The Berlin Assignment

This story of discovery, romance, and intrigue is set in Berlin shortly after the fall of the Wall. Anthony Hanbury, a Canadian diplomat pursuing a desultory career, is assigned as consul to Berlin. Having lived in Berlin as a student during the sixties, he asks for this assignment twenty-five years later to renew contact both with the city - gripped by the tumultuous changes of German reunification and with people he once knew. On the surface Hanbury's assignment unfolds routinely. Behind the scenes, however, his activities generate forces of suspicion. Only in the new Berlin where the Wall is gone but East-West divisions continue, where the Cold War's remnants linger and a totalitarian regime's entrails are available for scavenging could Hanbury's fate take the calamitous turn it does. Bracketing the story is Hanbury's previous boss, Irving Heywood, a man with a zest for Service gossip. In a position of influence at headquarters in Ottawa and piqued by the Berlin events, he unwillingly becomes an agent in the consul's mysterious downfall.