Lehrter Station

David Downing

May 2012 · Blackstone Audio Inc. · Narrated by Simon Vance

About this audiobook

Paris, November 1945. John Russell is walking home along the banks of the Seine on a cold and misty evening when Soviet agent Yevgeny Shchepkin falls into step alongside him. Shchepkin tells Russell that the American intelligence will soon be asking him to undertake some low grade espionage on their behalf—assessing the strains between different sections of the German Communist Party—and that Shchepkin’s own bosses in Moscow want him to accept the task and pass his findings on to them. He adds that refusal will put Russell’s livelihood and life at risk, but that once he has accepted it, he’ll find himself even further entangled in the Soviet net. It’s a lose-lose situation. Shchepkin admits that his own survival now depends on his ability to utilize Russell. The only way out for the two of them is to make a deal with the Americans. If they can come up with something the Americans want or need badly enough, then perhaps Russell will be forgiven for handing German atomic secrets over to Moscow and Shchepkin might be offered the sort of sanctuary that also safeguards the lives of his wife and daughter in Moscow. Every decision Russell makes now is a dangerous one.

About the author

David Downing grew up in suburban London. He is the author of the Jack McColl novels, the thriller The Red Eagles, and six books in the John Russell espionage series, set in WWII Berlin.

Robert Whitfield is the pseudonym for Simon Vance, an AudioFile Golden Voice with over forty Earphones Awards. He has also won more than a dozen prestigious Audie Awards and has narrated more than eight hundred audiobooks over thirty years.