The Helsinki Pact (ePub)

Bettina lies unconscious on the subway tracks. Hanno, Stasi agent and her former lover, is gaining fast on the fugitives. Will she and Thomas make it out alive? Will Hanno shoot them before the next train thunders through?

Berlin, 1989. The Soviet empire is close to financial collapse. The East German public is rioting. The Party is falling apart and the dreaded Stasi is working corruptly to secure its leaders' futures. In Dresden KGB agent Vladimir Putin sets out to exploit this for his own benefit.

West Berlin economics student and small time currency blackmarketeer Thomas Wundart has been trapped into spying for the feared East German security organisation, the Stasi. His target is his oldest and best friend, Stephan, now important in West German finance as personal assistant to the head of Deutsche Bank and key to critical financial information the Stasi wants.
Thomas's Stasi manager is Bettina - beautiful, intelligent, strong-minded and feisty - and Thomas's emotions swing wildly between his growing infatuation with her and his fury at her icy control. He senses she's attracted to him but loyalty to her country come first.

After the Berlin Wall opens in November Colonel Dieter, a high ranking Stasi officer recognised for his integrity and loyalty to East Germany, sends Bettina and Thomas on a highly secret and very dangerous mission to Dresden and the Stasi HQ where they discover financial fraud, blackmail and murder. They learn also of a mysterious Frankfurt-based organisation with Stasi links, Phoenix Securities, which looks to benefit hugely from currency manipulation on unification.
Recalled urgently to Berlin with hard evidence of Stasi corruption at the highest levels they find tragedy. Realising the serious danger they're now in they hide away in a secret East Berlin flat before making a perilous run for it, desperately fleeing for their lives towards the West.

This is a taut, urgent, fast-paced thriller set in a totalitarian state in the very recent past. It cleverly mixes real events and real people with an imaginative telling of a gripping tale about financial fraud, chicanery and dodgy politics, hard to put down. The story involves greed, totalitarian brutality, murder and betrayal, love and integrity, Western arrogance and ignorance, and also a fierce commitment to justice. The characters are rounded and real and grow and develop as the story unfolds. Does crime pay? Will Bettina and Thomas both escape? Will the financial mastermind behind Phoenix make a killing? And what about Hanno and Putin? Because it's all there, waiting for you to find out, best get a copy of the book now before the price rises!