Berlin Exchange, Kanon - B+

         In this novel set in 1963, American physicist Martin Keller, imprisoned in the UK for a decade for giving atomic secrets to the Soviets, is exchanged and crosses into E. Berlin. His motive in going to E. Germany is that he would like to get to know his 12-year old son. He and his wife had divorced when he was imprisoned. Both are die-hard believers. When he and Sabine have a few moments together, he tells her that she had to be the one who turned him in, and she acknowledges that she was ordered to in order to protect someone higher up. She also advises him that she is dying of lung cancer and it's imperative that he look after their boy, Peter. His KGB handler tells him he has to go to work again, and without a choice, he agrees to keep his ears open at his new place of work. He is assigned to work on the bomb again, and spying on his old friends. He realizes he can't do it and tells Sabine, also born in the US, that they have to take Peter to America, they need to leave. He orchestrates an elaborate scheme to leave and, although there are are some glitches, he pulls it off. A well done effort by a skilled writer of post-war Germany novels. Interestingly, E. Germany exchanged thousands of people and returned them, or sent them, to the west for hard currency. It is estimated that billions of Deutschmarks flowed into the GDR over the course of its failed existence.