She glared at him, not wishing to have a conversation, before restacking her albums. “And secondly: don’t touch my personal belongings ever again. Your hands are filthy.”
“Please. Give me a chance,” he insisted.
“Why should I?”
“I have good news.”
“And that would be?”
“I have requested permission to have the tank pulled back to the fields near Ceske Krumlov.”
“Oh? When will this happen?” Ayna remained stiff.
“It must go through the proper channels. The typical paperwork must be processed. Procedures, you know. How long it will take? A few days? A week? Remain hopeful, Ayna.”
“I’m not that stupid.”
The people outside her home had justification to hiss. Her mother had crossed the line. Socializing with the KGB was wrong. While she did not directly blame the colonel for Sascha’s death, Ayna believed he had provoked her friend into a fight. And that made him an accessory to a murder.
“This is my home,” Ayna said. “You aren’t welcome here, regardless of what my mother has led you to believe.”
“Your mother has given us her blessing.” It sounded more like a warning.
“Blessing?”
“To take you on a picnic.”
“You can’t be serious.” Ayna was horrified. A picnic? With him?
“I know a beautiful spot along the river. You would enjoy the view. We might sit and talk about the tank. And about other concerns you have.”
“No. Never.” Ayna shook her head, throwing her mother a sharp eye.
“He means well,” Nadezda insisted.
“You’ve gone mad.”
“It’s complicated. The Germans are coming to Mersk.”
“I would sooner drown myself in the river than spend time with him.” Ayna noticed her underwear drawer was cracked open and closed it.
“Most of this abhorrent pop music you listen to,” Dal said, gazing at the record, “has been banned by the Communist Party.”
“Banned?”
“Yes.”
“What a joke.”
“It’s no laughing matter.” The blood was rushing to his face. “I would strongly advise you to get rid of this counter-revolutionary paraphernalia. Should word get out─”
“Unless we have official Party business to discuss or unless you intend to arrest me . . .” She taunted him by holding out her wrists, which shocked Nadezda. “I would like you to leave my home at once.”
Dal’s lips tightened. He put on his hat and gave a polite nod. “Good day, ladies,” he said and strode down the stairs.
Emotions overwhelmed Ayna. Terror. Panic. Rage. Resentment. “How could you, mother? How could you let the KGB into our home?”
“It was tea,” Nadezda said. “A simple conversation. I was worried you had made enemies.”
“We all have enemies.”
“I wanted to make some peace.”
“There you go again.”
“You’ve created a mess. Someone must throw some water on your fire.”
“Stop being such a conformist.”
“You shouldn’t have gone to the villa this morning. Do you understand what you’ve done?”
“I made a stand for Jiri.”
“Why? Because of a tank?”
“The tank represents enslavement,” Ayna said. “Today a tank. Tomorrow chains.”
“You and your rhetoric.”
“I also went there to honor Sascha, something no one else seems interested in doing.”
“Then your reasons are doubly wrong.”
“How can you say that?”
“It was Sascha’s choice to assault the soldier. The Russians were only defending themselves.”
“Ridiculous. You think like everyone else.”
“That boy should’ve known better than to provoke a fight.” Nadezda pointed a finger. “He was always a hothead. And stupid if you ask me. All this foolhardy talk against Moscow? All those secret meetings at the tavern. Well, they weren’t so secret. It finally caught up with him.”
“Now I’ve heard everything.”
“This is a problem for the president, not for a country girl like you.”
“The president got us into this mess.”
“Regardless, we must be smarter than the soldiers or more violence will come.” Nadezda was flustered. “If you push them, they will arrest you, then Jiri will become an orphan, too.”
This hit hard. Ayna walked to the bed and sat with her head buried in her hands. There was no denying her mother’s grim warning about Jiri’s safety. “You’re giving me a headache. Go away. I want to be alone.”
“Father Sudek has spoken with the police. They have cleared the Russians from any wrongdoing. There will be no investigation into Sascha’s death.” Nadezda wore a long face. “This is how we live. Sascha should’ve known better.”
“Leave,” Ayna said again. “I need some time to myself.”
Although it would be many weeks before the examination rooms officially met with the ministry’s standards, and before a patient table and other necessary medical equipment arrived, Milan decided to break with regulations and opened the doors to the clinic the next morning. He posted a sign in the clinic’s window:
VACCINATIONS TODAY
By 11:00 a.m., the lobby was jammed with people from all across the valley. A table occupied the center of the room, along with two folding metal chairs. Milan sat in one chair; the other chair was reserved for patients, most of them children. He had already given thirty-two vaccine injections for whooping cough and the line snaking out the door was growing longer.
“They’ve come in from the villages,” Josef said, standing beside the table with a jar of black licorice. “Most of these folks have gone years without seeing a doctor. Whether it’s too long a bus ride to the hospital or another bad excuse, some have chosen to live with an illness.”
“Those days are officially over,” Milan said. “Better times are ahead of us, brother.”
There was a buzz of excitement in the room. Milan had hoped the decision to open the clinic would provide an encouraging jolt to the gloomy and openly frustrated public morale. Judging by all the cheerful faces standing in line, it seemed to have worked. He rubbed a swab of alcohol on a six-year-old girl’s shoulder, poked the needle into her skin, and then placed a bandage over the prick mark.
Josef gazed at the people standing in line and sighed. “This could go on all day.”
“I imagine so.”
“Do you have time to see them all?”
“I’m going nowhere, Josef. Not until the work is done.”
“Well then, what can I get you? To keep you comfortable?”
Milan wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. “A cool breeze would help.” Even with open windows, the clinic was stifling hot and reeked of sweat and body odor.
After telling Bedrich to get a floor fan from the bakery, Josef said, “Father Sudek was right about you.”
“Oh?”
“He says you’re an unselfish man.”
“Lies. Don’t believe him.”
“And humble.”
“Please. Enough. You’re embarrassing me.”
“Okay. But there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask . . .”
“What is it?”
Josef raised an eyebrow. “Why dedicate your life to the sick? Your hours are so long. It seems an underappreciated job.”
Milan flinched. He always hated that often asked question: why did you become a doctor? How could he explain what had happened that snowy day in 1944 when he led a team of resistance soldiers to derail a Nazi freight train?
The plan had been to blow the tracks and heave a satchel of grenades into the targeted freight car.
The objective was to annihilate its cargo of radio communications gear.
. . . and then run like hell.
On paper, it was a routine mission. The intelligence seemed reliable and the weath
er, even with eight inches of snowfall, worked to their advantage. They were seasoned warriors. All of them. When someone fell, another fighter stepped in. They had ambushed several freight trains and supply trucks during 1943 and 1944. Three weeks earlier, in fact, they had attacked a convoy on the road near Pilsen and killed several German soldiers.
Yet none of their work seemed as crucial to victory as destroying the cargo on that particular train. The Nazis had their backs to the wall. They were a major blow or two from defeat.
For the mission, Milan had packed the satchel with nine grenades. It was more than enough to destroy the equipment. Later, on the way to the ambush zone, he joked about slipping in an extra grenade for good luck.
Except he was unlucky.
The train’s communications gear had been swapped, he learned the next morning, with twelve Roma orphans on their way to an internment camp in Poland.
Dead.
All of them.
Dead because there was an unexpected snow flurry and bullets zipping above his head.
Dead because he had shot the lock off the door and thrown the grenades into the railcar without looking.
Dead because when things are routine you don’t expect the unexpected.
And that high-pitched scream? The voice that sounded like a little girl? He bowed his head and stared at the concrete floor. “It’s just the way things worked out for me,” Milan finally said, a lump in his throat. “Now, which child is next?”
DAL WAS DRIVING past the square, on his way to Ceske Budejovice for a meeting with district Party leaders, when he witnessed the line of people snaking around the block. “Unbelievable,” he said to himself, abruptly parking the GAZ truck on the street near the café. “I gave the doctor specific instructions to keep things orderly. ‘Don’t move too quickly,’ I told him. And he responds by drawing crowds? By inciting a raging mob outside the clinic?”
He mopped the perspiration from his face with a handkerchief before climbing from the truck with his black baton.
MILAN HEARD grumbling and looked toward the door. It was Colonel Dal. The colonel was storming into the clinic like a man possessed, roaring at the women and children standing in the way. Now what? He set aside a needle and stood between Josef and Oflan. Thinking trouble, he asked, “What brings you to the clinic, comrade? Vaccination?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“I’m irritated.” Dal squeezed his baton. “Why, you ask? Because my quiet Bohemian village is no longer quiet.”
“Well, I never actually asked why you’re irritated. But since you mention it, what seems to be the problem?”
“Take a look out the window.”
“Oh, something wrong?”
“It looks like the gypsy carnival has come to town.”
“I don’t understand?”
Dal pointed toward the large window near the entrance. It had a broad view of the square, the trees lining the street, the cars, the line of people. “The square has become a parking lot,” he said. “Your patients are obstructing traffic.”
“I can explain.”
“There could not possibly be a good explanation.”
“This is a proud day for you, comrade.” Milan savored the cynicism in his voice. He emphasized the word comrade as though speaking to a commanding officer. “We are fighting Bordetella pertussis this afternoon, otherwise known as whooping cough.”
The colonel gazed at Josef and Oflan, then over his shoulder to the families standing in line, and back to Milan. “Why didn’t you inform me of this public event?”
“It slipped my mind.”
“That is no excuse.”
“I don’t know what to say. I have a clinic to run.”
“This is severe. Every mother and child in the Bohemian Forest has come to town.”
“For a good reason.” Milan meant it. “I’m amazed. After all these years, the children are finally receiving quality treatment.”
Dal swatted his baton against the desk. “Is this your idea of keeping things low key?”
Milan was taken aback. “Like any Czech, I’m simply carrying on with my work.”
Dal turned to the people in the room. “Everyone must go home,” he said. “If you are not a resident of Mersk, you have precisely ten minutes to leave town. Or else be arrested.”
Mothers began to grab their children and flee.
“You have no authority to close the clinic,” Milan insisted. “Your military jurisdiction, which isn’t legal anyway, doesn’t include compromising the public health.” He reminded Dal how the Soviets had claimed to arrive as a liberating force, not an occupying army, and mentioned the names of important government officials who supported the clinic. He cited health laws put in place for the public good, emphasizing the need for them. By the time Milan finished speaking, the colonel wore a frown, disinterested in laws and unimpressed with his name dropping.
Dal said, “I let you have your way with this clinic because I trusted you would move slowly, that you would keep me informed every step of the way.” He leaned menacingly into Milan. “On the contrary, your mob interferes with my ability to manage the affairs of Mersk.”
“That’s a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?”
“I can’t have a rabble on my hands.”
Josef injected, “A rabble? People are in desperate need of the doctor’s good services.”
Milan placed a hand on Josef’s shoulder and spoke with a calm voice. “These families mean no trouble to your security nor do they intend to interfere with any Warsaw Pact operations. I assure you─”
“From this point forward, lines are forbidden in Mersk. Any line. Here. At the bakery. At the grocery store. Everywhere. I will not tolerate them.” Dal stepped away from Milan and kicked the table. Needles, swabs and vials of medicine flew in the air. “All visits to this clinic must be made by appointment.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Milan shook his head, looking at the medical paraphernalia scattered across the floor.
“I suggest you schedule them wisely.”
“Have you lost your mind? The ministry─”
“The ministry is in turmoil,” Dal said. “Exactly who do you think will be running the affairs of your country by this time next week?”
“I have children to care for, colonel. You’re interfering with official directives from the Ministry of Health.” Milan brushed against Dal, who was taller than him. “Until my superiors tell me otherwise, this clinic will operate as any clinic in Czechoslovakia operates.”
“I’m putting you on notice, Doctor Husak. Compromising my mission would be a very serious mistake.”
Milan wanted to fire away an insult, instead he bit his lip, and with a deadpan voice said, “These doors are to remain open for any visitor ──scheduled or not. Furthermore, I will visit Zdenek Seifert tomorrow to administer his insulin. If you have a problem with this or with my clinic, then I suggest you contact Minister Precan at once.”
Milan thought back to the 1950s, to the progress made on eradicating malaria, which had been mostly eliminated from Czechoslovakia by the early 1960s. He recalled other mosquito-borne viruses, like the Tahyna virus, a disease that had been isolated in a Slovakian village ten years ago, causing patients to suffer from acute fevers, vomiting, headaches, and neurological infections. He was also familiar with the deadly West Nile virus, which had yet to be reported in Czechoslovakia, although was endemic to many neighboring countries. There was always concern the disease would eventually reach Bohemia.
He had grounds to be concerned. He worried the heavy summer rains had created the perfect breeding environments for the mosquitoes, which thrived in wet areas across the valley. It was possible some of the flying insects were carrying deadly diseases, including malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, and the West Nile virus.
Right away, he saw what looked like an infection on the colonel’s neck. It would explain his flu-like symptoms and delusional state of mind. He remembered a
serious case from three years ago when a man from Hodonin had suffered an inflammation of the brain after being bitten by a mosquito. Even though such cases were rare, the infected man had experienced a high fever and suffered from hallucinations until he eventually leaped to his death from a hotel balcony.
And Dal’s health? Milan was so infuriated by his unrealistic demands to meet with patients by “appointment only” that he neglected to offer an examination──which would have been the right thing to do. In the meantime, the colonel had stormed away from the clinic and driven out of town.
“Once again, the KGB meddles in our affairs,” Oflan said.
“The soldiers have crossed the line,” Josef agreed. “This is a Czech clinic.”
Oflan sat on a chair. His eyes were downcast, shoulders slumped. “What can we do? Father Sudek prevents us from defending ourselves.”
“I’d like to clobber him,” Milan said. “Except that would get us nowhere. He’d arrest me. Then he’d use the arrest as an excuse to close the clinic.”
“Resisting the impulse to fight was a good decision,” Oflan said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Father Sudek would approve. Picking and choosing one’s battles is always important.”
“However we must spread the word,” Milan went on. “That all are welcome at this clinic. We can’t live in fear of these mongrels.”
“Perhaps we could shut off the water to the villa,” Josef said. “That would inconvenience them. Possibly force them to move on.”
Milan grunted. “And where do you think they would go? They would move to your home. Or maybe to Oflan’s home. They won’t leave Mersk. Trust me. They’re here until they receive orders to leave.”
“I’m ashamed.” Josef was gathering the needles from the floor. “Ashamed of the army for allowing this to happen.”
“We are in agreement, O’brother.” Oflan nodded eagerly. “As usual, in utter agreement.”
Josef and Oflan began to discuss the army’s unwillingness to defend the homeland. They agreed it was an act of betrayal but were unsure who to blame. Meanwhile something outside the window caught Milan’s attention──the beautiful cellist he had almost killed.
The Thin Wall: A POW/MIA Truth Novel Page 14