Shoots and Ladders

The Wall fell, but the shadows never left. Gunnar Kross is a ghost in the machine of a reunited Germany. A decade ago, a botched operation in the heart of Prague cost him his career at the BND and the life of the woman he loved. Today, he survives on the fringes of Berlin, working as a security consultant for construction firms and keeping his SIG Sauer SP2022 close. He thought he had buried the ghosts of the Cold War. He was wrong. When his old contact is found murdered in the shadows of the Grunewald forest, a cryptic warning is left behind: LADDER IS UNSTABLE. Kross is pulled back into a world of dead drops, one-time pads, and high-stakes tradecraft. A missing Stasi-era microfilm canister has resurfaced, carrying secrets that were supposed to stay buried in the archives of the DDR. It contains the architecture for the "Schläfer-Netz"—a sleeper network being reactivated for a terrifying new purpose. At the heart of the conspiracy lies Clause 47.b, a digital backdoor protocol that will codify total surveillance into European law. Behind it is Viktor Draken, an enigmatic figure known as The Curator, who believes the world is a gallery and the citizens are mere exhibits to be managed. To stop him, Kross must form a fractured alliance with Clara Vance, an investigative journalist and digital archaeologist who specializes in following the money Draken's organization has laundered for decades. From the subterranean vaults of the Prague Metro to the rain-slicked heights of a historic clock tower, Kross and Vance navigate a lethal game of vertical warfare. In this world, trust is a ladder—hard to climb, and easily kicked away. As the body count rises and the digital Iron Curtain begins to fall, Kross must confront the "Prague Incident" that broke him and decide if he's ready to climb one last time. Grounded in gritty technical realism and visceral action, Shoots and Ladders is a pulse-pounding thriller that explores the high cost of historical curation and the lethal intersection of old-world HUMINT and modern surveillance. The clock is ticking. The rungs are slick. And the fall is a long way down.