Hiding Crimes and Uncovering Spies

When first imagining what eventually became The Berlin Letters, I knew two things: I wanted to stay in the spy world, as I had discovered so many fascinating stories of daring while writing my previous novel, A Shadow in Moscow, and I wanted to frame this new story with the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall. But, of course, I needed new facts, new historical touch-points, and new intrigue for an original and fresh novel. Two discoveries ignited my imagination and set the tone for what became a race of a story — the KGB’s reliance upon East German state security, the Stasi, for the creation of disinformation, and the CIA top-secret code-breaking project, the Venona Project. 

First of all the crimes or, at least, the hiding of them…Back in the Cold War era, the KGB, massive as it was, didn’t work in isolation. It called upon the state security bureaus of all the Soviet Bloc countries to work in concert, tightening its net of control and surveillance beyond the Soviet Union’s borders. The East German state security, the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, often referred to as the Stasi, was one such bureau, founded and formed with KGB guidance. Although he didn’t start the organization, Erich Mielke ran it from 1957 to 1989 and his is the name most associated with it, along with Stasi spymaster Marcus Wolf  — who is said to be the inspiration for John le Carré’s Karla. 

Upon inception Stasi quickly became unparalleled in obtaining, storing, and utilizing information — I suppose one shouldn’t be surprised that the East Germans were organized. But it was more than that, information was the currency of control and the Stasi built its network beyond its officers by employing citizen informants. By the 1980s, one out of every eight East German citizens reported to the Stasi. That meant if you lived in an apartment building during this time, there were possibly several informants on your floor, among your friends, and even within your own family. And every detail those informants conveyed to the Stasi was recorded and often acted upon in some form. At the Stasi’s dissolution in 1991, open files on millions of Germans were discovered. 

But the Stasi didn’t merely collect information, it was also called upon to create disinformation. During the Italian investigation of the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, the KGB felt the spotlight was pointing too close in their direction. The Stasi was tasked to create a campaign to redirect the investigators’ attention to other parts of Europe. Operation Pope was initiated in August 1982 and, despite the fact that a government order opened the Stasi files in 1992, the operation wasn’t declassified and revealed until 2005. 

Now that I had a few interesting details to uncover within my story, I wondered who was going to uncover them…Here’s where the remarkable women of the CIA’s Venona Project entered into my imagination. Starting in 1943, Gene Grabeel and a team, mostly comprised of women brilliant in math, were tasked to decipher encrypted Soviet messages. The Soviet codes were considered virtually unbreakable as they were created using a one-time-pad system and a complex machination of non-carrying addition and subtraction. But these women succeeded and they were responsible for unveiling some of the most famous spies of the Cold War era: Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, Klaus Fuchs, Don Maclean and Guy Burgess (members of the infamous Cambridge Five), to name a few. The Project ran from 1943 to 1980, but the files were not declassified until 1995. All that time, those women held their secrets. So while we know many of the spies they uncovered, their names are less well-known: Gene Grabeel, as I mentioned, Josephine Miller, Carrie Berry, Mary Boeke, Helen Bradley, Angelia Nanni, Gloria Forbes, Doris Johnson, Rosa Brown, and many others.

I found the Venona Project and women involved so fascinating I envisioned a CIA officer starting it up again in hopes of finding relevant, new, and vital information within those same communiques the original Venona team wrestled with for years. Within The Berlin Letters, you will find a fictional Venona II — four women still decoding and still working in an off-site, top-secret location. 

These are just two of my findings while digging around within the Cold War era, the KGB and its partners, and the CIA. There is so much more out there and, while story always comes first, I do believe that oftentimes fact is more intriguing than fiction, and I relished being able to weave some of this history within the novel. For, while the two superpowers never went head-to-head during the Cold War — which spanned for practical purposes from 1947 – 1991 — there are plenty of shadows, side-skirmishes, and covert intrigue to uncover and investigate. It all certainly makes for interesting reading, offers valuable lessons we should not forget, and provides ample fodder for some pretty compelling fiction. 

About The Berlin Letters:

From the time she was a young girl, Luisa Voekler has loved solving puzzles and cracking codes. Brilliant and logical, she’s expected to quickly climb the career ladder at the CIA. But while her coworkers have moved on to thrilling Cold War assignments—especially in the exhilarating era of the late 1980s—Luisa’s work remains stuck in the past decoding messages from World War II.

Journalist Haris Voekler grew up a proud East Berliner. But as his eyes open to the realities of postwar East Germany, he realizes that the Soviet promises of a better future are not coming to fruition. After the Berlin Wall goes up, Haris finds himself separated from his young daughter and all alone after his wife dies. There’s only one way to reach his family—by sending coded letters to his father-in-law who lives on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

When Luisa Voekler discovers a secret cache of letters written by the father she has long presumed dead, she learns the truth about her grandfather’s work, her father’s identity, and why she has never progressed in her career. With little more than a rudimentary plan and hope, she journeys to Berlin and risks everything to free her father and get him out of East Berlin alive.

As Luisa and Haris take turns telling their stories, events speed toward one of the twentieth century’s most dramatic moments—the fall of the Berlin Wall and that night’s promise of freedom, truth, and reconciliation for those who lived, for twenty-eight years, behind the bleak shadow of the Iron Curtain’s most iconic symbol.