Midnight Hunter

“Because it’s a last resort, only to be used if there are no other choices. This plan is dangerous. You would be far safer in West Berlin.”

Frustrating man. How like him to consider something and then dismiss it out of turn without even telling me about it. “What is this plan?”

“Look in the glove box.”

I open it and take out two East German passports, both ordinary citizens’ passports, one with his picture and the name Franz Bauer, and one with mine and the name Alisz Bauer.

“We are two East German tourists on holiday,” he explains.

“In a Mercedes-Benz?” It doesn’t seem wise to try and fly under the radar in such a conspicuous car.

He smiles. “All will become clear, meine Liebe. How are you feeling? I’m sorry, I had to give you a lot of Veronal. I wanted to make sure you were asleep when we went across the border into Poland. It was four in the morning and the guards assumed you were asleep.”

I picture us at the border, me posed in the front seat as if sleeping, Reinhardt whispering to the guards as he hands our papers over, asking them not to wake his sleeping wife. He’d know just what to say to them to put them at their ease; perhaps share that he doesn’t have much time off so we’re driving through the night and that he never needed much sleep anyway. Perhaps he offered them a cigarette and asked them about their shifts, commiserating with them about the boredom of working an East German–Polish border. He’d strike just the right balance of courteousness and unconcern.

“I could have pretended to be Alisz Bauer just fine,” I say, feeling stubborn and annoyed about being out of it for so long.

“Ah, but then I couldn’t have looked fondly at my sleeping young wife and made them all think of their own girlfriends and wives and the holidays they wished they were setting out on.”

I’m having trouble taking all this in. Yesterday I was a Stasi secretary desperate to find my father and escape to West Berlin. Now I’m posing as a young married woman with my fugitive lover. There are so many questions crowding on my tongue but I ask the one that seems the most important. “Where are we going?”

He hesitates. “You may not like it. You may wish I’d left you in West Berlin.”

I sit up straighter. “Just tell me.”

“We’re not going to the West. We’re going further into the Eastern Bloc. To Bulgaria.”

“Bulgaria? But that’s a thousand miles away—that’s the other side of Europe. I don’t even speak Bulgarian. Wait, you do, don’t you?” I remember coming into his office that time and hearing him speaking in a foreign language to the Bulgarian delegation. How I’d served them coffee and Reinhardt had looked at me as if he was wondering how I tasted, and I’d flushed because I was starting to imagine what it would be like if I let him find out.

“Ja.” And then he speaks a sentence of something unintelligible and clearly not German.

“Pardon?”

He smiles. “I said that once we reach Bulgaria we’re going to become Alexsandr and Lina Lyubomir, and you are my East German wife. I can pass as a Bulgarian who’s been living in East Germany.”

“But why Bulgaria?”

“It was the first place I thought of, and the only place I considered. The only place I could see us being…” He hesitates. “My grandmother was Bulgarian and I spent every summer with her and my grandfather in their little seaside village. I was happy there.” He grimaces as if he can’t quite believe he’s made such a sentimental decision.

But to me it’s everything, because he chose Bulgaria as he thinks we could be happy there. He wants us to be happy, and he wants us to be together.

“Reinhardt,” I moan in relief, burying my face in his chest. “Do you know how frightened I was? I thought I’d never see you again.”

His arms tighten around me and he murmurs into my hair. “I know, Liebling. I know. I’m sorry I did that to you. I didn’t think there was any other way to keep you safe.”

I look up, beseeching him, “Promise me you’ll never do anything like that again.” When he hesitates I hold up my hand and show him the wedding ring. “I’m your wife now, remember?”

“I promise never to drug you in East Berlin in order to smuggle you—”

But I’m not going through that again, sliding into unconsciousness without any control over what’s happening to me. To us. “No. We both decide our lives from now on. We’re in this together, to the end, no matter what. I can’t face losing you again.”

He looks at me for a long time, as if he doesn’t dare hope that I feel this way. “Do you really mean that, Liebling?”

I reach up and touch his cheek, roughened by morning stubble. “I’m not your prisoner anymore. I’m your partner, your equal. This will only work if we both decide our fates, not just you.”

“I’ll still fight for you, scheme for you, protect you.”

“We’ll protect each other,” I insist.