“The taller of the two, Jan Kubiš, was twenty-seven years old and nearly six foot tall. He had blond hair and deep-set grey eyes that watched the world steadily…” et cetera. I’ll stop there. It’s a shame that Burgess wasted his time with clichés like this, because his book is undeniably well researched. I found two glaring errors—concerning Heydrich’s wife, whom he called Inga rather than Lina, and the color of his Mercedes, which he insists is dark green rather than black. I also spotted two dubious stories that I suspect Burgess of having invented, including a dark tale of swastikas branded on buttocks with a hot iron. But in other respects I learned a great deal about Gabčík and Kubiš’s life in Prague during the months before the assassination. It must be said that Burgess had an advantage over me: only twenty years after the events, he was able to talk to living witnesses. Yes, a few of them did survive.
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So, to cut a long story short, they jumped.
148
According to Eduard Husson, a reputable academic who is writing a biography of Heydrich, everything went wrong right from the beginning.
Gabčík and Kubiš are dropped a long way from the target area. They should have landed near Pilsen but actually end up a few miles from Prague. Now, you may say: well, that’s where the operation will take place, so in a way they’ve actually gained time. But such thinking just goes to show how little you know about secret operations. Their contacts in the Resistance are waiting for them in Pilsen. They don’t have an address in Prague. The people in Pilsen are supposed to make the introductions for them. So they are close to Prague, where they need to get to, but only after they’ve passed through Pilsen. They feel the absurdity of this roundabout journey every bit as much as you do, but they know it’s necessary all the same.
They feel it once they know where they are, but at this precise moment they don’t have the faintest idea. They land in a graveyard. They don’t know where to hide the parachutes, and Gabčík is limping badly because he’s fractured a toe landing on his native soil. They walk blindly and leave tracks. They bury the parachutes quickly under a snowdrift. The sun, they know, will soon rise: they are dangerously exposed and must find somewhere to hide.
They find a rocky shelter in a quarry. Protected from the snow and the cold but not from the Gestapo, they know they can’t stay here—but they don’t know where else to go. Strangers in their own land, lost, injured, and undoubtedly already the subject of a search—the Germans couldn’t have failed to hear the plane’s engines—the two men decide to wait. What else can they do? They consult the map, but it’s hard to imagine what they’re hoping for. To pinpoint the location of this tiny quarry? Their mission, hardly even begun, is already under threat of being aborted. Or, if we assume that they will never be discovered (which is a ridiculous supposition), of never getting started at all.
Anyway, they are discovered.
It’s a gamekeeper who finds them, early that morning. He heard the plane in the night, he found the parachutes in the graveyard, he followed their tracks in the snow. Now he enters the quarry. And, coughing, says to them: “Hello, lads!”
According to Eduard Husson, everything went wrong from the beginning, but they also had some good luck. The gamekeeper is a decent man. He knows he’s risking his life by doing so, but he’s going to help them.
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This gamekeeper is the first link in a long chain of Resistance fighters who will lead our two heroes to Prague, and to the Moravecs’ apartment.
The Moravec family consists of the father, the mother, and the youngest son, Ata. The eldest son is in England, flying a Spitfire. They are namesakes of Colonel Moravec, but not blood relations. Like him, however, they are resisting the German occupation.
And they’re not the only ones. Gabčík and Kubiš will meet lots of ordinary people ready to risk their lives in order to help them.
150
I’m fighting a losing battle. I can’t tell this story the way it should be told. This whole hotchpotch of characters, events, dates, and the infinite branching of cause and effect—and these people, these real people who actually existed. I’m barely able to mention a tiny fragment of their lives, their actions, their thoughts. I keep banging my head against the wall of history. And I look up and see, growing all over it—ever higher and denser, like a creeping ivy—the unmappable pattern of causality.
I examine a map of Prague, marking the locations of the families who helped and sheltered the parachutists. Almost all of them paid with their lives—men, women, and children. The Svatoš family, a few feet from the Charles Bridge; the Ogoun family, near the castle; the Novak, Moravec, Zelenka, and Fafek families, all farther east. Each member of each of these families would deserve his or her own book—an account of their involvement with the Resistance until the tragic dénouement of Mauthausen. How many forgotten heroes sleep in history’s great cemetery? Thousands, millions of Fafeks and Moravecs, of Novaks and Zelenkas …
The dead are dead, and it makes no difference to them whether I pay homage to their deeds. But for us, the living, it does mean something. Memory is of no use to the remembered, only to those who remember. We build ourselves with memory and console ourselves with memory.
No reader could possibly retain this list of names, so why write it? For you to remember them, I would have to turn them into characters. Unfair, but there you go. I know already that only the Moravecs, and perhaps the Fafeks, will find a place in my story. The Svatošes, the Novaks, the Zelenkas—not to mention all those whose names or existence I’m unaware of—will return to their oblivion. But in the end a name is just a name. I think of them all. I want to tell them. And if no one hears me, that doesn’t matter. Not to them, and not to me. One day, perhaps, someone in need of solace will write the story of the Novaks and the Svatošes, of the Zelenkas and the Fafeks.
151
On January 8, 1942, Gabčík (limping) and Kubiš walk upon Prague’s sacred earth for the first time. I’m sure they marvel at the city’s Baroque beauty. First, though, they must deal with the three great problems facing any secret mission: accommodation, provisions, and identification. London has equipped them with fake ID cards, but it’s not enough—far from it. In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1942, you must be able to produce a work permit. And, above all, if you are stopped in the daytime hanging around in the streets—which will often be the case for Gabčík and Kubiš during the coming months—you must have a very good reason not to be working. The Resistance talks to the doctor who treats Gabčík’s foot: he diagnoses an ulcer in Gabčík’s duodenum, and for Kubiš an inflamed gallbladder, thus establishing the two men’s inability to work. So their papers are in order and they’ve got money. Now they must find a place to stay. But as they will soon discover to their pleasure, there is no shortage of people willing to help them even in these dark times.
152
Don’t believe everything you’re told—especially when the Nazis are telling you. They tend to be wrong in one of two ways. Either, like big fat Göring, they are guilty of wishful thinking, or—like Goebbels Trismegistus (called “the human loudspeaker” by Joseph Roth)—they lie shamelessly for propagandist ends. And quite often they do both at the same time.
Heydrich is not immune to this Nazi trait. When he claims to have decapitated and neutralized the Czech Resistance, he probably believes what he’s saying—and it’s not completely false. Even so, it’s a somewhat hollow boast. On the night of December 28, 1941, when Gabčík injures himself in a clumsy collision with his native soil, the state of the Resistance in the Protectorate is worrying but not entirely hopeless. They still have a few cards up their sleeve.
For a start, Tri kralové (“the Three Kings”—the unified organization of Czech Resistance movements) is still operational, despite taking some heavy blows. The three kings are the heads of this organization: three former Czechoslovak army officers. On Heydrich’s arrival in January 1942, two of them are put out of action: one is shot, the other tor
tured in a Gestapo jail. But that leaves one—Václav Morávek (with a k at the end, thankfully, so he can’t be confused with Colonel Moravec, nor with the Moravec family, nor with Emanuel Moravec, the minister of education). He wears gloves all year round because one of his fingers was severed sliding down a lightning conductor to avoid a Gestapo patrol. The last of the three kings is intensely active in coordinating what remains of his network, and continues to risk his life. He is waiting for what his organization asked for months before—the arrival of the parachutists from London.
Morávek is also the conduit for the incredible information sent to London by one of the greatest spies of the Second World War—a high-level German Abwehr officer called Paul Thümmel (code name A54; alias René). He alone was able to warn Colonel Moravec of the Nazi invasions of Czechoslovakia, of Poland, of France (in May 1940), of Great Britain (planned for June 1940), and of the USSR (in June 1941). Unfortunately, the countries in question were not always able or willing to heed such warnings. But the quality of the information greatly impressed London, and it was only through Morávek that it could arrive—because A54 was based in Prague and, prudently, wanted to deal with only one Allied agent. So he is one of Beneš’s trump cards, and the president spends whatever it takes to keep him onside.
At the other end of the chain are the ordinary Resistance fighters—little people like you or me, except that they are willing to risk death by hiding comrades, storing materials, and delivering messages. They form a significant Czech shadow army, which can still be counted upon.
Gabčík and Kubiš may only be two men, charged with fulfilling a daunting mission. But they are not alone.
153
In a Prague apartment in the Smichov district, two men wait. They jump when the bell rings. One of them gets up and opens the door. A man walks in, quite tall for the time. It’s Kubiš.
“I am Ota,” he says.
“And I’m Jindra,” one of the men replies.
Jindra is the name of one of the most active internal Resistance groups, organized by a sport and physical culture association, the Sokols.
They pour tea for the newcomer. A heavy silence is finally broken by the man who introduced himself in the organization’s name:
“I would like you to notice that the house is guarded, and that we each have something in our pocket.”
Kubiš smiles and takes a pistol from his jacket. (In fact, he’s got another one up his sleeve.)
“I like toys too,” he says.
“Where have you come from?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why?”
“Our mission is secret.”
“But you’ve already told lots of people that you’ve come from England.”
“So what?”
A silence, presumably.
“Don’t be surprised that we don’t trust you. There are many double agents in this country.”
Kubiš says nothing. He doesn’t know these people. He may need their help, but he’s clearly decided that he’s not answerable to them.
“Do you know any Czech officers in England?”
Kubiš agrees to name a few. He responds more or less graciously to some other potentially embarrassing questions. The second man intervenes. He shows Kubiš a photo of his son-in-law, who’s gone to London. Kubiš recognizes him, or doesn’t recognize him, but he seems at ease because he is. The man who called himself Jindra speaks again:
“Are you from Bohemia?”
“No, from Moravia.”
“What a coincidence—me too!”
Another silence. Kubiš knows he’s being tested.
“Could you tell me whereabouts?”
“Near Třebíč,” Kubiš replies grumpily.
“I know that area. What would you say is unusual in the train station at Vladislav?”
“There’s a beautiful clump of rosebushes. I guess the station boss likes flowers.”
The two men start to relax. Kubiš adds:
“Don’t be offended by my silence. All I can tell you is the mission’s code name: Anthropoid.”
What’s left of the Czech Resistance tends to be guilty of wishful thinking. For once, it’s not wrong.
“You’ve come to kill Heydrich?” asks Jindra.
Kubiš is stunned:
“How do you know that?”
The ice is broken. The three men drink more tea. Now everyone who’s anyone in the Prague Resistance will be at the service of the two parachutists from London.
154
For fifteen years, I hated Flaubert. I held him responsible for a certain kind of French literature—devoid of grandeur and imagination, content to portray mediocrity, wallowing in the most boring sort of realism, reveling in the very petit bourgeois universe it claims to denounce. And then I read Salammbô, which immediately became one of my ten favorite books.
When I had the idea of going back to the Middle Ages to sketch the origins of Czech-German hostilities, I wanted to find a few examples of historical novels whose action takes place before the modern era. I thought again of Flaubert.
While composing Salammbô, Flaubert worries in his letters: “It’s History, I know that. But if a novel is as boring as a scientific book…” He also felt that he was writing “in a deplorable academic style,” and then “what bothers [him] is the psychological aspect of [his] story,” all the more so as he must “make people think in a language in which they never thought!” Regarding research: “When I research a word or an idea, I let my mind wander into infinite daydreams…” This problem goes hand in hand with that of veracity: “As for my archaeology, it will be ‘probable,’ that’s all. As long as no one can prove that what I’ve written is nonsense, that’s all I ask.” There I’m at a disadvantage: it’s easier to be proved wrong about the registration number of a Mercedes in the 1940s than the harnessing of an elephant in the third century before Christ.
Even so, I am comforted by the idea that Flaubert, long before me, writing his masterpiece, felt this same anguish and asked himself these same questions. I am also reassured when he writes: “Our worth should be measured by our aspirations more than our works.” That means I’m allowed to make a mess of my book. Everything should come together more quickly now.
155
Unbelievable—I’ve just found another novel about the assassination! It’s called Like a Man, and it’s by a certain David Chacko. The title is supposed to be a rough translation of the Greek word anthropoid. The book is extremely well researched. I get the impression the author has utilized everything currently known about Heydrich and the attack—even some fairly obscure (and sometimes questionable) theories such as the hypothesis that the bomb contained poison. I was greatly impressed by the mass of details he’s gathered and I’m inclined to think they’re authentic, as I haven’t found a single one that I know to be false. This has forced me to qualify my opinion of Seven Men at Daybreak, the Alan Burgess novel I had previously thought rather fanciful. I had been particularly skeptical about the swastika branded on Kubiš’s ass. I also condescendingly picked up on a glaring error regarding the color of Heydrich’s Mercedes, which the author claimed was green. But David Chacko’s novel agrees with Burgess’s on both points. And since I haven’t otherwise been able to spot a single mistake in his book—even with very specific details that I had imagined, in a fit of slightly delirious pride, were perhaps known only to me—I am bound to trust what he writes. Suddenly I start questioning myself. But this Mercedes—it was black, I’m sure. Not only in the army museum at Prague, where the car was exhibited, but also in the numerous photos that I checked. Obviously, in a black-and-white photo, it would be easy to confuse black with dark green. And admittedly there is some controversy over the exhibited Mercedes: the museum claims it’s the original, but certain people dispute this, saying that it’s been re-created (with the blown tire and the smashed rear right door) as an exact replica. But even if it is a replica, surely they would have made sure they got the color right! Anywa
y, I’m probably attaching too much importance to what is, at the end of the day, just a background detail. I know that. In fact it’s a classic symptom of neurosis. I must be anal-retentive. Let’s move on …
When Chacko writes: “The castle could be entered in several ways, but Heydrich, the showman, always came and went by the main gate, where the guard was,” I am fascinated by his certainty. I wonder: “How does he know? How can he be so sure?”
Another example. This is a dialogue between Gabčík and Heydrich’s Czech chef. The chef is telling Gabčík about the security surrounding Heydrich in his own house. “Heydrich scorns protection, but the SS take their job seriously. He’s their leader, you know. They treat him like a god. He looks like they say they all want to look. The Blond Beast. They actually call him that in the service. You won’t be able to truly understand Germans until you realize they mean it as a compliment.”
HHhH: A Novel Page 17