THE MEMORY CHURCH

The sudden and surprising collapse of the Berlin wall sends spies scuttling in all directions. Old wounds bleed again in the latest moody thriller from the author of Saviour's Gate (1991), etc. East Germany's Stasi aren't the only intelligence agents to run from the light as the lid comes off the collapsing communist state. British agent James Martin, who posed as a defector and came to live in the workers' state four years ago after someone betrayed Her Majesty's East German spy ring, is now dangerously exposed. There's still a traitor in place back home in MI-5 whose existence is threatened by the new openness and by Martin. As the Soviets pull out, taking their nastiest files with them, the uncontrolled Stasi are like so many unfenced Dobermans, running loose and taking bites out of anyone who moves. With old associates and enemies dropping like flies, Martin takes the first available plane back to Britain and looks up his masters, who wish he'd stayed away. So much has changed since he left. Martin is a messy remnant of the Old World Order, an embarrassment. Is that why there is attempt after attempt on his life even in England? Dodging a bullet from a fake nun at Heathrow and a bomb in placid Oxford, Martin flees to America, where he's reunited with the CIA agent he loved, then lost, when the he took the fall for the German mess. But the East Germans have followed him to Washington. To set himself free once and for all, Martin must root out the traitor, and to do that he must go back to the city of his nightmares, East Berlin. Classically grim thriller. Sebastian's cold war ghosts are still more frightful than any number of petro-terrorists.