Brandenburg Gate [Paperback]

Middle-aged Dr. Rudi Rosenharte is about to see his former life as a Stasi foreign agent turn his present life as a renowned art historian upside down. The scene is set in East Germany in September 1989. Rosenharte's passion at this stage is to set aside the decadent alcoholic lifestyle he's lived for many years in order to free his twin brother, Konrad, from a GDR prison. Konrad has been mistreated by the Stasi and is in need of dental, physical and mental treatment for his declining health. Rosenharte's energy is to cooperate with the Stasi to ensure that Konrad lives and is reunited with his wife Else and two young boys.

Rosenharte has become an authority in the art world and travels frequently between cities to lecture. During trips to Trieste, he's become acquainted with a person of interest to the Stasi officials concerned with treason to the German Democratic Republic. Stasi officials use information in ruthless fashion in order to intimidate citizens to inform upon one another. Rudi's former life as a secret agent comes to bear when he comes face to face with a woman he believes to have died, a former love who possessed important information against enemies of East Germany.

Believing that his cooperation with the Stasi will free his brother, Rosenharte sets in motion a series of actions that conflict with his chief goal, that of freeing Konrad. He possesses the means to gain vital information not only for the Stasi but for American, British and Russian agents as well. The game plays out with his former lover, Annalise Schering, holding the key to intelligence the Stasi must have. Rosenharte has to abandon his former lover (or a reasonable facsimile of her) or become a turncoat agent and cooperate with foreign agencies. He cannot jeopardize Konrad's state in the process.

Henry Porter has written this spy novel in the fashion of a John le Carre thriller and brings the reader along for a first-rate ride back in time. The GDR experiences the tumult of a people long oppressed by a police state, harassed with unemployment and suppression of intellectual freedoms. The wall between East and West Germany is a scene of protests, both silent and proactive. Porter writes the times with political accuracy and develops the characters with passion for their beliefs.

Stasi inquisitors are truly villainous. Western agents want information and are willing to cross barriers to obtain it. A surprising Russian presence solidifies the murky political waters at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Timing is crucial to Rosenharte's success and coincides with the barriers broken between East and West in Berlin. Characters are fictitious with the exception of the Russian agent Vladimir, later known to the world as Vladimir Putin.

At times, multiple plot layers make for tedious sleuth work on the part of the reader. Difficult Germanic names and associations with Nazi history take concentration to understand. When the tangles unfurl into an understandable reality at the finale, one applauds the author for a novel well done. Though fictionalized, one can feel the climate of the historical date when Berlin became a free city. BRANDENBURG GATE is a testament to those who sought freedom from oppression. Espionage in the finest tradition.

--- Reviewed by Judy Gigstad

Excellent spy potboiler set in the waning days of European communism. Author Henry Porter interweaves the East German secret police (STASI), British intelligence, the CIA and the KGB into this story of a world-weary East German academic who is blackmailed into serving the GDR in a dubious espionage plot. That first caper, lasting no more than the first several pages of this lengthy book, opens the door to what is the vast rat's nest of the main story line here. The best part of this novel, in my opinion, is its detailed description of the gradual public uprising against the GDR regime as the Soviet Block begins to visibly disintegrate. The author conveys a highly credible understanding of how the citizens of East Germany finally reached the end of their patience with the desperate living that was inflicted on them by their government through the STASI.

As good as this book is, it could have used some adept editing in places to tighten it up some. For example, there are a number of oft-repeated lines coming from the antagonist about his imprisoned brother that become tiresome by the middle of the book.

Despite a few flaws, this is an excellent read that reaches its best and most credible moments at the end of the book.

Porter makes an interesting linkage between the closing of the Cold War and the current war on terrorism. En route, he also supplies us with an indepth view of what life was like in East Germany, under the scrutiny of the Stasi.

The book is fairly mild, as far as its depictions of mayhem. Also piquant is how the Soviet Union and the KGB come off as relatively benign, compared to the Stasi. Vladimir Putin makes a fictional cameo appearance as a KGB representative in East Germany in 1989, and is portrayed as a decent bloke.

Porter also reminds us of how innovative the Web really is. Something too easily taken for granted now. But in 1989, it was cutting edge stuff, that really did presage a cultural revolution. He found a neat way to tie the political events of 1989 with the murmurings coming out of CERN about a global hyperlinked network.

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