The Good German A Novel

the long version

In the opening months of postwar Germany, CBS correspondent Jake Geismar is in Berlin to cover the Potsdam conference, but also to search for his wartime mistress, Lena. When he comes across the body of a dead American soldier on the grounds of the conference, and nobody wants to investigate it further, Jake scents a story. Before he is through, he finds that Lena herself is connected to the mystery and that both the Americans and Russians are looking for Lena's mathematician husband, Emil, who holds the secrets of the Nazi missile program.