Masaryk Station - John Russell, Bk 6 Author:David Downing Berlin, early 1948. The city, still occupied by the four Allied powers, still largely in ruins, has become the cockpit of a new Cold War, and as Spring unfolds its German inhabitants live in fear of the Soviets enforcing a Western withdrawal. Here, as elsewhere in Europe, the legacies of World War II have become entangled in the new Soviet-Ameri... more »can conflict, creating a world of bizarre and fleeting loyalties, a paradise for spies.
John Russell works for both Stalin's NKVD and the newly-created CIA. He does as little for either as he can safely get away with, and between the tawdry tasks they set him -- assessing dubious defectors in Trieste, running a spy ring in a Berlin VD clinic, rescuing ex-Nazis who might prove useful from Czechoslovakia -- he seeks a way to cut himself loose. His partner Effi Koenen has an easier time, starring in a popular radio series and looking after their adopted daughter Rosa, until a woman she helped save in the War turns up on her doorstep, and admits to a child she left behind all those years before, a child now trapped behind the new iron curtain.« less
I find it difficult to put David Downing's books about "John Russell" down. What a shame, as I have only one more to go. Hopefully, it won't be the last. But I have a feeling Downing is wrapping this series up with the one published this year.