Berlin, 1961: the heart of the Cold War. On the last night before the border fence was sealed, Zhang Guiyuan, a twenty-year-old student sent abroad on a government scholarship, accidentally wandered into an East Berlin checkpoint. A man named Chen Yiheng hid him in the attic of an old apartment building.
Twelve years his senior, Chen Yiheng was an interpreter at the Chinese embassy in East Germany, a man with secrets to hide and eyes as cold as the morning mist over the Spree. In the attic there was only a sparrow that had crashed into the window frame, a radio with a faltering signal, and a wall that would close in at dawn. The two men shared their fear through the warmth of unfamiliar bodies, and tried to tell friend from foe in a forbidden language. Before the wall went up, they still had one whole night to defect.
