Excerpt from The Berlin Exchange by Joseph Kanon, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"My line of work."

"On second thought, maybe you'll fit right in. With the Krauts. They say everybody's got an ear out over there."

The men on the other side had now formed a line, like a team taking positions, their clothes so similar they might have been uniforms: gray baggy raincoats, mufflers, rimless German glasses. Except the last one, smart in a belted camel-hair topcoat and thick black-framed glasses, the fashion look a surreal touch in the morning gloom. But what wasn't surreal in Berlin? Even on the drive in from Tegel he had been disoriented, once familiar streets now unrecognizable. There were still pockets of bomb damage, after all these years. Stretches of wasteland next to new apartment buildings. An empty space where Lehrter Station had been, the whole ornate pile gone, vanished.

At least the Charité hospital complex was still there, across the canal, its nineteenth-century red brick evidently strong enough to survive the wolf's blast, like the clever little pig's house. Or just lucky, the bombs falling somewhere else. Hospital wards and classrooms shoehorned into Wilhelmine mansions, Luisenstrasse with its medical supply shops and textbook sellers, the streets running off it lined with old apartment buildings where students rented spare rooms or pooled their money to share a place of their own. And gave parties. How he had met Sabine. A casual invitation from Georg, a break from Göttingen, carrying his overnight bag from Friedrichstrasse Station, the rush of hot smoky air and music when he opened Georg's door, music the Nazis disapproved of, just playing it an act of rebellion. A beer thrust into his hand before he could even put his bag down. And then, a sudden opening through the crowd, her eyes looking up at the same time. She'd been sitting on a couch, legs curled beneath her, an ashtray in her lap, a cigarette in one hand, the other at her elbow, as if she were holding herself down, about to float away with the smoke. She stared at him, a snapshot second, head half-turned, like someone who'd been tapped on the shoulder. Yes? Then Georg came over to greet him and he lost sight of her again behind the crowd. That had been the beginning. A party at the Charité. Just across the bridge.

"Now what?"

"They start. Then we start. High Noon."

"Without the guns."

"Now," McGregor said, beginning to walk. "Not too fast. We want to be there at the same time. When you get to the barrier, they'll raise it and you keep going. The others will pass you coming out. So nobody's first. Nobody pulls anything."

"That ever happen?" A chess piece yanked off the board.

"No, they're just like that. By the book."

Over the water now, the wall ahead. Behind it a heavy turn-of-the-century building big enough to have been a government ministry, its façade unscarred by bombs. Massive doors and pediments, built to last. The confident years.

The man in the camel-hair coat stopped, as McGregor had, the three in raincoats coming on by themselves. Three for one. The road barrier was raised and Martin walked through the checkpoint, the others passing on his left, nobody hurrying, wary, as if they were expecting something to go wrong at the last minute. And then they were in the West and Martin was in East Berlin, free.

He stopped for a minute, breathing in the damp air. He was through. Nobody was going to pull him back, lock him up again. He'd paid and now it was over.

A smile from the man in camel hair, hand outstretched.

"So. Welcome to the better Germany. As we like to say. I'm Kurt Thiele. You had an easy trip?"

"Sabine's husband."

"Yes," he said, still smiling. "She's anxious to see you. After so many years. And of course Peter."

"You arranged this," Martin said, waving his hand to take in the whole border crossing.

"It's what I do," he said easily. "These exchanges with the West. It's a kind of specialty. I used to work with Vogel, the lawyer. You've heard of him?"

Excerpted from The Berlin Exchange by Joseph Kanon. Copyright © 2022 by Joseph Kanon. Excerpted by permission of Scribner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.