Tearing down the Wall

Brandenburg By Henry Porter (Orion, Pounds 10)

I DOUBT whether Henry Porter had any intention of giving me a cameo role in his new thriller about the fall of the Berlin Wall. As it happens, however, he did. The climax of the novel, the chapter entitled A Magnificent Blunder, depicts the press conference on the evening of 9 November, 1989, when the Berlin party boss, Gunter Schabowski, announced that East Germans would be allowed to go to the West, with "immediate" effect.

Porter takes up the story: "For about a minute or so a rather studious-looking journalist in the middle of the room had been on his feet, waiting to gain Schabowski's attention. "Herr Schabowski, what will happen to the Berlin Wall now?"

The room was suddenly electrified.

It was the question on everyone's mind. Schabowski sat back, then sank in his chair. He toyed with his reading glasses and seemed to be trying to give the impression that he was in control of the situation. Yet he could not escape the logic of the young man's question. If people could travel whenever they wanted without preconditions from that moment on, what indeed was the point of the Wall?"

That studious young man was me, then the Telegraph's Eastern Europe correspondent. Schabowski's halting reply to my question was the moment when the pfennig dropped: not only for those present, but for millions of East Germans watching on TV.

The press conference, and the events that then unfolded, have been described many times. Brandenburg conveys the singular atmosphere of that night, and indeed the whole period, pretty well. Porter's version, however, includes a running commentary by a KGB colonel in the audience, known only as "Vladimir" and gifted with astonishing hindsight.

Turning to a watching British MI6 officer, Vladimir remarks: "I'd better let my people know that Gunther [sic] Schabowski has single- handedly torn down the Berlin Wall." Just in case anybody had missed the identity of Vladimir, Porter explains in a postscript. Whether the present occupant of the Kremlin makes a plausible good guy is another matter.

I don't usually care for the spy novel, but I got hooked on Brandenburg. The plot is even more convoluted than usual, because of the need to introduce post-Cold War subject matter such as terrorism and the internet. The hero - an East German art historian called Dr Rudi Rosenharte - gradually finds himself not merely working for the Stasi (the dreaded East German secret service-but becoming a double, triple and finally quadruple agent for the British, Americans and Russians.

Rosenharte is the only one of the spies who has an interior life, but his co-star, Ulrike (one of the Christian protesters who marched in Leipzig), is not the usual Mata Hari-style temptress. I confidently predict that Brandenburg will not win this year's Bad Sex Award.

Porter is not immune to other vices of his genre. The hero and heroine utter banalities that would have made the East Germans I knew cringe: "The Stasi is a state within a state." Or: "Whoever thought of dividing a city like this?

It's so bizarre when you see the reality of it." The Brits are not much better: they say things like: "What news from the Rialto?" And almost every German expression Porter uses is misspelled or out of place.

Yet, even if the detail is sometimes sloppy, the novel is saved by its ability to recreate the drab, menacing "hibernation" of a people that was the German Democratic Republic.

The idealists who wanted reform did not realise that, by overthrowing communism, they would also abolish their backwater of a state.

The young heroine of this novel would, however, be roughly the same age now as the woman from the East who is likely to replace Gerhard Schroder as Chancellor after September's election: Angela Merkel.

Interestingly, she is a Christian and a conservative. Luckily, Porter did not think of putting her into his novel.

For a new generation who do not remember the Cold War, Brandenburg would be an excellent place to start.

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