East Berlin

East Berlin Written by: Grey M Kupiec Logline: When an American housewife teams up with a disgraced CIA agent to search for her estranged husband in East Berlin, the two find themselves stuck on the wrong side of The Wall with a target on their backs. Act I Summary: In fall of 1989, Sarah Ladjanski was a typical middle-class American housewife and mother, living and raising her son in the DC Metro area. Then, she came home to find her husband, Paul, gone and a mysterious letter, in which he confesses to begin a KGB sleeper agent and has been re-called to East Berlin. Six months later, when a CIA Assistant Director Richard Abernathy comes to see her, Sarah thinks she might finally get an explanation. Instead, she gets an offer of assistance; Abernathy recommends an ex-agent living in Berlin who might be able to help Sarah find answers. Meanwhile, ex-CIA Agent Andrew Burke drinks spends his days in West Berlin drinking himself to death, waiting for some ghost of his past to come finish him off. When his former Station Chief comes to see him with an offer of some contract work, Burke is hesitant to take the job acting as a private detective, babysitting a spurned housewife from the States. However, Burke also sees it as an opportunity; to work his way back into the Agency, to face the demons of his past, to get some answers of his own about what really went wrong with his last, failed operation. When Sarah arrives in West Berlin, Abernathy meets with her and lays out their next steps: She is to stay put while he crosses the border to rendezvous with an arranged contact in East Berlin. Desperate for answer, Sarah instead decides to follow Burke by smuggling herself across the wall. When the arranged rendezvous turns out to be an ambush by a Soviet assassin, Sarah saves Burke and the two make a dramatic escape into the streets of East Berlin. Act II Summary: Unable to cross back over to the West – Sarah crossed the border illegally, and Burke is no doubt on a Stasi watch list – the two Americans manage to evade capture by the Stasi, Volkspolizei (local police), and the assassin. While hiding out with someone from Burke’s past life, Sarah is able to gain the name and drinking habits of a former KGB general rumored to have trained sleeper agents in East Berlin in preparation to penetrate the West – Otto Storovich. Though Burke is desperate to find a way back to the West, Sarah is intent on finding out the truth about her husband and convinces Burke that they need to find Storovich. They hatch a messy scheme to kidnap the former KGB operative from the underground gay bar he’s known to frequent. The two former intelligence men from opposite sides of the Iron Curtain face off in a tense interrogation, and are able to come away with two pieces of information: Sarah’s husband was not one of Storovich’s trainees, nor has he ever heard of him, and there are rumors that it was a double agent inside the CIA behind the exposure of Burke’s spy network that led to his downfall. Trapped in East Berlin, with no way back to the West, both Burke and Sarah are exhausted, losing hope, and near breakdown. When the Stasi swarms in and surrounds them, there’s no where to run. Burke and Sarah are separated – while Sarah is taken by the Volkspolizei to the local lockup, Burke is carted off in a police car by the Soviet Assassin towards his execution. Act III Summary As Burke is driven through the city, he sees the protests forming – thousands of people march, flags waving, towards The Wall. What he doesn’t yet know is that at a press conference that evening, a high-level East German politician has mistakenly announced that the Wall border will open immediately. Desperate to free himself, Burke manages to attack the assassin as he drives the car, resulting in a violent car wreck and Burke’s escape. He sets out to free Sarah from the police station, and the two make a dramatic charge for the Bornholmer Strasse Bridge border crossing. With the police as their heels, Burke and Sarah push their way through the crowd of thousands, gathered to protest for the opening of the Berlin Wall. They reach the border checkpoint just as the guards decide to raise the gate, opening the border between East and West Berlin. Burke and Sarah are finally back in West Berlin, marching across the border along with the thousands of others. After seeing Sarah off to the U.S., Burke has a bone to pick with his Station Chief – someone tried to have him killed – but when he pays him a visit, he finds him dead. With evidence incriminating an old CIA friend, Burke sets out for the U.S. to settle his score. When he inadvertently puts Sarah in harm’s way, The double agent takes her hostage, and Burke sets off on one final chase to free Sarah and finally take down the colleague who betrayed him.