Excerpt from The Berlin Exchange by Joseph Kanon, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"How?" Martin said, watching the guard on the phone.

"Trade someone, like you." He paused. "Or buy them out," he said, almost a grin.

"Buy them?"

"All this business, a spy for a spy. It's valuable, yes, of course we must do it, but what we really need is hard currency."

"Not old spies."

"Don't misunderstand. It's an honor to do this for you. But as a practical matter—"

"You can't sell people. That's—"

Kurt jumped in. "Yes, I know, how would it look? To the good West Germans. Hypocrites. But here are two more." He nodded to the young men. "What do we do with them? More expenses."

An ambulance was coming around the corner, followed by a car of border police.

"Let's go," Kurt said, leaving the guards to deal with whatever reports were going to be made. "It's another matter, the exchange. Nothing to do with this. We don't want them confused. Come." Protecting himself.

They got into the back of the black sedan, saying nothing for a minute, still shaken.

"Not a very pleasant welcome," Kurt said as their driver pulled out. "I hope you won't think this is typical. Very rare. Before the wall, it was a problem. The state trains someone, years of free education, and then one day he takes the S-Bahn to the West and all the skills are lost. Years of investment gone. You heard them. Their ambulance. Skilled medical workers."

They were speeding past the Charité grounds, nurses and students filling the street. Sabine hadn't been a medical student, just a friend of Georg's brother, a girl at a party.

"I'm too much a coward," she'd said. "All the blood. I don't have the stomach for that. It doesn't bother you?"

"I'm not in medicine. Physics."

"Oh, physics. I don't even know what it means. Something they teach at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, I think. I met someone from there once. He said it was how the world works. Yes?" Her eyes moving all over his face, studying him, already familiar.

"He meant the underlying principles of—"

"I know what he meant," she said, a quick smile. "You're at the Kaiser Wilhelm too?"

"Göttingen. I'm just here for the weekend."

"So you don't know Berlin?"

"A little."

"Well, I don't know any Americans. You're the first." Looking at him, the eyes again.

"What do you think? So far."

"You're a serious person," she said, glancing at the rest of the room, her voice throaty with smoke. "That's what I think. So far."

"Serious. Is that good?"

"For me, yes." She drew on her cigarette. "Are you political?"

Almost a laugh, caught in time. Then, when she kept staring, "We don't have politics. Not like here."

"Everybody has politics."

"What about you?"

"Don't you know it's dangerous to ask a German that?"

"Unless you're a Nazi, you mean."

"We're all Nazis now. If you ask that."

He looked at her. "Not you."

"How can you know?"

"You're here, for one thing. In this crowd."

"That doesn't mean anything."

He shrugged. "I trust my instincts."

"Ouf," she said, dismissing this. "Instincts."

"You trusted yours, didn't you? When you started talking to me?"

She smiled, then looked away. "No, that was flirting. A difference." The word running through him, a jolt, the eyes sexual now. She turned back. "But you're right. I'm not a Nazi. The opposite."

"What, a Communist?" he said, not serious, party talk.

"Not officially. But up here, yes." She touched her head. "I used to think I was anyway." Something people didn't say out loud, the boldness of it another jolt.

"But not now?"

"Now? If I were a Communist in Germany now, I'd be dead."

But of course she had been, even then, something he would have known if he'd been listening, too busy hearing the rush of blood in his ears, the throaty voice. At the beginning, when he believed everything she said.

Excerpted from The Berlin Exchange by Joseph Kanon. Copyright © 2022 by Joseph Kanon. Excerpted by permission of Scribner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.