At the end of the war, Berlin was a mess. Children wandered the streets, people were starving, and anything could be had for a cigarette. Add to the mix thousands of soldiers, all of them bored, and you have a recipe for depredation. "‘The ruins turned us all into rats … The self can be pretty vile if let off the leash.’ All those feral children. All that hunger and starvation. It must have been a feeding frenzy for someone like Blackburn. He wouldn’t have been alone either. Men like that recognized each other, hunted in packs, and protected each other. . . It was like stepping into hell. The problem is, some men like hell."
Some of those predators were officers and they turned a lodge into a true den of iniquity, some of them preying on children. But someone else was writing down the names of the worst, and many of those same men went on to high-level careers in government. Throw in those who want to sabotage the glasnost talks about reducing nuclear weapons and you have a rather incendiary mix.
Major Tom Fox is sent to Berlin to bring back a former defector. It was to be a simple mission. He has none of the above information, but soon it's apparent that someone wants the defector dead and Tom, too. But, most of all they want the memoirs the defector had been supposedly writing as he had the list of names. Fox is caught in a vice but has no idea who's turning the screws. When his children is kidnapped to coerce his cooperation, things get desperate.
This book will suck you into it as it races to the conclusion. I have already ordered Grimwood's other book. Superior spy novel.
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