Having shot someone in what he believed was self-defense in the chaos of
1963 Berlin, Wilderness finds himself locked up with little chance of
escape. But an official pardon through his father-in-law Burne-Jones, a
senior agent at MI6, means he is free to go--although forever in
Burne-Jones's service. His newest operation will take him back to
Berlin, which is now the dividing line between the West and the Soviets.
A backstory of innocence and intrigue unravels, one in which Wilderness
is in and out of Berlin and Vienna like a jack-in-the-box. When the
Russians started building the Berlin wall in 1961, two unfortunate
Englishmen were trapped on opposite sides. Geoffrey Masefield in the
Lubyanka, and Bernard Alleyn (alias KGB Captain Leonid Liubimov) in
Wormwood Scrubs. In 1965 there is a new plan. To exchange the prisoners,
a swap upon Berlin's bridge of spies. But, as ever, Joe has something on
the side, just to make it interesting, just to make it profitable. The
Unfortunate Englishman is a thrilling tale of Khrushchev, Kennedy, a
spy exchange . . . and ten thousand bottles of fine Bordeaux. What can
possibly go wrong?