The Moment by Douglas Kennedy

Author:Douglas Kennedy [Kennedy, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9781409021490
Publisher: Arrow
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

AS SOON AS Petra finished talking, I stood up and took her in my arms. But her reaction to this embrace, this attempt to comfort her, was disconcerting. She was limp, lifeless—as if the telling of this terrible tale had depleted her entirely. I held her close to me, saying:

“When you first came here—that night we first spent together—you asked me to never let you go. I promised you I wouldn’t. And that promise holds—even more so after what you’ve just told me.”

“You really mean that?”

“You know I do. Just as you know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, for us.”

“Us,” she said, pronouncing the pronoun carefully, as if it was foreign to her or—worse yet—a word that had been proscribed. “I so want that. But . . .”

“I won’t accept the word ‘but.’ What you’ve been through, what you’ve survived, it would have broken most people. It didn’t break you. Now, together, we have a real chance at happiness.”

“But, as I told you, how can I ever be happy if Johannes is with those people?”

“You can have another child. With me.”

“It won’t bring Johannes across The Wall. It will never end the sense of loss.”

“True, but it will mean you will be a mother again.”

“But do you really want that, Thomas? You, who live this vagabond existence, who love to wander, to roam. Surely you don’t want to be changing diapers or forced to stand still for a while . . .”

“I want this, you, us. And, yes, I want a child with you.”

“Please don’t say that just to make me feel better.”

“I’m saying that because I mean it. And because I will also do everything I can to get Johannes back to you.”

“You’re being far too romantic, Thomas. What Herr Ullmann told me a year ago was correct: there is no way you can negotiate with these people.”

“They got you out.”

“Because they had a bargaining chip: Dieter Mettel, a high-ranking officer in the Bundesnachrichtendienst who turned out to be a Stasi operative. He was such a big catch for the West Germans that they traded him for three East German dissidents and me. The only reason they wanted me out was that they could learn all about Stenhammer’s interrogation techniques. He was someone who had broken many of their own people over there. And I was able to give them a very comprehensive account of his strategies when it came to breaking his victims.”

“But he didn’t break you.”

“I didn’t tell him anything he wanted to know. But yes, he still broke me. Just as they broke Judit.”

“But she betrayed you. Betrayed you utterly.”

“I got a letter from her five months ago. A letter that had been smuggled out by a second cousin who teaches at Tübingen and was visiting her in the East. According to the letter, Judit only spent a few weeks in the psychiatric hospital—where she was administered electric shock treatment that, as she said, mentally neutered her. She said the horrible feelings she had for betraying me, for betraying our friendship, have been neutralized by the treatment.

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