Emerald

British author Baddock ( The Dutch Caper ) keeps his latest espionage thriller whizzing along right up to a slam-bang ending. During the last days of the Third Reich, agents Alan Cormack and Tony Woodward are dropped into Hitler's crumbling Berlin to try to bring out an Allied spy called Emerald. The glamorous Emerald is Marianne Kovacs, nee Driscoll, the Irish-born wife of a Hungarian diplomat; she has fed important information to England for years. Currently the mistress of a German general, she has also dallied with Goebbels. While Cormack and Woodward suspect they are expendable, they don't know the extent of the danger closing in on them and Marianne. The NKVD, aided by double agent Kim Philby, is plotting to grab her. The Russians blackmail a German colonel into chasing Marianne, and she and the British agents weave in and out of several traps in breathtaking episodes filled with violent action. If the characterization is not very deep, the pace is terrific and Baddock holds the reader all the way to the gory finale. (Mar.)