Joe Wilderness is a World War II orphan, a condition that he thinks
excuses him from common morality. Cat burglar, card sharp, and Cockney
wide boy, the last thing he wants is to get drafted. But, in 1946, he
finds himself in the Royal Air Force, facing a stretch in military
prison...when along comes Lt Colonel Burne-Jones to tell him MI6 has
better use for his talents.
Posted to occupied Berlin, interrogating ex-Nazis, and burgling the odd
apartment for MI6, Wilderness finds himself with time on his hands and
the devil making work. He falls in with Frank, a US Army captain, with
Eddie, a British artilleryman, and with Yuri, a major in the NKVD, and,
together, they lift the black market scam to a new level. Coffee never
tasted so sweet. And he falls for Nell Breakheart, a German girl who has
witnessed the worst that Germany could do and is driven by all the
scruples that Wilderness lacks.
Fifteen years later, June 1963. Wilderness is free-lance and down on his
luck. A gumshoe scraping by on divorce cases. Frank is a big shot on
Madison Avenue, cooking up one last Berlin scam...for which he needs
Wilderness once more. Only now they're not smuggling coffee, they're
smuggling people. And Nell? Nell is on the staff of West Berlin's mayor
Willy Brandt, planning for the state visit of the most powerful man in
the world: "Ich bin ein Berliner!"
Then We Take Berlin is a gripping, meticulously researched and richly
detailed historical thriller - a moving story of espionage and war, and
people caught up in the most tumultuous events of the 21st century.
