Berlin, Christmas 1979. The Wall cuts through the city like a scar. On one side, the glare of neon; on the other, the darkness of control. When a covert mission falters, two Americans find themselves hunted through the snow by a Soviet armoured carrier. At the border, a single decision by a Soviet adviser alters the course of events and threatens to turn the Cold War hot. It is a story of espionage, loyalty and betrayal, written by a man who lived through the very world he describes.
Perfect for fans of Mick Herron and John le Carré, COLD PROTOCOL is a razor-sharp espionage thriller where survival is never guaranteed.
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David Bickford is a former senior intelligence official and novelist whose fiction draws directly on a career spent at the centre of British national security during the Cold War and beyond.
Trained as a lawyer, he served for many years as Legal Director to MI5 and MI6, advising on some of the most sensitive intelligence operations of the late twentieth century. His work placed him at the intersection of espionage, law and geopolitics at a time when Europe was divided, loyalties were uncertain, and mistakes carried profound consequences.
Earlier in his career, Bickford was closely involved with intelligence operations connected to Berlin, a city that would later become the moral and emotional landscape of his fiction. The atmosphere of divided streets, quiet surveillance and moral ambiguity that characterised the Cold War forms the backbone of his novels.
Bickford is the author of the acclaimed Katya series and the forthcoming Cold War thriller Cold Protocol, set in Berlin at Christmas 1979. His fiction is distinguished by its restraint, authenticity and deep understanding of intelligence tradecraft, favouring psychological tension over spectacle and moral consequence over simple resolution.
Now writing full time, Bickford explores the enduring relevance of the Cold War, the realities of intelligence work, and the human cost of secrecy. His essays and commentary examine how power operates under pressure and why many of the assumptions of that era continue to shape the world today.
He lives in the United Kingdom and continues to write about espionage, history and fiction with the perspective of someone who was there when it mattered.
