It is the black ice spy Reiner Paul Fülle, about whom part of his life story is told in this novel. Born in Zwickau and came to the West as a child, Fülle was recruited by the State Security as a young man while visiting his relatives in Thuringia. A spy at the MfS since 1964, he supplied information from the Karlsruhe nuclear research facility to the GDR for adventure and money. On January 19, 1979, Reiner Paul Fülle was arrested by the BKA. He escaped and was brought to the GDR in a wooden box a few days later by the Soviet military mission. Because the BKA officials slipped on black ice during the persecution, abundance was referred to in the German media as black ice spy. Not least because he was very reluctant to be spanked or prescribed, and because his wife persistently refused to move to the GDR, he made his return to the Federal Republic of Germany. Filled with false papers, Fülle returned in late 1981.