Midnight Hunter

He strokes a finger down my cheek, a regretful smile on his face. “They will not welcome me in West Berlin. I’m a Stasi officer. They’ll put me in prison just to be safe, or they’ll quietly hand me back to the East German authorities in exchange for political prisoners.”

I gape at him. “They wouldn’t. Surely that’s against…against human rights conventions?”

He muses on this. “It is. But if the West Germans are quick about handing me back, who is to know? Will the East Germans protest, or will they agree to the deal? I know what I’d do in their place.”

“Not everyone is as opportunistic as you, and if they are then it will be because of the intelligence you can give them on East Germany. You must know so much that will be useful to the West.”

Reinhardt grimaces as if he finds the notion abhorrent. “Perhaps. But I’m not going to trust my life in the hands of enemy authorities. I’ve lived that life before.”

As a prisoner of war, he means. He’s got a soldier’s instincts, but this is a cold war, not a hot one. Defection isn’t the same as surrender but I can see from his stubborn expression that he thinks it is.

I look up into his face, eyes supplicating, unwilling to let go of the sliver of happiness that I’ve glimpsed on the horizon. Both of us together, in the West. “Come with me. Please, Reinhardt.”

Pain flickers over his face and I realize with a jolt that he’s saying goodbye to me. This is the end of everything between us. He can’t keep me safe any longer so he’s doing what he said he’d never do and letting me go. He’s giving me my freedom at last, and I don’t want it.

I take a deep breath. Pleas aren’t working. I’ll try and make him sense instead. “Reinhardt, when I disappear they’re going to discover it was you who helped me escape, and that you harbored a traitor for months in your apartment. Frau Fischer knows we’ve been sharing a bed and Lenore’s not oblivious to what’s been going on. What happens when they’re questioned? What happens when the border guards tell your Oberst that you go across the border at night and match the dates to unexplained disappearances? They will find out that you’ve been unfaithful to the Party and you will be sent to prison for the rest of your life.”

Reinhardt watches me unemotionally, as if none of this is news to him and I realize that it isn’t. He came to the same conclusion in his office before he told me to get my coat. “I’m always aware of the risks, Liebling. There are things in this life for which it is worth suffering the worst of fates. You happen to be one of them.”

“Don’t be sentimental. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Do you think I was a happy man when I met you? Do you think happy men steal women off the street because they’re haunted by their pasts? I have held the sweetest flower in my hands when I have held you, and for that I would suffer worse fates than anything these people could ever do to me.”

“It is a needless fate when the West is a matter of miles away.”

He shakes his head. I don’t understand, and I’m not ready to give up. My mind races over the possibilities. Would life in prison be a severe enough punishment for a high-ranking Stasi officer turned traitor? The State sometimes liked to make examples of powerful people they thought they could trust. The dreadful realization slams into me. I take hold of his jacket in a white-knuckled grip.

“Reinhardt, they won’t put you in prison will they? You will be executed.”

He shrugs and digs his cigarettes out of his pocket. “Perhaps.”

I gape at him. “Don’t you dare be offhand about this. They’ll drag you before a firing squad and shoot you. They won’t even give you a proper trial. You know how it works.”

He turns the unlit cigarette in his fingers slowly, as if he’s choosing his words. I wait, still holding fistfuls of his jacket.

“Then I will die knowing that you’re safe. They will not have you.”

“No, Reinhardt—”

But he cuts me off. “Evony, I’ve told you this before. Being a soldier means I’m not afraid to die. On a battlefield, on the street, in the shadow of the Wall. I have accepted it, but more than that I have expected it.” He reaches out and smooths my curls back from my face. “Though I didn’t expect to find such sweetness at the end. I have no regrets, Liebling. They can’t take my love for you, even if they take my life.”

I’m shaking all over. This can’t be the hard, ruthless man I know who would stop at nothing to get what he wants. How can he give up now when I need him the most?

He smiles at me, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t take heart, meine Liebe. It may not come to the firing squad. They’ll have to catch me first.”

They will catch him. The Stasi have soldiers and informants all over East Germany, not just in East Berlin, and Reinhardt is a conspicuous man.

“But I love you,” I say in a choked voice. “Why do I have to lose you now when you’ve finally found a place in my heart? Why did you make me fall in love with you if I was only going to lose you?”

He casts the cigarette aside and wraps his arms around me. “So you do love me, Evony.” He kisses me, and I taste my own salt tears on our lips. When I close my eyes I see him stripped of his uniform and hands bound behind him as he’s dragged before a firing squad, and my eyes fly open.

“No. I’m not going without you. I’m not leaving you here to die alone. I’m staying.”

He takes me by the upper arms, holding tightly, his eyes boring into mine. “Evony, listen to me. Your father is in West Berlin. There is nothing for you here but me and I will not be here for long. I can’t protect you from them and I will not see them take you away. If I go with you the West German authorities could think you’re a spy as well. I can’t control what might happen to you if I go with you, and if we both end up back in East Berlin as prisoners it will be worse than dying for me. Don’t you understand? Some things are worse than dying.”

He’s thinking about Johanna, how she suffered and died in the death camp and he couldn’t save her. The remembered pain is filling his eyes. That’s why he’s always admired my strength, because he’s believed that if the worst happened I’d never give up. I’d find some way to survive and he wouldn’t have to live through my death or capture as well. Maybe he’s felt all along that this could never last between us, that he’s been living on borrowed time ever since he was taken prisoner during the war; borrowed, painful time, because if he’d died in battle he would have been spared the horror of knowing what Johanna went through.

I shrug out of his grasp, angry now. “I’m not her and you’re not in the Wehrmacht. They are not our enemies in West Berlin. What about all those times you said I was yours forever even when I spied on you and lashed out at you? How could you love me through all of that but not now?”