Voices Under Berlin: A Novel of the
Berlin Spy Tunnel
T.H.E. Hill
T.H.E. Hill
T.H.E. Hill is a veteran of
Field Station Berlin and of Herzo Base. As such, he is perfectly
attuned to the subject of his novel. Hill’s novel is set in the
early days of the Cold War. The CIA and the U.S. military
intelligence linguists are in fact involved in the planning and
construction of the tunnel and also handling of processed data.
From this point on, this review will refer only to the novel. The
book is very entertaining, irreverent and humorous throughout. The
story is told from both the Russian side via tapes and land-line calls
and the U.S. side from the transcriptions by the ‘lingies” in the
tunnel under Berlin. The characters are a mix of fun or
stereotypical in order to bounce off each other like the straight man
and the funny man. Through the tapes we come to know the
characters you never get to “see”, but learn the personalities of,
through the transcriptions.
There is a feeling of being
a part of the cloistered community, especially once the wiretaps are in
full operation. In a boring and inactive area, a lot of the
action comes from the transcription of the tapes and calls. There
is so much game-playing to alleviate the boredom that some characters
suspect the head transcriber, Kevin, is playing jokes with the
transcriptions and making things up. Some of the transcribers are
unable to discern the underlying information and make serious errors in
judgement that Kevin just barely has time to correct before the reports
go out. He has read the manuals, he knows the lingo, knows how to
distinguish what is important and what is not. When he is
questioned about where he finds certain words in the transcriptions, he
can point out what was hidden that led him to know place or person,
what clues to watch for.
Underlying the daily goings
on is the content of some of the tapes talking about a spy who is
dating a U.S. soldier, who the Russians suspect is involved in a U.S.
operation in the area where the warehouse is (the warehouse is over the
tunnel entrance). The concern rises as some tidbit of information
is inadvertently dropped to the Russian spy, and the main characters in
the tunnel each have a different idea of who the GI might be, but when
they identify the spy, they will know. I do not want to include
any spoilers, so I will step away from the mystery. Needless to
say, the more I think about this book, the more I enjoy recalling it.
There is a “Guide to the
Jargon” in the front of the book that’s very helpful. There is
also a paragraph on “How the Russians Address Each Other”. A quick
search by me on the internet for my own curiosity brought up several
sites about the Berlin Tunnel, declassified in 2007.
I would definitely recommend
this book to those who like Cold War humor, history, and entertaining
reading.