the ground, Kiril thanked Rolf Gruner for setting down. “We’ll be staying only a few minutes,” he reassured the captain.

Opening the helicopter door, Kiril jumped down, Rogov right behind him. Galya and the Brenners followed.

Adrienne glanced back at the helicopter, its blades still rotating slowly, perched on the field like some wary bird poised for flight.

All five of them stood looking at a couple of uniformed soldiers headed in their direction, submachine guns in hand.

“Vopos,” Kiril told them. “Let me handle this,” he added with a warning glance at Brenner before walking toward the soldiers.

Brenner caught snatches of German, followed in short order by angry demands for an explanation. But Andreyev’s authoritative voice—he said something about it being an inspection—made the Vopos uncertain about what to do next. One decided he would go to the phone at the guard shack three hundred or so yards away.

The other Vopo’s mind was apparently made up for him, Adrienne thought, as she noticed what appeared to be some kind of a disturbance at the other end of the large field.

“What’s that about?” she asked Galya.

“Is better not know, better not be mixed in,” she whispered.

Adrienne shrugged and started to walk in Kiril Andreyev’s direction.

“Please to stay near helicopter,” Galya called after her. “We have no permit to be here. I heard Mongolian say field is mass grave. But not like Treptower. Not for heroes from Great Patriotic War. This is mass grave for traitors.”

Adrienne stared at her.

Like Paul Houston’s friend, Stepan Brodsky?

“Where do you think you’re going?” Brenner asked Adrienne.

“To see for myself,” she said flatly.

Her heels sunk into the black furrows of the freshly plowed field. It covered an area large enough for a hundred conventional graves, she thought. How many could be buried in a human dumping ground, a thousand? Two?

Dr. Andreyev, his Mongolian “shadow” a few feet behind him, was walking along a barbed-wire fence that surrounded the field. Adrienne groped in a side pocket of her bag for a slim silver object the length of a pocket comb. Avoiding the gaze of the pilots and the Vopos, but not particularly concerned about Dr. Andreyev’s nurse—or was Galya his girlfriend?—Adrienne slid the outer shell of the miniature Minox back and forth, exposing the lens as she snapped photographs of the field . . . the barbed wire . . . a couple of signs that said verböten.

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