Midnight Hunter

A smile touches his mouth. “All right, my Valkyrie. We’ll protect each other.”

I take a slow, deep breath, because for the first time it’s not us against each other, it’s us against everyone else. And between us, I feel we’re unstoppable. “I love you, Reinhardt.”

He kisses me, holding me tight against him as if he’s afraid I’ll slip through his fingers. “Ich liebe dich. Immer.” I love you. Always.

I think ahead to what’s in store for us on our journey there. It will be dangerous as the Stasi must be after us by now.

“What’s the name of this village?”

“Sozopol, on the Black Sea.” He smiles, a soft smile of remembrance. “It’s beautiful there. So much sunshine, little stone cottages. The sea is warm and there is always fresh fish. The stray cats sit on the dock waiting for the fishermen to come in at sunset and they are all sleek and well fed. It’s quiet. Peaceful. At least, that’s how I remember it. No doubt my memories are colored by nostalgia.”

Reinhardt, hardened as he is by life, is taking a chance on the place he loved as a boy. I cup his cheek, hoping that I’ll see him smile like that again soon.

He talks me through his plan to get us to Bulgaria, enumerating all the dangerous places that we’ll be passing through. There are multiple borders to traverse before we even get to Bulgaria and we can’t take the most direct route lest we give our final destination away.

“Right now we’re headed for Szczecin, a city on the route to the north coast of Poland. I want them to believe we’re intending to defect to the West via boat to Malmo or Copenhagen.” He’s silent for a moment, watching me. “We could do that, you know. I have enough dollars and West German marks to bribe a sea captain to take us to a Western port. You could see your father again.”

My father. I don’t know how to feel about what he did. Now that the initial shock over his betrayal has passed I find I’m not as angry as I expected to be. Mostly I feel confused and disappointed. What would I say to him if we were face to face right now? I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I have no idea what I’d say.

Going east with Reinhardt means giving up not only my family, but any plans I had for my future there. I think about Ana and her dream to go to a Western university. I never wanted that for myself. All I’ve wanted is to be with the people I love. And now, that person is Reinhardt. “Could you be happy in the West?”

“I will be happy if I’m with you, Liebling.”

“Where would we be safest? Will we have peace in our lives if we make our home in Bulgaria?”

His hand strokes through my hair and he’s silent for a moment, thinking. “No matter where we go there is a risk. We could get into the West under our aliases but they will eventually find out who I am and they will coerce me into providing secrets about the Stasi in exchange for money and a place for us to live. I will have to accept because they will see to it that I am too notorious to find employment, and we’ll need their protection because the Stasi will send assassins to silence me.”

I stare at him in horror. I hadn’t thought of assassins. “And in the East? I suppose we risk being recognized as traitors and sent back to East Berlin.”

“Exakt.”

So there’s danger everywhere. It seems like an impossible dream that we’ll ever be happy. It will be a miracle if we have even our freedom at the end of this journey, but I want more than just existing. I want to love. I want peace for us.

I think of fishing boats bobbing on the sea. A small stone cottage and a garden. Peace that we can find only in a place far, far

away from East Berlin or any other big city in the East or West.

“I want us to be together, and I want us to be happy,” I whisper. “I think Sozopol might be our best chance at both.”

He kisses me fiercely and I feel the full force of his love behind it. I breathe him into myself, my dark lover who became my heart’s song in a cold, gray world.

“I will get us there, meine Liebe. It won’t be easy, for they will be hunting us and if we are to make a home in the East then I will have to make us disappear. The things I will have to do may not be pleasant. Are you ready for that? Will you stay by my side, no matter what?”

He means we will be hunted like he once hunted me on the streets of East Berlin, and that he may have to hurt people. Kill people. I’ve seen with my own eyes how ruthless he can be when I’m threatened.

“I’m with you, my love. No matter what.”

8 8 8

It’s strange and enthralling to see Reinhardt switch into his hunter mindset. We are the hunted now, but he’s thinking like a Stasi officer so that we can stay one step ahead of our enemies.

“They’ll all be looking for us, not just Heydrich. My Oberst is probably getting a dressing down from the Chairman himself for not knowing there was a traitor right under his nose,” Reinhardt says with a grim smile. “They won’t play fair, but neither will we.”

He almost seems like he relishes the challenge of having the whole of the East German secret police force after us. “What will happened if they catch us?”

He’s silent for a moment as he drives, his eyes on the road ahead and a grim cast to his profile. “They will take me back to East Berlin. My execution will be kept out of the papers but the whole of the Stasi and Party will know my fate.”

“And me?” I can see that he doesn’t want to answer, but I press him. “Just tell me. I need to know what could happen. What would you do to me in Heydrich’s place?”