Michel Meyer is a writer, journalist and radio and television professional. He served for many years as a foreign correspondent in Germany, Russia and Eastern Europe for the French television station Antenne 2, the radio station France Inter and the newsweekly L’Express. As Radio France’s news director (1986-1989), he was the creator of the all-news radio station France Info. He has taught at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (IEP), in Paris, and at the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre.

• 2014: Three weeks before the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Craig Portman, a journalist with the Wall Street Journal and a sometime CIA operative, meets Ludwig Leinen, a former Stasi agent. Leinen is being hunted down — but by whom and why? Portman does not have time to find out, for Leinen is murdered soon after, as are some other shady characters of the Cold War period. While trying to track down Leinen’s killers, Portman uncovers the old Stasi files, in Berlin.
• The ensuing investigation will be the most dangerous of Portman’s career. In the process, he discovers that the causes leading to the collapse of the Berlin Wall are more complex than we’ve been led to believe by the experts specialising in this crucial event of the late 20th century.

• A unique view of some of the more obscure events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and to the collapse of the Soviet Empire.
• This year marks the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union (26 December 2011).