A Time to Forgive: Love, Deceit, Lies, Truth

It is May 1982. The plan for the escape from East to West Berlin is fool proof. It won't fail. It can't fail. On the surface Karl and Penny Schultz are a happily married couple. Karl is a lecturer with the West Berlin University and Penny works for a British Army unit in Spandau. But they are not what they seem. Underneath this shallow exterior are two people planning a criminal and immoral act. In August 1961, Karl managed to escape from East to West Berlin before the completion of the infamous Berlin Wall, but having to leave his young sister, Marie, behind broke his heart. For the next twenty years getting Marie out of the East becomes an obsession. After so many testing years when he meets Penny and confides in her, his obsession could become reality. Their plan involves blackmail and finding the right person to coerce is not easy. Exactly twenty years after Karl escaped to the West, Paul Cameron arrives in the unit where Penny works and she discovers he is the missing piece in the jigsaw. But what she didn’t plan for was her own feelings; she wasn’t supposed to fall in love. The events leading up to the actual escape are fraught with deceit, sexual manipulation, intrigue, indecision and emotional twists and turns, but only on the day of the escape does the truth become reality.