Join T.H.E. Hill, author of the spy fiction novel, Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary, as he virtually tours the blogosphere in April 2010 on his first virtual book tour with Pump Up Your Book!
Q: Could you please tell us a little about your book?
A: Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary is ostensibly about the pre-wall Berlin Spy Tunnel that the CIA dug to tap three underground Russian telecommunications cables in the mid-1950s. It became infamous, when it was discovered by the Soviets, 54 years ago during the night of 21-22 April 1956. The Time Magazine article (7 May 1956) about the discovery was entitled “BERLIN: Wonderful Tunnel.” In the article the tunnel is described by a German journalist as “the best publicity the U.S. has had in Berlin for a long time.” At the time it was indeed an astounding feat of engineering.
• You can learn more about the Berlin Spy Tunnel at the on-line Cold War Museum.
The yarn in the novel is told from both ends of the tunnel. One end is the story of the Americans who worked the tunnel. The main character, Kevin, is the Monterey Mary who has to transcribe the Russian conversations that are coming off the cable tap. This part of the story is about the fight of the tunnel rats for a sense of purpose against boredom and against the enemy both within and without. Reviewers have compared the novel to Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Richard Hooker’s M*A*S*H*, and Hans Helmut Kirst‘s Zero Eight Fifteen, perhaps better known in America as The Revolt of Gunner Asch.
The other end of the tunnel is the story of the Russians whose telephone calls the Americans are intercepting. Their side of the tale is told in the unnarrated transcripts of their calls. They are the voices under Berlin. This part of the novel has been compared to Henrik Ibsen’s “play for voices,” Peer Gynt, which is usually considered very hard to stage due to its accent on the aural, rather than on the visual. This unusual approach to literature is intended to help the reader understand the ear-centric worldview of the people who had to transcribe the Russians’ conversations. The result is a new type of spy novel, as unique as Berlin herself.
It is Cloak-and-dagger with headphones.
A pair of “antique” military headphones of the type used for operations like the Berlin spy tunnel.
Q: What do you feel sets this book apart from others in the same genre?
That is the key to the problem that I had finding a publisher for Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary. It is a different kind of spy novel. It is the kind of thing that has not been done before. One reviewer called it “A Spy Novel that Breaks all the Molds.” And therein lies the problem. More and more these days publishers and agents are looking for what was selling last week, rather than for something new. I think that is best illustrated by one of the responses I got when the manuscript was making the rounds of literary agents in search representation.
It was the best rejection letter I got. Almost all the others were just form letters with some vacuous reason for rejection like “It does not fit our current requirements.” This agent, however, took the time to write me a personal letter, in which he said that Voices Under Berlin was very Helleresque, but that it would sell better with more sex and violence.
I could have sped things up by taking his advice, and loading my novel with sex and violence, but that wasn’t the kind of book that I had set out to write. I wanted to write a book that was based on the reality of the mind numbing boredom of a Sunday mid while you’re waiting for the target’s loose lips to sink a ship.
Readers’ reactions to Voices Under Berlin indicate that I was right not to give in to the blandishments of the book marketplace. There is an audience for what I write.
Q: Who or what is the inspiration behind this book?
Very few of the incidents in the book are entirely the product of my comic imagination, though they are all liberally decorated by it, and by my own experiences in Berlin in the mid-1970s. The historical background that the story plays against came out of books about Berlin in the 1950s, and books about the tunnel, primarily: 1) Battleground Berlin, a book on the Intelligence war in Berlin written by a former chief of the CIA Base in Berlin in cooperation with a retired KGB Chief of German operations from that period. It has a whole chapter on the tunnel. 2) Spies Beneath Berlin by David Stafford of the University of Edinburgh. 3) The Official CIA history of the tunnel that was prepared in August 1967 and declassified in February 2007.
The inspiration to write it came from the people to whom it is dedicated. The dedication reads “to all the countless Kevins and Gabbies, Fast Eddies and Megs—not just in Berlin, but around the world—who for over forty years fought the secret Cold War for one tour and then went home.” Kevin and Gabbie, Fast Eddie and Meg are characters in the novel who are amalgams of people I knew, and people I heard about, and of various incarnations of myself. The people who fought the Secret Cold War were some of the most extraordinary people I’ve ever met in my life. They were so full of intelligence and energy that you could almost see the sparks flying off of them.
I wanted to record what it was like to fight the Secret Cold war for posterity. When their children ask “What did you do in the Cold War?,” most Secret Cold War veterans, have to say something trite, like “If I told you, I’d have to shoot you.” I wanted to give voice to some of their stories so that they would not disappear when the generations of Kevins and Fast Eddies who are sworn to silence shuffle off this mortal coil. Voices Under Berlin may not be exactly the story that each and every one of them would like to tell, but it is close enough so that people who fought the Secret Cold War in places other than Berlin say that they felt right at home while reading it. I wanted Secret Cold War vets to be able to answer their children and grandchildren with: “I can’t tell you exactly, but why don’t you read Voices Under Berlin?” A number of Secret Cold War veterans have done just that.
Q: If you could go back and change one day, what would it be?
A: August the 12th, 1961, the day before the Berlin Wall went up. According to a “legend” that was still told on mids in Berlin when I was there in the Army in the mid-1970s, we had advance information about the construction of the wall that said orders had been given to the East German engineer troops who would be building the wall to pull back if the Americans took any aggressive action to stop construction. History says that we obviously did not take advantage of that information. My current work in progress is an examination of this legend. I may not be able to change history in fact, but I can in fiction. The story I’m telling in The Day Before the Wall: Berlin August 1961 relates what happens to a young American sergeant in Military Intelligence who has this piece of information. It’s something that the East Germans are prepared to kill for. The Stasi—the East German secret police—are after him, but so are the West-Berlin municipal police and the U.S. Army MPs, because the Stasi have framed him for the murder of his postmistress. It’s August the 12th, and the clock is running almost as fast as my hero. I’m not going to spoil the surprise of my ending by telling you what I plan to change now. You’ll have to buy a copy when it’s published to find out. It has turned out rather well, if I do say so myself.
Q: Is that the only thing you are currently working on?
A: No, I have two other novel projects that I’m working on at the same time. The reason for this is that I’m one of those authors who sits down in front of a computer and lets the characters tell him what to write. Once I have the first few words on screen to set the scene for a chapter, the characters are normally quite talkative. Some days, however, the characters don’t want to talk to me. When that happens, I just see what the characters in my other two novel projects have to say. If I only had one project going, I would be stuck until the characters in it started speaking to me again. But with three projects, there is usually somebody who wants to talk. I’m actually making good progress on all three.
One of these projects is entitled Reunification. It is about an American who used to be stationed in Berlin going back to post-wall, reunified Berlin and meeting his old “long-haired dictionary.” The key questions to be explored here are: “Is there an ‘us’ in this reunited couple?”, “Is there an ‘us’ in the reunited halves of Berlin?”, and “Is there a place for the ‘USA’ in the reunited Germany?”.
The other project has the working title of The Listeners at P.O.Box 1142: The Hunt for Nazi Secrets in Virginia. This is a return to the style and layout of Voices Under Berlin. The main character will be another transcriber, and the transcripts will be of the bugs in the cells of high-value Nazi prisoners of war.
During World War II, the USA had an interrogation center for Nazi POWs at Fort Hunt in Virginia. The operation of the center was so secret that it was only known by its post office box number. The history of P.O.Box 1142 has only recently been declassified, and the press immediately seized on the story to make comparisons to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba.
Those are the stage settings for my two follow-on projects, but I cannot say how they will end. I’m waiting for the characters to tell me what happens next, but I am also trying to keep them from talking so much so that I can finish The Day Before the Wall.
Q: What is the most important lesson you have learned from life so far?
A: I think that the most important lesson that I’ve learned in the school of hard knocks can be summed up in this quote from Hopscotch (1975) by Brian Garfield: “Living is something most of us postpone, isn’t it? We sell the present for a chance at a future where we may do our living when we’re old and we’ve lost the talent for it.” For those with a more classical bent of mind, you could sum it up in the Latin phrase from a poem by Horace that was embellished upon in the film Dead Poets Society (1989), starring Robin Williams: “Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.” Tempus fugit!
About the Author:
T.H.E. Hill, the author of Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary, served with the U.S. Army Security Agency at Field Station Berlin in the mid-1970s, after a tour at Herzo Base in the late 1960s. He is a three-time graduate of the Defense Language Institute (DLIWC) in Monterey, California, the alumni of which are called “Monterey Marys”. The Army taught him to speak Russian, Polish, and Czech; three tours in Germany taught him to speak German, and his wife taught him to speak Dutch. He has been a writer his entire adult life, but now retired from Federal Service, he writes what he wants, instead of the things that others tasked him to write while he was still working.
You can learn more about T.H.E. Hill and his books at: www.VoicesUnderBerlin.com
T.H.E. Hill (center)
About T.H.E. Hill
T.H.E. Hill, the author of Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary, served with the U.S. Army Security Agency at Field Station Berlin in the mid-1970s, after a tour at Herzo Base in the late 1960s. He is a three-time graduate of the Defense Language Institute (DLIWC) in Monterey, California, the alumni of which are called “Monterey Marys”. The Army taught him to speak Russian, Polish, and Czech; three tours in Germany taught him to speak German, and his wife taught him to speak Dutch. He has been a writer his entire adult life, but now retired from Federal Service, he writes what he wants, instead of the things that others tasked him to write while he was still working.
You can learn more about T.H.E. Hill and his books www.VoicesUnderBerlin.com.
Voices Under Berlin by T.H.E. Hill (click on cover to purchase)
About Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary
A spy fiction about the Americans who ran the pre-wall Berlin Spy Tunnel that the CIA used to tap Russian telecommunications cables, and about the Russians whom they were intercepting. The novel is ostensibly set against the backdrop of the Berlin Spy Tunnel (Operation GOLD, covername: PBJOINTLY). The yarn is told from both ends of the tunnel. One end is the story of the Americans who worked the tunnel, and how they fought for a sense of purpose against boredom and the enemy both within and without. This side of the story is told with a pace and a black humor reminiscent of that used by Joseph Heller (Catch-22) and Richard Hooker (M*A*S*H*). The other end of the tunnel is the story of the Russians whose telephone calls the Americans are intercepting. Their end of the tale is told in the unnarrated transcripts of their calls. They are the voices under Berlin. Voices Under Berlin is the proud winner of 5 Book Awards: PODBRAM Best Historical Concept, “Puss Reboots” book blog Top 10 Books for 2009, Hollywood Book Festival, Branson Stars & Flags Book Award and Military Writers’ Society Book of the Month.
Read the Excerpt!
“If my mother could see me now,” said Kevin, up to his ankles in the brown ooze that seemed to have stopped rising. “She thought that I had a nice safe spy job, where all I had to worry about was fighting off all those Mata Haris, trying to wring secrets out of me.”
“Is that what I signed up for?” quipped Blackie. “My recruiter wouldn’t tell me anything except that it was too secret to tell me about it. If I had known about the Mata Haris, I’d have signed up for four.”
“Three years or four. It doesn’t matter. Just help Kilroy there figure out where the water is coming from!” ordered Master-Sergeant Laufflaecker. You would have thought that neither one of them had ever handled a shovel before, he said to himself. “You two clowns probably broke open a sewer drain. Now find out where the hole is so we can close it back up and get back to work!” continued the sergeant whose job it was to keep the tunnel moving forward.
It wasn’t a sewer drain–it didn’t smell bad. It didn’t smell at all. It was just rain water, and there was always plenty of that in Berlin. It was trapped by a layer of clay that none of the geologists on the survey team had predicted. The geologists were reasonably intelligent and would have found it, if the project wasn’t so secret that they had not been allowed to take core samples. The irascible Chief of Base, whose sarcasm was sometimes heavy enough to crush rocks, not to mention less-than-sturdy egos, had given their request short shrift.
“You want to what?” exclaimed the Chief of Base. “If you take core samples out in the compound enclosure, we might as well send an engraved announcement to the Russians to let them know that we are digging a tunnel under the Sector border to tap three of their communications cables. Why don’t we do it up right, and put a neon sign on the roof and sell tickets!”
So the geologists, who recognized the space between a rock and a hard place when they saw one, looked in some old books, took some pictures, walked back and forth on the Operations-Site compound and wrote: “The prevailing soil type in the Rudow district of Berlin is dry sand to a depth of 32 feet below the surface, which is the prevailing level of the water table in the subject area.” So much for prior planning. At a depth of 16 feet below the surface, Kevin was standing in a foot of water, wondering just how deep it would get.
Here’s what critics have to say!
The setting for this deftly written spy novel is divided city Berlin during the height of the 1950s Cold War. What sets “Voices Under Berlin” apart from so many others of similar venue is not just the focus on the American military linguistics resources and personnel, including cryptographers and intelligence analysts, but also the author’s combining a genuine gift for humor with a deft literary astuteness in telling a story that fully engages the reader quite literally from first page to last. Simply stated, “Voices Under Berlin” is a terrifically entertaining 312-page read and an enthusiastically recommended addition to community library collections and personal leisure time reading lists.
I found the book funny, easy to read and if you like espionage and the Cold War this is the book for you. The novel has won five book Awards.
It’s not often, these days, to get the news that a spy novel has earned a prestigious award. But Voices Under Berlin, a comic novel by T.H.E. Hill, about the goings-on around the Berlin Tunnel in the early 1950s, was among the award winners at the 2008 Hollywood Book Festival. . . . We cannot recommend the book more strongly, and will be pleased to help promote this outstanding contribution to insightful and original espionage humor.
–Dr. Wesley Britton, author of Spy Television, Beyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film, and Onscreen and Undercover: The Ultimate Book of Movie Espionage
I thoroughly enjoyed Voices Under Berlin and I feel it holds up to its promise to be akin to M*A*S*H* and Catch-22. It’s one of the funniest books I’ve been sent for review.
–Puss Reboots
…so realistic that you may find yourself wondering, as I did, whether this is a novel or the memoirs of an actual intelligence agent. Of course, if you’re looking for James Bond, you won’t find him here. What you will find is a fascinating account of what it must have been like to be toiling away at an important but often dreary job underneath the streets of Berlin during the Cold War years.
–BookIdeas.com
Voices Under Berlin Tour Schedule
Monday, April 5
Book reviewed at Books R Us
“…if you like espionage and the Cold War this is the book for you”
Tuesday, April 6
Interviewed at The Writer’s Life
Wednesday, April 7
Interviewed at Book Marketing Buzz
Thursday, April 8
Book spotlighted at Literarily Speaking
Friday, April 9
Interviewed at Blogcritics
Saturday, April 10
Book reviewed at Midwest Book Review
Monday, April 12
Interviewed at As the Pages Turn
Tuesday, April 13
Interviewed at Beyond the Books
Wednesday, April 14
Interviewed at Pump Up Your Book
Thursday, April 15
Interviewed at The Hot Author Report
Monday, April 19
Guest blogging ‘The Literary Face of the Secret Cold War‘ at The Book Connection
Tuesday, April 20
Guest blogging ‘An Ode to Cold War Berlin:A modern-day letter from one of the characters in Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary to another’ at Cafe of Dreams
Wednesday, April 21
Guest blogging ‘The Voices Fall Silent‘ at Acting Balanced
Thursday, April 22
Interviewed at Examiner
Book reviewed at Acting Balanced
“…fascinating view into post-WW II Berlin”
Monday, April 26
Book reviewed at The Life (and Lies) of an Inanimate Flying Object
Book reviewed at Simply Stacie
Tuesday, April 27
Guest blogging at The Story Behind the Book
Interviewed at American Chronicle
Wednesday, April 28
Guest blogging at Southern City Mysteries
Thursday, April 29
Interviewed at Review From Here
Friday, April 30
Interviewed at Personovelty
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