Page 42 of Beehive

My eyes flicked to the checkpoint ahead, where two Soviet guards leaned lazily against a concrete barricade, their posture a poetic mirror image of ours against the truck. The soldiers’ rifles hung loose over their shoulders, but I didn’t doubt they could snap to attention and shoot a man dead before he could even think about running.

Thomas straightened and brushed invisible dust from his jacket as though he weren’t preparing to cross into the lion’s den. “Come on. It’s just a checkpoint. Smile, be polite, and let me do the talking. Besides, our friendly neighborhood minder should be here to whisk us through.”

He led the way, theclackof our shoes on the cracked pavement sounding much louder than it should have. As we approached, one of the guards raised a hand and barked something in Russian.

“Guten tag,” Thomas said with easy confidence, pulling out his forged papers and offering them to the guard. His German was crisp and deliberate, every syllable polished to sound like he belonged here. “We are here on official business.”

The guard’s face was unreadable as he flipped through the documents.

I stood perfectly still, resisting the urge to wipe damp palms on my trousers. Thomas looked at ease, his hands resting lightly at his sides, though I knew one was close to the knife hidden inside his jacket.

The other guard stepped closer, his beady brown eyes scanning us both.

My breath hitched. For a moment, I thought they’d ask questions about our forged seal, the American accents beneathour carefully practiced German, about why we’d dare to entertheirterritory.

I clamped my mouth shut, gripping the strap of my satchel as though it were the only thing anchoring me to reality. The guard scanned our papers with the practiced boredom of someone who’d seen too many documents to care about them anymore.

“Kunst?”(Art?)

The man cocked one brow. He’d mangled the German word worse than American bombs had Berlin.

I nodded.

Seconds stretched.

Finally, the soldier handed the papers back with a curt nod. “Nach innen gehen,” he said in heavily accented German, basically telling us to “Get to the inside” and waving us through. His pronunciation was almost as atrocious as his word choice, but correcting an armed man at a border crossing seemed like a poor life choice, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Your escort is waiting in the building over there.” The guard pointed to a mid-sized brick home the Soviets had apparently turned into a border crossing office. Thomas offered a polite smile, touched the brim of his hat, and strode forward.

The Soviet sector greeted us with the stench of coal smoke and despair.

We walked at a steady, unhurried pace. The moment we entered the house, the gaze of a steely-eyed young man no older than twenty snapped to us. The man, dressed in a Soviet corporal’s uniform, scowled and said, “You are the Americans?”

Thomas shook his head. “Germans, but we are here at the behest of the American regime.”

The corporal squinted at Thomas, looked through me, then looked down to scan a binder sitting open on his desk. A moment later, he glanced back up. His glare shifted from suspicious to bored.

“Go that way.” He pointed down a hallway. “Second door on the right. Do not stray.”

“Thank you,” Thomas said, giving the man another of his warm smiles. The clerk did not return the gesture.

A dozen paces brought us before the aforementioned door.

“Ready?”

I nodded once.

He turned the knob and stepped inside to enter a stifling office whose air was filled with tobacco and stale paper mingled with something else—shoe polish?

One window was cracked open. The weak breeze did little against the oppressive weight of the place. The room was supremely Soviet: utilitarian, furnished with a mismatched desk and chairs that had seen better days.

On the far side of the desk, a man with bushy black hair and darker eyes glared as though his stare might bore holes in our chests. He didn’t bother to rise. Instead, he leaned back, one hand resting on the edge of the desk, while the other held a cigarette whose ash was nearly as long as the remaining paper. The man’s officer’s uniform fit him with the kind of rigidity that seemed less tailored and more imposed. Everything was perfect with nothing out of place.

“Ah, our American allies,” the man said at last, his Russian accent rolling English words like marbles in his cheeks. He gestured to the chairs opposite his desk, the motion sharp and dismissive. “Sit. Make yourselves comfortable—though I expect you are accustomed to greater comforts than this.”

I exchanged a confused glance with Thomas, then stared at the man as though I hadn’t understood a word he’d spoken. Thomas shrugged, joining my act.

Thomas said in German, “We are German, not American.”

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