“And that’s the wife asking, is that it?” Not as long as I’ve been here.”ĭigby took this in, then side-stepped. And who’d choose-?”ĭigby looked at him, surprised. Different walls, that’s all.” But how could he know, someone who went home at night? “They’re trying to get out over there, not in. “You ask me, it’s changing one prison for another. Which wasn’t how Digby, the junior warden who’d handled his release, had seen it. “Germans.”Ī few minutes and he’d be free. “Right on time,” McGregor said, checking his watch. Some men were getting out of a black sedan on the other side. There it was, the wall he’d seen in a thousand pictures, more brutal somehow in real life, a gray slab running along the water, broken here by a gap the width of a car. Martin got out, feeling the cold through his coat. They had stopped on the western side of one of those canals that trickled out of the Spree. “Just to the other side of the bridge,” McGregor said, nodding to the checkpoint barrier up ahead. “We get out here,” McGregor said, his escort since Heathrow, guiding him through customs at Tegel and across the British sector, staying close, as if he were afraid Martin would pick his moment and bolt. There was a different light in prison, even in the exercise yard, the sun itself filtered, behind bars. How many of the young guards up ahead would even know who he was? All they’d see would be the prisoner skin, the unmistakable pallor of someone who’d been inside. This was officially a British exchange, Martin for an MI6 operative the East Germans had held for years and two English students caught helping friends over the wall. Invalidenstrasse had the virtue of being discreet, out of the way, designated for the few West Germans heading east. The press kept an eye on Glienicke Bridge now, hoping for another Powers-Abel swap, and the international crossing at Checkpoint Charlie would be crowded, cars streaming out of the American sector on day visas. The exchange, it was decided, would take place at the Invalidenstrasse checkpoint.
Intriguing and atmospheric, with action rising to a dangerous climax, The Berlin Exchange “expertly describes what happens when a disillusioned former agent tries to come in from the cold” ( The New York Times Book Review), confirming Kanon as “the greatest writer ever of historical espionage fiction” ( Spybrary). Something else, which he cannot learn until he arrives in East Berlin, when suddenly the game is afoot. Not physics-his expertise is out of date. But Martin has other questions: Who asked for him? Who negotiated the deal? The KGB? He knows that nothing happens by chance. The exchange is made with the formality characteristic of these swaps. Keller’s most ardent desire: to see his ex-wife Sabine and their young son. Keller’s most critical possession: his American passport. On the other side of the trade: Martin Keller, a physicist who once made headlines, but who then disappeared into the English prison system. The Communists are trading two American students caught helping people to escape over the wall and an aging MI6 operative. An early morning spy swap, not at the familiar setting for such exchanges, nor at Checkpoint Charlie, where international visitors cross into the East, but at a more discreet border crossing, usually reserved for East German VIPs. From “the most accomplished spy novelist working today” ( The Sunday Times, London), a “heart-poundingly suspenseful” ( The Washington Post) espionage thriller set at the height of the Cold War, when a captured American who has spied for the KGB is returned to East Berlin, needing to know who arranged for his release and what they now want from him.īerlin, 1963.
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