Excerpt from Winter Work by Dan Fesperman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Beside the body was a bright orange watch cap. Emil knew this cap, and knew its owner. The man's name rose to his lips on a gush of nausea and then died before he could utter it. He swallowed with difficulty, tasting bile, and tried to regain control of his emotions. Perhaps the hat belonged to someone else—a thread of hope that began to unravel the moment he grasped it.

He held still, hoping no one had seen him. Then he sighed, because they had. One of the four men—the one in charge, a tall fellow in his early forties—began tramping up the hill toward him.

"Grimm. I was thinking you might turn up."

"How did you know that was even possible?"

Dieter Krauss shrugged, a gesture freighted with meaning: We are state security and so are you, so of course we are familiar with your usual movements.

"Your dacha is near here, yes? Not far from Wolf's?"

"Near enough, but Wolf is gone."

"So I've heard."

Markus Wolf, they meant—Emil's former boss, now retired. Wolf's reputation as the Stasi's most renowned spymaster ranked him higher on the Bonn hit list than Emil, so he had recently fled to Moscow. From Emil's vantage point you could see the chimney of Wolf's A-frame poking just above the treetops. There had been no smoke from it for weeks. Maybe he was gone for good.

"What have you found down there? What's happened?"

"Come see."

Krauss led him down the path as the three other men stepped aside to reveal more of the scene. The victim had tousled silver hair. He wore loden wool pants and one of those British waxed cotton jackets with a corduroy collar. Nearby, tossed aside with the orange cap, was an old--fashioned hiking cane covered with tin badges of all the places its owner had been. For Emil there was no longer any doubt.

Krauss halted on the hillside and spoke again.

"I regret to say that we believe it is your neighbor and colleague, Lothar Fischer. You will assist us in making a positive ID."

Emil knew it would be best to react with shock and sorrow, and nothing more. But by pausing to collect himself he squandered the opportunity, so he simply nodded, poker-faced.

"I'll do what I can."

Krauss held out a hand to help steady him on the muddy path. Emil waved away the gesture and surged forward as Krauss fell into step behind him.

"I've always thought it was odd the way so many of you HVA people ended up here in Prenden."

"Odd? You talk like we're a coven of witches. We just happened to work together."

But Krauss wasn't the first person to have noted the unlikely concentration of spies in this patch of woods, twenty-five miles north of central Berlin. As with Wolf and Fischer, Emil's main residence was an apartment in the city, even though he hadn't been there in weeks. There was an HVA safe house nearby as well—roomy and well furnished, the nicest dwelling on the lake if you didn't mind the concealed microphones and surveillance cameras.

"Who found him? And why did they call you first?"

Krauss, ignoring the questions, flipped open a notebook and began scribbling. Emil stooped beneath the tape without asking permission and moved closer to the body. Where was Lothar's dog? The man almost never went walking without his shepherd, Gretel. Unless, of course, he had gone out on a woodland chore that even an animal couldn't be trusted to witness.

Lothar's hair was matted with blood around a black hole near his right temple. His right arm was outstretched with a gun loosely in hand, the forefinger poking through the trigger guard. It was a Makarov, or Pistol-M, the compact service weapon they'd all been issued on their first day as Stasi officers. A suppressor was screwed onto the end of the barrel.

"Well?" Krauss sounded impatient.

"It's him. It's Lothar. A suicide?"

"Is that what you think?"

Excerpted from Winter Work by Dan Fesperman. Copyright © 2022 by Dan Fesperman. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.