HHhH Бине Лоран

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The bomb explodes and instantly the windows in the tram opposite are blown out. The Mercedes jumps a few feet in the air. Fragments from the explosion hit Kubi in the face and hurl him backwards. A cloud of smoke fills the air. Screams burst from the smashed tram. An SS jacket, laid out on the backseat, flies upward. For several seconds, this is all the suffocating witnesses see: a black uniform floating above a cloud of dust. It is, in any case, all I can see: the jacket, twisting and spiraling gracefully like a dead leaf, while the aftershock of the explosion travels calmly outward to echo as far away as Berlin and London. Apart from the spreading sound and the fluttering jacket, nothing moves. There is no sign of life at the curve in Holeovice Street. From now on, I am talking in seconds. A second later, everything will have changed. But here, now—on this clear morning of Wednesday, May 27, 1942—time has stopped. For the second time in two minutes, albeit rather differently.

The Mercedes lands heavily on the asphalt. In Berlin, Hitler has not the faintest suspicion that Heydrich won’t report for their meeting that evening. In London, Bene still believes Anthropoid will succeed. What arrogance, in both cases. When the blown tire of the right rear wheel—the last of those four suspended in the air—touches the ground, time starts up again for good. Instinctively, Heydrich brings his hand around to his back—his right hand, the one that holds his pistol. Kubi gets to his feet. The passengers on the second tram press their faces to the windows to see what’s happening, while those in the first tram cough, scream, and push each other to get off. Hitler is still sleeping. Bene leafs nervously through Moravec’s reports. Churchill is already on his second whisky. Valk, from the top of the hill, watches the confusion unfolding at the crossroads below, cluttered with all these vehicles: one Mercedes, two trams, two bicycles. Opalka is somewhere nearby, but I can’t put my finger on him. Roosevelt is sending American pilots to Britain to help the RAF. Lindbergh does not want to give back the medal that Gring awarded him in 1938. De Gaulle is fighting to convince the Allies to recognize the Free French. Von Manstein’s army is besieging Sebastopol. The day before, the Afrika Korps began its attack on Bir Hakeim. Bousquet is planning the raid on Vl’ d’Hiv. In Belgium, from today, all Jews must wear a yellow star. The first Resistance fighters are appearing in Greece. Two hundred and sixty Luftwaffe planes are en route to intercept a navy convoy headed toward the USSR, attempting to bypass Norway via the Arctic Ocean. After six months of daily bombings, the German invasion of Malta is indefinitely postponed. The SS jacket comes to rest gently on the tram’s electric cables, like an item of washing hung out to dry. Here we are again. But Gabk still hasn’t moved. More than the explosion, the tragic click of his Sten has been like a slap in his face. As if in a dream, he sees the two Germans get out of the car, covering each other just like in a training exercise. Klein turns toward Kubi, while Heydrich, reeling, stands in front of him—alone, gun in hand. Heydrich: the most dangerous man in the Third Reich, the Hangman of Prague, the Butcher, the Blond Beast, the Goat, Sss the Jew, the Man with the Iron Heart, the worst creature ever forged in the burning fires of hell the fiercest man ever to come from a woman’s womb, his target, standing right there in front of him, reeling and armed. Released from a trance, Gabk suddenly recovers his wits. He grasps the situation immediately. Putting aside all considerations of mythology and grandiloquence, he comes to a quick and correct decision, one that allows him to do exactly what he ought to do: he drops his Sten and runs. The first shots ring out. Heydrich is shooting at him. But despite being a champion in all categories in practically every human discipline, the Reichsprotektor is clearly not at his best. All his shots miss. For now. Gabk manages to throw himself behind a telegraph pole—and it must have been a seriously thick telegraph pole, because he decides to stay there. He doesn’t know when Heydrich might start shooting straight. Meanwhile, there’s a rumble of thunder. On the other side, Kubi, wiping away the blood that’s streaming over his face and blurring his vision, discerns the gigantic silhouette of Klein moving toward him. What madness, or what supreme effort of lucidity, reminds him of the existence of his bicycle? He grabs the machine’s frame and jumps on the seat. Now, anyone who’s ever ridden a bike will know that a cyclist racing against a man on foot is going to be vulnerable for the first ten, fifteen, let’s say the first twenty yards after starting up, beyond which he will outdistance his opponent easily. Given the decision he’s just made, Kubi must have this in mind. Because instead of fleeing in precisely the opposite direction to the one Klein is approaching from—which would seem the natural thing to do for 99 percent of people in a similar situation: that is, a situation where you must very quickly escape from an armed Nazi with at least one very good reason to want you dead—he decides to pedal toward the tram (where the suffocating passengers are starting to stagger out onto the street), meaning that the angle of his escape, with reference to Klein, is less than 90 degrees. I don’t like putting myself inside people’s heads, but I think I can explain Kubi’s calculation. In fact, he has two reasons for doing what he does. Reason one: in order to counteract the relative slowness of those first few yards, and to gather speed as quickly as possible, he goes downhill. In all likelihood, he has calculated that pedaling uphill pursued by an enraged SS stormtrooper is not a viable option. Reason two: in order to have a chance, even an infinitesimally small chance, of getting out of this alive, he must meet two contradictory demands: Don’t expose yourself, and put yourself out of range of enemy fire. But to put himself out of range, he must first cover a certain distance, though he cannot know the exact length until he has already covered it. The gamble that Kubi makes is the opposite of Gabk’s: he tries his luck now. But he is not merely giving himself up to chance. Instead, he considers the unfortunate presence of this tram—a presence the parachutists had always feared—and decides to use it to his advantage. The passengers who have escaped from the tram are not numerous enough to constitute a crowd, but all the same he is going to try to use them as a shield. I don’t suppose he’s counting too heavily on an SS stormtrooper’s scruples about shooting through a group of innocent civilians, but at least the shooter’s vision of his target will be reduced. This seems to me a brilliantly conceived escape plan, particularly if you bear in mind that the man behind it has just been blown up by a bomb, that he has blood in his eyes, and that he’s had about three seconds to come up with it. However, there is a moment when Kubi will have to abandon himself to pure chance—the moment before he reaches his shield of suffocating passengers. Now, as is often the case, fortune decides to distribute her favors equally. So when Klein, still shocked by the explosion, squeezes the trigger of his gun, something jams. (The firing pin? The breech? The trigger itself? I don’t know.) Does this mean Kubi’s plan is going to work? No, because the passengers in front of him are standing too close together. Some of them have already regained their senses and—whether because they’re German, or Nazi sympathizers, or because they’re eager for praise or a reward, or because they’re terrified of being accused of complicity, or simply because they’re so shocked that they can’t budge an inch—they don’t seem inclined to get out of his way. I doubt whether any of them showed any intent to actually apprehend Kubi, but perhaps they looked vaguely menacing. Whatever, we now have a burlesque scene (there seems to be one in every episode) in which Kubi, on a bicycle, fires into the air to create a passage for himself through the stunned tram passengers. And he makes it. Realizing that his prey has escaped him, the bemused Klein remembers that he has a boss to protect and runs back toward Heydrich, who is still shooting. But suddenly the Reichsprotektor’s body betrays him by collapsing. Klein rushes up. The silence that follows this cease-fire is not lost on Gabk, who decides that if he wants to try his luck it’s now or never. He leaves the precarious shelter of his telegraph pole and starts running. He is thinking clearly now: in order to maximize Kubi’s chances of escaping, he needs to choose a different direction. So he runs up the hill. His analysis, however, is not entirely flawless because in doing so he is heading toward Valk’s observation post. But Valk has not as yet been identified as a participant in the operation. Heydrich manages to lift himself up on an elbow. As Klein reaches him, he barks: “Catch the Schweinehund !” Klein finally manages to cock his damn pistol, then runs off in pursuit. He fires and Gabk, equipped with a Colt 9mm (that he had, thankfully, kept in reserve), shoots back. I don’t know how many yards ahead he is. At this point, I don’t think Gabk is shooting to hit his opponent, just to warn him off getting too close. Running, the two men leave the chaotic crossroads behind them. But up ahead a silhouette stands out ever more clearly: it’s Valk, who is coming toward them. Gabk sees him raise his gun, stop to aim, then collapse before he’s had time to fire.

“Do pici!” When he falls to the ground, a violent pain in his thigh, all Valk can say is: “Shit, what an idiot!” Hit by one of the German’s bullets—tough luck. The SS giant is now only a few yards away. Valk thinks the game is up. There’s no time to pick up his gun, which he dropped. But then a miracle happens: Klein doesn’t slow down. Either the German regards Gabk as the more important target, or—in concentrating on him—he hasn’t noticed that Valk was armed and about to shoot at him. Or perhaps he hasn’t seen him period. He runs past without stopping, without even glancing at him. Valk can think himself lucky, but he’s cursing all the same. If that’s what really happened, he’s been hit by a stray bullet. When he turns around, the two men have vanished.

Farther down the hill, things are hardly any less confused. A young blond woman, however, has grasped the situation. She is German and has recognized Heydrich, who is lying across the road, clutching his back. With the authority born of believing oneself part of a race of natural leaders, she stops a car and orders the two occupants to take the Reichsprotektor to the nearest hospital. The driver protests: his car is loaded with boxes of candy, which cover the whole backseat. “Get them out! Sofort!” barks the blonde. So now we have another surreal scene, described by the driver himself: the two Czechs, clearly less than thrilled, start unloading the boxes of candy as if in slow motion, while the pretty and elegantly dressed young blond woman babbles away in German to Heydrich, who seems not to hear. But this is the blonde’s lucky day. Another vehicle arrives, which she judges at a glance to be more suitable. It’s a little Tatra van, delivering shoe polish and floor wax. The blonde runs toward it, yelling at its driver tostop.

“What’s going on?”

“An attack!”

“So?”

“You must drive Herr Obergruppenfhrer to the hospital.”

“But… why me?”

“Your car is empty.”

“But it’s not going to be very comfortable. There are boxes of polish, it smells bad. You can’t transport the Protector in conditions like that…”

“Schnell!”

Tough luck for the worker in the Tatra—he’s stuck with the job now. Meanwhile, a policeman has arrived, and he helps Heydrich toward the van. The Reichsprotektor tries to walk on his own, but he can’t. Blood seeps from his torn uniform. He maneuvers his too-tall body with difficulty into the front passenger seat, holding his revolver tightly in one hand and his briefcase in the other. The van starts up and takes off down the hill. But the driver realizes that the hospital is in the other direction, so he makes a U-turn. Heydrich notices this and shouts: “Wohin fahren wir?” Even I, with my poor German, understand that this means “Where are we going?” The driver understands, too, but he can’t remember the German word for “hospital” (Krankenhaus), so he doesn’t say anything. Heydrich threatens him with the gun. Luckily, the van is now back at its starting point. The young blond woman sees them arrive and rushes toward them. The driver begins to explain, but Heydrich murmurs something to the blonde. He can’t stay in front—it’s too cramped. So they help him out, then put him in the back of the van, lying facedown, surrounded by boxes of polish and wax. Heydrich orders them to give him his briefcase. They throw it in next to him. The Tatra starts up again. With one hand Heydrich holds his back, and with the other he hides his face.

While this is going on, Gabk keeps running. Tie flapping in the wind, hair messed up, he looks like Cary Grant in North by Northwest or Jean-Paul Belmondo in That Man from Rio. But obviously Gabk, though very fit, does not have the supernatural endurance that the French actor would later display in his spoof role as a hero. Unlike Belmondo, Gabk cannot keep running forever. By zigzagging through the neighboring residential streets he has managed to put a bit of distance between himself and his pursuer, but he still hasn’t shaken him off completely. Each time he turns into a new street, though, there is a period of a few seconds when he disappears from the other man’s field of vision. He has to use this to his advantage. Breathless, he spots an open shop doorway and throws himself inside, precisely during this brief window of opportunity. Unfortunately, Gabk didn’t have time to read the name of the establishment: Brauner the butcher. So when, panting, he asks the shopkeeper to help him hide, the butcher rushes outside, sees Klein belting toward him, and—without a word—points at his shop. Not only is Brauner a German Czech, but on top of that his brother is in the Gestapo. This is bad news for Gabk, who now finds himself cornered in a Nazi butcher’s back room. But Klein has had time during the pursuit to notice that the fugitive is armed, so instead of entering the shop he takes shelter behind a little garden post and starts shooting like crazy through the doorway. Thus Gabk’s position has not really improved much since he was hiding behind the telegraph pole being shot at by Heydrich. But whether because he remembers his abilities as a marksman, or because an ordinary SS stormtrooper standing six feet away impresses him less than the Hangman of Prague in person, he reacts very differently. Moving into the open for a second and seeing part of a silhouette sticking out from behind the post, Gabk aims and fires—and Klein collapses, hit in the leg. Without any hesitation Gabk springs out, runs past the felled German and back up the street. But he’s lost in this maze of residential alleys. At the next crossroads, he freezes. At the end of the street he’s about to enter, he can see the beginning of the curve in Holeovice Street. In his frantic flight, he has gone around in a circle, and now he’s back to where he started. It’s like a Kafkaesque nightmare stuck on fast-forward. Hurrying to the other side of the crossroads, he runs down toward the river. And I, limping through the streets of Prague, dragging my leg as I climb back up Na Po, watch him run into the distance.

The Tatra reaches the hospital. Heydrich is yellow; he can barely stand up. He is taken immediately to the operating room, where they remove his jacket. Bare-chested, he scornfully eyes the female nurse, who runs out without asking him to take off the rest of his clothes. He sits alone on the operating table. I’d love to know how long this solitary wait lasts. Eventually a man in a black raincoat arrives. He sees Heydrich and his eyes widen. After looking quickly around the room, he leaves to make an urgent telephone call: “No, it’s not a false alarm! Send an SS squadron over here immediately. Yes, Heydrich! I repeat: the Reichsprotektor is here, and he’s injured. No, I don’t know. Schnell!” Then the first doctor arrives—a Czech. He is as white as a sheet but immediately begins to examine the wound, using swabs and a pair of tweezers. The wound is three inches long and contains many fragments and bits of dirt. Heydrich doesn’t flinch while it’s cleaned. A second doctor, a German, bursts in. He asks what’s happening, then he sees Heydrich. Instantly he clicks his heels and shouts: “Heil!” They return to examining the wound. There is no damage to the kidney, nor to the spinal column, and the preliminary diagnosis is encouraging. They put Heydrich in a wheelchair and take him to the X-ray department. The corridors are full of SS guards. Security measures are being taken: all exterior windows are painted white to protect them from snipers, and machine gunners are posted on the roof. And, of course, they get rid of any patients who are in the way. Making a visible effort to retain his dignity, Heydrich gets out of the wheelchair and stands in front of the X-ray machine. The X-rays reveal further injuries: one rib is broken, the diaphragm is perforated, and the thoracic cage is damaged. They discover something lodged in the spleen—a fragment of shrapnel or a piece of the car’s bodywork. The German doctor leans close to his patient:

“Herr Protektor, we’re going to have to operate…”

Heydrich, white-faced, shakes his head.

“I want a surgeon sent from Berlin!”

“But your condition requires… would require immediate intervention.”

Heydrich thinks about it. He realizes his life is at risk, and that time is not on his side, so he agrees instead to summon the best specialist working at the German clinic in Prague. He is taken back to the operating room. Karl Hermann Frank and the first members of the Czech government are beginning to arrive. The little local hospital is busier than it’s ever been, or ever will be again.

Kubi keeps looking over his shoulder but he is not being followed. He’s done it. But what exactly? He hasn’t killed Heydrich, who seemed perfectly fine when he left him, spraying bullets at Gabk. Nor has he helped Gabk, who looked in serious difficulty, with his jammed Sten. As for putting himself out of danger, he is well aware that this is only a provisional escape. The manhunt will begin any minute, and they won’t have much trouble describing who they’re looking for: a man on a bike with an injured face. He could hardly be any more conspicuous. Once again he is faced with a dilemma: the bicycle allows him to escape more quickly but it also makes him easier to find. Kubi decides to dump it. He thinks while he’s riding. Bypass the curve in Holeovice Street, and leave the bike outside the Bata shoe shop in the old Libe district. It would have been better to move to a different district, but each passing second outside increases the likelihood of him being arrested. That’s why he decides to seek refuge with his nearest contact—the Novak family. Inside the workers’ apartment building, he climbs the stairs four at a time. A female neighbor calls out “Are you looking for someone?” He clumsily hides his face.

“Mrs. Novak.”

“She’s not here just now, but she should be back soon.”

“I’ll wait.”

Kubi knows that good Mrs. Novak never locks her door, precisely in case he or one of his friends turns up. He enters the apartment and throws himself on the sofa. It’s the first respite he’s had on this very long and very testing morning.

The hospital on Bulovka now looks like a cross between the Reich Chancellery, Hitler’s bunker, and the Gestapo headquarters. Shock SS troops are posted around, inside, above, and beneath the building; enough of them to take on a Soviet tank division. Everyone waits for the surgeon. Karl Frank chain-smokes cigarettes as if he’s about to become a father. In fact, he’s brooding: he ought to inform Hitler.

The town is in pandemonium: uniformed men run in all directions. There is a great deal of agitation to very little purpose. Had Gabk and Kubi wanted to leave the city by taking the train from Wilson Station (although it’s no longer called that) during the first two hours after the attack, they could have done so without any difficulties.

Having got off to a bad start, Gabk now has fewer problems. He has to get hold of a raincoat—because the description of him broadcast by the Germans will doubtless mention that he doesn’t have one, having dropped his next to the Mercedes—but on the other hand he has no injuries at all, visible or otherwise. He runs until he reaches the ikov district, where he stops to catch his breath and calm down. He buys a bouquet of violets and calls at the apartment of Professor Zelenka, a member of the Jindra Resistance group. He hands the bouquet of violets to Mrs. Zelenka, borrows a raincoat, then leaves. Either that or he borrows the coat from the Svato family, who have already lent him their briefcase—which he also dropped at the scene of the crime. But the Svatoes live farther away, near Wenceslaus Square. At this point in the narrative the witness accounts are unclear, and I’m a bit lost. Somehow he ends up at the Fafeks’ place, where a nice hot bath is waiting for him, along with his young fiance, Libena. What they do, what they say, I have no idea. But Libena knew all about the assassination attempt. She must have been very happy to see him alive again.

Kubi washes his face, and Mrs. Novak applies tincture of iodine to his wounds. The neighbor, a good sort, lends Kubi one of her husband’s shirts so he can change—a white shirt with blue stripes. His disguise is completed with a railway worker’s uniform, borrowed from Mr. Novak. Dressed like this, his swollen face will attract less attention: everyone knows that workers are far more likely to have accidents than gentlemen in suits. But one problem remains: someone has to pick up the bicycle he left outside the Bata shoe shop. It’s too close to the curve in Holeovice Street—the police will soon find it. Happily, young Jindriska bursts in at that very moment: the Novaks’ youngest daughter is hungry after a day at school—people eat lunch early in Czechoslovakia—so, while preparing her meal, her mother gives her an errand: “A man I know has left his bicycle in front of the Bata shop. Go and get it, will you, and bring it back to the yard? And if someone asks you who it belongs to, don’t say anything. He had an accident, and it might make things difficult for him…” As the young girl dashes off, her mother shouts: “And don’t try to use it—you don’t know how! And watch out for cars!”

Fifteen minutes later, she returns with the bike. A lady questioned her, but she did what she was told and didn’t reply at all. Mission accomplished. Kubi can leave now, his mind at ease. Well, when I say “at ease”… obviously I mean as at ease as anyone could be when they know they’re fated to become one of the two most wanted men in the Reich within hours or even minutes.

As for Valk, his predicament is not quite so delicate, as his participation in the attack has not yet been clearly established. But still, limping around Prague during a state of emergency with a bullet wound in his leg is probably not the best way to secure an untroubled future. So he finds refuge with a friend and colleague of Alois Moravec—another railway worker; another Resistance fighter who has helped the parachutists; another husband of a woman utterly devoted to fighting the German occupation. It’s this man’s wife who lets Valk in. He’s very pale. She knows him well, having often looked after him and hidden him, but she calls him Mirek because she doesn’t know his real name. With the whole city buzzing with rumors, the first thing she asks him is: “Mirek, have you heard? There’s been an attack on Heydrich.” Valk lifts his head: “Is he dead?” Not yet, she says, and Valk lowers his head again. But she can’t stop herself asking the burning question: “Were you in on it?” Valk manages to smile: “You’re kidding! I’m much too softhearted for that kind of thing.” Knowing from experience that this man is made of sterner stuff, she realizes he is lying. And in fact Valk does so only as a reflex; he doesn’t really expect her to believe him. She has no idea he’s limping, but asks him if he needs anything. “A very strong coffee, please.” Valk also asks if she might go into town to find out what people are saying. Then he’s going to take a bath, because his legs hurt. The woman and her husband assume he must have walked too far. It’s not until the next morning, when they discover bloodstains on his sheets, that they understand he’s been injured.

Around noon, the surgeon arrives at the hospital. The operation begins straightaway.

At a quarter past twelve, Frank bites the bullet and rings Hitler. As expected, the Fhrer is not happy. The worst bit is when Frank has to admit that Heydrich drove around town in an unarmored Mercedes convertible without bodyguards. At the other end of the line, Hitler screams, just for a change. The contents of the Fhrer’s ravings can be divided into two parts: first, that pack of dogs that they call the Czech people are going to pay dearly for this. Second: How could Heydrich, the best of them all, a man of such importance for the good of the Reich—the whole Reich, you understand—how could he be cretinous enough to be guilty of such self-neglect? Yes, guilty! It’s very simple. They must immediately:

1. Shoot ten thousand Czechs.

2. Offer one million Reichsmarks as a reward for any information leading to the criminals’ arrests.

Hitler has always been fond of figures. And, where possible, nice round figures.

In the afternoon, Gabk—accompanied by Libena, because a couple always looks less suspicious than a man on his own—goes out to buy a Tyrolean hat. It’s a little green hat with a pheasant feather. He does this to look more German. And this hasty disguise works better than he could have hoped: a uniformed SS guard calls him over and asks for a light. Ceremoniously, Gabk takes out his lighter and touches it to the German’s cigarette.

I’m going to light one too. I feel a bit like a graphomanic depressive, roaming around Prague. I think I’ll take a pause here.

But only a short pause. We have to get through this Wednesday.

The man in charge of the inquest is Commissioner Pannwitz: the black-coated man glimpsed earlier in the hospital, sent by the Gestapo to find out the news. Judging by the clues left at the crime scene—a Sten, a bag containing an English-made antitank bomb—there is nothing very mysterious about the origin of the attack: London. Pannwitz makes his report to Frank, who calls Hitler back. The internal Resistance is not responsible. Frank advises against mass reprisals because they would suggest that the local population was largely opposed to the Germans. Executing individuals suspected of the crime, or of complicity—and their families, for good measure—would seem the best way of putting the event back in its true perspective: an individual action, organized abroad. Above all, they must not let the pubic form the unpleasant impression that the attack is an expression of national revolt. Surprisingly, Hitler seems more or less convinced by this argument in favor of moderation. The mass reprisals are put on hold for the time being. However, as soon as he puts the phone down, Hitler starts ranting at Himmler. So that’s how it is, eh? The Czechs don’t like Heydrich? Well, we’ll find them someone worse! At this point, obviously, he needs some time to reflect, because finding someone worse than Heydrich is no easy task. Hitler and Himmler rack their brains. There are a few high-ranking Waffen-SS leaders who might be suitable for organizing a good slaughter, but they’re on the Eastern Front—and in the spring of 1942 they’ve got their hands full. In the end, they fall back on Kurt Dalge because he happens to be in Prague already, for medical reasons. Ironically, Dalge—the chief of the Reich’s regular police, and just promoted to Oberstgruppenfhrer—is one of Heydrich’s direct rivals, although he has nothing like the same stature. Heydrich refers to him only as “the moron.” If the Blond Beast regains consciousness, he is not going to be pleased. As soon as he’s back on his feet, they must think about promoting him.

He regains consciousness. The operation has gone well. The German surgeon is quietly optimistic. It’s true that they had to remove the spleen, but there are no apparent complications. The only slightly surprising discovery was some tufts of hair, which were inside the wound and all over his body. It took the doctors a while to figure out where they came from: the Mercedes’s leather seats, ripped open by the explosion, were stuffed with horsehair. In the X-ray department, they were worried that there might be small fragments of metal lodged in some vital organs. But there’s nothing, and the German elite in Prague can begin to breathe again. Lina, who wasn’t told about the attack until three p.m., is at his bedside. Still groggy, he speaks to her in a weak voice: “Take care of our children.” Right now, he doesn’t seem very sure about his future.

Aunt Moravec is ecstatic. She bursts into the concierge’s apartment and asks: “Have you heard about Heydrich?” Yes, they’ve heard: it’s all they’re talking about on the radio. But they have also broadcast the serial number of the second bicycle, abandoned at the scene of the crime. Her bicycle. They forgot to scratch it out. Her happy mood is instantly extinguished and replaced by bitter reproach. Ashen-faced, she curses the men for their negligence. But she still firmly intends to help them. Aunt Moravec is a woman of action and now is not the time for self-pity. She doesn’t know where they are; she must find them. Indefatigable, she leaves.

All over town, they are plastering the bilingual red posters to the walls—the posters they use whenever they need to proclaim something to the local population. There are many such posters, but this one will undoubtedly remain the highlight of the collection. It says:

1. IN PRAGUE ON MAY 27, 1942, THERE WAS AN ATTACK ON THE INTERIM REICHSPROTEKTOR, SS OBERGRUPPENFHRER HEYDRICH.

For information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators, there will be a reward of ten million crowns. Whoever shelters these criminals, or helps them, or who, having any knowledge of them, does not denounce them, will be shot, along with his entire family.

2. A state of emergency has been declared in the Oberlandrat region of Prague. The state of emergency will be proclaimed by the reading of this declaration on the radio. The following measures have been decided:

1. All civilians, without exception, are forbidden to go out on the streets between 9:00 p.m. on May 27 and 6:00 a.m. on May 28;

2. All bars and restaurants, all cinemas, theaters, and other places of entertainment are to be closed, and all traffic on public highways stopped during these hours;

3. Whoever, in contradiction of this order, is found on the street between these hours will be shot if they do not stop at the first command;

4. Further measures are anticipated and, if necessary, will be announced on the radio.

At 4:30 p.m. this declaration is read out on German radio. From 5:00, Czech radio begins to broadcast it every thirty minutes; from 7:40, every ten minutes; and from 8:20 until 9:00, every five minutes. I suppose anyone who lived through this day in Prague—if they are still alive—would be able to recite the entire text by heart. At 9:30 the state of emergency is extended throughout the Protectorate. Meanwhile, Himmler has called Frank to confirm Hitler’s new orders: the hundred most important people imprisoned as hostages since Heydrich’s arrival the previous October are to be executed.

In the hospital, they are emptying the cupboards of all the morphine they can find for the relief of their most important patient.

That evening, an insane raid is organized. The city is invaded by 4,500 men from the SS, the SD, the NSKK, the Gestapo, the Kripo, and other Schupos, plus three Wehrmacht battalions. Add to this the Czech police, who must help them, and there are more than 20,000 men taking part in the operation. All access routes are cut off, all main roads blocked, streets closed, buildings searched, people checked. Everywhere I look, I see armed men jumping from uncovered trucks, running in columns from one building to the next, filling stairwells with the pounding of boots and the clanking of steel, hammering on doors, shouting orders in German, dragging people from their beds, turning their apartments upside down, pushing them about and barking at them. The SS in particular seem to have completely lost control: they pace up and down the streets like angry madmen, shooting at lighted windows or open windows, expecting at any moment to be the victims of snipers waiting in ambush. This is not a state of emergency—it’s a state of war. The police operation plunges the entire city into indescribable chaos. That night 36,000 apartments are visited—for a meager yield, compared with the means deployed. They arrest 541 people—of whom three or four are tramps, one a prostitute, one a juvenile delinquent, and one a Resistance leader with no link whatsoever to Anthropoid—and immediately release 430 of them. And they do not find a single trace of the parachutists. What’s worse, this is only the beginning. Gabk, Kubi, Valk, and their friends must have had a strange night. I wonder if any of them managed to sleep? I would be very surprised. As for me… I’m sleeping very badly these days.

223

On the hospital’s second floor, emptied of all but one of its patients, Heydrich is lying in bed. He is weak, his senses are numbed, his body aching, but he’s conscious. The door opens, and the guard lets his wife, Lina, into the room. He tries to smile at her—he’s happy she’s here. She, too, is relieved to see her husband alive, albeit very pale and bedridden. Yesterday, when she saw him just after his operation, all white and unconscious, she thought he was dead. Even after waking up, he looked barely any better. She didn’t believe the doctors’ reassuring words. And if the parachutists had trouble sleeping, Lina’s night wasn’t very pleasant either.

This morning she brings him hot soup in a thermos flask. Yesterday: victim of an assassination attempt. Today: already convalescent. The Blond Beast has thick skin. He’ll be fine, as always.

224

Mrs. Moravec goes to fetch Valk. Her husband, the kindhearted railway worker, does not want to let Valk leave in his current state. He gives him a book to read on the tram, so he can hide his face: Thirty Years of Journalism by H. W. Steed. Valk thanks him. After he’s gone, the railwayman’s wife tidies his room and, stripping his bed, finds blood on the sheets. I don’t know how serious his injury was, but I do know that all doctors in the Protectorate were legally obliged to tell the polic about any bullet wounds, under pain of death.

225

A crisis meeting is taking place behind the black walls of Peek Palace, Commissioner Pannwitz summing up: after studying the clues gathered at the crime scene, his initial conclusion is that the attack was planned in London and executed by two parachutists. Frank agrees. But Dalge, named as interim Protector the day before, believes the attack points to an organized national uprising. As a preventive measure, he orders that lots of people be shot and every policeman in the region rounded up to reinforce the city’s police presence. Frank looks like he’s going to throw up. All the evidence suggests that this attack was organized by Bene, and even if that were not true… politically, he couldn’t care less if the internal Resistance is implicated or not. “We must not let people believe that there is a national revolt! We have to say that this was an individual action.” On top of that, if they pursue a campaign of mass arrests and executions, they risk disturbing the country’s industrial production. “Need I remind you of the vital importance of Czech industry for the German war effort, Herr Oberstgruppenfhrer?” (Why have I made up this phrase? Probably because he actually said it.) Frank, the second-in-command, thought his hour had come. Instead of which, they promoted this Dalge, who has no experience as a statesman, knows nothing of the Protectorate’s business, and can barely even locate Prague on a map. Frank doesn’t object to a show of force: it costs nothing to unleash terror in the streets, and he knows it. But he remembers the political lessons learned from his master: no stick without a carrot. The previous night’s hysterical raid exemplified the uselessness of such actions. What they need is a well-organized and well-funded campaign of denouncements. That would produce better results.

Frank leaves the meeting. He’s wasted enough time with Dalge. A plane is waiting to take him to Berlin, where he has a meeting with Hitler. He hopes that the Fhrer’s political genius will not be overpowered by one of his famous rages. In the plane, Frank carefully plans his presentation of the measures he will recommend. Given yesterday’s phone conversation, it’s in his interests to be convincing. In order not to look like a wimp, he suggests invading the city with tanks and regiments, and cutting off a few heads. But, once again, there must be no mass reprisals. Rather, he would advise that Hcha and his government be leaned on: threatened with the loss of the Protectorate’s autonomy, and with German control of all Czech organizations. Plus all the usual methods of intimidation: blackmail, harassment, et cetera. But all of this, for now, in the form of an ultimatum. The ideal solution would be for the Czechs themselves to deliver the parachutists into their hands.

Pannwitz’s concerns are different. His area of expertise is not politics but investigation. He is collaborating with two brilliant detectives sent by Berlin, both of whom are still stunned by the chaos of “catastrophic proportions” that they found here on arrival. They say nothing about this to Dalge, but to Pannwitz they complain that they needed an escort just to reach their hotel safely. As for the behavior of those rabid SS dogs, their judgment is damning: “They’re completely mad. They won’t even be able to find their way out of the insane maze they’re creating, never mind find the assassins.” They must proceed more methodically. In less than twenty-four hours, the three detectives have already obtained some important results. Thanks to the witness accounts they’ve collected, they are now in a position to reconstruct exactly how the attack unfolded, and they have a description—albeit rather vague (those bloody witnesses can never agree on what they saw!)—of the two terrorists. But there are no leads on the men’s whereabouts. So they’re searching. Not in the streets, though, like the SS imbeciles: they are going through the Gestapo files with a fine-tooth comb.

And they find that old photo taken from the corpse of brave Captain Morvek—the last of the Three Kings, killed in a tramway shoot-out two months earlier. In this photo, the handsome Valk looks inexplicably bloated. But it’s him, all the same. The policemen have no clues at all linking this man to the attack. They could easily pass on to the next file, but they decide to investigate this photograph just on the off chance. If this were a detective novel, we’d call it a hunch.

226

A young female Czech liaison officer called Hanka rings the Moravecs’ doorbell. They show her through to the kitchen. And there, sitting in an armchair, she finds Valk, whom she knows from his days as a waiter in Pardubice, her hometown. As affable as ever, he smiles at her and apologizes for not being able to stand up: he’s twisted his ankle.

It’s Hanka’s job to send Valk’s report to the Bartos group in Pardubice, so that they can inform London via the Libuse transmitter. Valk asks the young woman not to mention his injury. As the leader of Silver A, Captain Bartos is still officially his head of mission. But Bartos has never approved of the assassination attempt. Somehow Valk managed to transfer himself from Silver A to Anthropoid. Given what’s happened, he doesn’t believe he owes an explanation to anyone apart from his two friends, Gabk and Kubi (he hopes they’re safe); to Bene himself (if need be); and, perhaps, to God (Valk is a believer).

The young woman rushes to the station. But before boarding her train, she stops dead before a new red poster. Immediately she phones the Moravecs: “You should come here and see—there’s something interesting.” There is the photo of Valk, and beneath: 100,000 crowns reward. There follows a fairly inaccurate description of the parachutist—and that’s another piece of luck to add to the fact that the picture doesn’t look much like him. His surname is mentioned, but his first name and date of birth are both wrong (they’ve made him five years younger). A little note at the end reminds you of the true nature of wanted posters: “The reward will be given with the greatest discretion.”

227

But that poster isn’t the best bit.

Bata built his empire before the war. Starting as a small shoemaker in the town of Zln, he developed an immense business with shops all over the world, and above all in Czechoslovakia. Fleeing the German occupation, he emigrated to the United States. But even during the boss’s exile, the shops remained open. At the bottom of Wenceslaus Avenue, number 6, is a gigantic Bata boutique. In the shop window this morning the usual display of shoes has been replaced by an assortment of other objects. A bicycle, two leather bags, and—displayed on a mannequin—a raincoat and a beret. All these exhibits were found at the crime scene. They are accompanied by an appeal for witnesses. Passersby who stop before the shop window can read:

With regard to the reward of ten million crowns for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators, which is to be paid in full, the following questions must be asked:

1. Who can provide information on the criminals?

2. Who saw them at the scene of the crime?

3. To whom do these objects belong? Above all, whose is the ladies’ bicycle, the coat, the beret, and the bag?

Whoever is able to provide this information and who fails to do so voluntarily will be shot with his family in accordance with the notice of May 27 declaring the state of emergency.

Be assured that all information received will be dealt with in the strictest confidence.

Furthermore, from May 28, 1942, all owners of houses, apartments, hotels, etc., in the Protectorate must declare to the police all persons staying with them who have not already been reported. Failure to do so will be punishable by death.

S-Obergruppenfhrer

Chief of Police

Office of the Reichsprotektor

of Bohemia and Moravia

K. H. Frank

228

The Czech government-in-exile declares the assassination attempt on the monster Heydrich an act of vengeance, a rejection of the Nazi yoke, and a symbol of hope for all the oppressed peoples of Europe. The shots fired by the Czech patriots are a show of solidarity sent to the Allies and of faith in the final victory which will ring out all over the world. Already, new Czech victims are being killed by German firing squads. But this latest fit of Nazi fury will once again be broken by the unbending resistance of the Czech people, and will succeed only in reinforcing their will and determination.

The Czech government-in-exile encourages the population to hide these unknown heroes and threatens punishment for anyone who betrays them.

229

In his Zurich postbox, Colonel Moravec receives a telegram sent by agent A54: “Wunderbar—Karl.” Paul Thmmel (alias A54, alias Ren, alias Karl) has never met Gabk and Kubi, and took no direct part in the attack’s preparations. But with this single word he echoes the joy felt on hearing the news by everyone, all over the world, fighting against Nazism.

230

The concierge’s doorbell rings. It’s Ata, the young Moravec son, come to fetch Valk. The concierge doesn’t want Valk to leave. He could live in the attic, he says, on the fifth floor: nobody would look for him up there. Here, Valk plays cards and listens to the BBC and eats the delicious cakes made by the concierge’s wife, which he says are as good as his mother’s. The first evening, he had to hide in the cellar because there was a Gestapo agent in the building. But he feels very safe, staying with these people. So why not stay? the concierge insists. Valk explains that he’s been given orders, that he’s a soldier, that he is bound to obey, and that he must rejoin his comrades. The concierge shouldn’t worry: a safe haven has been found for them. Only, it’s very cold. They’ll need blankets and warm clothes. Valk picks up his coat, puts on a pair of green glasses, and follows Ata, who is taking him to the new hiding place. But by accident he leaves behind the book lent to him by his previous host. The owner’s name is written inside. The fact that he forgets this book will save the owner’s life.

231

Capitulation and servility are the lifeblood of Ptainism, and old President Hcha—every bit as senile as his French counterpart—is a master in the art. To show his goodwill, he decides, in the name of the puppet government he leads, to double the reward. So Gabk’s and Kubi’s heads are now valued at ten million crowns each.

232

The two men at the church door are not here to attend Mass. The Orthodox church of St. Charles Borromeo (today renamed the Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral) is an immense building, and one side of it faces Resslova Street—that sloping street which runs from Charles Square down to the river, right in the heart of Prague. One of the men is Professor Zelenka, alias “Uncle Hajsky” of the Jindra organization. He is met at the door by Father Petrek, an Orthodox priest. Zelenka has brought a friend with him. This is the seventh friend he’s brought to the church. It’s Gabk. They take him through a trapdoor to the church crypt. There, amid stone recesses that used to hold dead bodies, he is reunited with his friends: Kubi and Valk, but also Lieutenant Opalka and three other parachutists, Bublik, Svarc, and Hruby. One by one, Zelenka has brought them all here. Because, while the Gestapo is still tirelessly searching all the city’s apartments, no one has yet thought to look in the churches. Only one parachutist is missing: they’ve had no news of Karel urda at all. Nobody knows where he is, whether he’s hiding or he’s been arrested, or even if he’s still alive.

Gabk’s arrival causes a sensation in the crypt. His comrades rush to hug him. He recognizes Valk, his hair dyed brown, sporting a thin brown mustache, and Kubi, whose eye is swollen and whose face still bears the scars of the explosion. These two are clearly the most demonstrative in their joy at seeing him again. Gabk’s feelings are torn: he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Naturally he is very happy to see his friends, all of them pretty much safe and sound. But he’s so sorry for the way things turned out. He’s barely been reunited with them before he begins his bitter litany of excuses and self-reproach. They will soon become accustomed to this. He curses the bloody Sten, which jammed just when he had Heydrich at his mercy. It’s all my fault, he says. I had him there in front of me, he was a dead man. And then this piece-of-shit Sten… ah, it’s too stupid. But he’s injured—you got him, Jan? Seriously injured? You think? Lads, I am so sorry. It’s all my fault. I should have finished him off with the Colt. But there were bullets flying everywhere, and I ran, with that giant hot on my heels… Gabk hates himself, and nothing his friends say can console him. It doesn’t matter, Jozef. What you did is huge, don’t you realize? The Hangman himself! You injured him! Heydrich is injured, that’s true, he saw him fall, but apparently he’s recovering in hospital. A month from now, he’ll be back at work—perhaps even earlier. It’s true what they say: those bastards are bulletproof. Anyway, the Nazis have always had the luck of the devil when it comes to surviving assassination attempts. (I think of Hitler in 1939, who had to give his annual speech at the famous Munich beer hall between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m., but who left the building at 9:07 to catch his train—and the bomb went off at 9:30, killing eight people.) But Anthropoid is a pitiful failure—there you go, that’s what he thinks—and it’s all his fault. Jan did nothing wrong. He threw the grenade. Sure, it missed the car, but he was the one who injured Heydrich. Thank God Jan was there! They didn’t fulfill their mission, but thanks to him at least they hit the target. Now the Germans know that Prague isn’t Berlin, and that they can’t treat this place like home. But frightening the Germans was not the objective of Anthropoid. Perhaps they were too ambitious after all: no Nazi as high-ranking as Heydrich has ever been shot. But no, what am I saying? If it wasn’t for the stupid, stinking Sten, he’d be dead, that pig… The Sten, the Sten!… It’s a piece of shit, I’m telling you.

233

Heydrich’s condition has suddenly and inexplicably deteriorated. He’s in the grip of a powerful fever. Himmler has rushed to his bedside. Heydrich’s tall body lies weakly under a thin white sheet drenched with sweat. The two men philosophize about life and death. Heydrich quotes a line from his father’s opera: “The world is just a barrel organ, which the Lord God turns Himself. We all have to dance to the tune that is already on the drum.”

Himmler asks the doctors for explanations. The patient seemed to be recovering well until he was laid low by a sudden infection. Perhaps the bomb contained poison or the horsehairs from the Mercedes’s seats got into his spleen. There are various theories, but nobody knows which one is correct. But if, as they believe, this is the beginning of septicemia, the infection is going to spread very quickly and he will be dead within forty-eight hours. To save Heydrich, they would need something that is not to be found anywhere in the vast territory of the Reich: penicillin. And the British aren’t about to give them any.

234

On June 3, the Libuse radio receives the following message, for the attention of Anthropoid:

From the president. I am very happy that you have been able to keep in contct. I thank you most sincerely, and take note of your absolute determination, and that of your friends. This shows me that the whole nation is united. I can assure you that this will bear fruit. The events in Prague had a huge impact here and have done a great deal for international recognition of the Czech Resistance.

But Bene doesn’t know that the best is yet to come. And the worst.

235

Anna Maruscakova, a young and pretty factory worker, called in sick today. So when the afternoon post arrived and the factory boss found a letter addressed to her, he opened and read it without a second thought. The letter was from a young man, and this is what it said:

Dear Ania,

Sorry for taking so long to write to you, but I hope you will understand, because you know I have many worries. What I wanted to do—I’ve done it. On the fatal day, I slept in Cabarna. I’m fine. I’ll come to see you this week, and afterward we will never see each other again.

Milan

The factory boss is a Nazi sympathizer—or perhaps not even that: just an ordinary person conditioned by that ignoble mentality that exists almost everywhere but which finds its true voice in occupied countries. Deciding that there is perhaps something fishy going on, he forwards the letter to the relevant authority. The Gestapo’s inquiry has stalled so badly that they are desperate for a new bone to chew. They treat the dossier with a diligence all the greater because after making more than three thousand arrests they still haven’t found anything useful. Very quickly, they determine that the letter concerns a love affair: the author is a married man. He probably wishes to put an end to an adulterous relationship. The details of the story are not very clear, but it’s true that certain phrases could be construed as ambiguous. Perhaps this young man even wanted, between the lines, to suggest an imaginary involvement in the Resistance—either to impress his mistress, or to create an atmosphere of mystery so he could break up with her without having to justify himself. Whatever the truth of this, he had nothing to do in any shape or form with Gabk, Kubi, and their friends. They’ve never heard of him and he’s never heard of them. But the Gestapo is so desperate for leads that they decide to dig deeper on this one. And this leads them to Lidice.

Lidice is a peaceful and picturesque little village. It is also the birthplace of two Czechs who enrolled in the RAF. This is all the Germans have discovered in the course of their inquiry. Even to them, it is obviously a false trail. But Nazi logic is complex and mysterious. Either that or it’s very simple: they’re out for blood and their patience is running thin.

I spend a long time looking at Anna’s photo. The poor girl is posed as if for a Hollywood glamour shot, even though it’s just an identity photo for her work permit. The more I examine this portrait, the more beautiful I find her. She looks a bit like Natacha: high forehead, well-drawn mouth, with that same look in her eyes of gentleness and love, slightly darkened, perhaps, by a premonition of disappointment.

236

“Gentlemen, if you’ll follow me…” Frank and Dalge give a start. The corridor is perfectly silent as they walk its mazelike turns for I don’t know how long. Holding their breath, they enter the hospital room. The silence here is even more overpowering. Lina is there, hieratic and pale. They approach the bed stealthily, as if fearful of waking a wildcat or a snake. But Heydrich’s face remains impassive. In the hospital they write down the time of his death—4:30 a.m.—and the cause: infection caused by a wound.

237

Opportunity makes not only the thief but the assassin too. Therefore, supposedly heroic behavior such as driving around in an open-topped, unarmored car or walking the streets without a bodyguard are nothing but damned stupidity, and are against the national interest. That a man as irreplaceable as Heydrich should expose himself to danger in that way… it’s idiotic and stupid! Men as important as Heydrich should always know that they are like targets at a fairground, and that a certain number of people are constantly watching for any opportunity to shoot them.

Goebbels is listening to something he will hear more and more often until April 30, 1945: Hitler, adopting a sententious tone and lecturing the world, in a vain attempt to keep his temper. Next to him, Himmler listens in approving silence. He is not in the habit of contradicting the Fhrer anyway, but he, too, is angry—with the Czechs and with Heydrich. Naturally, Himmler was wary of the ambitions of his right-hand man. But without him—deprived of the abilities of this machine of terror and death—Himmler feels more vulnerable. To lose Heydrich is to lose a potential rival, but above all a trump card. Heydrich was his jack of clubs. And everyone knows the story: once Lancelot left the kingdom of Logres, that was the beginning of the end.

238

For the third time, Heydrich makes a solemn journey to the castle of Hradany. But this time he is in a coffin. A Wagnerian setting has been organized for the occasion. The coffin, wrapped in a huge SS standard, is carried on a gun carriage. A torchlit procession leaves from the hospital, an endless line of military vehicles moving slowly through the night. Armed Waffen-SS guards march alongside, brandishing torches, which illuminate the route. Throughout its journey the convoy is saluted by soldiers standing to attention at the sides of the road. No civilians have been authorized to attend, but in truth nobody would want to risk going outside tonight anyway. Among the guard of honor, accompanying the coffin on foot, are Frank, Dalge, Bhme, and Nebe, all wearing helmets and combat uniform. And so, after a journey that began at 10:00 a.m. on May 27, Heydrich finally reaches his destination. For the last time, he passes through the open gates and enters the walls of the castle of the kings of Bohemia.

239

I’d like to spend my days with the parachutists in the crypt, reporting their discussions, describing how they live from hour to hour in the cold and the damp, what they eat, what they read, what rumors they hear from the town, what they do with their girlfriends when they visit. I would like to tell you about their plans, their doubts, their hopes, their fears, their dreams and thoughts. But that isn’t possible, because I know almost nothing about any of it. I don’t even know how they reacted when they heard about Heydrich’s death, although that ought to make one of the best bits of my book. I know the parachutists were so cold in the crypt that, when night fell, some of them took their mattresses to the gallery that overhung the nave because it was slightly warmer. That’s not much, is it? I also know that Valk had a fever (probably as a result of his injury), and that Kubi was one of those who tried sleeping in the church rather than the crypt. Or that he tried it at least once.

On the other hand, I have a colossal amount of information about Heydrich’s funeral, from his body being taken from the castle in Prague until its burial in Berlin, including the rail journey in between. Dozens of photos, dozens of pages of speeches made in praise of the great man. But that’s too bad, because I don’t really care. I am not going to copy out Dalge’s funeral eulogy (although it is quite amusing, given that the two men hated each other), nor Himmler’s interminable encomium for his subordinate. I think I’ll quote Hitler instead, because at least he kept it short:

I will say only a few words to pay homage to the deceased. He was one of the best National Socialists, one of the most ardent defenders of the idea of the German Reich, one of the reatest opponents of all the Reich’s enemies. He is a martyr for the preservation and protection of the Reich. So, my dear comrade Heydrich, as head of the Party and as Fhrer of the German Reich, I award you the highest decoration that it is in my power to bestow: the medal of the German Order.

My story has as many holes in it as a novel. But in an ordinary novel, it is the novelist who decides where these holes should occur. Because I am a slave to my scruples, I’m incapable of making that decision. I flick through the photos of the funeral cortege crossing the Charles Bridge, going back up to Wenceslaus Square, passing in front of the museum. I see the beautiful stone statues on the balustrade of the bridge with swastikas beneath them, and I feel slightly sick. I think I’d rather take my mattress to the gallery in the church, if they’ve got a bit of room for me there.

240

Evening, and all is calm. The men are home from work, and in the little houses the lights are going out one after another. The houses still exhale the pleasant smell of dinner, mixed with the slightly acrid stench of cabbage. Night falls on Lidice. The inhabitants go to bed early because, as always, they’ll have to get up early tomorrow to go to the mine or the factory. Miners and steelworkers are already sleeping when a distant sound of engines is heard. The sound gets slowly closer. Covered trucks move in single file through the silence of the countryside. Then the motors are silenced, and a continuous clicking sound is heard. The clicking extends through the streets like liquid rushing through tubes. Black shadows spread all over the village. And then, when the silhouettes have congregated in compact groups, and when everyone is in position, the clicking stops. A human voice rips open the night. It’s an order shouted in German. And so it begins.

Torn from sleep, the inhabitants of Lidice understand nothing of what’s happening to them—or they understand all too well. They are dragged from their beds, they are driven from their houses with rifle butts, and herded into the village square, in front of the church. Nearly five hundred men, women, and children, dressed hastily, stand there dumbstruck and terrified, surrounded by the uniformed men of the Schutzpolizei. They cannot know that this unit has been brought here specially from Halle-an-der-Saale, Heydrich’s hometown. But they do know that nobody will be going to work tomorrow. Then the Germans begin to do what will soon become their favorite occupation: they divide the group in two. Women and children are locked up in the school, while the men are led to a farmhouse and crammed into the cellar. Now they must wait, interminably, the anguish etched into their faces. Inside the school, the children weep. Outside, the Germans are let off the leash. Frenetically but conscientiously, they pillage and ransack each of the ninety-six houses in the village, plus all the public buildings, including the church. All books and paintings, considered to be useless objects, are thrown from the windows, piled up in the square, and burned. Anything considered useful—radios, bicycles, sewing machines—is taken away. This work takes several hours, and by the time it’s finished, Lidice is in ruins.

At five in the morning, the soldiers come back to get them. The inhabitants find their village turned upside down and filled with running, shouting policemen who continue to plunder everything they can find. The women and children are taken in trucks toward the neighboring town of Kladno. For the women, this is the first stage on their journey to Ravensbrck. The children will be separated from their mothers and gassed in Chemno—with the exception of a few judged suitable for Germanization, who will be adopted by German families. The men are assembled before a wall where the mattresses have been dumped. The youngest is fifteen, the eldest eighty-four. Five are lined up and shot. Then five more, and so on. The mattresses are there to prevent the bullets ricocheting. But the men of the Schupo are not as experienced in such matters as the Einsatzgruppen, and—with all the pauses for carrying away the corpses and forming new firing squads—it takes forever. Hours pass while the men await their turn. To speed the process up, they decide to double the rate and shoot them ten by ten. The village mayor, whose job it is to identify the men before their execution, is among the last to be killed. Thanks to him, the Germans spare nine men who are not from the village but simply visiting friends and trapped there by the curfew or invited to stay the night. They will, however, be executed in Prague. When nineteen night workers return from their shifts, they find their village devastated, their families vanished, the bodies of their friends still warm. And, as the Germans are still there, they, too, are shot. Even the dogs are killed.

But that isn’t all. Hitler has decided to vent all his frustrations on Lidice, so the village will serve as a means of catharsis and as a symbol of his avenging rage. The Reich’s inability to find and punish Heydrich’s assassins provokes a systematic hysteria beyond all human bounds. The order is that Lidice must be wiped off the map—literally. The cemetery is desecrated, the orchards destroyed, all the buildings burned, and salt thrown over the earth to make sure that nothing can ever grow here. The village is now nothing more than a hellish furnace. Bulldozers have even been sent to raze the ruins. Not a single trace of the village must remain, not even a hint of its former location.

Hitler wants to show people the price to be paid for defying the Reich, and Lidice is his expiatory victim. But he has committed a serious error. It is so long since Hitler and his colleagues lost touch with reality that they do not anticipate the worldwide repercussions that will be provoked by news of the village’s destruction. Up to now, the Nazis, if somewhat halfhearted in the concealment of their crimes, have nevertheless kept up a superficial discretion that has enabled some people to avert their gaze from the regime’s true nature. With Lidice, the scales have fallen from the whole world’s eyes. In the days that follow, Hitler will understand. For once, it is not his SS who will be let loose but an entity whose power he does not fully grasp: world opinion. Soviet newspapers declare that, from today, people will fight with the name of Lidice on their lips—and they’re right. In England, miners from Stoke-on-Trent launch an appeal to raise money for the future reconstruction of the village and come up with a slogan that will be echoed all around the world: “Lidice shall live!” In the United States, in Mexico, in Cuba, in Venezuela and Uruguay and Brazil, town squares and districts, even villages, are renamed Lidice. Egypt and India broadcast official messages of solidarity. Writers, composers, filmmakers, and dramatists pay homage to Lidice in their works. The news is relayed by newspapers, radio, and television. In Washington, D.C., the naval secretary declares: “If future generations ask us what we were fighting for, we shall tell them the story of Lidice.” The name of the martyred village is scrawled on the bombs dropped by the Allies on German cities, while in the East, Soviet soldiers do the same on the gun turrets of their T34s. By reacting like the crude psychopath that he is (rather than the head of state that he also is), Hitler will suffer his most devastating defeat in a domain he once mastered: by the end of the month the international propaganda war will be irredeemably lost.

But on June 10, 1942, neither he nor anyone else is aware of all this—least of all Gabk and Kubi. The news of the village’s destruction plunges the two parachutists into horror and despair. More than ever, they are wracked by guilt. No matter that they have fulfilled their mission, that the Beast is dead—no matter that they have rid Czechoslovakia and the world of one of its most evil creatures—they feel as if the themselves have killed the inhabitants of Lidice. They also fear that, as long as Hitler does not know them to be dead, the reprisals will continue indefinitely. Enclosed in the crypt, all of this churns over and over in their heads, until—exhausted by the nervous tension—they reach the only possible conclusion: they must turn themselves in. In their fevered brains they imagine asking to see Emanuel Moravec, the Czech Quisling. When they see him, they will hand over a letter explaining that they are responsible for Heydrich’s assassination; then they will shoot him, and kill themselves in his office. Lieutenant Opalka, Valk, and the other comrades in the crypt need all their patience, friendship, diplomacy, and persuasiveness to convince the guilt-ridden parachutists not to go through with this insane plan. First of all, it’s technically unfeasible. Second, the Germans will never take them at their word. Finally, even if they managed to carry out their plan, the terror and the massacres had begun long before Heydrich’s death, and would continue long after their own. Nothing would change. Their sacrifice would be completely in vain. Gabk and Kubi weep from rage and powerlessness, but they end up being convinced. All the same, no one ever manages to persuade them that Heydrich’s death was good for anything.

Perhaps I am writing this book to make them understand that they are wrong.

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CONTROVERSY ON THE CZECH NET

An Internet site designed to get young Czechs interested in the history of the village of Lidice, which was utterly destroyed by the Nazis in June 1942, is offering an interactive game, the goal of which is to “burn Lidice in the shortest possible time.”

(LIBRATION, SEPTEMBER 6, 2006)

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The Gestapo is so short of leads you might think they’d given up looking for Heydrich’s assassins. They need a scapegoat to explain this incompetence and they think they might have found one. He is a civil servant for the Ministry of Work, and on the evening of May 27 he authorized the departure of a train full of Czech workers going to Berlin. Given that the three parachutists still haven’t been found, this lead seems as good as any other—so the Gestapo “establishes” that the three assassins (yes, the inquiry has made some progress—they now know that there were three of them) were on board the train. The men from Peek Palace are even in a position to give some surprising details: the fugitives hid beneath their seats during the journey and got off the train while it made a brief stop in Dresden, where they disappeared into the countryside. It’s true that the idea of the terrorists leaving their own country to take refuge in Germany seems rather daring, but you have to be more daring than that to escape the Gestapo. Unfortunately, the civil servant is not prepared to be the scapegoat, and his defense takes them by surprise: yes, he authorized the train’s departure, but only because he was told to do so by the Air Ministry in Berlin. Gring, in other words. Not only that, but the meticulous bureaucrat has kept a copy of the authorization, stamped by the Prague police services. So if there’s been a mistake, the Gestapo would have to accept its own share of the responsibility. The men from Peek Palace decide not to pursue this particular lead.

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The idea that finally solves the problem comes from that old soldier Commissioner Pannwitz, clearly a fine connoisseur of the human soul. Pannwitz begins with this observation: the climate of terror deliberately created since May 27 is counterproductive. He has nothing against terror, but in this case it’s inconvenient because it scares off those who might otherwise be tempted to inform. More than two weeks after the attack, nobody is going to risk trying to explain to the Gestapo that they know something but that, up to now, they haven’t admitted it. The Gestapo must promise—and deliver—an amnesty for anyone who comes forward of their own free will and provides information on the assassination, even if they themselves are implicated.

Frank is persuaded by these arguments and decrees an amnesty for whoever provides—within five days—information leading to the capture of the assassins. After that he won’t be able to contain Hitler and Himmler’s lust for blood any longer.

As soon as she hears this news, Mrs. Moravec understands what it means: the Germans are staking everything. If, after five days, nobody has denounced her lads, they will be free from any further fear of informers and their chances of survival will increase considerably. Because, once the amnesty has expired, nobody will dare to go and see the Gestapo. Today, June 13, 1942, a stranger turns up at Mrs. Moravec’s apartment, but there’s nobody there. The man asks the concierge if Mrs. Moravec has by any chance left a briefcase for him. He is Czech but he doesn’t give the password, “Jan.” The concierge says he knows nothing about it. The stranger leaves. Karel urda has almost resurfaced.

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Aunt Moravec has sent her family to the countryside for a few days, but she herself has too much to do in Prague. She washes and irons clothes, and she runs errands all over the place. In order not to attract too much attention, she is helped by the concierge’s wife. They mustn’t be seen too often carrying packages, and naturally the parachutists’ hiding place must remain secret, so the two women arrange to meet in Charles Square, surrounded by flower beds and crowds of people. After that, the aunt walks down Resslova Street, enters the church, and disappears. Another time, they get on the same tram but the concierge’s wife gets off two or three stations earlier, leaving her bags, and the aunt picks them up. She brings the men cakes still warm from the oven, and methylated spirits for their old stove. She also brings them news from the outside world. The lads are all a bit under the weather, but their morale has improved. Heydrich’s death cannot erase the memory of Lidice, but gradually they come to realize the significance of what they’ve done. Aunt Moravec is welcomed by Valk in his dressing gown. He looks a bit peaky, but he sports a thin mustache these days—and, my word, how very distinguished it makes him look. He asks for news of Moula, his dog. Moula is fine: he has been adopted by a family with a large garden. The swellings on Kubi’s face have gone down, and even Gabk has recovered a bit of his old joie de vivre. They are beginning to get organized, this little community of seven: they’ve improvised a sieve from an undershirt and they’d like to try to make coffee. The aunt promises to find some. Meanwhile, Professor Zelenka is working with the Resistance on some very hypothetical plans to get the parachutists out of the Reich. The problem is that Anthropoid was really designed as a suicide mission, so nobody gave much thought to the question of their return. First of all, they must be smuggled into the countryside, but the Gestapo is still under great pressure to arrest them and the city is in a state of maximum alert—so this will have to wait. It will soon be St. Adolf’s day, and as they wish to celebrate this (because, to be clear, Lieutenant Opalka’s first name is Adolf), Aunt Moravec is going to try to get hold of some veal scallops. She’d also like to make them a broth with chunks of liver. The lads no longer call her “Aunt,” but simply “Mom.” These seven highly trained men are now reduced to a state of total inaction, as vulnerable as children, cloistered in this damp cellar and wholly in the hands of this little lady who cares for them like a mother. She keeps repeating to them: “We just have to get through to the eighteenth.” Today is the sixteenth.

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Karel urda stands on the pvement at the top of Bredovska Street—today renamed the Street of Political Prisoners—which comes out at the central train station. On the opposite corner is Peek Palace, a dour and menacing presence in gray stone. This huge pile was built after the First World War by a Czech banker who owned almost all the coal mines in northern Bohemia. Perhaps the anthracite-gray faade was designed as a reminder of the origin of his fortune. But the banker gave up the mines and the palace to the government, prudently deciding to leave the country for England just before the German invasion. Even today Peek Palace is an official building—home of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. But in 1942 it is the headquarters of the Gestapo for Bohemia and Moravia. Nearly a thousand employees work here at the blackest tasks, in rooms so gloomy it looks like night even in the middle of the day. Located in the heart of the capital and equipped with the latest technology—a printing works, a laboratory, a pneumatic postal service, and a telephone exchange—the building is, from a functional point of view, absolutely perfect for the Nazi police. Its many underground chambers and cellars have been cleverly converted for the Gestapo’s particular needs. The head of the police here is a young Standartenfhrer called Dr. Geschke. I’ve seen only one photo of this man, but—with his scar, his womanly skin, his mad eyes and cruel lips, his side-parted hair and half-shaved skull—it was enough to freeze my blood. Anyway, Peek Palace is the very incarnation of the Nazi terror in Prague, and you need a certain courage just to stand in front of it. Karel urda does not lack courage, but he is motivated by the thought of twenty million crowns. Though, to be honest, it does take courage to denounce your comrades. You have to weigh up the pros and the cons, and there is no guarantee that the Nazis will keep their word. urda is playing double or quits with his own life: either wealth or death awaits him. But he’s an adventurer. That’s why he joined the Free Czechoslovak army; that’s why he volunteered for special missions in the Protectorate: because he has a taste for adventure. He hasn’t enjoyed this return to his homeland because, ultimately, the clandestine lifestyle isn’t very appealing. Since the assassination he’s been living in the provinces with his mother, in the little town of Koln, forty miles east of Prague. Before this, though, he did have time to meet many people involved in the Resistance, among them Kubi and Valk—they worked together in the koda operation at Pilsen—and also Gabk and Opalka, whose paths he crossed several times when they were switching hideouts in Prague. He knows the apartment of the Svato family, who supplied a bicycle and a briefcase for the assassination. And above all he knows where the Moravec family lives. I don’t know why he went there three days earlier. Was he already thinking of betraying them? Or was he attempting to get back in contact with the network because he’d had no news of them recently? But why come back to Prague, if not for the reward? Wasn’t he safer with his mother in picturesque little Koln? Actually, he probably wasn’t: in 1942, Koln is a German administrative center, where the Jews of central Bohemia are rounded up, and its train station is a rail junction for deportations to Terezn. So it’s possible that urda no longer wished to endanger his family—he had a sister in Koln as well as his mother—and that he came back to Prague to seek support and refuge with his comrades. How important, then, was the closed door he found when he went to call on the Moravecs? And yet, Aunt Moravec was expecting him, because when the concierge told her about the mysterious visitor, she asked if he had come from Koln. But she’d gone out… We can never know why things turn out the way they do—malicious and mischievous fate, or the powerful forces of some higher will. Still, by Tuesday, June 16, 1942, Karel urda has made his decision. He doesn’t know where his comrades are hiding. But he knows enough.

Karel urda crosses the road, presents himself to the guard standing in front of the heavy wooden gate, and tells him that he has important information to provide. Then he climbs the wide steps covered in red carpet that lead up to the vast entrance hall, and he is swallowed by the stone belly of the black palace.

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I don’t know when or why the father and son of the Moravec family returned to Prague. I guess they went away for just a few days. Perhaps it was the son’s impatience to help the parachutists that brought them back, or his unwillingness to leave his mother in Prague alone. Or perhaps it was the father’s work. It’s said that the father knew nothing of what was going on, but I can’t believe that. When he saw the men his wife welcomed into their house, he knew perfectly well they weren’t Boy Scouts. And besides, he asked his friends on several occasions for clothes or a bicycle or a doctor or a new hiding place. So the whole family took part in the struggle—including the eldest son, who lived in England and was an RAF pilot. He will die when his fighter plane crashes on June 7, 1944, the day after D-day. Nearly two years from now, in other words. In times like these, that’s an eternity away.

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urda has crossed the Rubicon, but he is not exactly being welcomed like a conquering hero. After being interrogated all night long—the Gestapo give him a good beating in recognition of the importance of his testimony—urda now waits quietly on a wooden bench in one of those dark corridors while they decide his fate. Left alone with him briefly, the requisitioned interpreter asks him a question:

“Why have you done this?”

“I couldn’t bear any more innocent people being murdered.”

And also for twenty million crowns. Which he will get.

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