Midnight Hunter

The sound of an engine. The heat from the sun, bathing me in its warm glow. I rise upwards into consciousness through deep, cold waters and I’m chasing toward awareness—and then I remember. A whimper, a pained, despairing sound escapes me. I don’t want to open my eyes because I know what I’ll see. West Berlin. I’ll finally be on the other side of the Wall and I’ll hate it even more for who it separates me from.

Someone touches my hand and I jerk away. It will be a stranger ready to welcome me to the West with a smile. They’ll tell me I’m one of the lucky ones who managed to get out.

“Evony.”

It’s a man, maybe a doctor, and they’ll be kind and professional and ask if they can call anyone on my behalf. Maybe Dad’s already here, waiting behind a door or a curtain to call me Schätzen and pretend everything’s all right. I don’t want a doctor, or Dad, or anyone else in the world. I only want Reinhardt, the man I love.

I feel the chair I’m sitting in rock from side to side. I’m moving, sitting in a leather seat. I finally drag my eyes open and see the world is rushing past the window. The road ahead is an empty, lined sparsely with trees. There are fields beyond, some empty, some dotted with cows. I frown, because this isn’t West Berlin. This isn’t even East Berlin.

The dashboard, the black hood of the car is familiar. It’s Reinhardt’s Mercedes. With a cry I turn to my left. And he’s there, impossibly, beautifully there, in a crisp white shirt rolled back to his elbows and his large, strong hands on the wheel. He’s smiling, the sun falling over the lower half of his face, making his eyes very bright and blue.

“If you didn’t open your eyes in another ten minutes, Dornröschen, I would have tried kissing you awake.”

Dornröschen. Sleeping Beauty. I reach out and touch him and he’s solid and warm. I stare out the windscreen at the unfamiliar landscape and then back at him. The chloroform must have muddled my brain as it’s taking longer than usual to kick into gear.

Then all my questions gather and come out in a bewildered rush. “What’s happening? Where are we? What time is it? Is this West Germany? Why aren’t we being processed as immigrants?

He reaches out and takes my hand and I wrap both of mine around his, clinging tightly to the man I thought I’d never see again. How is he here? Where even are we?

“We are in Poland. You have been unconscious for about—” he glances at his watch “—fifteen hours. I had to hide us until the early hours of the morning but we are, as you see, driving, and I have no intention of us being processed as anything if I can help it.”

This information only makes my confusion worse. Poland is in the East, even further from West than East Berlin. “Poland? Fifteen hours?”

“Ja. Oh, and we are married.”

He touches a gold band that’s glinting on my ring finger, and I see there’s one on his as well. I stare at our rings for a long time, watching the way the sunlight gleams on their shiny surfaces. My husband. There can’t have been a ceremony but he must have forged or obtained the papers somehow.

This is all too much for me to take in. “Pull the car over.”

“Why?” His tone is light but there’s a hard look in his eyes. He’s already made up his mind about this, whatever this is.

“Reinhardt, pull the car over.”

He frowns, but a moment later he reluctantly turns the car off the road and alongside a farm fence. I sense him readying himself to grab me if I try to hurl myself out the door. As soon as he’s put on the handbrake and cut the engine I throw myself at him, locking my arms around his neck and pressing myself as close to him as I can get. The steering wheel digs into my hip. He gathers me close so that my legs are across his thigh and I’m cradled against him, shuddering with fury and relief.

“You bastard. I thought I’d never see you again.”

His large hand strokes through my hair. “Shh, Liebling, it’s all right now.”

I look up at him, tears running weakly down my face though I’m not actually crying. I still don’t understand what’s happening but all I care about is that we’re together. “I thought you were going to smuggle me across the border to t

he West and leave me there. I thought you were going to let them kill you. Why did you have to do it like that? I was so frightened.”

He wipes the tears from my face, his expression rueful. “I intended to do just that.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“Because when I came down to it I couldn’t let you go.”

He kisses me softly, and as if I really am Sleeping Beauty awakening from a long sleep my mind clears. He couldn’t let me go. We’ve left East Berlin behind us. We’re together.

“I had the plan all laid out. I was going to take you someplace safe until it got dark and then drive you across the border. But when I gathered you into my arms to take you to the car I just couldn’t do it. So I injected you with Veronal and I put my escape plan into action.”

There’s a plaster at the bend of my elbow and I run my finger over it. So it wasn’t just the chloroform that knocked me out. I had no idea that he had an escape plan, let alone hypodermics and powerful drugs in the house. “What plan?”

“A way to disappear if there’s an invasion or a revolution and it’s suddenly dangerous for me to be in East Berlin. Weeks ago I saw to it that you were part of that plan, too.”

I look up at him angrily. “Then why didn’t you tell me about this plan last night? Why didn’t we even discuss this as a possibility?”