The Berlin Exchange by Joseph Kanon

Published by Scribner on February 22, 2022

The Berlin Exchange gives readers a different take on the spy thriller. The protagonist is a failed spy, an American physicist who passed secrets to the Russians while America was developing the atomic bomb. He served about ten years in a British prison before a prisoner exchange sent him to East Germany, reuniting him with his ex-wife and son. The novel begins with the exchange as the tense steps across the border are followed by gunfire and a crashed ambulance.

Martin Keller taught physics in Germany. When he met Sabine at a party, she told him she was a Communist “in her head,” but not openly because the Nazis did not tolerate Communists. She also told him that she wanted to leave Germany before a war started and that an American would be positioned to make that happen. Martin married her, brought her to America, and — like Sabine — became a spy for ideological reasons. He believed that America’s quest to be the sole nation with nuclear weapons would hinder the cause of world peace.

Martin got caught while he was in England. To maintain her cover, Sabine denounced and divorced him, then returned to the country that had become East Germany, where she took up residence. She married Kurt Thiele, a lawyer who arranges prisoner exchanges with the help of a priest and some black marketeers. Thiele raised Martin’s son Peter as is own, although Peter has always known Martin is his father. At Sabine’s request, Kurt arranges the prisoner exchange that brings Martin to East Germany, a place Martin views as little better than the prison in which he had been serving time.

Peter plays a starring role in an East German television show that is a propaganda vehicle for East Germany’s brand of communism. Peter has been raised in an environment of propaganda and views his father as a hero for betraying the West. Peter believes what he has been taught — communism is fairness, everyone in East Germany has everything they need. Given the status of Peter and his father, Peter has it better than most, making it easier to swallow the lie.

Against that background, a plot unfolds. Martin has abandoned his ideological respect for communism because of how it is practiced in Russia and East Germany. He doesn’t like the oppressive society that he has been forced to join. He doesn’t like the return of his former Russian handler to his life or the expectation that he will spy on a friend and former colleague. He doesn’t like Kurt. But he cares about Sabine (despite having good reason to hate her) and he loves his son. The story follows Martin as he masterminds a plan to save Peter, Sabine, and himself.

Joseph Kanon doesn’t try to make Martin particularly likeable, but he does craft Martin as a decent man who earns the reader’s sympathy. Martin is trying to make the best of an impossible situation and is willing to take risks to overcome his mistakes. His relationship with Sabine is complicated but he doesn’t let anger prevent him from doing the right thing.

Martin’s plan is complex and clever, designed to stay a step ahead of his adversaries, but the story always feels real. Kanon sets up a meticulous plot but doesn’t bog it down in unnecessary detail. Every scene has a purpose, setting up a suspenseful ending that could have a variety of outcomes. Until the final pages arrived, I had no idea how the book would end.

Kanon writes some of the smartest thrillers on the market, and some of the best suspense novels that are set in post-war, Cold War era. The Berlin Exchange meets the high bar that Kanon has set for novels in that genre.

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The Accomplice by Joseph Kanon

Published by Atria Books on November 5, 2019

The first two-thirds of The Accomplice seems like a well-written story with a mediocre plot. Then the plot takes off, producing the kind of tension and moral quandaries that are the strength of spy fiction.

The novel is set in 1962. Aaron Wiley is an American. His uncle is Max Weill. Max is an Auschwitz survivor. He lives in Hamburg, a location he uses as a base for tracking down Nazi war criminals. Max wants Aaron to take over the cause, but Aaron professes to be content with his work in America as an intelligence analyst.

While Max is pleading his case to Aaron in Hamburg, Max thinks he sees Otto Schramm and promptly has a heart attack. But everyone knows that Schramm died in Argentina. Maybe Max is getting old. And he doesn’t claim to recognize the face. It is the way the man was walking that convinced Max he was looking at Schramm. Max was a young doctor during the war. Schramm let him live, but Max will never forget the things that Schramm made him do at Auschwitz. He is confident that he will never forget Schramm's swagger.

Schramm’s body was identified by a person and by dental records, but all of that might have been faked. Perhaps Schramm felt the need to disappear (again) after Israeli agents kidnapped Eichmann from a street in Buenos Aires. But why would he risk a return to Hamburg? With the help of one of Max’s friends, Aaron discovers a possible answer.

The story takes Aaron to Buenos Aires, where Schramm’s daughter lives. Predictably, Aaron finds himself in a steamy relationship with the daughter, because the protagonist’s inability to keep it in his pants is nearly inevitable in a spy novel. He also meets anti-Semitic priests and diplomats who are well positioned in Argentina, the kind of people who might help Schramm begin his third life.

The plot seems like a mundane Nazi-hunter story until it takes an unexpected twist. At that point, Aaron must confront difficult moral questions. If Schramm is indeed hiding in Argentina, what should be done about it? Israel kidnapped Eichmann so that he could be tried and executed. Is it justifiable to violate international law and national sovereignty to capture a war criminal? If Schramm cannot be kidnapped and spirited out of Argentina  for a trial (a second offense that might not reflect well on Israel), is it morally acceptable to kill him? Is murder justice or vengeance? Does the fact that Schramm is a Nazi war criminal make a difference in how that question is answered? Does it matter that some of the people who directed Schramm's actions are still in Germany and are to powerful ever to answer for their crimes?

One of the characters asks whether a trial would make Israel any safer than a publicized killing. Another suggests that without a trial, the only definition of justice is: “Who has the gun?”  On the other hand, is there a moral distinction between a trial with a preordained outcome and a murder? Perhaps a trial in Germany rather than Israel might be perceived as more just (Schramm, after all, committed no crime in Israel), although the judicial bias in Germany might simply run in a different direction.

Does it matter that any action taken against Schramm will have a profound effect on his innocent daughter? Eichmann was displayed in a glass cage during his trial, a humiliation that Schramm’s daughter would feel deeply if Schramm meets the same fate.

And what if some other use might be made of Schramm? The US has a history of cozying up with notorious killers, including Klaus Barbie, if it serves someone’s concept of national security. Does justice always require death or imprisonment, or might it be better to find a use for a war criminal?

Joseph Kanon gives the reader a good bit to think about while telling a story that, by the end, has enough action and suspense to entertain readers who don’t care about the questions it inspires. Because Aaron struggles to do what he deems morally right, even if it means defying his employer, he is the kind of principled character who is easy to like — whether or not the reader agrees with his moral choices. The winning combination of action, characterization, and close examination of moral issues makes The Accomplice one of the year’s smartest thrillers.

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Defectors by Joseph Kanon

Published by Atria Books on June 6, 2017

Simon Weeks is running a publishing company, having been forced out of the State Department after his brother Frank, a CIA agent, defected. Now, in the Khrushchev years, Simon has the chance to publish Frank’s “tell all” book. But first, he needs to meet Frank, for the first time in years. To that end, Simon travels to Moscow.

There is tension between the brothers that goes beyond Frank’s defection. Some of it involves Frank’s wife, who traveled with Frank to Moscow. But the tension mounts when Simon learns that Frank wants to defect … again … this time betraying the Soviets by returning to the US.

In the best tradition of spy novels, the reader wonders what sort of treachery is really afoot as the novel progresses. Joseph Kanon keeps the reader guessing as Simon second-guesses then third-guesses everything he is told. Suspense elevates when things get sticky, but it isn’t always clear for whom the reader is supposed to root.

The novel’s background accounts for the plural title. Guy Burgess and an assorted crew of spies spend their nights drinking and moaning about the boring lives they’ve settled into, quite a change from the exciting lives of deception they once lived. Some of the defectors and their wives play key roles as the story unfolds. Some are conflicted, prone to second-guessing the decisions that defined their lives, while others seem quietly resigned to the isolated lives that Soviet heroes live when they are never quite trusted by the Soviet government. Only Frank, an active officer in the KGB, seems to have gained the trust of his superiors, but as he well knows, nobody is trusted, and perhaps nobody deserves to be trusted.

The surprising plot ends with two tight twists. That is reason enough to recommend Defectors, but the novel’s emotional resonance comes from the complexity of its characters and their shifting relationships. Everyone seems to be betraying everyone in Defectors. Everyone is playing a role, some unwillingly, some for the love of the game. The shifting and uncertain relationship between the two brothers, in particular, is masterful.

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