Canceled Czech

by Lawrence Block

  “I am not a fool.”

  “Good. The guards are unconscious downstairs. We have very little time. You must trust me and come with me, and I will get you back to Lisbon.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “I thought you said you were not a fool.”

  “You could be trying to trap me, and then I will be shot trying to escape.”

  “Do you want to stay here?”

  “No,” he said gloomily. “I will come with you.”

  The guard on the floor was stirring. I gave him another love tap behind the ear and he went back to sleep. Kotacek followed me out of his little cell. I closed the iron door, locked it, and pocketed the key. I led him down the stairs. He came very slowly and clumsily, and I kept pausing and looking back to make sure he was still there. A turn or two from the bottom I coughed a warning to Zvi, and heard bodies falling in response. When we reached the foot of the stairs Zvi was crumpled up in a lifeless heap.

  “He is dead?”

  “Only sleeping.”

  “You should have killed him,” Kotacek said. “The only good Czech is a dead one. Give me your pistol. I will kill him for you.”

  “We have no time.”

  “A pity.”

  The doors were closed. I opened them, and Kotacek walked through ahead of me, pausing to glance at Gershon on the left and Haim on the right. “Two more of the swine,” he said. “You can always identify a Czech at a glance. See the characteristic shape of the skull? The cheekbones? Hah. Some day we shall put a plastic bubble over all of Western Bohemia and then we shall turn on the gas. Hah! Too much trouble to load them onto trucks. Too much trouble!”

  He was a charmer.

  We walked down the path toward the front gate. Gershon and Haim lay in their places, and Ari…

  Where was Ari?

  He should have been at his post at the front gate. I looked to either side of the path and couldn’t find him.

  “Wait right here,” I said.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I have to check something.”

  “Are we safe?”

  “Sure. Just wait here.”

  I left him at the gate and raced back to the steps. I bent down beside Gershon. In Hebrew I asked him what the hell happened to Ari.

  “He went with the girl.”

  “With Greta? Why?”

  “Why do you think?”

  I sprinted back to Kotacek. If the damned girl had dragged Ari along because she couldn’t keep her legs together for another half-hour, I would throttle her. She was supposed to have a taxi waiting at the curb. We had about five minutes on the Israelis—I knew they’d change their clothes and come after us the minute we were out of sight. She was supposed to be there, ready and waiting with a car. Instead she had Ari along for company.

  I hurried Kotacek along. We passed through the gate and I let it swing behind us. He asked where I was taking him. To safety, I said. I was a hero, he told me. I would be rewarded. Perhaps he would make me his personal aide, and I could assist him with his correspondence. Would I like that? I told him nothing would please me more, and suggested he walk a little faster.

  “I am walking as fast as I can.”

  “All right.”

  “You should show more respect to your superiors, Tanner. That is your name? Tanner?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is your rank?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Your rank. Private, corporal, sergeant—”

  “Oh. Captain.”

  “Get us out of here safely and you will be a major. I solemnly guarantee it.”

  He was impossible. I wanted to tell him to cut the talk and save his energies for walking, but I didn’t even bother to try. We crossed the street and headed for the house. Already they were behind us. Gershon and Haim and Zvi, back in their civilian clothes again, and coming through the gate on our trail.

  In front of the house, just ahead of us, was a Russian-made sedan with the motor running.

  I couldn’t believe it. How had she done it? What had she done with Ari? Where had she found the car? It didn’t matter. We just had time. They were on the other side of the street. We could duck into the car and be gone before they knew what was happening….

  Oh.

  Greta was on the passenger’s side. And seated next to her, behind the wheel, was Ari.

  He rolled the window down. “Here’s the car,” he said. “I came back with Greta and she told me you wanted a taxi, but I got us a private car instead.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Ari is very clever,” Greta said. “He knows how to start a car without a key. He used the tiniest piece of wire.” I couldn’t help it, her eyes added. He just came along, and what could I do?

  And Ari said, “Why did you want the car, Evan?”

  I looked over my shoulder. Gershon and Zvi and Haim were crossing the street, their faces aglow with comradely smiles. “For later on,” I said, weakly, “when we all make our getaway.”

  “So we get the car ahead of time?” He nodded approval. “You are a good planner, Evan. Excellent.”

  Zvi did not want to hold a trial. I think he was still upset because we had not permitted him to kill the Czech guards. “What is the point of it?” he demanded. “We all know he is guilty. We all know we are going to hang him. Why have a trial?”

  “Because it is a necessary procedure. We are not barbarians.”

  “Did his kind ever hold trials?”

  “Would you place yourself in his class?”

  “It is not the same thing.”

  “My dear Zvi, it is precisely the same thing.”

  “Bah.” Zvi turned his back on Gershon, who had been upholding the principle of law and order. “You can see the folly of it, can’t you?” he asked me. “Among other things, the butcher does not speak Hebrew. What does he speak? Slovak?”

  A few other languages as well, I thought, but Zvi had given me an idea. “Only Slovak,” I told him.

  “So! How can we have a trial?”

  “Evan speaks Slovak,” Haim said.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we might as well have this farce of a trial. You will interrogate him, do you understand? We will give the questions, and you will repeat them to him and translate his answers for us. Is that all right with you, Evan? It should not take long.”

  “I’m willing.”

  “And then,” Zvi said, “we take the rope and stretch his neck.”

  “Providing he is found guilty.”

  “You are joking, Haim.”

  “Well…”

  We were in the basement. Kotacek, wholly incapable of understanding what was going on around him, sat in the same chair in which I had regained consciousness a night ago. Greta was near the door motioning to me. I went to see what she wanted.

  “I couldn’t help it,” she said. “He insisted on coming with me.”

  “I know.”

  “I couldn’t get rid of him. I told him he should stay at his post, but he wanted to come with me. Do you want to change your clothes? I brought your clothes.”

  “I’ll change later.”

  “You look very pretty in your uniform. At least we got the car, but it is no good now, is it? I am sorry. He wanted to make love to me; that is why he came with me. The one time in my life I had something better to do, and he wanted to make love to me!”

  “It’s all right.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “We’re going to try him.”

  “For what?”

  “For killing Jews.”

  “Him. He couldn’t kill a gnat. What is going to happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They were readying the scene for the trial. Kotacek’s chair was moved to the far wall, four other chairs grouped in a semicircle facing him. I moved toward them all, scooped the pencil-beam flashlight from the table top. I hefted it in one hand and slapped it against the palm
of the other hand.

  “Talk to him,” Ari said.

  “What should I tell him?”

  “Explain that this is a court of law, and tell him the charges against him…” He went on to give me a long message for our prisoner. “Make sure he understands what is going on,” he added. “He does not look particularly intelligent.”

  I stood in front of Kotacek. “Be very calm,” I said in Slovak. “Look only at me and do not say anything just now. We are in very dangerous trouble right now. These men you see here are Jews.” His lip curled in a sneer. “Don’t say anything. Listen to me. You have to trust me. Nod if you understand.” He nodded. “Good. If you cooperate, I think I know a way to get out of here. But you will have to do as I say. Do you understand?”

  “If you are quick with your revolver,” he said, “you can murder all of these Jewish swine before you know it.”

  Gershon touched my arm. “What did he say?”

  “He says that he is sorry for whatever may have happened in time of war, but he was only following orders.”

  “They all followed orders,” Zvi said. “This is a farce. Why is it that no one ever gave an order? Ask him if he signed the order consigning the Jewish population of Bratislava to Belsen.”

  I looked at Kotacek. “I have a flashlight in my hands,” I said. “I am going to shine it in your eyes. You must look directly into the beam. Do not take your eyes off it for an instant. Do you understand?”

  He nodded.

  “He admits it?”

  “He does. What else shall I ask him?”

  I pointed the pencil-beam light at Kotacek. I moved the switch to the middle position, for sending code, and I worked the little button rhythmically, a nice steady tempo, flashing the light monotonously on and off, on and off, and keeping the beam directed right between Kotacek’s eyes.

  “Ask him about his role in the extermination of the ghetto of Spisska Nova Ves. And the ghetto of Presov.”

  I said, “Stare at the light, straight at the light, keep your eyes directly on the light.”

  “But what is the point?”

  It wasn’t getting to him. I flashed faster, upped the tempo. The frequency of the flashes was supposed to have something to do with it. I didn’t really believe it would work, but I considered it a slightly more realistic prospect than divine intercession, and without one of the two we were lost. Of course he would get a shock when they put the rope around his neck, but it might be too late by then. And it might not send him into a seizure anyway.

  “Ask him if he also ordered the extermination of the Gypsies, and the Slovak Socialists, and of thirty-five thousand Ruthenians, and…”

  I speeded up the frequency of flashes again as Haim completed his question. When I saw Kotacek’s eyes glaze I knew I had him. I held the tempo steady, worked my thumb in and out on the flasher button, and his eyes rolled and his mouth dropped open and I had him, I had him. He tried to stand up and barely got halfway out of his chair before his hand flew to his chest and a moan escaped his lips and he pitched face forward onto the basement floor.

  “What has happened?”

  “It looks like his heart. Is he all right?”

  I eased my way backward, away from Kotacek. I wanted to get out of the center of attention and put the flashlight aside before someone thought to wonder why I had been flashing it in his eyes. I could bluff it off as an investigative technique, but I was as happy not to have to do it. Meanwhile, they could examine Kotacek and assure themselves that he was good and dead.

  “He is dead!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You think I have not seen enough corpses to tell? No pulse, no heartbeat, no breathing. I would say that he has had a heart attack. Perhaps a coronary thrombosis, but I could not tell for certain.”

  “Not poison? All of them carry it, you know. A capsule of cyanide in a hollow tooth…”

  “Cyanide leaves them with a blue face. I would say a heart attack, but who knows? It could be some other poison.”

  “So he has cheated the rope?”

  “Does it matter? He is dead.”

  “But not by our hands, under sentence of our courts.”

  “Not under a Czech court either. And he died in our courtroom. Is that not the same thing?”

  “It is not the same thing at all.”

  “Why not? Show me the difference.”

  “He had not been found guilty, sentence was not passed, and he was not executed. Otherwise”—palms spread sarcastically—“otherwise you are quite correct. Otherwise it is precisely the same.”

  “Then we shall continue,” Gershon said solemnly. “The defendant no longer is required to play an active role in the proceedings—”

  “Which is fortunate,” Zvi said dryly.

  “Please. His role is finished, as we have all heard his testimony. You will bear me out, Evan, that he has pleaded guilty to all charges leveled against him?”

  “He did mention extenuating circumstances….”

  “But he admitted his guilt?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Good. Now it is upon us to reach a verdict, and then to pass sentence. I vote guilty, for my own part, and advise the death penalty. Zvi?”

  “This is absurd. Guilty, death penalty.”

  “Ari?”

  “Guilty, death.”

  “Evan?”

  “Guilty, death.”

  “Haim?”

  “If I said twenty years in prison, what would you do? I’m sorry. Guilty and death, yes, by all means.”

  Gershon smiled. “You see? It is unanimous. The prisoner has been found guilty and has been sentenced to death. Sentence will be carried out now by means of hanging. You, Zvi, get the rope, and we will hang him from that beam there just as we had planned. Ari, give me a hand with him. Evan…”

  This was too much. He was alive, but they thought he was dead. So they were going to hang him anyway and kill him in the process. I felt it was time to assert myself.

  “That is barbaric,” I said. “We are not barbarians. We do not hang dead men.”

  “It is the sentence. Alive or dead—”

  “Sheer nonsense. He was tried and convicted and sentenced; that is sufficient. He died while awaiting execution, perhaps of a heart attack, perhaps induced by remorse for his crimes”—that, I thought, would be the day—“or perhaps in fear of the retribution he so justly deserved. It does not matter. Our organization has been the instrument of his death acting in the name of the Jewish nation and Jews throughout the world, and that is enough.”

  “His kind buried living men. Why not hang a dead one?”

  “We are not his kind.”

  It went on this way for a few minutes. I was arguing nicely, but couldn’t have carried them by myself. Surprisingly, it was Zvi who came in on my side. His enthusiasm was evidently confined to the execution of living persons; once an enemy was dead, it ceased to interest him. Between the two of us, Zvi and I carried the rest.

  “But there is one thing we may do,” Zvi added.

  “What?”

  “An old custom of our people. Do you recall in the scriptures when Saul slew his thousands of the Philistines and David his tens of thousands? Do you remember what was done to the fallen enemy?”

  No one seemed to remember. I remembered, but said nothing.

  “Evan, perhaps you know. You are from America, are you not? You know what it is that the American Indians did to defeated enemy tribes?”

  “They scalped them,” I said, “but I don’t see—”

  “This is similar. But our people have brought back as trophies something other than the scalp. An Indian might return to his village with the scalp of one of his tribesmen and no one would know the difference. But a Jew could not take this from another Jew, because another Jew would not have it to lose. You know what I mean, Evan, do you not?”

  I nodded.

  And gradually it dawned on the others. “But we don’t have a rabbi,” someone object
ed.

  “Fool, we don’t make a b’rucha over him, either. It is not a religious ceremony. It is an act of military triumph. Who will do it?”

  “My uncle was a mohel,” Ari said, “but—”

  “Then you may do it.”

  “Must I?”

  “Don’t you want to? It’s an honor.”

  “The honor should be yours.”

  “Evan?”

  “It was your idea. Go ahead, Zvi.”

  And so he went ahead. We rolled Kotacek over on his back—and I prayed that he wouldn’t pick that moment to come out of his funk—and Zvi took down his trousers and undershorts and exposed him.

  “Someone give me a knife.”

  Someone gave him a knife. Greta had joined our little circle and was pressing against me, watching the proceedings with excited curiosity. Her eyes never left the theater of operations. I thought that corpses did not bleed and wondered if cataleptics did. This one didn’t.

  So we crouched there, in a basement in Prague, and Zvi used the knife and, effectively if awkwardly, brought to completion the circumcision of Janos Kotacek.

  Chapter 11

  Evan darling,” she said, “there are some things I do not understand.”

  We were alone now. Well, not entirely alone; Kotacek, snug in the arms of living death, lay motionless a few yards from us. But my fellow Sternists had left. With them on their way, I was able to relax for the first time. As long as they remained with us in the basement, I kept waiting for Kotacek to come out of his funk and get himself executed all over again. Once they had finished their experiment in surgery, I couldn’t get rid of them fast enough.

  And they were in no rush to be gone. Ari still had hopes of horizontal pleasantries with Greta, a thought which had apparently occurred to one or two of his comrades as well. Zvi was concerned about the disposal of the corpse. I insisted that it was dangerous for them to stay and selflessly assumed the task of tucking Kotacek’s corpse into the gentle waters of the Vltava. They felt I was taking an unnecessary risk. “We can all do it,” Zvi said, “and then we can all leave together in the car.” I told him to take the car, explaining that I had to get Greta back to Germany. We clasped hands all around, and each of them kissed Greta with rather more than pure fraternal affection. “You must come to Israel,” Ari insisted. “You will be truly welcome there, Greta.” She agreed that she would love to see their country. They all kissed her again, and felt her body against them, and remembered how grand she had looked, all soft and nude, in the arms of one Czech guard after another. I didn’t think I would ever get rid of them, but, reluctantly, they left.