‘You could try again,’ he suggested gently.
There were shadows at the back of her eyes. ‘No.’
‘Does that mean you cannot forgive yourself?’
‘That’s a false assumption.’
He spread out his hands in a gesture intended to convey: I don’t agree.
She gestured to the now thinning numbers of guests. ‘David is signalling that my lot should go. Meanwhile, by the look of it your side are partying hard. They look hungry for deals and new business.’
‘They are hungry. The West does not hold a monopoly on ideas or energy.’
‘No.’ She smoothed the sleeve of her blouse and a flash of emotion escaped. ‘I always think… I can’t help thinking that, if I had met Tomas three years later, it would have been all right.’ She blinked. ‘It would have been all right.’
‘Do you know what happened to him?’
Her gaze slid past his shoulder. ‘You know I don’t.’
He took his card from his wallet and held it out. ‘We could try to find out.’
It was a deliberate, and cruel, challenge and she gasped audibly. ‘What did you say?’
He repeated it, watching the expression in her eyes – the colour of which she had once, dancing around the apartment with Maria, referred to jokingly to as ‘gooseberry’.
‘Why would you help?’
‘Because—’
She cut him off. ‘There’s nothing you could tell me, Petr, that I don’t know. I was employed by you, I loved Tomas, there was trouble, and I left to come home. That’s all. I now have my work here and I’m concentrating on that.’
It was a good story and he was almost fooled. Neither too provocative, nor too boring but neutral.
As he knew she would, she accepted the card. ‘Chief Executive, Potio Pharmaceuticals.’ An eyebrow flew up. ‘You’ve turned capitalist.’
She meant: Aren’t you still working for the Státní Bezpecnost?
‘If you phone that number, the message will get to me.’
The late evening was murderously cold. He buried his gloved hands in his overcoat pockets and headed eastwards towards his hotel.
Always, he liked to walk. A city’s topography provided clues to its inner life but the first thing he had noticed about the former eastern sector was the sickening smell, a mix of Trabant fuel and the cheap brown coal, which the Ossis had to put up with. Compared to here, Prague was positively fragrant. Where his grandparents had lived near the Letná Plain, for instance, it was still possible to smell moist earth on the spring winds and to sniff the forsythias flowering on the Strahov. There were other things too which he loved: the noisy gulls on the Jirasek Bridge, the rush of water under the bridges…
He smiled at the thought of them.
North of him, in the distance, was the Tränenpalast, nicknamed the Hall of Tears, a checkpoint where Germans on the opposite side of the divide had been forced to say goodbye to each other.
Tears. Desperation. Recklessness. People in disguise, forged papers…
Perhaps Berlin would never eradicate the Wall from its consciousness? Perhaps it would always be dominated by the psychosis induced by the division? Interestingly, some of the buildings that he was walking past were pock-marked with bullet holes from the Second World War and the murk cloaked the bombsites still awaiting renovation. In his heightened emotional state, he imagined that they exuded a spectral legacy of persecution and warfare which offered an additional perspective. Berlin and its history were a lot older than the Wall.
He halted to take his bearings. West Berlin had lighting but, in the part of the eastern sector where he was now walking, public lighting was intermittent and he was not absolutely sure of his route.
Unwise as it was to be walking in the dark unaccompanied, he relished the freedom. Life without surveillance was a luxury. (Had he ever imagined that he would feel like that?) If the Germans and British were keeping an eye on him, it was more likely to be for business reasons, not political ones and hardly at this hour.
Three-quarters of the way down the Unter den Linden he walked into a cafe. It was warm and clean, with touches of chrome and a tiled bar and a pretty waitress. Installed at a window seat, he ordered coffee and a ham and cheese sandwich and helped himself to a newspaper from the rack.
In the bright, new shiny world his reading habits were no longer scrutinized, nor were his jokes or his choice of clothing for he had been under no illusion that, in the contradictory, tortured, absurd universe of the Czech Communist regime, even a Party man did not escape surveillance.
He ordered a second coffee and drank it, reflecting on the surprise that the evening had yielded and reprising what happened in the past.
Anyway, now he was calmer, he could assess himself better.
Outside, an elderly woman with bunioned feet and cracked leather shoes shuffled past. Ossi or Wessi? She looked old enough to have lived through not only the communist era but Hitler’s as well.
How might the conversation be going between Laure and her boss back in the British Embassy building in the Unter den Linden?
There would be the report on him, and others like him. These would be analysed. From what he heard, several British MPs had been approached by the StB not so long ago. The British being wary, the approach had yielded nothing of any note, apart from a remarkably detailed intelligence report, put together by the British, on the Czech industrial sector. This had been smuggled back to Prague and people at Petr’s level got to read it. Unsurprisingly, it featured him.
‘Potio Pharma. CEO Petr Kobes…’ Here someone had noted in the margin, ‘A survivor as a surprising number of those old commies have proved to be’.
Potio Pharma. Established post the so-called Prague Spring in 1968. Pharmaceutical in origin. Since the Velvet Revolution in December 1989, has been diversifying into bio-technology. Headquarters in Prague. Emerged viable after the communist regime although there were several problems with levels of pollution that threatened the purity of their products. They have always displayed a hard export drive and maintained a team of salesmen who were probably engaged in industrial espionage as well.
Since the regime change, they have bought up smaller companies and, currently, are one of the top five Czech pharma companies. They have taken to the capitalist mode with vim and vigour but try to disguise it…
Evidently, the writer of the report had a sense of humour.
Objectives:
• Regulation of the distribution of pharmaceuticals with limited margins
• Regulation on distribution
• Return on R&D investment
• Proliferation of licensing and co-marketing agreements’
The marginalia displayed less restraint. ‘i.e. Keep socialist in flavour and rake in profits by other means. Cake and eating thereof.’
It was odd reading about his company from another point of view. Odd, but educational and he appreciated the Oxbridge turn of phrase.
The report continued. No link has been established between Potio Pharma and the Russian poison factory (established by Joseph Stalin) or the manufacture of chemical weapons, including nerve agents and other substances listed in the recent Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), although this cannot be definitively proved.
Past history suggests Kobes was engaged in industrial espionage for StB searching for information on research and techniques which the then current regime lacked and was desperate to obtain. It is possible that he was involved in the exfiltration of a dissident who was living in Marseilles in 1984. It is thought that Kobes was the instigator and money man. This has not been proved.
Bloody fuckers, he thought, on reading the above. But what surprised him was the level of personal detail. Inside detail. Someone had fed it in.
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 thoug
ht 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.’
Too young to remember much before 1986 when Anatomie was barnstorming around Czechoslovakia, and still at the stage when he was unsure of how to assess the immediate past, Eduard looked baffled. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll head for the nearest bar.’
A little later the taxi dropped Petr in Oderberger Strasse, close to the entrance of Mauerpark which had marked the former boundary between East and West. It was a rundown, seedy area with graffiti scrawled over the buildings and dismal street lighting.
Laure was waiting for them flanked by several women, plus a tall, square-faced man in a Loden coat and a baseball hat. The women were Embassy wives and the man was their German guide.
It was bitter weather made worse by the wind, and the group had dressed for the cold in heavy overcoats and hats. Petr judged that Laure’s serviceable grey coat had been chosen to suggest a lowly embassy status which may, or may not have been, near the mark. He had not made up his mind on that point. With it she wore a black beret (which looked French) pulled down over her ears. Apart from a polite greeting, she paid no special attention to Petr. As they moved around, he observed her masterminding the group with a calm, assured competence, a definitive marker between the older Laure and the younger one.
The group was led into an anti-tank defence building which, explained their guide, had been abandoned after the end of the war. ‘This made it a perfect place to dig.’ He shepherded them over to an opening in the concrete floor. Here a shaft had been driven into the earth and reinforced with crude wooden posts. ‘It was discovered some weeks ago when engineers working on new underground water storage systems cut across it. It’s known as Tunnel 15 as, it has been established, fifteen people managed to get out through it before it was shut down.’
The shaft was approximately five metres deep. Dutifully, the group peered down into it. Petr glanced around at the rapt faces. Did he sense a superiority in the attitude of the British clustered around the shaft? An inner monologue that ran along the lines: we would never allow a society where people felt they had to dig to escape?
But what, he reflected grimly, did the class-ridden British know?
He went to stand beside Laure. She shot him a look that told him nothing.
Their guide continued, ‘Tunnel 15 runs for about eighty metres and comes up in a disused outside lavatory behind a block of flats. There are several stories about the escapers, some of them fanciful. It’s estimated that many more people planned to go through, but they were betrayed. The shaft in the East was sealed off by the authorities.’
The British women murmured among themselves.
‘As you know, the authorities built the Wall between East and West Berlin in 1961, which ended up approximately a hundred miles long. This tunnel was begun in 1964 when the attempts to tunnel were at their peak. It is unusual in that it was dug from West to East, not the other way around.’
Foetid air with no life in it seeped up from underground.
‘Cold War tunnels have a special place in Berlin’s history,’ said the guide who did not look especially poetic or empathetic. ‘They’re symbols of survival and a willingness not to give up.’
Petr dug his hands into his coat pockets. For a communist, ex or otherwise, the subject was uncomfortable. For the nth time, he reflected on history’s contortions. ‘Not so long ago it was the Third Reich who was the oppressor,’ he said into Laure’s ear.
‘Communist, fascist… same difference,’ she whispered back.
The guide asked them to gather around. ‘There are several things to remember if you are planning on digging a clandestine tunnel under a wall…’ Something approximating humour was discernible on the broad features. ‘First, once you have hit the water table stop digging downwards and go forwards instead. Two, operate with a password system otherwise you won’t know if the group has been penetrated. Three, a screwdriver will melt if it touches the electric grid. Four, to stop guards becoming suspicious it is necessary to live on the site. Five, if you are going to dig, it’s best to choose a nice, light sandy soil like we have in Berlin.’
Petr glanced around. At 3.6 metres, the height of the Wall may have obscured some comings and goings, but Stasi guards would have been mounted in the buildings and the watchtowers. Digging and constructing a tunnel would have taken nerves of the first order – and probably an engineer.
Normally, he refused to put himself into others’ shoes as it weakened resolve. But now he could not help thinking what a fearful, dangerous business it must have been. An undertaking that would rip nerves to shreds. He glanced at Laure. She looked appalled, as if she couldn’t begin to imagine what it took to drive someone to escape through a crumbling shaft.
He shifted up to stand beside her. ‘It’s always worse thinking about it than doing it,’ he said.
‘It’s a thought to cling onto,’ she replied, with barely disguised bitterness.
The guide continued: ‘We gather that the group who dug this tunnel lived on site for over five months, sleeping here in week-long shifts, using buckets of water to keep themselves clean. It was a heroic achievement. Although they had no idea where they were going to emerge, they kept on digging.’ He paused for effect. ‘Luck was on their side and they found themselves in a disused lavatory behind an apartment building.’
Petr could imagine. Stench worse than dead bodies. Filth.
He pointed to the shaft. ‘When the escapees came over, a
n electric winch was used to haul them up. We’ve put down a ladder. It’s been secured but, if you wish to go down, it’s at your own risk.’
The group took turns with the embassy wives going first. One or two found the ladder tricky. They returned to the surface looking both shell-shocked and in the grip of an excitement that they tried to tamp down. Laure and Petr went last.
‘The rule was absolute silence whilst either digging or escaping,’ said their guide, warming to his subject. ‘Voices carry from underground. And, of course, there was no question of using explosives to make the work progress quicker.’
The descent was tricky and, with each step down, the air grew more rank. Petr went first and held out his hand to help Laure down the final rungs but she refused it. To access the tunnel proper, it would be necessary to drop down flat and to edge forward on the stomach, which was not advised as water had pooled on the beaten earth floor.
‘Anatomie’s hit “Tunnelling”,’ said Petr. ‘I think it was banned.’
She did not blink. ‘You know it was.’
‘Whose song was it?’
She took a while to reply. ‘Tomas’s.’
A couple of electric lights had been rigged up, which had been switched on. Petr crouched down and peered along the long and dark stretch. It did not look big enough even for a slim person to force themselves through but, in flight, people achieved the impossible.
‘They build their tunnels in underground cities to outwit the winter,’ went the lyric of the song.
If he remembered correctly.
Hot air flowed over his face, smelling of decay from hidden miasmic rot. It was all he could do not to retch.
Laure hunkered down beside him. She took one breath and clapped her hand to her nose. ‘Oh God, to think of them nose to tail…’ her voice was muffled. ‘Probably terrified. Pushed on by adrenaline. The guide says that a baby was brought through.’
He swallowed the saliva swilling around his mouth. ‘Not sure I could have done it.’
‘You didn’t have to.’
The Museum of Broken Promises Page 18