Former East Germany, 1992. Patrick Stein and Markus Bach, two very different police officers, are commissioned to investigate the disappearance of two female teenagers in a remote area of the country. Did they run away from home or did something more terrible happen to them?
Colonel Stok, a Soviet intelligence officer responsible for security at the Berlin Wall, appears to want to defect but the evidence is contradictory. Stok wants the British to handle his defection and asks for one of their agents, Harry Palmer, to smuggle him out of East Germany.
It is the summer of 1980 in East Germany and, alone, Barbara is confined to living and working as a doctor in a small provincial town - her punishment for attempting to emigrate to the West. She has only one focus; to escape and for this, she has to wait patiently. Until Andre, her supervisor in the hospital, takes her off course. Are his motives of love or duty to the authorities? The day-to-day pretense, and content supervision slowly take their toll as the tension builds.