What did you do in the war, Gunther?    more...

The history of the fallout between the Communists and the Democrats in Germany brought a policeman into close proximity of political violence. Hitler’s rise to power was tainted by violence on the streets but Mielke, the man whose life Inspector Bernie Gunther saved, would soon enough retaliate. The death of two policemen turned him into a marked man and Gunther into the hunter – a pursuit that was paused when war was first waged.

The ebb and flow of conflict faced SS Captain Gunther with different concerns. Orders to execute thirty Russian NKVD officers who had just shot two thousand prisoners was one thing. Killing hundreds of local women and children was too much – even if it was ordered from above. Then, when Konigsberg fell to the Russians, it was his turn to suffer. He encountered the living hell of the labour camps, until the death of a turncoat offered a way out and a meeting with Mielke.

This girl Elisabeth?    more...

Gunther’s prize for rescuing Mielke from a beating on the streets was Elisabeth. A brunette seamstress who had played enough of a part in Mielke’s family life that he thought of her as a sister. She was a prize Gunther cherished and, in pre-war Berlin, he took her out again and again until his policeman’s instincts cut across personal concerns. When Mielke and colleagues attacked, shot and killed two policemen, Gunther demanded that she betray him.  Betrayal. A word that would ring down through the years.

After the war there was little call for a seamstress in ravaged Berlin. The nightclubs were much more appreciated by the occupying forces, the spies and the spymasters. So that is where she made her living and Berlin was where Gunther found her once again. No matter what he was called on to do, or for whom, he found a way to let her know she was going to be the centre of his life for the rest of his life.

From Cuba to hell and back.    more...

Life in an exuberant Cuba of the 1950’s, where no-one was concerned about his pedigree, seemed a settled existence for Gunther. But a man who can escape from one life into another - from a Russian labour camp, from war-torn Germany - that man will always attract attention. When revolution was in the air, fate’s sleight of hand saw him taken into custody by the Americans - roughed up, interrogated, imprisoned in Cuba, then New York and finally back to Germany, facing trumped up charges.

Years after the war is over, Berlin is still in bits – a city divided. Not as the spoils of war, but the frontier between the Western powers and the Russians as four nations struggle to escape their history. A clandestine war is being fought out, driven by secrets and subterfuge. Bernie Gunther has seen it all; understands the stand-off and the paranoia as enemies seek escape, prisoners are exchanged and infiltrators of dubious allegiance are returned in new guises. Understands there’s always a price to pay somewhere, to someone. The question is, who’s going to pay it.