Dawn of Liberty

By Michael Phillips

Political unrest shakes the foundations of a war-torn country—and of the McCallum family as they fight for their faith in the Secret of the Rose series.
 
Many years after their daring escape from a divided Germany, Sabina and Matthew McCallum return with their son, Tad, to attend a conference on preaching the gospel of Christ in a country still scarred by the Cold War. What they discover is troubling. Western Christianity, while well intentioned, is not filling the unique needs of Christians in the East. And even though the Cold War is over, political strife is bubbling just below the surface, and Sabina and Matthew become entangled in a Communist plot to seize control of Eastern Europe. Once again, the couple must call upon their instinctive talent for survival—and their deep faith in God’s protection—to save their family.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781625391605

Michael Phillips

Professor Mike Phillips has a BSc in Civil Engineering, an MSc in Environmental Management and a PhD in Coastal Processes and Geomorphology, which he has used in an interdisciplinary way to assess current challenges of living and working on the coast. He is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research, Innovation, Enterprise and Commercialisation) at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and also leads their Coastal and Marine Research Group. Professor Phillips' research expertise includes coastal processes, morphological change and adaptation to climate change and sea level rise, and this has informed his engagement in the policy arena. He has given many key note speeches, presented at many major international conferences and evaluated various international and national coastal research projects. Consultancy contracts include beach monitoring for the development of the Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay, assessing beach processes and evolution at Fairbourne (one of the case studies in this book), beach replenishment issues, and techniques to monitor underwater sediment movement to inform beach management. Funded interdisciplinary research projects have included adaptation strategies in response to climate change and underwater sensor networks. He has published >100 academic articles and in 2010 organised a session on Coastal Tourism and Climate Change at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris in his role as a member of the Climate, Oceans and Security Working Group of the UNEP Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts, and Islands. He has successfully supervised many PhD students, and as well as research students in his own University, advises PhD students for overseas universities. These currently include the University of KwaZuluNatal, Durban, University of Technology, Mauritius and University of Aveiro, Portugal. Professor Phillips has been a Trustee/Director of the US Coastal Education and Research Foundation (CERF) since 2011 and he is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Coastal Research. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Geography, University of Victoria, British Columbia and Visiting Professor at the University Centre of the Westfjords. He was an expert advisor for the Portuguese FCT Adaptaria (coastal adaptation to climate change) and Smartparks (planning marine conservation areas) projects and his contributions to coastal and ocean policies included: the Rio +20 World Summit, Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts and Islands; UNESCO; EU Maritime Spatial Planning; and Welsh Government Policy on Marine Aggregate Dredging. Past contributions to research agendas include the German Cluster of Excellence in Marine Environmental Sciences (MARUM) and the Portuguese Department of Science and Technology.

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Prologue

In all his purposes for the world, the Creator allows time to help accomplish them.

Whether it be in an individual heart, in the relationships of a family, or in the history of a nation, time teaches, time heals, time strengthens, time deepens roots and gives perspective. For time is an essential element of growth, and a necessary catalyst for the development of maturity and wisdom.

The best things are never arrived at in haste. God is in no hurry; his plans are never rushed.

When he fashioned time, the Creator divided it into segments. Night and day became its measured portions. Months were marked by the sequences of the moon, and the years by repeating quarterly spans of changing climate. He made all things to grow according to these patterns, passing ever and again out of dormancy into fruitfulness and back again, repeating over and over the growth cycle of life’s miracle.

Just as he created such natural phases to prescribe duration for growing things, he likewise defined by parallel intervals the progression of the earthly sojourn of his people The pilgrimage of one Baron Heinrich von Dortmann had now graduated through the fullness of its natural seasons. His days on this earth had been ones of learning, teaching, loving, and serving, that the bonds of his temporal life might in the end break into the freedom of eternal childness for which he had humbly prepared himself.

His God was not only his Creator but even more was his friend. His was a life whose single prayer was that he might know his God-friend more intimately, and that his life, his words, and his deeds might cause others to know him likewise. His was a life that must spread out, that must plant and nurture and reproduce, and which constantly poured itself into his wife and daughter first, and then all those around him.

He was a man who visibly evidenced the life-spreading, the life-giving, the life-creating character of the primary and foundational essence of the Trinity. For the purposes of the Creator are everywhere bound up in that highest aspect of his triune nature—Fatherhood.

The Fatherhood of God is one that must not merely create, it must continually imbue with life, it must generate his Own life.

In each tiniest corner of creation does the begetting of the Father’s substance and being continue every instant, impregnating new generations of seeds and trees, flowers and grasses, animals and men, with that mysterious yet delicate potency… to live!

The flourishing fruitfulness of creating Fatherhood invisibly fills every molecule, forever passing itself on and on—every apple containing the seeds to produce ten new trees, each of which is capable of growing ten thousand new apples, which can each produce ten million more in their turn.

In all growing things does this miracle of reproduction and proliferation show us the Father’s smiling face. Look, he says, "look around you. Life is springing up everywhere—because I put Myself into all I touch, into every atom of the universe."

Men and women are drawn to the earth; many do not even know why. They cultivate gardens and tenderly care for its trees and flowers and shrubs. The wise among them, however, acknowledge what gives the garden its glory. Kneeling down to plunge their fingers into the moist earth, they recognize that the miracle of God’s very creation is before them. When they pluck a blossom from a cherished rose, to offer in affection to a loved one, they perceive their participation in the greatest truth in all the universe—that the goodness of the Creator has been lavished abroad upon the earth for his children to behold, discover truth from, and then enjoy… if they will but look up, behold his face of love, and learn to call him Father.

Such a man was Baron Heinrich von Dortmann, late of the kingdoms of Prussia and Pomerania, now child in the heavenly kingdom of his Father, a man for whom the earthly ground he cultivated served as but a foreshadowy likeness of that heavenly garden to which he was now giving his efforts, and the roses he so lovingly tended while here were but faint images of flowerage of a more enduring kind.

In truth, the baron’s life itself was a seed, placed in good soil and nurtured by heavenly purposed rains and sunshine, germinating, sending its roots deep and its trunk high, that in time it might bear its appointed fruit: those living blossoms, whose blooms were the radiant faces of others who had become the Father’s children by the death-energized sprouting of his life-seed.

Existence continually regenerates itself. Such is the life placed into the very universe by its Creator that it can do no other than propagate and rejuvenate. As growing things do not reproduce only once, but pass along not merely the capacity to exist and breathe and grow but the power likewise to renew that life, so too did the spiritual life-legacy of Heinrich von Dortmann now spread out and flow into those whom his life had touched, extending in ever-widening concentric circles to future generations, in outflowing ripples of purposefulness in God’s kingdom.

The autumn and winter seasons of his life, spent in prison and then in the mountains of Bavaria—though perhaps dormant to the onlooker—were years destined for eternal purpose, during which a multitude of prayer-seeds for family and nation were expectantly planted in the soils of heaven.

The story of the baron’s life is necessarily, therefore, one in which the roots from his plant passed on life to an ever-increasing number of human-plants after him, nourishing and enabling them to flourish and bear fruit—thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. Some of the spiritual seeds planted as a result fell in unexpected places, and the life that would burst forth from them would astonish many. Such, however, is the Father’s way. He sends his sunshine and rain to fall on the just and the unjust. Nothing comes back empty. No word from his mouth returns void, but accomplishes the purpose for which he ordained it.

And so, as all life ultimately flows in that great eternal round back into the heart of its Creator, the characters of our saga advanced through the cycles of life. The baron, reunited at last with his beloved Marion, had ascended into the springtime of a happy new time that will know no winter.

Matthew and Sabina had now passed through that wonderful autumn when the bounty of harvest yields fruit from years of labor, and found themselves entering the restful, memory-filled winter years. Now had come the season to observe with glad expectancy the flowering spring and summer for a new generation, even as the country they loved prepared to emerge from its dormancy of separateness and embark upon a new national epoch of unity.

Generations pass that others may be born. The cycles of human life give no occasion to sadness, but rather rejoicing. Should winter’s death not come, no eternal springtime could follow. Heinrich and Thaddeus had faded from earthly view, and soon likewise must Sabina and Matthew accompany them beyond the mists of earth’s horizon.

Such passings are no end but rather signify completion, fruition, and fulfillment, necessary that new beginnings might begin. What appears to earthly eyes as life’s sunset is only the back side of the dawn opening into the greater life toward which we are bound.

God our Father, do we doubt that all things ultimately work for our good and to the growth of your kingdom, both here and in the life to come? Open our eyes to apprehend your designs, that we might fall ever more harmoniously in step with them. Accomplish your eternal purposes in the men and women around us, even those in whom we see no possible light of your presence. Strengthen our faith, Lord, to believe that you indeed love all men and women and are constantly sending rain and sun into the cold chambers where they live so alone with themselves, to soften the seeds planted there by a thousand circumstances of life and by the words and deeds of your people. Awaken the long-dormant hearts of those who have resisted you. Enliven the seeds planted in the human soils throughout the earth, and cause a hundredfold fruit to grow from the plants that spring forth from them. Cause fruit to grow and seeds to be planted from our lives, as we have witnessed in that of the baron and from his legacy. Make us fruitful progenitors of your life, our Father, we pray from the depths of our hearts.

And what is the season at Der Frühlingsgarten? What will the breaking of winter’s spell in this new German year hold in store for the posterity of the lineage of that ancient family Dortmann and its former estate?

The grounds south of the baron’s beloved Lebenshaus were not only an earthly garden. The flowers tended by his hand contained no mere temporal tidings. Verily the secret of the rose contains as many depths as does the Father’s life itself, for within its blossoms he has hidden his own messages of love for his children to discover.

The baron’s Garden of Spring now encompassed his whole nation, and a dawn of many awakenings was at hand.

PART I

Cold War—Treachery and Bravery 1979

1

Interlude of Isolation

East Berlin

What did it actually feel like, she wondered, that rough, thick vertical gray slab of stone and cement that so deeply represented life in this city and stood as the symbol of Europe’s division?

To her it had always been. It had existed right there, less than two kilometers from her home, every day of her young life.

Familiarity notwithstanding, however, Die Mauer yet remained to the impressionable eyes pausing a moment to behold it a compelling yet confusing enigma. Its proximity drew her in a way she could not understand, as a slumbering evil presence, awaiting some future moment of wakefulness.

Her parents told her often of the summer days when it had been built, when soldiers, dogs, and tanks patrolled every inch of the border, when escape attempts had been a monthly, sometimes a weekly or even a daily occurrence, and when many had been killed.

She had also heard the numerous stories of her father’s own involvement. Only eighteen years had passed. Yet for her, those were events of another era, another lifetime. She had grown up with the Wall and had known nothing else.

Most Berliners had managed to accustom themselves to the silent symbol of separation during the interlude since. Being whose daughter she was, however, she had also grown up with the conviction constantly reinforced that everything that could be done must be done to help people from this side get to the other. Her father was a leader in the underground network, and her family, and those like them, would never get used to the barrier. In what ways lay open to them, they would always, even if it cost their lives, resist the tyranny that Communism had imposed upon their countrymen. So at least said her father.

Between deserted buildings of Markgrafenstraβe she continued to stare down the two empty blocks at the somber stone barrier, whose height was strung with coiled and deadly barbed wire. Partially visible on her right stood one of the hundreds of guard towers, occupied by soldiers of her own race who now took their orders from Moscow.

An eerie feeling swept suddenly through her, as if foreshadowing a day when the sleeping gray serpent would wake, and when her destiny would take her closer to the Wall than she dared walk today.

For this moment, however, she could only gaze from a distance and wonder what it all meant.

With an unconscious shiver, Lisel Lamprecht jerked her head back in the direction she had been bound, and continued her way along Leipzigerstraβe with the package that had been the object of her errand. She continued occasionally to glance at the Wall down the side streets she passed, for its direction paralleled hers for another short while, before she veered left on Gertraudenstraβe.

But though she knew it not, events were approaching that would alter her outlook about everything and would eventually bring her—as something within her subconscious had just sensed—face-to-face with the Wall. When that day arrived, she would press her hand against the cold stone, challenging its presence. Perhaps she would even see the other side like those her father and mother now helped.

For today, however, she was but one German teenager caught up in the silent clash over ideology that overarched world events. She was of the next generation, those who had been taught of but did not remember the great war. Therefore she could not quite grasp the complexities and implications of the very different kind of conflict that had been being waged throughout the world ever since.

Though history is rarely neat, nor the cleavages into which events order themselves so tidy as pundits later organize them, that forty-five-year conflict in the latter half of the twentieth century known incongruously as the Cold War divided itself roughly into two uneven segments surrounding the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963.

This most dangerous war the world had ever seen produced but a handful of casualties, and those mostly accidental. Yet for nearly half a century the globe of humankind had stood poised on the brink of wholesale destruction the likes of which could only be imagined by the most pessimistic of doomsday prognosticators.

Prior to the Cuban missile crisis of 1961 and the shattering events on the streets of Dallas in November of 1963, much of the steadily mounting East-West tension was played out on the visible world stage, where diplomatic bravado and technological prowess were the criteria used to judge superiority. The late forties, fifties, and early sixties acted as a prelude, during which both sides postured and bluffed and threatened, developed and tested their bombs, increased their stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and then raced for the conquest of space. The Soviets pushed out their borders, and the Americans sought to eradicate Communism from their land.

Nineteen sixty-three was the year Lisel would always consider significant as that of her birth. The rest of the world would remember 1963 as the year when everything changed.

The two men who had squared off eyeball to eyeball over Cuba, and who had come to symbolize the essence of the new age of conflict, were gone—Kennedy cut down by an assassin’s bullet; Khrushchev shortly thereafter ousted from power.

As Lisel grew from infancy into childhood, the world’s attention turned elsewhere, to Southeast Asia, whose faraway jungles began to witness a cold war that was suddenly heating up. It was a localized clash between democracy and communism that, if the superpowers did not keep it contained, could escalate into World War III.

It was a time of change. The world was being reshaped at many levels and in a host of diverse ways.

The Beatles forever revolutionized pop music, Vietnam permanently mutated the American perception of war, and Watergate cynically altered the political climate of Washington. But the Cold War went on, its most serious battles being waged far from the public spotlight.

Lisel matured and began to cast her young gaze abroad upon her world. She lived in an environment of tension and danger. Subtleties of the conflict between Moscow and Washington increased. No longer did presidents and premiers yell and threaten. Détente replaced ultimatum, test bans replaced nuclear detonations, and congenial words masked hidden motives.

Indeed, the sixties and seventies had transfigured everything about how people looked at their world. But silently the behind-the-curtain theater of the Cold War continued unaffected by it all.

Foot soldiers of the conflict took over from world leaders—men and women like Lisel’s own parents, those whom in most parts of the world would have been considered an unremarkable citizenry. It was now these who waged an invisible war for that most basic of human rights and desires—that commodity known as liberty. Much of the Cold War turned silent and sinister, its battles fought in ones and twos, in neighborhoods and candlelit basements, from behind drawn curtains, along deserted byways, and in lonely prison cells, hidden from the public eye.

And now, during her sixteenth year, while the world anxiously watched the heated chess game playing itself out between Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini and President Jimmy Carter of the United States, this silent, unseen drama continued unaffected. The eyes of the world were riveted upon Tehran, yet it was still the Cold War between democracy and communism that remained the global dividing matrix between good and evil, between autonomy and servility—aligning nations, creating adversaries, separating families, and artificially disrupting long-established ethnic unities.

At the heart of this focal center still sat the divided nation of Germany, formerly the cause now the victim of events it could no longer control. As the superpowers played out their impersonal maneuvers on the game board of the world, nowhere did a rising postwar generation feel more helpless and ill-used by their gambits than in the figuratively and actually divided capital of Berlin.

It was a land where the Cold War made enemies of friends, family, and neighbors, where Stasi informants lurked everywhere, where KGB infiltrations had been effected at every level of life, and where treachery loomed always nearby. Desiring freedom too greatly, or helping others who did, was a lethal business. The blood that was often spilled in consequence, and the tears of those left behind, was all too real.

The global standoff continued year after year, nowhere symbolized more visibly than at the Friedrichstraβe border crossing known as Checkpoint Charlie, not far from the shop out of which Lisel had recently come.

All the while, the most recognizable symbol of this unseen drama remained the gray, malevolent, unbreakable, unscalable barricade slicing its way through the center of Berlin, separating a nation… dividing a world.

Yet if it was an era producing treachery, it also gave rise to bravery. For seasons of danger produce heroes as well as martyrs. Of the courage and selflessness of both, the world seldom hears. From time to time, however, individual stories become known… and those who hear them are changed forever after.

The energetic young East Berliner quickened her stride once the Wall was at her back, walked for another ten minutes through a drab neighborhood, then turned from the street along the uneven concrete of a broken walkway, and was soon entering her home.

2

Sisters of Danger

Do you have the package, Lisel?"

Yes, Papa, she answered.

No trouble?

None, Papa.

Good, replied her father, taking the small parcel. He unwrapped the paper hastily and began examining the book his daughter had apparently just bought. He did not pause long enough on any page to read, however, for he was uninterested in the content intended by the author. Rather he now leafed through the volume in order to piece together a cryptic communiqué from his shopkeeping contact.

Within five minutes he satisfied himself that he had thoroughly deciphered the message.

We must bring an important man into Berlin next week, he announced to wife and daughter as he rose from the chair where he had been sitting intently studying the book.

How, Hermann? asked Frau Lamprecht.

The friend of my cousin will pass him off to us in the wood south of the city, he replied.

Can I go with you, Papa? asked Lisel.

The big man did not answer immediately. Hmm… perhaps it might be time, he mused at length.

May I visit Girdel?

There will be no occasion, Lisel.

I have not seen her for a year.

When we are about the business of the network, the safety of those who place themselves in our hands must be our only thought.

Even as he spoke the words, Hermann’s thoughts trailed back to a time long past. It had not then been his own daughter’s safety he had been thinking about, but that of another.

So many memories, so many individuals—it all seemed from another lifetime. She now occupying his thoughts had been an important part of this work he was engaged in. She was one of its founders and most loyal members. She had finally used her own Network of the Rose to flee herself.

Hermann smiled at the thought of the successful escape to freedom through the cemetery.

Karin had tried so strenuously to convince him to accompany them. Now he wished he had confided in her the reason he had had to remain behind—that he was planning to be married soon. But at the time he thought the less any of them knew about one another the better.

He had been a different man back then. Smiles and tender thoughts had not been part of his nature. Having a wife and daughter had tempered his gruff exterior. He wished he could see Karin again, though he knew that was not her real name. He wished she could see him, now that he too was on intimate terms with the Master whom she had always served.

Hermann sighed. But he had not laid eyes on his former comrade since that day, though occasionally there were reports. He only prayed his own Lisel might become so brave a woman.

In the brief seconds while Hermann reflected on his former associations and what they had been through together, his daughter found herself likewise remembering the first day she had seen her friend Girdel.

The two girls could not have been more than four or five at the time, far too young to possess the slightest inkling of the import of the meeting that had brought their fathers and several others of like commitment together. While the men of God prayed and plotted together, Lisel and Girdel had played in the innocence of childhood.

Ever after, though the occasions of visits were not many—for the mutual work of their fathers was necessarily a clandestine one—they remained friends and grew as sisters, not realizing to what an extent theirs was a sisterhood of danger.

Neither were they aware of the parental discussions concerning how much to include growing boys and girls such as these in the secretive activities that bound them together. Like the baron, whom none had known but most in this region had heard of, the faithful men and women of the network desired that their convictions outlive their own brief mortal years. Thus they prayed to be able to inculcate in their offspring a vision of helping the larger family of God’s people, and they necessarily sought opportunities to teach them such work firsthand. But for the fathers and mothers in this particular part of the world, such was a dangerous legacy to pass on to their sons and daughters, and they did so with great soul-searching and prayer.

Seeds must be planted. Some must die in order that others might bear hundredfold fruit.

Girdel, a year older, had now been active in her own father’s affairs for some time. But Hermann, more cautious—brave enough yet newer to the life of intimate faith than Girdel’s father—had been reluctant to allow Lisel to participate quite so fully with him. Today’s thoughts of Karin, however, suddenly made him aware how quickly his daughter’s womanhood was approaching and that he could not prevent its coming.

He sighed, then took Lisel’s hand and led her out of the kitchen and to the worn couch, where he motioned for her to sit down beside him. She did so. They remained several moments in silence.

Do you remember about the rose? he asked.

Yes, Papa. I could never forget that.

We have not spoken of it in several years. Do you still wear the locket your mother and I gave you?

Of course, Papa. It is the most special thing I have. I am wearing it now.

She reached up, pulled at the thin chain at her neck, and a moment later the tiny gold-plated locket appeared between her fingers. Hermann smiled at the sight. It was not an expensive piece of jewelry but a mere trinket. It was not its value that made it precious, but rather what he had placed inside the tiny chamber, and what they symbolized.

Do you recall what I told you that day? he asked.

Lisel nodded.

The mystery of life is found in seeds, began Hermann. When they are planted with prayer… He paused, obviously waiting.

…blossoms of love will grow, added his daughter, completing the sentence for him.

They laughed together.

I’m happy you remember, he said.

I will never forget the seeds you have planted in me, Papa.

They fell silent in the small room. The daughter’s soft hand still rested in the large, rough palm of the father, content as a newborn fawn in a spring wood, and showing no anxiety to take flight.

You are growing older, Lisel, said Hermann at length. You are nearly a woman.

Lisel glanced down, trying to keep back the blush of embarrassment she could feel rising in her cheeks. I don’t know, Papa.

It is true, my child—and a lovely woman at that.

Now came the red in earnest. Lisel said nothing. A long silence followed, but a comfortable one that neither was eager to break.

Yes, said Hermann at length, "I think you may accompany me, Daughter. The work must be carried on, and one day I will be too old to continue it myself."

Then may I visit Girdel, Papa?

Soon, Lisel… soon. Once we have the man safely in the hands of our people on the other side, I will make arrangements with our friends for a visit.

Oh, thank you, Papa.

A moment more they sat, then stood. Lisel joined her mother in the kitchen.

Hermann’s mind was suddenly full of a melancholy mixture of thoughts and emotions concerning his daughter that he could never have put into words even had he tried. He was no philosopher, but a man whose life evidenced his convictions. Yet the sensations surging through him at this moment were no less profound that he did not possess the capacity to analyze them or formulate them into specific thoughts.

He turned and sought what solitude could be had in the confines of the small space they possessed behind the house.

The tiny plot of ground where there was room for but a few green things to keep alive was a far cry from that magnificent Frühlingsgarten where she whom he had known as Karin Duftblatt had spent the early years of her life. He walked out in the direction of the single rose plant that grew on the premises. She had given it to him twenty years before when telling him of the mystery of the seeds, a truth that, once he had fully apprehended it for himself after she was gone, he had later passed along to his own daughter.

Hermann Lamprecht was a humble man and could hardly have known that the tears now filling his eyes were tears from the universal Fatherhood of the world, the same tears that had driven Heinrich von Dortmann to his garden to pray—with words perhaps more eloquent but in substance identical—the same prayer upon many occasions years before. Nor could he have possibly foreseen how the two prayers, separated by more than a generation, were intertwined as they entered the eternal heavenly ear, and thus whose answers were destined to interweave as well.

Hermann lifted up to the heavens the strange burden that had so suddenly seized his breast, and uttered the simplest form of that profoundest parental cry in all the universe, that entreaty born in the very Abba-heart of God, which echoes back his own divine love that is continually calling the sons and daughters of his creation back to himself: God—take care of my child… protect her, watch over her, and keep her in your hands.

They were the only words Hermann could bring to his lips. They were enough. His Father heard and would use them to consummate his purpose.

3

Evil Chase

East Germany

With uncanny precision a large, dark Mercedes roared through the black and empty night.

The narrow, half-paved back roads through the Brandenburger Wald southeast of the city scarcely widened in some spots beyond the breadth of the vehicle itself. Though more than sixteen hundred kilometers separated him from his home, he still considered Poland and the DDR his turf. He had done duty here in the latter during his younger days, assigned to the Stasi office of the now-influential German politician Gustav Schmundt.

He knew all the escape routes like the back of his hand and had been tracking the moves of the network for two weeks now—from eastern Poland, across the border near Eisenhüttenstadt, and finally here—to the moment of final showdown. He knew they considered their present charge an important one. No old woman wanting to see loved ones in the West, no idealistic student hoping for a so-called better life.

This time they had a big fish in tow. The biggest! He was one of the leaders who had taken over when the Jewish rabbi had fled, and who had in the years since become the Moscow leader of the underground Christian organization, known by various names in different parts of Eastern Europe, sometimes Das Christliche Netzwerk, sometimes merely as The Rose.

He should never have let him go that day they met as young men on the streets of Moscow. But now at last the moment for his revenge had come.

Andrassy Galanov stood ready to drop the net over his arch rival who had evaded the rest of the KGB for more than fifteen years. At least he thought it was the same man. He would know for certain soon… very soon!

For this confrontation his superior had sent him west three weeks ago with his own personal vendetta against the Christian leader hanging in the balance.

You get him, Galanov, do you hear me? he could still hear the furious voice shouting across the cornfield. I want him! Don’t show your face again if you return empty-handed!

A quick glance back revealed Leonid Bolotnikov, the top agent of the empire, pistol in hand, standing over a dead peasant’s body, fist lifted in rage, as the three men they’d trailed half the night disappeared into the surrounding wood.

Minutes later the revving of an automobile engine sounded through the trees.

They had been outmaneuvered. A night of pursuit lost!

Even as the escape vehicle sped away and the sound faded into the distance, in his ears echoed further angry shouts from his director. After him! Don’t let him get to Berlin, or you’ll rot in Siberia!

The kingpin of the underground network—the man they called Der Prophet—had eluded them, for the present.

Within an hour of the failed capture, an automobile bearing the thirty-six-year-old agent careened recklessly southwest toward Minsk. His uncle had liked to use Siberian threats too. When applied to his nephew, however, Andrassy knew they were mere empty tirades, and he hadn’t paid serious attention to them. But Korskayev was dead, and now Bolotnikov was head of the entire KGB, and when he spoke, even an experienced and self-reliant agent like Andrassy Galanov occasionally trembled. Bolotnikov was a man with both the power and the determination to carry out his threats.

Galanov crossed into Poland early the next afternoon and reestablished contacts in Warsaw, making use of some of Korskayev’s old files that night. It had taken several days to sniff out the cooled trail of Das Netzwerk’s moves. But there was a heavy and dedicated Christian element in the region of Bialystok according to his uncle’s records, and once he had picked up the unmistakable clues of their presence, everything confirmed that indeed his quarry was close to his grasp. He smelled the urgency in their movements immediately. After questioning his own operatives and a few of the Christians he’d been able to lay his hands on, he knew that only hours ahead of him they were passing Der Prophet from hand to hand along the very underground circuit that the fugitive himself, along with the two Germans for whom his former Stasi boss possessed such a fixation, had helped to establish.

Steadily across Poland Galanov drew closer.

This time no hole in the system would allow the man to escape. He would ensnare him! No foul-ups! Tonight destiny would shine its face upon him. He would deliver the hated and troublesome apostle into the hand of his chief. No one would get out—especially not the so-called Prophet.

Galanov would kill if he had to… he would not let the man into the West.

His headlamps danced about, sending luminescent beams into the thick clumps of pines bordering the way on each side. Like menacing eyes probing the blackness, with every bend and twist of the road they sought their prey with eerie divination.

Behind the wheel, foot nearly to the floor, sat the latter-day Saul who considered himself guardian of the reputation of the Committee of State Security, otherwise known as the KGB. His fascination with the Christian underground had begun during his brief stint in Berlin, and over the years, though he knew it not, it had grown to resemble his uncle’s deviant hatred. Truly did he carry on into the next generation the twisted vendetta of he who had been known in these regions as Emil Korsch.

Even as the lights of his car glared into the night, his own eyes glistened with the evil fire of their dark intent. If only he could do what his KGB chief himself had failed to do! Promotion would be his. Perhaps a position in the Kremlin—maybe as Bolotnikov’s top assistant or some other high post in Chairman Brezhnev’s government.

It won’t be long now, he thought as the automobile raced along.

No other noise sounded for miles. The night remained empty and black.

Respectable people had taken to their beds hours ago. In this region, so close to the borders of the partitioned city, nothing but trouble could come to one caught abroad after midnight.

4

Network Preparations

While the old adversaries of The Rose sped their way, Hermann Lamprecht awoke and began preparations for the night’s clandestine activity. He still harbored grave doubts about his daughter accompanying him. She had been involved around the fringes of the network and its people in minor ways for years. But this was a more important and more dangerous assignment.

But he had promised. And she was a stouthearted girl.

And he knew the time could not be delayed forever when he would have to start treating her like the full-grown woman she nearly was. He had sensed it before praying for her protection, and the feeling had grown even stronger afterward. Her younger brother was only eleven, and he too was anxious to become involved. Hermann could not shield them from the realities of life in this part of the world forever.

He dressed quickly, then roused his wife and Lisel from their few hours’ sleep. While Frau Lamprecht made coffee and put a few other items of food in a bag, Lisel excitedly dressed for the adventure.

Twenty minutes later they were ready, promising the anxious but faithful wife to be home before noon.

Hermann possessed the papers justifying his being out in the middle of the night, though he did not anticipate being stopped by the authorities. He had long ago learned what routes would avoid them.

They proceeded by car through East Berlin, through Grünau and Müggelheim, past the city’s eastern border at Gosen, then southwest into the wooded region, where, within thirty minutes, he turned off the road and parked the car. Here they would wait for two hours before proceeding to the designated place of meeting on foot.

Once the handoff was made, he and Lisel would make their way back to the car with their delivery, drive him via side roads to Glasow, then retrace their steps homeward.

Meanwhile, in another part of the district of Brandenburg, two darkly clad individuals hastened along. They had left Fürstenwalde by foot, walking some three kilometers to a solitary barn far removed from any human abode in the middle of one of the wheat fields of an East German collective farm.

The man in front puffed from the effort, for they strode with long and quickly paced steps. He baked bread and rolls and sweets for the village by day, and in truth carried a few kilograms more around his midsection than was good for him. By night he did the network’s business and did it bravely in spite of the exertion—and the hazards.

Behind him followed a tall, strongly built man of some forty-five or fifty years, though darkness rendered certainty of age difficult. Herr Brotbacker had heard of Der Prophet and had even picked up vague rumors that hard times had befallen the Russian patriarch like the rabbi before him. A plan was said to be in place to get him out, but as to specifics no one in any of the neighboring fellowships knew anything. He had no idea that the man he now led across the grain fields to Brother Hugo’s old deserted barn was none other than he who had smuggled behind the Iron Curtain the very Bible the baker so treasured, stashed in his small apartment under the bed where his wife now slept.

Neither man had spoken since leaving the lights of town.

Finding their way inside the structure of the barn, now decaying from disuse under East Germany’s communal farming system, the German breadmaker assisted his silent Russian brother aboard an aging wooden wagon already hitched to a sturdy plow horse. Still without sound of human voice to disturb the sleeping night, he walked across the packed dirt floor and opened the large door, which was kept well-oiled and thus swung without so much as a creak in spite of its age.

Farmer Hugo, already waiting atop the wagon with leather reins in hand, clicked his tongue, urging his faithful equine collaborator into motion. The baker closed the door behind them.

As the clomping footfall of the horse and the groan of the wagon’s wheels faded across the field, he began the walk back to town. He would be able to catch about two hours sleep before the morning ovens and loaves of rye demanded his attention. Now the mysterious traveler bounced slowly along in the hands of the farmer, who would pass him on at the next rendezvous point to someone neither Brotbaker nor Hugo had ever met.

Thus did the Network of the Rose operate. No one knew much. Words remained as few as possible. A look, a brief smile, the scantest of necessary instructions, passwords having to do with flowers and growing things, perhaps a parting nod. Hardly any of those now involved knew anything about that daring young lady who had been so instrumental in helping establish the network after the war, nor how she and her father had eventually made use of it themselves to escape to the West. Nonetheless, carrying on the work remained the vital imperative—preserving the chain, keeping strong its links, protecting God’s people. The less each knew of what his brothers and sisters of the underground were about, the safer for all. The last decade had begun to witness a few changes and eased restrictions since the days of Khrushchev. But lives still could be lost. Shootings occurred at the Wall with continued regularity. Caution remained a matter of life and death.

Two and a half hours later, the lone pilgrim, a stranger in the hands of his brothers, weary now from night after night of intermittent and tedious travel, having slept but little in the back of the wagon before being passed along again several times from one silent accomplice to the next, approached a small clearing in the wood where two dirt roads intersected.

A faint flicker of light shone through the darkness, then disappeared. It was the sign by which the man who had the sojourner in tow—neither baker nor farmer this time, but in fact a converted local Communist official attached to the constabulary—knew that his leg of the clandestine itinerary had come to an end. He had never seen the face behind the brief flash of light, nor would he—for the protection of all. At this juncture came the final handoff save one, and vulnerability mounted the closer they came to the city.

Come with me—quickly. A hand reached across through the night to clutch that of the nomadic evangelist.

Turning to retrace his steps to his own home, the official heard but a few words more and did not hesitate in his return through the trees. They were on their own now. God be with them, the converted Communist silently breathed.

The transient Russian now noticed that two persons had come to meet him. The second, slighter of build and shorter of stature, stood a little behind the man who had spoken. The man’s daughter, seventeen and already active in the network’s activities for years—without knowing that her friend Lisel was also out with her father on this fateful night and awaiting them on the other side of the forest—had, like Lisel, begged to accompany him.

There is always the possibility of danger, Girdel, her father had replied to the request.

Is it not you who have always taught me to fear nothing that we have placed in God’s hands?

The man had smiled and nodded. He had indeed so taught her, and how could he therefore deny her request?

Make haste, whispered the German to the refugee. We must get you to the safe house before dawn.

With that, the three disappeared quickly from the rendezvous site, father and daughter leading the man for whose escape already so many had risked so much.

5

Ultimate Test of Faith

An hour and twenty minutes later, father, daughter, and prophet exited the cover of trees through which their path had taken them. The first gray hints of dawn made the horizon faintly visible in the east, though the protection of darkness still covered them.

They were close now.

Safety lay but twenty minutes beyond. The contact who would drive the fleeing Russian to the safe house already crouched in wait on the opposite side of the large field they had just entered.

In the distance, suddenly the sound of a car’s engine came into hearing.

Indistinct at first, gradually it loudened. The leader of the trio stopped briefly, listened, then quickened his pace. The automobile bore in their direction—and fast. It might mean nothing. They had to make every second count nonetheless. If nothing else, the approaching car signaled that the end of their cloak of night came nearer every second.

The huge car rounded a curve, and suddenly headlights blazed above them in the air.

The small band broke into full flight across the barren pastureland. No hope of cover lay anywhere. At the far end, a large figure had risen from a hollow and now stood impotent to help, watching in mute agony as the most feared of all nightmares played itself out before him. Silently he prayed. Beside him stood a girl, tears rising in her stunned and innocent eyes.

The three fugitives sprinted courageously, measuring half the distance to their would-be rescuers.

But it was too late.

Their persecutor had spotted them, and the enormous Mercedes rumbled over the flat grassy expanse, bouncing high over the ruts with the wild fearlessness of an army tank, spotlighting the fleeing forms ahead of it in the naked exposure of their helplessness.

Another ten seconds—the chase took no longer.

The revving engine screamed by them, then sputtered into silence as the machine skidded in an arc in front of the tiny company. It cut them off, sending a choking cloud of gritty dust all about, momentarily dimming the headlamps. Even before the Mercedes reached its final stop, its door flew open and the driver burst out onto the turf, automatic pistol brandished in his hand, eyes aglow in the intoxication of at long last outwitting these Christians he so despised.

A silence pregnant with suppressed passions followed. Only the laboring lungs of the three renegades broke the stillness of the dusty air. They stood still as statues while their adversary scanned them from head to toe.

Slowly a cunning smile spread over his face.

So, Rostovchev, he said at length, speaking in Russian, "it is you they call Der Prophet. I suspected as much."

We meet again, Comrade Galanov, replied the tallest of the three. He did not return the smile, yet his tone hinted nowhere of hatred. It was the first time the East German and his daughter had heard the voice of the man they had been attempting to lead to safety.

Under less than pleasant circumstances for you, I must say, than the Moscow street where I last saw you seventeen years ago, replied the agent, punctuating his words with a wave of his gun. The smile, still on his face, gave evidence that he enjoyed this moment of his triumph.

Danger comes with walking as a Christian.

Bah! And idiocy along with it! The smile vanished.

In the eyes of the world, I suppose, it must look that way.

Always preaching, eh, Dmitri? rejoined the other sarcastically. Well, no matter, he added. It would seem I have you checkmated at last. My chief will be pleased to see you again.

I doubt Leonid Bolotnikov is capable of feeling pleasure, replied the one called Rostovchev. Hatred too thoroughly consumes him, though no doubt seeing me dead would give him an evil kind of satisfaction.

I am sure it will.

And you as well?

Let’s just say that I shall provide it for him.

A momentary pause followed.

Tell me, Andrassy, said Rostovchev, when did you take up the KGB’s cause again? I understood you had gone to work for the French after returning from Germany years ago.

A huge laugh bellowed from Galanov’s throat. It revealed glistening white teeth in a face that under any other circumstances would have been considered well sculpted. But the traitorous glare of his eyes undid the attraction. Even the most cursory of glances confirmed this man as one to stay away from. On his head grew a thick crop of healthy, reddish-brown hair, rumpled and unkempt from his frenzied night behind the wheel.

The French! he repeated, still laughing. "Morons every one! Ja, ja, Comrade Prophet, they think I work for them, because I turn over something insignificant every couple of months. Fools—they’re the easiest of all to double-deal in this game!"

So you’re still a KGB man at heart.

I am a Russian.

I cannot profess to surprise.

Bolotinikov pays better than the French too, said Galanov, chuckling again.

You really ought to give our side a try, Andrassy.

You’re as Russian as I.

I meant our Christian side, he said, staring deeply into the agent’s eyes with a heart full of compassion.

The other hesitated a moment, returning the stare, then seemed to shake himself free from its spell. Bah! he snapped.

You just might find that there’s more to what we believe than—

None of your sermons! snapped the KGB agent.

It’s about life, Andrassy. Nothing but death results from the tangled game you play.

Shut up, Rostovchev!

I have prayed for you for years, that you would one day know the life I know.

That’s absurd! bellowed Galanov with a laugh of incredulity. What business is it of yours to pray for me? You are more a fool than I took you for!

We are under orders to make such our business.

Orders—orders from whom?

From him whom we call Master.

Enough of this moronic chatter—into the car!

It’s you I’m concerned for, Andrassy. I only wanted to say—

"Death will result, just as you say—yours!"

Whether I live or die is in his hands.

We’ve wasted enough time pretending as friends! retorted Galanov with disdain. You know how it works, Rostovchev. Now into the car, and your two spying friends with you. It’ll be the firing squad for you, the gulag for them!

Please. These two are innocent of any crime. They are Germans. Let them go.

Again Galanov laughed. Let them go free, so they can continue helping our enemies escape into West Berlin!

Christians are not your enemy, said the evangelist sadly.

"What kind of fool do you take me for? Bolotnikov would shoot me if I returned to tell him a wave of compassion had come over me and I had let the kingpin of Das Netzwerk go free. Now come, all three of you—into the car!"

Dmitri Rostovchev slowly began to make his way forward in the glare of the headlight. As he did, the East German who had remained silent thus far spoke hurriedly to his daughter, hoping the KGB agent would have difficulty hearing their soft voices.

"Geh, Girdel! he said. Schnell—mit dem Propheten. Hermann wartet dahinten im Feld. Lauf, Tochter!"

The girl hesitated. "Nein, Papa—du muβt auch mit," she replied in a pleading voice.

"Ich folge, he answered. The light is still thin enough. In a few paces you will be out of sight. Run to our friend waiting on the other side of the field!"

Suddenly he lurched forward in front of the prophet. Before the surprised man of God knew what was happening, he found himself shoved with strong arms into the darkness, away from the two beams of the Mercedes.

"Geh, Tochter! he cried. Take him and run!"

Without further hesitation, Girdel obeyed, gripping the hand of Rostovchev and yanking him after her.

Stop! cried Galanov, hardly aware of what had happened until it was too late. His eyes had grown accustomed to the visibility provided by the lights of his car. All at once he realized he could see only the ridiculous German standing there. Dmitri and the girl had disappeared!

He advanced in rage, crying out for them to stop. Don’t make me shoot, Rostovchev! he shouted. You only make it harder on your—

But further words did not come from his lips. With unexpected swiftness the German sprang forward with a powerful lunge and threw himself upon the KGB agent, knocking him to the ground.

Momentarily stunned by the assault, Galanov crawled to his knees, then sought his gun in the dirt. The next instant a punishing kick from the German’s boot sent the pistol across the ground.

The German bolted after his daughter and the prophet. Stop, Rostovchev! cried Galanov behind them, as he climbed to his feet and scanned about frantically for his gun. You can’t get across the border, not now! I’ll alert the guards. Come back or I’ll kill you all!

Hermann was sure the three running toward him had seen him, for they were coming straight in his direction. The moment he saw the Mercedes leave the road and come screaming across the field, however, he knew they had been spotted.

Get down, Lisel, he cried. Get back to the hollow.

Terrified, she obeyed.

Only a moment or two longer Hermann watched.

The next instant his senses returned to him. He fell back to his belly, and now crawled quickly after his daughter. He could do nothing for the others now but pray.

Still the three ran, though separated, toward the contact they had seen earlier, but who had now disappeared from sight.

Seconds went by. Only the muffled thudding of feet broke the silence.

Suddenly explosions of gunfire rang through the morning air. More shouts from the enraged Galanov, whose footsteps now pursued the fleeing Christians.

Sharp reports from the automatic pistol continued to ring out in rapid-fire succession.

A cry.

The sound of a fall.

Running footsteps.

More shots.

All at once the gunfire stopped. Stillness descended over the field, but only briefly. Without warning, the engine of the Mercedes turned over, then revved to full throttle. The next instant it tore across the field in the direction Galanov had last seen his prey heading.

Lying motionless on his belly in the grass, the German who had imperiled his own life for his brother heard the car rumble past about thirty feet to his right. Slowly he rose to his feet.

But he did not walk far. In the gathering light of dawn he could make out a form lying ahead of him.

The Mercedes rampaged into the distance, its driver maniacally flying after what turned out to be a stray cow at the far border of the pasture. By the time he discovered his fatal error and spun the huge car around, not a