THE COLD WAR ERA (1963-1964) When Captain John Warner takes an assignment in West Germany, he's thrown into a chaotic mess of smugglers, spies, and Soviet secrets. Captain John Warner wasn't looking to be a spy. Like many young men in the early 1960s, he wanted to serve his country with honor. He didn't believe he was cut out for spy craft, but an assignment in postwar West Germany will force him to stop thinking like a soldier and start thinking like a secret agent. The divided Berlin of the 1960s is full of smugglers, spies, and killers, as well as agents working for the CIA, the KGB, and the STASI (or maybe all three). Guards armed with machine guns continually patrol the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain from 1962 to 1964 looking for East German defectors. Those who manage to get past the barbed wire, searchlights, and guard dogs still have to contend with the wall itself. For decades, it stands as an ugly reminder of the state of the world. Like it or not, Warner is one of the people helping shape this world. In this new spy thriller, his assignment will take him into the black markets of West Germany's underground cities along the Iron Curtain, and the offices of Berlin's most powerful men. His goals will include intercepting important information, establishing a network of contacts, and even stopping a presidential assassination! The Berlin of the early 1960s was a fascinating and dangerous place. On one side of the Berlin wall and the Iron Curtain, German citizens were rebuilding after the chaos of World War II. On the other side, their brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters were toiling under a brutal Communist regime. While neither side was engaging in open combat, there was a war raging all the same. It's against this backdrop that young Captain John Warner finds himself. But he's not the only American in a strange city. President John F. Kennedy is about to stop in West Berlin-if KGB assassins don't take him out! As Warner and his team work to stop an assassination plot, they see the dangerous underside of the struggling city. Black market dealers, soldiers of fortune, spies, and assassins dart in and out of the city streets. If Warner isn't careful, he'll be their next target! It was a time of forbidding 'Walls'. A great towering wall surrounded the free people of West Berlin. An "Iron Curtain" also cut East Germany off from West Germany and divided that WWII devastated nation. Those behind these walls were trapped, lived in slavery, and fear of a Soviet dictator threatening world domination and nuclear war. Far beyond the walls and across a great ocean, a gifted Statesman, and President of the United States John Kennedy ignited the hearts of his nation and the free world. He went to Berlin and in front of hundreds of thousands of free West German citizens demanded that the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev tear down his walls that surrounded the divided cities. Yet the world was still at war-The 'Cold War' (1961 thru 1964). In this 'Cold War Era' of early 1960's America, we see the world through the eyes of a 22 to 26 year-old Captain John Warner, an Intelligence Officer on his first assignment in West Germany near the East German and Czechoslovakian Iron Curtains. All he wanted was to be a simple soldier and serve his country against the Soviet Union's threat of worldwide Communist domination. But fate again throws him into the murky world of Black Market smugglers, secret underground WWII cities under the Soviet Built Iron Curtain, CIA and KGB spies and assassins. Thanks for supporting the Craft of Writing. This Cold War Spy adventure continues with the book called Cold War Spies II: Das Wall.
Steve Burch, lieutenant colonel US Army Military Intelligence (retired), worked for the US Army Intelligence Agency (USAIA), the Office of the Director of Intelligence (DCI) Staff, and the US Air Force Intelligence Agency (USAIA). He retired from the United States government as an Intelligence Specialist GG-0132-15 in 2003. Burch's military career took him to Bamberg, West Germany, and a posting close to the Iron Curtain and Communist German Democratic Republic. He used his experiences as inspiration for his Cold War-Era spy novels.
