MASARYK STATION: DAVID DOWNING

It's 1948 and John Russell is in Trieste, Italy, at the behest of the Americans, acting as an interpreter of a Russian colonel.  Things are heating up in Yugoslavia, as Tito and Stalin seem to be at loggerheads, ready for conflict.  And the Russians are beginning to put a blockade on Berlin, making it difficult for the Allies to get food, gas, and electricity.  Eventually it leads to the creation of both East and West Germany, a divided Berlin until the fall of the wall in 1989 and with that, the triumph of capitalism over a tyrannical Soviet communism, leaving in its wake, millions of dead innocents on both sides.  Ah Politics.

This particular novel starts with violence, the murder of a young woman, the rape of her sister by an unknown power figure.  We do not seem the reason for this opening until half way through the novel when Russell is made aware of a tape of this atrocious act by Beria, the Russian head of the KGB. The knowledge of this tape, and a way of getting it in his hands, leads both Russell and his Russian counter part in all six novels, Shchepkin, not disillusioned with Russian communists, to figure a way out of being beholden to both Russia and the US.  They will threaten Beria with the making public of the tape unless he promises to let both escape to the West, without revealing their parts in intrigue, for Russell it means not telling the Americans that he gave up nuclear secrets to save the life of his wife. If the Americans knew about this, he could be tried for treason.  The rest of the novel details their plan, how its carried out, the problems they face as the Russian Military Intelligence finds out about the tape and tries to secure the tape from Russell, to undermine Beria, whom they hate.  Russell is forced to kill two Russian agents, burns the tape as directed by Shchepkin, and the novel ends with him in his apartment in Berlin, ready to flee to the West with his wife, Effi,  after Shchepkin, the Russian spy leader, turns himself in to the American forces.

The joy of this novel is the moral ambiguity of it, the fact that though the Russians seem worst, the Allies, too, are no angels, doing what is necessary, sacrificing lives all for the greater cause.  As Camus states, "There are no ends just means, " thus Marx's dictum that the 'end justifies the means' makes no sense.   Downing clearly sympathizes with the aims or goals of socialism, its goal of equality and justice for all, though he knows that both Russia and East Germany never achieved the goal.  And he sees the West as obsessed with materialism, with making money, creating just as unequal a world as did Russia.  The novel makes you hate politics, admire people who believe in fraternity, equality and justice, sacrificing their lives in its name which is then corrupted by those in Powers  and their politics.  Sound familiar. This is the last of the Berlin novels.