Midnight Hunter

Silence falls, the minutes ticking on and on. What if Reinhardt’s been caught? What if there was more than one person on our tail? The gun is shaking in my white-knuckled hands, and then I remember that I haven’t turned the safety off. I turning the weapon over in my hands, looking for the button, when I hear it. Whistling. I nearly let out a sob of relief.

“I’m here,” I call in a cracked whisper, and then I’m plunging through the bushes, see Reinhardt, and fall into his arms. He takes my bag and holds me for a moment.

“It’s all right. Come on.” He kisses my temple and I let go of him. We walk quickly across the scrubby field, away from the road and the town. “I took so long because I had to drive around the backroads and park on the far side,” he explains. “I don’t think I was followed.”

“I think I was.” And I tell him about the man I saw.

“Yes, that’s who was watching us in the square,” he says grimly.

“But why would someone be following us? If the Stasi are after us why wouldn’t they just arrest us?”

The car’s parked beneath the branches of a spreading oak on a narrow lane, and we get in before Reinhardt answers. “Because Heydrich is waiting for us to defect, not merely to run. He wants to be sure that he’s got me on a serious charge before he makes his move. We’ve confused him by traveling east.”

The flesh at the back of my neck creeps. So he does believe that it’s Heydrich who’s after us. “But we’ve fled East Berlin together. Surely that’s traitorous enough.”

He turns the ignition and starts driving. “For you, yes. But he doesn’t understand why I’ve gone with you. If he arrests me now I might come up with all sorts of plausible reasons why we’re together. I could say that you have valuable intelligence and this has been a long, elaborate interrogation; I’m using you as bait to catch your escaped friends; or I’m not travelling with you, I’m pursuing you. He knows how much I’m trusted within the Ministry and how it could come down to my word against his. It’s not you he wants to arrest. It’s me.”

“Is he here, do you think? Was he in that town?”

Reinhardt glances into the rearview mirror. We’re the only car on this winding road. “I don’t know.”

I chew my thumbnail, thinking. “We can’t keep going into Bulgaria now. That man will be reporting into Heydrich right now if he is who you think he is.”

Reinhardt thinks, a muscle in his jaw flexing. “This is a Soviet aligned border on both sides. The security will be minimal.”

I gape at him. “You can’t be serious. After what just happened? They’ll be waiting for us. Heydrich himself might be there.”

“Then I’ll wring his goddamn neck,” he growls.

“Murdering Heydrich isn’t going to stop the rest of the Stasi from coming after us.” He doesn’t want to double back, I realize. We pass through a small town in silence and then get onto a main road that winds through some hills. On a bend, Reinhardt pulls the car to a halt, peering through the trees.

“What is it?” I ask.

He nods at the next bend. There are some people in the road ahead. “That’s a roadblock.”

“Are you—”

But Reinhardt’s already reversing the car in a tight three-point turn and racing back up the hill.

“Do you think it was for us?” I ask.

“Maybe.”

My heart is pounding hard again and I’m starting to feel dizzy from the adrenaline pounding through my body. Nowhere’s safe. We’re pinned between that roadblock and the town. Reinhardt accelerates, and I look over at him. There’s a gleam of hard determination in his eyes.

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking about that black car we passed a few miles back.”

Fear clutches me anew. “Are we being followed?”

“No. There was no one in it. I want us to do something very brazen, Liebling. Are you willing?”

I don’t want to do anything of the kind but I know it’s either this or capture. “Tell me what I need to do.”

We leave the Skoda behind an abandoned barn and walk with our bags along a lane. I wait a little ways back from the road while Reinhardt goes to investigate the black car. He puts the gun into my hand again before he leaves and I look at it with distaste. Could I even use it if I needed to? I’ve never even fired a gun in my life, let alone at someone.