Midnight Hunter

Sozopol. It’s exactly how Reinhardt said it would be. Sleepy, sunny, pretty. Ordinary. There are guards here of course and portraits Zhivkov, the Bulgarian leader, in the square and on some of the houses. But no one seems to pay them much mind and the guards don’t button their uniform jackets. From the living room window last night I watched the fishing boats coming back to the docks, the twining cats lining up in the dusky ligh

t, tails raised and expectant, waiting to be thrown the guts and fish-heads from the day’s haul.

I’m so tired after the events of the last week that I should go back to sleep, but I keep my eyes fixed on the window because if I close them I see too much blood. Heydrich’s spraying against my face. Reinhardt’s seeping unrelentingly through my fingers as I try to staunch the wound in his neck. The remembered terror of that drive to the hospital. His gray, unconscious face.

“You’re awake.”

I look over and see him standing in the doorway, one shoulder against the doorjamb, hands deep in his trouser pockets. There’s a large white plaster on the side of his neck and apart from a slightly paler cast than usual to his skin he looks as he always did. Sleek and powerful. Handsome. His eyes search mine. Perceptive eyes. Worried eyes.

We barely talked after he was discharged from hospital. He held my hand for most of the two hundred miles to Sozopol. Last night I stayed in the car while he knocked on someone’s front door and I heard loud, excited voices talking. Reinhardt brought us here and I went to bed almost straight away.

He comes and sits next to me on the bed. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

I pluck at the sheets, not meeting his eyes. “Everything’s wrong. I don’t know why we came here. Bulgaria is spoiled for us.”

Heydrich is dead by my hand but I haven’t even got time to deal with that because we’re not safe here and I don’t know what’s going to happen to us. Sozopol isn’t nearly far enough away from the havoc of that final border crossing.

“Spoiled how?”

“We were supposed to get into Bulgaria without being noticed. After what happened at the border—”

He covers my hand with his own, his voice gentle and reassuring. “It’s all taken care of, meine Liebe.”

I look at him, perplexed. Reinhardt is resourceful and clever but surely even he can’t undo the mess we made getting into Bulgaria. Not in less than a day, and not without more upheaval. “But how?”

“By a few things. Bribes for the guards. An unmarked grave for Heydrich. A Polish intelligence report that will soon arrive in East Berlin detailing the captain’s defection to the West via Danish fishing vessel.”

Bribes. How much of our starting over money has he spent? And I consider how it will look to the Stasi back in East Berlin that Heydrich followed us in pursuit and ended up defecting. “Heydrich wouldn’t turn like that. Not when he was so close to… Oh, unless he failed. Is that what you implied in your report, that he lost us and couldn’t face returning to East Berlin?”

Reinhardt smiles. “Implying. I’m working on the report now and I’ll send it to one of my contacts in Poland to deliver to HQ.” He’s silent for a moment, watching me. “It’s too soon to hope that we might get away with our dramatic entry into this country. But looking at you, my beautiful girl, whole and safe and by my side, I find that I have hope anyway.”

He draws me to him and I put my arms around him. I feel it too. Hope. We’ve battled our way here and we’re in one piece. We love each other. If it comes to it we’ll keep fighting, but the gentle sea breeze that caresses us, the soft buzz of bees in the spring garden, seems to herald the end of our flight.

“What’s next Reinhardt? What now?”

“Now? Now nothing. You’re going to rest.” He looks at me closely. “And you’re not going to feel guilty about what you had to do. If you hadn’t killed Heydrich he would have killed you.”

Do I feel guilty? Part of me wishes that I didn’t have to shoot him, but the other part is viciously glad I did. I didn’t know that this part of myself existed. “I wanted him to die. That’s probably the hardest thing to admit.”

Reinhardt wraps an arm around my shoulders and kisses my forehead. “It will never not be a difficult memory, Liebling. But it will begin to make sense for you in time, I hope.”

That’s more comforting than platitudes or telling me I did the right thing. I will always remember what I did, and why. I won’t forget any of this, but it will mean I treasure every peaceful moment in our life from now on.

“Where will we live?”

He smiles in mock astonishment. “Where? Here, of course. This is our new home.”

I gaze around the beautiful sunlit room. Though it’s careworn and musty the little stone cottage has charm, what I’ve seen of it. “But how?”

“Thanks to a very old friend of mine. That’s who I went to see last night. Our grandfathers were friends and we knew each other as boys. I’ve helped him out over the years when he’s needed it, and now he’s helping me.”

I wrinkle my nose, suspecting the sort of help Reinhardt could offer. “Shady secret police things?”

“In a way. His niece met an Italian at university and fell in love with him. I helped with the papers to she could emigrate to the West and be with him.”

My eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “You know, Reinhardt, you’ve got a stupidly soft heart inside that hard Stasi exterior.”

He smiles, and kisses me gently. “It’s not Reinhardt, it’s Alexsandr and Lina Lyubomir.”