Winter Work

On an early morning walk in the woods at the edge of Berlin, Emil Grimm comes across the body of his neighbor Lothar, a fellow Stasi officer. Lothar has been shot in the temple, and a pistol lies in his right hand. It looks like suicide, but Emil suspects murder.

East Germany is falling apart, and Emil, a Stasi colonel, has lost the standing his rank once gave him. He and Lothar had been working on one last secret mission together, and it has turned deadly. Emil now has to finish it alone, with old alliances shifting from one day to the next.

Claire Saylor, a CIA agent, has been posted to Berlin to help with the Agency's cleanup of its collapsing East German opponents. Her orders are upgraded: she is to be the contact for a high-ranking Stasi foreign intelligence officer. The details she is given are thin, and her first meeting goes badly wrong.

Claire learns the assignment is far more delicate than anyone told her. As her path and Emil's cross, the two find common ground neither expected. A powerful enemy stays out of sight, and both are fighting to stay alive.

This spy thriller draws on a true story about the secrets up for grabs just after the Berlin Wall falls. It follows the murky aftermath of the Cold War rather than a clean contest between two ideologies.