Pitch

Dust from the demolished Berlin Wall has barely settled, the East German police state is teetering on the edge of collapse, and Stasi General HOLGER FRANTZ will stop at nothing to save it. Caught in his intrigue are two unlikely heroes: American lawyer ROLF KELLER and aspiring opera diva SYLVIA MAZZONI.   

Rolf, recently divorced and fresh off the bottle, is dispatched to his native Germany by the senior partner of his Washington law firm to coordinate the drop of top-secret documents by a defecting Stasi agent. Rolf is stunned to learn that Sylvia, his former lover during Berlin college days, has been coerced by West German intelligence into acting as courier with threats of exposing her youthful involvement with Red Army Faction terrorists.

Nothing has prepared these reluctant recruits for the Stasi’s ruthlessness. Although the first drop of stolen documents goes smoothly, subsequent arrangements end in a burst of violence that sends the pair fleeing into the East German countryside. Following clues left by the murdered defector, they unearth his document cache and escape into the night, pursued by armed Stasi henchmen.

Besides a file containing damning information about Sylvia, they recover documents with cryptic references to a plot for derailing unification by assassinating West Germany’s chancellor—but when and where? With Germany’s future hanging in the balance, Rolf and Sylvia manage to decipher the coded document in time to race to the assassination site. But a Stasi killer is waiting. As he marches them into a deserted clearing in the Bavarian woods, all seems lost—their effort to foil the assassins, German unification, and their very lives.