Aug 12, 2022
In this
conversation with Spybrary host Shane Whaley, award-winning spy
author Dan Fesperman reveals more about the real-life espionage
events that inspired his latest novel, set in Berlin 1990, Winter
Work.
The Berlin Wall has fallen and in the ensuing power vacuum, a
former Stasi officer and a CIA agent must fight for their lives. On
a chilly early morning walk on the wooded outskirts of Berlin, Emil
Grimm finds the body of his neighbor, a fellow Stasi officer named
Lothar, with a gunshot wound to the temple and a pistol in his
right hand. Despite appearances, Emil suspects murder. If it were a
few months earlier, he would have known just what to do.
But now, as East Germany disintegrates, being a Stasi colonel is
more of a liability than an asset. More troubling still is that
Emil and Lothar were actively involved in a final clandestine
mission. Now Emil must finish the job alone and on uncertain ground
where old alliances seem to be shifting by the day.
Meanwhile, CIA agent Claire Saylor is sent to Berlin to contact a
ranking Stasi officer, although details of her mission are
suspiciously sketchy and her superior seems to have a hidden
agenda.
When her first rendezvous goes dangerously awry, she realizes the
mission is far more delicate than she has been led to believe. With
the rules of the game-changing quickly, and as their two missions
intersect, Emil and Claire find themselves on unlikely common
ground, fighting for their lives against a powerful enemy lurking
in the shadows.