Chasing Shadows 10: The Red Widow/Just Like Heaven

As the Wall falls, hope rises.

837 Washington St, New York, NY, 1989

Holly, Liza and I sat around watching the events unfolding on the TV in the morning of November 7, 1989, we watched as news broke that the German government resigned, including Prime Minister Willi Stoph. As we huddled over bagels and deep black coffee, the door to the apartment opened and Nadia entered carrying her roller bag. In the years since joining our little coven of assassins, Nadia had managed to secure asylum in the States in addition to a plum job at Pan Am as a stewardess which allowed her to pick up jobs “on the side” with the perfect cover. Nadia had now been able to sail in and out of many a contested border on her own to execute her own contracts. In fact, Nadia was fast earning a nickname, a moniker, a promise of her own— The Red Widow.

And given the upheaval from our former Comrades that had blown into full view of the global center stage, our dockets of ‘work’ were more full than ever. We were living in uncertain times but one thing that was certain - the Soviet Bloc was a powder keg about to explode.

Nadia’s return didn’t just bring her energy into the apartment, but also stories and tales from behind the Iron Curtain. “ One million people protesting in East Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, calling for free elections and press freedom — can you just imagine?” Nadia exclaimed.

It was so very strange to watch our old home and our old ways crumbling before our very eyes. Don’t let me get you wrong, I wanted to see the Soviets fall more than the next gal but I never thought I’d see what we had been seeing in this lifetime.

Something about this moment—it should’ve felt like triumph. Like justice. Like a reckoning decades in the making.

Instead, it felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, watching the earth shift rapidly beneath my feet.

I wanted this. I wanted to see the Soviet machine rot from the inside out. And yet, as I sat there, listening to Nadia talk about a million people in the streets of East Berlin, demanding freedom like it was something they could just ask for, I felt… untethered.

Because if the system that made me was collapsing, then what the hell was I? An aging relic of a world that was quickly being snuffed out of existence?

I had spent so much of my life fighting against them, against what they did to me and what I did to escape them. I was defined by what they took from me, what they made me. But if they were gone—if they burned to the ground and left nothing but smoke and ash—then what was left? What was I supposed to do with all this rage if the thing I built my rage around was gone?

I sipped my coffee, black as tar, and let the bitterness settle on my tongue.

Nadia was still talking, her voice electric with possibility. But I wasn’t thinking about protests or resignations. I wasn’t thinking about the hammer and sickle coming down— the question was, on who’s head?

I was thinking about what came next. Because history doesn’t stop. Empires fall, new ones rise. One machine breaks, another takes its place.

And the thing about power? It never disappears. It just changes hands.

I wasn’t naïve enough to think this was the end. It was just the beginning of something else. The only question was: Would I be ready for it?

The next morning, I woke up to the sound of the TV. Low murmurs, the kind of voices that only spoke in breaking news and historic moments. The kind that told you something big had just happened before your brain even had time to catch up.

I threw on my robe and shuffled into the living room, where Holly and Liza were already perched on the couch, coffee cups in hand, eyes locked on the screen. Nadia stood by the window, arms crossed, half-listening, half-lost in whatever storm was brewing in her head. The coffee table was littered with the fallen soldiers: takeout containers from Ming’s from the night before where Nadia, Holly, Liza and I stayed up glued to the wall to wall news coverage of the historic events.

On the television, a news anchor spoke in clipped, urgent tones:

“The Politburo, East Germany’s ruling body, has officially resigned en masse. This unprecedented move leaves the German Democratic Republic in a state of complete political turmoil. Citizens in East Berlin have taken to the streets once again, demanding immediate reforms, and the future of the GDR remains uncertain.”

The camera cut to footage of Alexanderplatz—crowds surging, banners waving, a wave of bodies pushing toward something that wasn’t quite there yet. The same scene we’d been watching unfold for weeks, but this—this was different.

This wasn’t just a protest. This was a regime coming undone, its foundation cracking under the weight of everything it had spent decades trying to suppress.

I exhaled sharply, rubbing my eyes as I brushed sauce packets away and took a seat in the armchair.

Nadia finally turned from the window, her gaze flicking between the screen and the rest of us. “It’s happening,” she said, voice quiet but firm. “Faster than we thought.”

“Faster than anyone thought,” Liza muttered, leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Yesterday, Stoph and his government resigned. Now the Politburo? There’s nothing left holding East Germany together.”

Holly ran a hand through her dark hair, a nervous tic she had when she was deep in thought. “The Soviet Union’s not gonna save them. They’re too busy trying to keep their own house from burning down.”

Despite the massive human upheaval on display here, we were still a household of assassins and the news had transfixed us - it was as if our industry had a Super Bowl - except instead of city versus city it was Davids vs. Goliaths, and we all awaited to see where the chips would fall at the end of the day.”

“The Bloc’s collapsing,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. “It’s not just East Germany. Poland’s already shifting. Hungary’s been poking holes in the Iron Curtain for months. The whole damn thing is coming down.”

Nadia walked over, dropping onto the arm of the couch, her expression unreadable. “And what do you think happens next, Sonja?”

I met her eyes, holding her gaze for a long moment before answering.

“Someone will take the pieces,” I said, reaching for the pack of cigarettes on the table next to a mound of soy sauce, chili paste and hot mustard packets. “Power doesn’t just disappear. It moves.”

Holly sighed, rubbing her temples. “So we wait and see who gets there first?”

“We don’t wait,” Nadia said, taking the cigarette from my fingers and lighting it for herself instead. “We watch.” She exhaled a slow, steady stream of smoke. “We find out who rises from the rubble before they find us.”

She wasn’t wrong. The world we knew was unraveling, and with it, the enemies we understood. But new players would step in, new lines would be drawn.

And sooner or later, we’d have to decide where we stood.

The next day started like any other afternoon spent watching the world unravel.

The girls and I were scattered across the living room, running on cold coffee, yesterday’s Marlboro Reds, and the wreckage of last night’s Ming’s delivery—a half-eaten carton of kung pao chicken sitting precariously on the arm of the couch, soy sauce packets crumpled into a mound on the table. An empty six-pack of Coca-Cola sat next to a half-squashed pack of Twinkies, the sad remains of Liza’s midnight snack.

Liza had claimed the recliner, feet kicked up, a Bagel Bros. onion bagel going stale in her hand. Holly was curled up on the couch, flicking cigarette ashes into a crushed Arch Burger cup, her dark hair sticking up at weird angles from an afternoon nap. Nadia sat cross-legged on the floor, flipping through a stack of passports—some real, some not, all hers

On the TV, the usual grainy footage of East Berlin flickered in and out. For weeks, we’d been watching history come undone—leaders resigning, streets swelling with protests, a whole damn superpower teetering on the edge of collapse. We’d seen plenty of governments stumble, but this was different this might have been the first world event I witnessed eating Arch Burgers and fries.

This was the goddamn Soviet Bloc cracking at the seams, and for the first time, none of us knew what the hell was going to replace it.

At first, the press conference didn’t seem like anything special. Just another East German bureaucrat, Günter Schabowski, droning through the usual scripted bullshit. And then, in response to a question, he hesitated. Fumbled with his notes.

And said the words that would burn the world down.

“As far as I know… immediately.”

I sat up so fast my cigarette tumbled into the Arch Burger wrapper. “Wait. What the hell did he just say?”

Holly turned up the volume. Liza leaned forward, bagel completely forgotten now.

The reporters in the room were just as confused as we were. East Germans were free to cross the border. No more restrictions. Effective immediately.

“Bullshit,” Liza scoffed. “No way they actually mean that.”

But then the live feed cut to footage of East Berliners running toward the border crossings, some on foot, some in cars, moving with the kind of stunned, frantic energy that said they weren’t waiting for clarification.

“They don’t mean it,” Holly muttered, shaking her head. “They can’t. The guards will stop them.”

We kept watching. Night fell, and the crowds only grew. Thousands, then tens of thousands, all pressed against the gates, yelling, chanting, screaming to be let through. And then, at 10:45 PM, it happened.

The border guards—outnumbered, overwhelmed, and looking about two seconds from pissing themselves—opened the gates.

The crowd erupted — it was a heaving mass of humanity, whole swaths of human bodies hurtling themselves towards the wall in a desperate surge for freedom — this wasn’t about Levi’s or MTV or the West’s promises of better things. This was about freedom. Pure, unadulterated freedom. People flooded through, some laughing, some crying, some just sprinting as if they were afraid someone would change their mind.

The Berlin Wall—the thing that had divided an entire generation—was being climbed, chipped away, torn down by bare hands and hammers each brick, every rock a token of control and oppression being ripped away from the Soviets who put it there. West Berliners met them at the top, dragging them over, hugging strangers they had been separated from for decades.

Champagne bottles popped. People danced—actually fucking danced—on the crumbled Berlin Wall.

Holly exhaled hard, rubbing her temples. “That’s it, then. The Wall’s done.”

I should have felt triumph. Victory. Justice. But all I felt was nothingness—a giant void where a wall once stood.

For so long, the Wall had been an unchangeable fact of life. Just like the Soviet Bloc. Just like the KGB. Just like the blood I had spilled to stay ahead of them.

Now, in a single night, that fact had ceased to exist.

I didn’t even realize I had crushed my cigarette into the Arch Burger wrapper until the smell of burnt grease and tobacco hit my nose.

Holly nudged me, smirking. “Sonja, I swear to God, if you set the couch on fire—”

I ignored her, reaching for another cigarette, lighting it with the tip of the last one.

Because if the system that made me was collapsing, then what the hell was I?

I had existed in opposition to them. To their walls, their rules, their chains.

Now what?

The celebrations exploded. The streets of Berlin turned into a festival of defiance and joy. It was the end of something. The end of everything we knew. And then outside, New York City joined the chorus of defiance and joy as car horns rang out across the city and the sounds of “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure floated out of windows and across fire escapes ringing out into a night now laced with defiance and now emboldened by promise.

And all I could think was: Who rises next?

Because someone always does.

And as the music strung its way through the night skies, I realized that while I had a hand in setting in motion some of the events leading up to tonight, I was now free—free to chart a course of my own, one that didn’t owe allegiance to any nation, any power other than the power that thumped in my own chest.

As I relished and sipped in the air of my newfound freedom I bobbed my head to the music…

Spinning on that dizzy edge

Kissed her face and kissed her head

Dreamed of all the different ways

I had to make her glow

Soft and lonely

Lost and lonely

Just like heaven…

It did actually feel something like that, for once—maybe once, just once, I’d feel just like heaven.