A widower, he is deemed to be a family man with a notable affection for his children. He is known to enjoy the benefits of Western Europe and takes care to dress well.

Now, he had met Laure again, and the more he thought about it the more convinced he was that she was working for the British in an intelligence capacity, however minor. He wondered if she had been tapped for the information.

If Laure had contributed, he knew she would have viewed it as a revenge.

A long shot, but it suggested that a link between her and him still existed.

The idea hurt and excited him in equal measure.

CHAPTER 16

THE FIRST OF THE MAJOR MEETINGS FOR WHICH HE WAS IN Berlin was scheduled for the Wednesday morning.

All parties anticipated it being a taxing one. However, Petr’s presence as Potio Pharma’s CEO, rather than a junior board member, helped to smooth negotiations. By late afternoon, the blueprint for a joint research and development had been hammered out, to be handled equally by Berlin and Prague.

Thursday’s meeting with a rival pharmacological company was less successful. Something in the air – a mood music – muddled intentions. In the good old days in Czechoslovakia what the bosses ordered happened. Not any longer, and he was aware he had not eradicated the expectation from his manner. Midway through the negotiations, it occurred to him that his own past, such of it as was known, almost certainly accounted for the faint hostile undercurrent.

He took a gamble and suggested that the meeting was terminated. ‘I hope, gentlemen, that we can all look to the future and not to the past which was a different place.’

The slight relief on the faces of his West German counterparts told him that his assumptions were probably correct. Descending to the lobby with Eduard, his assistant who had joined him from Prague, he reflected ruefully that, in the new thrusting Berlin, an old commie still had the stink of a corpse about him.

‘Is there something worrying you?’ asked Eduard.

‘Should there be?’

‘Only you hate unfinished business and it’s not like you not to fight harder.’

It hadn’t taken long for Laure to crack. A message was waiting for him in reception. It was from her. ‘I’m taking a group to see a recently discovered tunnel. Will you join us?’

There it was. The rope from the past coiled around them both.

He looked up at Eduard. ‘An invitation from the British Embassy. Part of a cultural programme to make us love each other. Here’s your chance to see a tunnel dug by escapees.’

Eduard was puzzled. ‘Why would we be interested in a tunnel? Hardly tactful, is it?’

Petr explained, ‘Did you ever hear of Anatomie? A dissident rock group. Their hit song was “Tunnelling” and my contact in the embassy is probably having a joke.’