Jim McDermott

A Political Man Jim McDermott

For Otto Fischer, time has run out. The 1958 elections to West Berlin's House of Representatives - the Abgeordnetenhaus - have seen the SPD increase their majority, and Fischer is one of their second-vote candidates. He will go to the House not just as a servant of the people but of General Zarubin also - a Soviet agent in the West's forward trench. A reluctant spy, Fischer doesn't suspect the worst of it. Zarubin is engulfed in a power struggle with the Head of KGB, the fearsome Ivan Serov, and part of their battle will be fought on the streets of Berlin. Even in a world bound by misdirection, misinformation and betrayal, the protagonists lose all sense of who may be trusted and who needs a bullet, quickly. Fischer needs a way out, but no exits are marked. Ordered to make a place for himself in Mayor Willy Brandt's office, pestered by his old friend Freddie Holleman to come clean about his political career, and shadowed by someone with old business to settle, he has to make himself either invisible or indigestible.