Berlin was
a grim place to live in 1946. A bitterly cold winter made the post-war
shortages of food, shelter, clothing and coal nearly unendurable. Despite these
conditions, Pavel Richter, a demobilized American soldier, has inexplicably
chosen to remain in Berlin. The Cold War had already begun and Pavel finds
himself caught between British and Russian spies as they struggle for power and
information. When Pavel agrees to help a fellow American hide the body of a
Russian spy, he puts his own life at risk as well as those of his two German
friends: Anders, an orphan living with other street urchins, and Sonia, a woman
who has turned to prostitution in order to survive. Particularly dangerous to
them is the sadistic Colonel Fosko, a British officer who has gone rogue and
will stop at nothing to obtain what the Russian spy may have had when he died.
As the tension and violence mount, and Pavel becomes trapped in the Colonel’s
ever-tightening ring of intrigue, the mysterious “I” of Pavel and I eventually reveals his identity and motive. But Pavel remains a cypher to the
end.
