Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Berg re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.

In 1957, lawyer James B. Donovan is recruited from his prestigious law firm to defend accused Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. It's an unenviable task in many respects. Donovan hasn't practiced criminal law since he was a prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials after World War II. Also, the strong anti-Communist mood at the time makes him a target from who think Abel should just be executed. Abel is convicted but Donovan convinces the judge to sentence him to prison, rather than execute him, as they may at some point in the future want to swap him for an American spy the Soviets might have in custody. Just such a scenario comes into play when in 1960 U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers is shot down over Soviet territory and taken prisoner. Donovan is again recruited to act as the intermediary and negotiate swapping Able for the American requiring him to travel to East Berlin crossing the newly built Berlin Wall.

About an aging Swiss professor of classical languages who, after a chance encounter with a Portuguese woman, quits his job and travels to Lisbon in the hope of discovering the fate of a certain author, a doctor and poet who fought against Portuguese dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar.