The Vault

Harry Mackintosh runs Berlin Station, but when an operation to smuggle a valuable source from East Berlin into the West goes badly wrong, the East German police kill his team and the woman he loves. He survives, and he swears he will get even. Lacking the manpower to take on the Stasi, he travels to London to ask for help and is handed Jimmy Walker, a small-time thief known mainly for his bank robberies. Together they head back to Berlin to pursue a bold scheme that could get them across the Wall. Their target is Karl-Heinz Sommer, a ruthless Stasi general nicknamed the Spider. Their odds are poor from the start, and Walker soon hears about the fortune Sommer took from Berliners forced from their homes after the Wall went up. That discovery tempts him to put his own interests ahead of Mackintosh's orders.

The novel follows two men with divided loyalties and competing goals as they try to work as a unit. Their partnership is tense, and the lines between ally and enemy keep shifting. Readers who enjoy Cold War espionage, a sharp sense of place, and a plot where the odds are stacked against the protagonists will find plenty here.