Synopsis
In November 1989, days prior to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, MI6 agent James Gascoigne is shot and killed by KGB agent Yuri Bakhtin, who steals The List, a microfilm document concealed in Gascoigne's wristwatch containing the names of every intelligence agent (on both sides) active in Berlin. Ten days later, Lorraine Broughton, a top-level MI6 spy, is brought in to be debriefed by MI6 executive Eric Gray and CIA agent Emmett Kurzfeld about her just-finished mission to Berlin. The plot jumps between the debriefing room and flashbacks to Lorraine's time in Berlin.
The day after Gascoigne's death, Lorraine is dispatched to recover The List and is told to keep an eye out for Satchel, a double agent for the KGB who has been a problem for MI6 for years. Arriving in Berlin, she is immediately ambushed by KGB agents speaking English and apparently posing as her own MI6 team, who attempt to deliver a message from their boss, Aleksander Bremovych. She is able to escape their grasp by crashing their car and is immediately picked up by her real MI6 contact, maverick MI6 station head David Percival, who should have been the one to pick her up initially. Percival is addicted to the Bohemian lifestyle he has been leading on both sides of the Berlin wall and resentful of Lorraine and the implied supervision from London she brings, and he seems unwilling to cooperate with her. Lorraine searches Gascoigne's apartment and discovers a picture of him and Percival. In the debriefing, she tells Gray and Kurzfeld Percival had previously denied knowing Gascoigne and she suspects Percival was behind the West Berlin police ambushing her while she searched Gascoigne's apartment. When Lorraine visits a restaurant mentioned by the KGB agents she encounters Bremovych, but is "saved" by Delphine Lasalle, a novice French agent. Although Lorraine is initially suspicious of Lasalle, they eventually enter into a sexual relationship after a passionate kiss in a nightclub, where Lasalle tells Lorraine that she knows who she is and why she's in Berlin, and suggests that they should work together.
Percival, having tailed Lorraine, surveils a watchmaker she visited. He spots Bakhtin entering the same shop. Bakhtin tells the watchmaker he has a watch full of secrets he will sell to the highest bidder. Kurzfeld meets with Lorraine in Berlin, handing her a newspaper containing a number which, when called, informs her Satchel has been compromised. Percival lures Bakhtin to an alley, kills him, and takes the wristwatch from which he discovers who Satchel is. Lorraine, who does not know Percival has The List, finds out that the Stasi officer codenamed Spyglass, who gave The List to Gascoigne, also memorized the names on it. Lorraine and Percival make plans to escort him across the border to West Berlin. Percival meets with Bremovych, who suspects Percival has The List, but Percival offers only the second best thing -- the identity and operations details of Satchel "to keep the balance",