HHhH: A Novel

by Laurent Binet

  In the gallery, three men are showered in a rain of stained glass. Yes, only three men—Kubiš of Anthropoid, Opalka of Out Distance, and Bublik of Bioscope—but they know exactly what they have to do: bar access to the staircase (Opalka is stuck with that job), spend as little ammunition as possible, and kill as many Nazis as they can. Outside, their assailants are growing wild with impatience. When the machine guns go silent, the next wave surges into the nave. Pannwitz yells: “Attacke! Attacke!” Short, judicious bursts of fire are enough to push them back. The Germans rush into the church and immediately rush out again, squealing like puppies. Between the two attacks, the German machine guns spit out long, heavy bursts of fire, eating into the stone and shredding everything else. Kubiš and his two comrades—unable to return fire, or to do anything but wait for the storm to pass—protect themselves as best they can, hiding behind thick columns. Luckily for them, the SS squadrons can’t expose themselves to this covering fire either, so the MG42s neutralize the attackers just as much as they do the defenders. The situation is extremely precarious for the three parachutists, but as minutes turn into hours, they continue to hold out.

  Karl Hermann Frank arrives at the scene. He’d been thinking, perhaps a little naively, that everything would be over by now. Instead, he is stunned to discover the most unbelievable bedlam on the streets, with Pannwitz sweating in his civilian suit, loosening his tie, and yelling, “Attacke! Attacke!” The assaults crash against the church like waves, one after another. You can see the relief on the faces of the injured when they’re dragged from this hell and taken to the medical center. Frank’s face, by contrast, looks anything but relieved. The sky is blue, it’s a beautiful day, but the thunder of weaponry must have woken the entire population. Who knows what they’ll be saying about this in town? Things are not looking good. As is traditional in a crisis, the boss gives his subordinate a good dressing-down. The terrorists must be neutralized immediately. One hour later, bullets are still whistling from all directions. Pannwitz screams ever louder: “Attacke! Attacke!” But the SS have now realized that they are never going to take the staircase, so they change their tactics. The nest has to be cleaned out from below. Covering fire, assault, fusillade, grenades tossed upward until the most skillful (or the luckiest) grenadier hits the bull’s-eye. After three hours of battle, a series of explosions finally brings silence to the gallery. For a long time, nobody dares move. Finally, it’s decided to send someone up to see. The soldier ordered to climb the staircase waits, resigned yet anxious, for the burst of gunfire that will kill him. But it doesn’t come. He enters the gallery. When the smoke clears, he discovers three motionless bodies: one a corpse, the other two wounded and unconscious. Opalka is dead, but Bublik and Kubiš are still breathing. Pannwitz calls an ambulance. He never expected to get this chance; now he must take advantage of it. The men must be saved so they can be interrogated. One has broken legs and the other’s in equally bad shape. The ambulance tears through the streets of Prague, its siren screaming, but by the time it reaches the hospital Bublik is dead. Twenty minutes later, Kubiš, too, succumbs to his wounds.

  Kubiš is dead. I wish I didn’t have to write that. I would have liked to get to know him better. If only I could have saved him. According to witnesses, there was a boarded-up door at the end of the gallery that led to the neighboring buildings, and which might have allowed the three men to escape. If only they’d gone through that door! History is the only true casualty: you can reread it as much as you like, but you can never rewrite it. Whatever I do, whatever I say, I will never bring Jan Kubiš back to life—brave, heroic Jan Kubiš, the man who killed Heydrich. It has given me no pleasure at all to write this scene. Long, laborious weeks I’ve spent on it, and for what? Three pages of comings and goings in a church, and three deaths. Kubiš, Opalka, Bublik—they died as heroes, but they died all the same. I don’t even have time to mourn them, because history waits for no man.

  The Germans search through the rubble and find nothing. They dump the body of the third man on the pavement and bring Čurda along to identify him. The traitor lowers his head and mumbles: “Opalka.” Pannwitz is delighted. He’s struck lucky. He presumes that the two men in the ambulance are the two assassins, whose names Čurda gave up during the interrogation: Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. He has no idea that Gabčík is just beneath his feet.

  When the shooting stopped, Gabčík realized his friend was dead. None of them would ever let the Gestapo take them alive. Now he waits alongside Valčík and his two other comrades—Jan Hruby of Operation Bioscope and Jaroslav Svarc of Operation Tin, the latter having just been sent by London to assassinate Emanuel Moravec, the collaborationist minister—for the Germans either to burst into the crypt or to leave without having flushed them out.

  Above them the search goes on, but still they haven’t found anything. The church looks like it’s been hit by an earthquake, and the trapdoor to the crypt is concealed beneath a carpet that nobody thinks to lift. When you don’t know what you’re looking for, you are far less likely to find it. And of course the Germans’ nerves have been sorely tested. Everybody thinks that there is probably nothing more to do here: the mission is over and Pannwitz is about to suggest to Frank that they pack up and go home when one of his men finds something and brings it to him. It’s a piece of clothing—I don’t even know if it’s a jacket, a sweater, a shirt, or a pair of socks—that he discovered in a corner of the church. The policeman’s instinct is immediately on alert. I don’t know how he decides that this item of clothing does not belong to one of the three men they’ve just killed in the gallery, but in any case he orders the search to be continued.

  It is after seven o’clock when they find the trapdoor.

  Gabčík, Valčík, and their two comrades are trapped like rats. Their hiding place is now their prison, and everything points toward it becoming their tomb. But until then they’re going to make it a bunker. The trapdoor opens. As soon as the legs of an SS stormtrooper appear, they each release a short burst of gunfire. This is like their signature—a demonstration of the cool blood that flows through their veins. There’s screaming and the legs disappear. Their situation is hopeless, but at the same time quite safe, in a way, at least in the short term—safer than the situation in the gallery had been. Kubiš and his two comrades had the benefit of a position overlooking the nave, which allowed them to dominate their attackers. Here, it’s the opposite, because the enemy is coming from above, but the entrance is so narrow that the SS have to come down one by one—and that gives the defenders plenty of time to shoot them one after another. It’s the same principle as at Thermopylae, if you like, except that Leonidas’s task has already been accomplished by Kubiš. So, protected by thick stone walls, Gabčík, Valčík, Hruby, and Svarc do at least have time—to think, if nothing else. How can they get out of there? Above them, they hear: “Give yourselves up. Nothing bad will happen to you.” The only way out of the crypt is this trapdoor. There is also a kind of horizontal vent in the wall, about ten feet above the floor: they’ve got a ladder, so they could reach it, but it’s too narrow for a man to pass through, and besides, it would only take them out to Resslova Street, which is crawling with hundreds of SS stormtroopers. “You will be treated as prisoners of war.” There are also a few steps leading to an old, boarded-up door, but even if they did manage to break it down, it only leads to the nave—and that, too, is swarming with Germans. “They told me to tell you that you have to give up. So I’ve told you. They said that nothing bad will happen to you, that you’ll be treated as prisoners of war.” The parachutists recognize the voice of Father Petrek, the priest who welcomed them and hid them in his church. One of them replies: “We are Czechs! We will never give ourselves up, you hear? Never! Never!” This is almost certainly not Gabčík, who would have specified: “Czechs and Slovaks.” In my opinion it’s Valčík. But another voice repeats “Never!” and follows it with a burst of gunfire. That seems to me more Gabčík’s style. (Although the truth is th
at I don’t have a clue.)

  Anyway, the endgame has reached a stalemate. Nobody can enter the crypt, and nobody can leave it. Outside, loudspeakers repeat the same words in a loop: “Give yourselves up and come out with your hands in the air. If you do not give yourselves up, we will blow up the whole church and you will be buried in the rubble.” Each announcement is met by a salvo of bullets from the crypt. Even if the Resistance is often deprived of its ability to speak, it can still express itself with a marvelous eloquence. Outside, the ranks of SS are asked to volunteer to go into the crypt. Nobody blinks. The commander repeats his request, more threateningly. A few soldiers step forward, pale-faced. Those who didn’t move are automatically volunteered. Another man is selected to descend through the trapdoor. He gets the same treatment: bullets in the legs—a bloodcurdling scream; another crippled superman. If the parachutists have plenty of ammunition, this could go on for a long time.

  The truth is that I don’t want to finish this story. I would like to suspend this moment for eternity, when the four men decide not to surrender to their fate but to dig a tunnel. Beneath the sort of fanlight/vent thing, with God knows what tools, they notice that the wall—which is below ground level—is made of bricks that crumble and come loose easily. Perhaps there is a way after all … perhaps, if we can dig through the stone … Behind the fragile brick wall, they find soft earth, and this makes them redouble their efforts. How far until they reach a pipe, or a sewer, or some kind of path leading to the river? Sixty feet? Thirty feet? Less? There are seven hundred SS outside, fingers on triggers, paralyzed or overexcited by nerves, by their fear of these four men, by the prospect of having to dislodge these enemies who are entrenched, resolute, and not at all intimidated, these enemies who know how to fight. They don’t even know how many of them there are! (As if there might be a whole battalion down there! The crypt is less than fifty feet long.) Outside, Pannwitz barks orders and men run in all directions. Inside, they dig with the energy of the damned. Perhaps they are just struggling for the sake of struggling, and nothing more. Perhaps nobody actually believes in this insane, delirious, Hollywood-style escape plan. But I believe in it. The four men dig away. Do they take turns while they listen to the fire engines’ sirens in the street? Or perhaps there weren’t any sirens. I’ll have another look at the testimony of the fireman who took part in that terrible day. Gabčík puts everything into digging the tunnel. He’s sweating now, having been so cold for days. I’m sure the tunnel was his idea: he’s a natural optimist. And I’m also sure that he’s digging now: he can’t stand being inactive. He wouldn’t just sit there and wait for death, not without doing something, not without trying something. Kubiš will not die in vain—let nobody say that Kubiš died in vain. Had they already begun digging the tunnel during the assault on the nave, taking advantage of the noise to cover the sound of their pickax? I don’t know that either. How is it possible to know so much and yet so little about people, a story, historical events that you’ve lived with for years? But, deep down, I know they’re going to make it. I can feel it. They’re going to get out of this trap. They are going to escape from Pannwitz’s clutches. Frank will be mad as hell and there’ll be films made about them.

  Where is that bloody fireman’s testimony?

  Today is May 27, 2008. When the firemen arrive, about 8:00 a.m., they see the SS everywhere and a corpse on the pavement. No one has thought to move Opalka’s body. The firemen listen as they are told what they have to do. It was Pannwitz’s brilliant idea: to smoke them out, and—if that doesn’t work—to drown them. None of the firemen want this job. Among their ranks, one hisses: “If you want that done, don’t look at us.” The head fireman chokes with anger: “Who said that?” But who would have become a fireman to end up lumbered with such a job? So a volunteer is chosen to smash off the iron bars that protect the vent. They fall after a few blows and Frank applauds. And thus a new battle begins around this horizontal orifice, barely three feet long and ten inches high; this black hole that, for the Germans, seems to open onto the unknown and the prospect of death; this shaft of light for the men in the crypt, which also signifies death. This small opening is now the one square on the chessboard coveted by all the pieces remaining in the game. Occupy this square, and you have a crucial positional advantage in an endgame where white—because, in this particular game, it’s black who moved first and who holds the initiative—will stage a heroic, against-all-odds defense.

  May 28, 2008. The firemen manage to slide their firehose through the vent. The hose is connected to a fire hydrant, and the pumps are activated. Water pours through the opening.

  May 29, 2008. The water begins to rise. Gabčík, Valčík, and their two comrades have wet feet. As soon as a shadow approaches the vent, they shoot. But the water keeps rising.

  May 30, 2008. The water is rising, but very slowly. Frank is getting impatient. The Germans toss tear-gas grenades into the crypt to smoke out its occupants, but it doesn’t work, because the grenades fall in the water. Why didn’t they try this before? It’s a mystery. I don’t think you should rule out the possibility that they are acting, as is often the case, in a rushed and disorderly way. Pannwitz seems to me the kind of man who thinks things through carefully, but I suppose he may not be in charge of all the military operations. And perhaps he, too, gives in to panic? Gabčík and his friends have wet feet, but at this rate they will die of old age before they’re drowned.

  June 1, 2008. Frank is extremely nervous. The more time passes, the more he fears that the parachutists will find a way of escaping. The water could even help them if they manage to find a leak, because, obviously, the crypt is not exactly watertight. Inside, they’re getting organized. One is in charge of gathering up the grenades and throwing them back outside. Another keeps digging unrelentingly in the tunnel. A third uses a ladder to push the firehose away from the vent. And the other one lets off bursts of gunfire whenever someone approaches. On the other side of the stone wall, soldiers and firemen, bent double, have to keep putting the firehose back in place while avoiding the spray of bullets.